More Tales of the Birds

“So we went back in procession to the school after I had kissed Nelly, and my clothes had been dug up in the garden, brushed, and put on me again; and when they locked me up in the whitewashed cell, where refractory boys were confined, the sergeant winked at the master, and put Mag’s cage in with me. When the labour-master unlocked the door to give me my dinner of bread and water, he brought something for Mag, and said a kind word to both of us.

“I was quite happy in Mag’s company all that day and night. Nelly’s pluck had made a man of me, in spite of all her fine schemes being upset. And I had a sort of dim hope that the magistrate, who was coming to see the runaway boy, might bring me some kind of good luck.

“Next morning I heard a carriage drive up, and in a few minutes I heard the key put into the lock. I stood up, and put my hands behind me, as we were always made to do when visitors arrived. Mag’s cage was on the floor at my feet.

“The door opened, and there stood the long-lost gentleman who had given me the sovereign, looking down on me with the same pleasant face and the same lively blue eyes! He recognised me at once; to him it was but the other day that I had caught his horse for him; but it had been long years of misery and disgrace to me. But he had been in London and in foreign parts, and had never thought of me since then – so he told me afterwards.

“‘Why, who’s this, and where’s my change?’ he said at once. ‘Didn’t I ask you if I could trust you? And how did you come here, I wonder, with that honest face?’

“It was too much for me, and for all the pluck I had got from Mag and Nelly, I burst into a fit of crying, and leant against the wall, heaving and sobbing. ‘The groom never came,’ was all I could get out at last.

“‘Bring me a chair here, Mr. Reynolds,’ said he, ‘and leave me alone with him. I know this boy.’

“The master went away, and my kind gentleman and I were left alone. I won’t tell you all that passed,” said the farmer tenderly, “it was only the first of a long string of kindnesses he has done me, and made me the happy old fellow I am. He got it all out of me by degrees. He heard all about Mag and Nelly, and all about Miss Pringle and the robbery. He took particular notice of Mag, and seemed very curious to know all about his ways. And when he went away he told the master to treat me as usual till he came back the next day.

“And now I’ve nearly done my yarn,” said the farmer; “she must be tired of Nelly and me by this time,” he added, looking at his wife, but it was getting too dark for me to see the twinkle that I know now was in his eyes as he said it.

“My gentleman came early, and to my astonishment, both I and Mag were put into his carriage, and he drove us away. Still more taken back was I when we stopped at Uncle Jonas’s, and out came Miss Nelly and climbed into the seat next me. We were too shy to kiss each other or talk, but after a bit I pulled out the wisp of hair from my trousers pocket and showed it her. Nelly couldn’t make it out, then, but she knows now how I got it. She knows – she knows,” said the farmer; “and here it is now,” and he showed me a locket, attached to his watch-chain, with some brown hair in it.

I looked, and was going to ask a question, when he held up his hand to hush me, and went on.

“We drove many miles, the gentleman asking questions now and then, especially about Mag, but for the most part we were silent. At last I saw the three elms and the spire come in sight, and I had hard work to keep the tears in. I sat with Nelly’s hand in mine, but we said never a word.

“We dropped Nelly at her mother’s cottage, and she was told that she would probably be sent for presently. Then we drove on to Miss Pringle’s, and went straight to the stable-yard; there was no pony, and the grass was growing in the yard. Miss Pringle, I found afterwards, would have no more boys about the place.

“‘Which was your room?’ said the gentleman, and I showed him upstairs.

“‘Stay here till I come for you,’ said he. ‘Can I trust you?’

“He did not wait for an answer, but went away, taking Mag with him. I sat down and looked out at the garden, and at the window where I had jumped out that terrible day, and wondered what was going to happen; and what happened is the last thing I am going to tell you.

“He went round to the front door, and presently came out into the garden, still carrying Mag’s cage. Then he put down the cage on the lawn, leaving its door open. Then he went back into the house, and I could see him and Miss Pringle come and sit at the open window of the parlour. He kept his eye on the cage, and seemed to say little; Miss Pringle looked rather puzzled, I thought, and shook her curls pretty often in a fidgety sort of way.

