Part 5

She brought him in to tea that afternoon, and even at this, his first meal, he sat up like a kangaroo on his long hind-legs, and ate bread and milk out of a spoon. He absorbed alarming quantities of it, fell instantly asleep, woke up after a few minutes and ate a great deal more; but the next morning the poor little beast was found gasping, apparently dying; and when his box was opened he would not run away. But he presently recovered as suddenly, and again devoured much food, and so went on through the day, though his gasping fits returned at intervals. Next morning he died. Is it that we find these creatures generally when they are ill?--the least touch seems to make them die. Certainly I remember once or twice, in those joyful days when sitting in a hayfield meant the height of bliss, that our very gentle and amiable collie, excited by an “animal” smell, would grub open a nest of little field-mice, and stand by delighted and smiling at his discovery, while we came up just in time to see three or four expiring infants. He could hardly have killed them, for he only wanted to look at them. Yet they died.

What was it, I wonder, that killed Maximilianus? Maximilianus was a very small shrew, and we found him running about the garden; he was just about as long as his name. He was not the least frightened, and we carried him about for half a day; but we found nothing he could eat, until at last we came upon a very large, fat, orange-coloured centipede. Maximilianus seized upon this with the utmost delight, began it vigorously at one end, and ate it up like a radish as far as the middle. Then he died.

We had once a visitor in the shape of a squirrel, who came uninvited, made his abode with us for some months, and finally departed, taking “French leave.” My mother was his guide, philosopher, and friend. He slept in a pocket of her apron (this was in the seventies), whence he came out to fly up the curtains and drop down, venture on to the breakfast table, and experiment on her tea with a tiny paw. He always ran up the curtain when he was scolded; as for instance when my father, going to the sideboard to cut ham, found the squirrel’s head just coming out of it, having eaten its way through from the other side. Then, after being received in the bosom of our family, after sharing meals with the household, after attending lessons and even prayers (when he ran up the back of a kneeling housemaid), the skwug suddenly disappeared without warning. A few days after, my mother was walking in the wood, when a squirrel ran up to her, put its paw upon her foot, looked her in the face, then turned and ran away. It was never heard of again.

Sometimes you find animals which, though not very near and dear to human beings, have a great influence on other animals. Our donkey died the other day. She was a remarkable and original animal. Though she was a fixture, taken at a high valuation from our predecessors, her demeanour was such that we called her Jack, and thought she had retired to a well-earned repose. Then we found she was not quite two years old, and a lady. We were always good friends, but not specially intimate. She and her mule-foal might come to the window for bread and salt when the horses were not allowed on the grass; but for weeks together she did not avail herself of this privilege, till one day a snort was heard from outside, and the donkey’s nose was seen flattened against the glass. Once, when my mother was walking with a friend of hers,--not an acquaintance of the donkey,--Jack, for I cannot help calling her so, solemnly accompanied them all the afternoon, walking between them. But such occasional walks, and the fact that she was amiably willing to follow anyone quite impartially for a handful of oats, constituted the extent of our intimacy with her. Not such was her relation to the other animals. As exclusively as my goat walked with the cows, Jack walked with the horses. She did not, of course, consider herself so superior to her company as the goat. She made many friends among the horses; you might not have known it, perhaps, but neither as a general rule would you suspect the friendship which men have for one another by their way of behaving. If a man meets a great friend in company, he either takes no notice of him or stands near him without saying anything. Jack used to stand about with the horses without saying anything, but they liked to have her near.

One morning Jack was found dead of fatty degeneration of the heart. “I’m sure the horses miss her,” said the bailiff’s wife; “I look at them standing in the yard, and I can see they miss her.”

Jack was buried in the orchard, and her little mule followed the body as far as the garden-gate. But there they shut the door, and the one mourner was left outside.

THE DESERTED LOVER

Ever since I was a very small child I had longed to possess a pair of budgerrygars. There was a tradition of three live ones once in our family, in proof whereof my nurse could point to a little stuffed bird in its case. I used to gaze with longing at that beautiful green and yellow creature, with the speckled back and the black and blue feathers in its neck, sitting with a foreground of quaking grasses and an eternal blue sky behind. There existed also, but rarely seen, a little cardboard box containing a few of these same mysteriously beautiful blue and yellow and green feathers, with here and there a long strong tail or wing quill. Yes, there had been budgerrygars among us once; there were even real live ones now in the possession of those happy Italian women who sit at the street corners, but for me--while I was still a child--they were inmates of that imaginary Paradise of unattainable things, wherein might be found little wax cages of birds, and the fluffy hollow ducks which live in confectioners’ shops and are sold for ninepence.

After I was grown up, a friend gave me one of these ducks; I have it still, and the halo still surrounds it. When I was grown up, too, some one gave me a pair of budgerrygars; and there followed a tragedy which was not bargained for in the price paid.

They came down from London in a tiny cage,--a travelling cage. Budgerrygars do not mind lack of room, it makes it all the easier for them to sit quite close, as if they were glued together. They were lovely little things, with their pearl-grey beaks,--wonderfully sharp and strong those beaks are, as I know to my cost,--but they could use them gently, and you would see one turn with a soft croon to put straight a ruffled feather on its mate’s head.

The little gentleman had caught a cold, not much of a cold at first; he only panted slightly as he sat near the little lady and ruffled his feathers; but she cheered him up, and smoothed the feathers down, and they sat side by side and looked at the world with little meaningless grey eyes.