“Mag sat there in his cage for some time, though the door was wide open, as if he didn’t quite see what it all meant; and I sat at my window, too, as much puzzled as the bird or Miss Pringle.

“At last Mag began to stir a bit; then he came out and looked carefully all round, hopped about a bit, and at last got upon the garden chair, and seemed to be thinking of something, with his head on one side. All of a sudden he gave his long tail a jerk, and uttered a kind of a knowing croak; then he came down from the seat and hopped away towards the flower-bed under the window. The gentleman pulled Miss Pringle behind the curtain when he saw Mag coming, and I couldn’t see her any more; but I should think she must have been more puzzled than ever, poor lady.

“From my window I could see Mag digging away in the earth with his bill just in the corner of the flower-border by the house; and it wasn’t long before he got hold of something, and went off with it in his bill down the garden, as pleased as Punch, and talking about it to himself. And well he might be pleased, for it was the saving of me, and I believe he knew it; bless his old bones down yonder by the hedge!

“As soon as Mag began to hop down the garden I saw my gentleman do just what I had done before him; he jumped straight out of the window, and down came the flowerpots after him. I saw Miss Pringle give a jump from behind the curtain and try to save them; but it was too late, and there she stood in the window wringing her hands, while Mag and the gentleman raced round the garden, over the neat beds and through the rose-bushes, until everything was in such a mess that I can tell you it took me a good long time to tidy it all up early next morning.

“At last he got Mag into a corner by the toolhouse, and a minute later he was in my room, with Mag in one hand, pecking at him till the blood came, and in the other a sovereign!

“‘Here’s the thief,’ he said; ‘shall we send for a policeman?’ But Miss Pringle had already done that, for she thought that every one was going mad, and that somebody ought to be taken up; and when I had been taken over to the house, feeling rather queer and faint, and had been put on the sofa in the drawing-room, in came the neat maidservant and said that the constable was at the door. And when I heard that, I went straight off into a downright faint.

“When I woke up I was still on the sofa, the neat-faced clock was ticking, there were steps on the gravel path in the garden, Miss Pringle was sitting there looking very sad, and there were tears in her eyes, and I thought for a moment that that dreadful hour had never come to an end after all.

“But there was no policeman; and who was this sitting by my side? Why, it was dear old Nelly! And as she laid her head against mine, with all that hair of hers tumbling over my face, that kind gentleman came into the room from the garden, where he had been trying to quiet himself down a bit, I think, and patted both our heads, without saying ever a word.

“After a bit, however, he made us sit up, and gave us a good talking to. It was not Mag’s fault, he said, that we had got into such a terrible scrape, but mine for disobeying Miss Pringle and keeping the bird in the stable; and Nelly’s, too, for leading me on to it. And we must take great care of Mag now that he had got us out of the scrape, and keep him, to remind us not to get into any more.

“And we kept him to the last day of his life; and as for scrapes, I don’t think we ever got into any more, at least, not such bad ones as that was – eh, Nelly?”

And seeing me open my eyes wide, he laughed, and asked me whether I hadn’t found it out long before the story came to an end, and then, putting his arm round his bonny wife, he added, “Yes, lad, here’s my old Nelly, and she’ll climb a tree for you to-morrow, if you ask her.”

I gave my old friend Nelly a good kiss (with the entire approval of her husband), made my bow to the magpie, and ran home to my grandfather’s. And as we sat together that night, I got him to tell me the Story over again, from the moment when he took a fancy to the boy who caught his horse, to the time when he gave him his best farm, and saw him safely married to Nelly.

“I gave her away myself,” said he, “and I gave her to one of the best fellows and truest friends I have ever known. Miss Pringle gave him £50, and left him £500 more. But he always will have it that the magpie was at the bottom of all his luck, and I never would contradict him.”

SELINA’S STARLING

There was no such plucky and untiring little woman as Selina in all our village. I say was, for I am thinking of years ago, at the time when her Starling came to her; but she is with us still, plucky and indefatigable as ever, but now a bent and bowed figure of a tiny little old woman, left alone in the world, but for her one faithful friend.

Untiring she has ever been, but never, so far as we can recollect, a tidy woman in her own cottage; perhaps it was natural to her, or more likely she fell in with the odd ways of her husband, a man whom no wife could ever have made tidy himself. They never had any children, and they did not see much of their neighbours; their society was that of pigs and fowls and cats, and such society, inside a cottage, is not compatible with neatness. These animals increased and multiplied, and man and wife were their devoted slaves. Their earnings were eaten up by the creatures, and nothing ever came of it so far as we could see; for it was seldom any good to ask Selina to sell you a fowl or a duck – she never had one ready to kill. We believed that they grew to a comfortable old age, and then died a natural death; and however that may be, it is true enough that neither Selina nor her husband could ever bear to part with them.

But the member of the household dearest to Selina’s heart was an old pony that lived in a little tumble-down hovel adjoining the cottage. Fan was perfectly well known to all the village, for she was always being taken out to graze on odd bits of grass which were the property of no one in particular, where, if kindly accosted, and in a good humour, she would give you her off fore foot to shake. Like Selina, she was of very small make; she had once been a pretty roan, but now wore a coat of many faded colours, not unlike an old carpet, well worn and ragged. Some people in the village declared that she was getting on for forty years old, and I am inclined to think they were not far wrong; but she was still full of life, and as plucky and hard-working as Selina.

Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Fan went up to Northstow with her master (I use the word by courtesy rather than as expressing their real relation to each other); she waited patiently at shops and market, had a dinner of hay at an inn, and returned with her little cart laden with parcels, which she had to distribute about the village before she turned in for the night. For many a year she performed these duties, and she was as well known in Northstow as she was in our village. But one day, some ten years ago, Selina’s husband fell down suddenly and died; and then for a short time there was a break in Fan’s visits to the market-town.

When the funeral was over, Selina returned to her solitary home, and busied herself as best she could. The fowls and ducks came trooping around her, anxious to be fed, and anxious for nothing else; they did not seem in the least to miss any one from the house. Selina turned them out of the kitchen, and quietly made up her mind that she could not now afford to keep them; they must go, with all their mess and litter, and she would begin to tidy up a bit at last. Then she went out to the hovel, for she heard a subdued whinnying there. Fan was the one creature in the place that had felt as she had; Fan had been wanting to know where the old man was, and had lost her spirits and her appetite. So she went and spent a full half hour with Fan, talked to her, made her comfortable, and cried a little on her rough old neck. At last she went once more into her kitchen, and thence into her tiny parlour, and after a little tidying up, she took the big family Bible from under the photograph book and the glass case with the stuffed kitten, and, laying it on the table, sat down and put on her spectacles.

She opened the book at haphazard, and began to read in the Old Testament, but she could not fix her attention. Her thoughts wandered far away, until she was suddenly roused by something falling down the chimney into the grate. It was a warm April day, and she was sitting without a fire; only in the kitchen was there a little bit of coal smouldering, to be woke up into life presently when it should be tea-time. She went and examined the grate; a few fragments of half-burnt stone had come down, and, as she looked, another bit and another fell with a rattle into the fender. Then there was a scuffle and a beating of wings; and a young starling suddenly shot down into the room, made straight for the window, banged himself against it, and fell to the ground.

Selina picked it up; it was only stunned, and soon revived in her hands. She took it gently, and put it into an old cage which lay among the lumber of the yard, brought the cage in again, set it on the table, and resumed her reading. It was the book of Ruth; and the first name she came to was Elimelech – and Elimelech, she thought, would make a good name for her visitor. All the rest of the day she tended her starling, which had come to her in this strange way just when she needed something better in the house to keep her company than those unfeeling fowls and ducks; and Elimelech, who was stupid from his fall, made no attempt to escape, but took her advances in a grateful spirit.