Their new large cage was a great excitement, and it was immense fun for them to walk over the top, using their beak as a third leg, and that the most reliable. And their spirits ran so high that they began to shriek unmusically at each other when they found themselves at opposite corners of the cage.

I am afraid we were not as careful as we ought to have been with the little gentleman. They were so funny and pretty that they were carried from room to room; and the cage must have been in a draught, for the little gentleman began to puff and breathe rather hard, and his feathers were persistently ruffled, and the little lady could not smooth them down any more, even if she had tried.

Sympathy to the ailing, the feeble, and the weak is a very modern virtue; strange, as civilisation shows us what an unprogressive virtue it is. The lame and the blind were “hated of David’s soul”; animals and savages and men of early civilisation agree with David. Now and then you find a dog which will bring a broken-legged friend to the hospital, a cat which brings its half-starved neighbour to eat its own dinner,--souls of philanthropists on pilgrimage, dead or yet to be; but the stag’s instinct of goring the sickly ones, and the wolf’s of tearing the wounded, are the ruling instincts. The lady budgerrygar took David’s side in the matter. She did not wish to bite her spouse, or peck him, or pull his feathers out, but he began to be hated of her soul.

One day she would not let him sit by her on the perch; he could hardly get up to it, yet he would have done so for the sake of sitting close to her, for the sake of putting a stray feather straight in her ladyship’s top-knot, of feeling the little pearl-grey bill travelling softly over his head with a croon of affection; but she would not have it, she drove him away from her. So he sat on the lower perch, or on the bottom of the cage; he did not scream or croon, he just puffed his feathers out and panted. Did David repent in respect of the blind and lame when he said, “My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me”?

What strange rebellion against fate moved in the soul of the little budgerrygar, what necessity of finding a lonely place to die in, what sad desire of escaping from the mate who would no longer care for him? It is all very well to talk of “instinct” and dismiss the case, but how do you suppose the abstract idea of loneliness in death nerved the failing wings and feet to seek the door of the cage, made him squeeze through the door, such a little way open; how did it attract him across the room and through the half-open door,--away--away--as far as he could go from his faithless love? Did this abstract idea act on the little budgerrygar like a machine, and move and nerve the wings for such a flight? Or was there distress in the heart, and anguish in the little animal soul, when he found himself ill at ease and ailing, deserted and repulsed?

It is a work of skill and time to induce a healthy budgerrygar to leave its cage; but this quixotic spirit found his way out of the cage for himself, and found his way out of the room, and he must have flown until he dropped dead. For we found a little heap of gay green and yellow feathers in the passage,--stone-cold and stiff;--he had been dead some hours.

Budgerrygars are very sociable birds, they cannot live alone. The little dead bird could not. So we got a new mate for the lady, whom she received warmly, and the pair lived quite happily ever after.

But I should like to know, in the whole scheme of things, what is the recompense for the little deserted lover.

JACK

Few people know how different one bird is from another of the same kind. Of course we can see when one canary is green and one yellow and one crested; but few people know that some canaries have blue eyes, some brown, and some grey; or how different one canary is in intelligence and character from another.

Jack was a remarkably intelligent canary; one always felt him to be immensely superior to oneself. When he consented to sit on his swing and allow me to swing him, he always seemed to say, “This is a very childish game, but it appears to amuse you, and I am by nature indulgent.” He was often very angry with me and pecked me, but I was sure I deserved it. The only blemish I ever found in him was that he was rather unscrupulous and ill-tempered, but then he was so exceedingly superior that he had to find fault with the canaries and me sometimes.

Jack was very bright yellow, with a slim, trim figure. When he was about two years old a little wife was given to him. She was almost white, and they looked very pretty together. Her name was Thyrsis. We tried to call them Corydon and Thyrsis, but “Jack” suited him so well that we were not able to change it, so they remained rather inharmoniously “Jack and Thyrsis” to the end of their lives.

I always used to turn Jack and Thyrsis out of their cage when I was cleaning it. One morning I did not see that the window of the room opposite was open. They flew round the room together, then coming to the open door they darted out of it, into the next room and straight to the window. One instant they rested on the window-sill, then like a flash of sunlight and moonlight they were out into the sunny garden and trees beyond. All that day I haunted the garden, too anxious to cry, carrying their cages about, in the vain hope that they might be hungry or thirsty and want to come back; once I thought I saw a flash of gold, but night fell and still the birds were out. The next day we sent the town-crier round shouting out a reward of five shillings for them, and the day following Thyrsis was brought back to me in a paper bag, much exhausted but not materially worse.

I did not hear of Jack for five months.

Then a boy who lived near and kept canaries heard for the first time of my loss, and he sent me a canary which some months ago had come through the open window and settled on his own bird’s cage. Of course it was Jack. He had not forgotten his way of coming towards me with wings outspread, uttering the funny scolding noise from which he got his name.

Now by this time Jack and Thyrsis were come to years of discretion, and it was thought that they ought to build and have young. So they were provided plentifully with horsehair and cottonwool, and given a small round basket in one of the cages, and we put their two cages together, opening the door between.

They were very much delighted with the wool, and played with it a great deal, but they seemed to have no idea of the proper use of it; if we put it into the nest for them, they merely pulled it out again.