This was how Selina came by her Starling, and with the natural instinct she possessed of attracting all living creatures to her, she very soon made a friend of it. It was young enough to feel no shyness for the quiet little old woman: it was hardly out of its nursery, and had only just begun to learn to scramble up to the top of the chimney from the ledge on which the nest was placed, when it took a sudden panic, failed to reach the top, and came scrambling down into a new world.

For some time she kept Elimelech in his cage, but gradually she accustomed him to shift for himself. He would sit on her shoulder as she went about her household work, and when she went into the hovel he would perch on Fan’s back. Fan did not seem to mind, and very soon Elimelech took to roosting there, and a strangely devoted friendship was established between them.

While Elimelech was thus growing up as a member of the household, Selina was beginning to wonder how she was to keep that household together. How was she to keep herself and pay her rent without the little incomings that had found their way into her husband’s pocket when he took a fancy now and then to ask his customers to pay their debts? She parted with her fowls and ducks, but most of these were ancient skinny creatures, whose lives had been prolonged beyond the usual limit by careless kindness, and they brought her but little profit. It was some time before it dawned on her that she must part with Fan too, but when at last it did, she felt a terrible pang. It would be like parting with a sister. And who indeed would buy poor old Fan, and if a purchaser were found, what would he give for such an ancient little animal?

She banished the notion from her mind: she and Fan must stick together for what years of lonely life still remained to them.

One Tuesday morning, she was grazing the pony on the strip of turf that ran through the middle of the village allotments; Elimelech was perched on Fan’s back as usual, for he now insisted upon occupying his favourite station during all these little excursions, amusing himself by occasional flights into the air, or sometimes walking at the pony’s heels and picking up the insects that were disturbed as she grazed. There in the dewy summer morning the three had a consultation together, and it was decided that the next day, Wednesday, being market day at Northstow, Selina and Fan should journey thither, show themselves once more, and try and start the carrying business afresh before it was too late. There was no time to be lost; already one villager more enterprising than his fellows had purchased a donkey, and threatened to step into the place left vacant by Selina’s husband. The day was spent in going round to the old customers, and by nightfall Selina had a fair number of commissions. A heavy cloud had suddenly lifted from the little old woman’s heart; she saw her way before her and went to bed happy.

Next morning early she went into her hovel, where Elimelech had passed the night on his usual perch. She fed the pony, and then, gently removing the bird, began to put on the harness. Elimelech flew up to a rafter, and began to utter dolorous crooning whistles; and no sooner was the harnessing finished, than down he flew again with a persistence that somewhat perplexed his mistress.

“No, my dear,” she said to him, “you just stay at home and keep house till we come back.” And laying hold of him tenderly, she began to carry him across the garden to the cottage, meaning to shut him up safe in his cage till evening. But Elimelech seemed to divine what was coming, and objected strongly; he struggled in her hand, and making his escape, flew up and perched on the cottage chimney. She shook her finger at him. “Don’t you get into mischief,” she said, “or you’ll make us both unhappy.” Elimelech looked very wise up there, bowing and whistling. “I’ll take care of myself,” he seemed to say, and she thought he might be trusted to do so. Anyhow, go she must, and without him.

She mounted into the seat of the little pony-cart, and turned out into the village street; but she had hardly done so, when a whirring of wings was heard, and down came Elimelech to his perch again. There was no time to stop now; and Selina was obliged to let him have his own way, though she was not without misgivings for what might happen at Northstow, if they ever reached it all three still together. In the village there was no fear; Fan and Elimelech were now as well known as Selina herself, but at Northstow what might happen if the children were coming out of school just as she got there?

She tried to time herself so as to escape such a catastrophe, but as usually happens in such cases, she did after all run right into the middle of the school as it broke up at twelve o’clock. Elimelech, who had been perfectly well behaved all the way, only taking a little flight now and then as a relief, now thought he saw an opportunity to display himself; and no sooner did the children begin to gather round than he fluttered his wings and saluted them with a cheery whistle. Instantly the pony and cart were surrounded with a crowd of imps shouting and dancing; Fan was hustled and began to kick, and one or two boys made a dash for the starling. But Elimelech was a match for them; he quietly flew up to a neighbouring roof and waited there till the hubbub had subsided. Before Selina had reached her inn, he was on the pony’s back again.

Once in the stable, both Fan and Elimelech were safe; but Selina had to do a good deal of extra carrying that day, for she could not venture to drive the cart about the town, and had to drag every parcel separately from shop or market to the inn. At last she got away, escaping by a back lane which joined the main road outside the town, and reached home without further adventures.

On the Saturday following she started again, and again Elimelech insisted on being of the party. She had no great fear for his safety this time, for unless it came to throwing stones, which was unlikely on a market-day with policemen about, she knew that he could save himself by flight. And so it happened; whenever anything occurred to disturb him, Elimelech would fly up to some lofty point of vantage, and as regularly rejoin his company at the inn. But as time went on, he had less and less need for these sallies; Northstow grew accustomed to the strange trio, and though a boy would sometimes howl, or a passer-by stop and stare, no one seriously troubled them.

So the autumn and winter passed, and Selina began to thrive. Cheerfully and untiringly she went about her business; she was always to be relied on, and apart from her own virtues her pony and her starling attracted attention to her, and got her many new customers. Indeed Selina began to think Elimelech so important a partner in the concern, that when February came and the wild starlings in the village began to mate, she took the precaution of cutting one of his wings, lest his natural instincts should get the better of him. To lose him would be a terrible thing both for herself and Fan, who showed much discontent if the bird were not on her back, gently probing her old coat with his bill.

“Oh, he loves Fan better than me,” Selina would say to her visitors, of whom she now had plenty; “he loves me, but he loves Fan better.” If we could have penetrated into Elimelech’s mind, I do not think we should have found that this was exactly so. I believe that he loved Selina as well as we all did – I believe that he looked upon her, as Mr. Dick looked upon Aunt Betsey, as the most wonderful woman in the world. But I think that Fan’s back was a more comfortable perch than Selina’s shoulder, and the hovel more suited to his turn of mind than her kitchen – and that was all.

So the years went on, Selina throve, Elimelech’s partnership was unbroken, but Fan began to grow really old at last. She struggled up the hill with all her old pluck, but her breath came short and quick. Many a time in those days have I watched the three making their way up the long hill beyond the village, Fan panting and struggling, Elimelech whistling encouragingly on her back, and Selina, who had dismounted to ease her friend, following the cart slowly, her old black bonnet nodding with each step, and the head inside it bending over till it was almost on a level with her waist.

One day in the winter I had given Selina a commission – it was a mere trifle, but one of those trifles, a packet of tobacco or what not, which one wishes there should be no delay about. At tea-time it had not arrived, and it was past the time when Selina might be expected. I put on my hat and went out to look for her, but no pony and cart was to be seen. Then I set off strolling along the road to Northstow, asking a labourer or two whether they had seen Selina, but nothing was to be heard of her. With half a misgiving in my mind, I determined to go right on till I met her, and I was soon at the top of the hill, and pacing along the stretch of high road that lay along the uplands in the direction of the little town. It grew quite dark, and still no Selina.

I was within a mile and a half of Northstow, where the road is bordered by a broad rim of grass, when I thought I saw a dark object a little in front of me by the roadside. I went up to it, and found it was Selina’s cart, without Selina or the pony. Then I struck a match, shading it with my hand from the breeze. I just made out the pony was lying on the grass under the hedge, and that the little woman was lying there too, with her head resting against his side. She seemed to be fast asleep. As I approached Elimelech rose from the pony’s neck, and fluttered around me.

Hardly knowing what to do, and feeling as if I were breaking in ruthlessly on a scene so full of tender sadness, I stood there for a moment silent. Then I put my hand on Selina’s shoulder, saying, “How are you, Selina? What’s the matter? Has Fan come to grief?”

Selina opened her eyes and looked at me; at first she did not know where she was. Then it all came back to her.

“She’s dead,” she said at last. “She fell down suddenly in the cart and died. I took her out and dragged her so that no one should run over her, but it made me so tired that I must have fallen asleep.”