Part 15

“I object to killing. It excites the young birds. When they have done it once they want to do it again. We might be breaking up the very foundations of society by encouraging this kind of punishment. Let them build in a tree by themselves. Live and let live, I say.”

This plan found a few supporters, but more assailants: Gaffer prudently held his tongue. Every one began to give his own opinion, and the two opposing parties got so angry that the president felt obliged to order another flight. When they returned, Gaffer spoke as follows:--

“I hope my worthy friends who have made their proposals, will not take it amiss if I state my opinion that they are both open to serious objection. If we kill this upstart’s bride, surely we shall be leaving the real criminal unpunished. (Loud caws of approval.) If on the other hand we let them build in a tree by themselves, they will bring up their young, and instead of having two rebellious birds to deal with, we shall have a whole family to keep aloof from. I ask you, is it likely, is it possible, that we should be able to keep our young birds from associating with them? Now what I propose is this: let them come and try to build in our trees, as I know they will; let us tell our younger birds, who will be very glad of the job, to take away every stick they bring, and worry them till they are sick of it. If they get a few bruises, or a broken leg or wing, so much the better; if they give up the attempt, and go elsewhere, we shall have got rid of bad rubbish (applause), and they won’t get on better anywhere else, depend upon it. If any rook here thinks that I have a personal grudge against this young Jetsom, I trust that the moderation of this proposal will undeceive him. I request the President to put my motion to the vote without delay.” (Much cawing.)

The President did as he was desired; and the motion was carried by a large majority. Each old bird was then directed to tell his younger friends that they might freely take any nesting materials collected by Jetsom and his spouse; and the meeting broke up.

The victim of these hard-minded old birds brought his wife home that night, and they roosted in one of the trees without being molested or even noticed. Next morning early they set about choosing a place for a nest, and while they were looking about, Gaffer sent a polite message, by a lively young bird, that an excellent position was vacant in his tree. The wily old gentleman wished to witness the success of his plot, without taking part in the proceedings himself. Jetsom began to think he was getting into Gaffer’s good books again, and gladly accepted the offer. “That old fellow,” he said to his wife, “is a great authority here, and if we can enlist him in the great cause, it will be the best thing that could happen to us. Now, my dear, we will begin our labours cheerfully.”

All that day they went backwards and forwards bringing sticks to lay the foundation of the nest; and Gaffer sat on a high bough and looked down on them benignly with his one eye. He even condescended once or twice to give them a little advice as to how the sticks should be placed. In the evening they went off to rest, bathe, and enjoy a little conversation about the happy future of the race of rooks; and a happier or more loving pair of birds were not to be found in all that large rookery. How their hearts sank within them on their return when they found that every stick they had laid had been taken away!

Gaffer was still sitting there, looking very wise: and Jetsom asked him who had done them this bad turn, and why.

“My dear young friend,” said Gaffer, with an ill-concealed leer, “these are little troubles that we have all had to go through. It’s only fun, you may be sure. Some of those idle young birds have been amusing themselves at your expense. Don’t be disheartened: begin again.”

“Thank you, you dear, kind old bird,” said Jetsom’s wife. “How good of you to take such an interest in us. May I have a little talk with you some day about the problems of life?”

Gaffer was overpoweringly polite. “My dear,” he said, “you do me great honour. I shall be delighted to discuss them with you. But perhaps you will solve them for yourselves.” And he seemed to leer at her with his vacant eye, while he winked the other at a friend in a tree hard by.

The work began again next day; the same thing happened again, and again Gaffer encouraged them to persevere. Next day Jetsom stayed on guard, while his wife collected sticks. Seeing this, Gaffer took himself off, and only returned to find, to his extreme delight, his victim in a very ruffled state, the other rooks in possession of all his sticks, and his wife in very low spirits. She appealed to him to protect them.

“My dear,” said Gaffer, “this is one of the problems of life. You are now beginning to face the facts of the world. Go on, persevere, and sooner or later you will solve the problems.”

The luckless pair took his advice once more, and day after day went on collecting their sticks, only to find them stolen directly their backs were turned. If one remained on guard, battles ensued; and Gaffer could hardly repress his delight when he saw Jetsom’s feathers begin to fall off in these fights. Several times he had to retire by himself to a distant tree, to enjoy his revenge in solitude.

At last the younger birds began to get tired of this game, and having finished their own nests, were no longer in want of the sticks that Jetsom collected. Gaffer began to get sulky and anxious. He sat on his bough and saw the nest beginning to rise at last: something must be done at once. He waited till both birds were away together; then down he went on the nest and began to pull it all to pieces. But it was a long job for one bill, and before he had done, back came the owners. Gaffer was surprised, and was quite unable to persuade them that he was only helping to arrange the sticks; it was all too plain. Jetsom fell into a fury that frightened his poor wife out of her wits, and before Gaffer could stammer out something about “the problems of life,” he was attacked, pecked, driven from one tree to another, worried, pushed, flapped at, till his one eye closed for ever, and he fell to the ground lifeless. But the problems of life had been too much for Jetsom. He felt a moment of glorious triumph as his enemy fell, and was just returning to his wife and nest with pride and honour, with heart swelling with joy and hope: when his senses gave way, his bill opened, his eyes grew dim, and in the moment of victory he expired, falling to the ground by the side of his conquered foe. He had solved his problem.

* * * * *

Half an hour later a gentleman walking down the road, stopped to watch a strange assembly of rooks in an adjoining meadow. They were standing in a large circle, making a great noise; in the centre of the circle stood a single rook, ruffled and miserable-looking. As he watched, the noise gradually ceased, and after a moment’s silence, the whole company rose on their wings and rushed upon the victim in the middle. The noise again became deafening, and nothing could be seen but a mêlée of wings, tails, and beaks, on the spot where the solitary bird had been seen a moment before. The gentleman scrambled over the hedge, waving his stick and shouting: the rooks flew away with loud cawings. When he reached the spot, he found nothing but a mangled mass of feathers--the lifeless body of one miserable bird.

It was the body of Jetsom’s widow. She too had solved the problem of her life, and the rookery was no longer troubled with revolutionary ideas.

A QUESTION BEGINNING WITH “WHY.”

One warm summer afternoon two young men were leaning out of a window, smoking their pipes, and enjoying a lazy half-hour. The window was one of a long row in the garden-quadrangle of an old gray Oxford college; and you looked out of it on a beautiful close-shaven lawn, bordered with flower beds, and inclosed on one side by one of watery Oxford’s many streams. This lawn, in the summer, is never without its family of water-wagtails. Here there is no fear of bird-nesting boys, and comparatively little peril of cats; and the turf is mown so often and so closely, that even the youngest bird can find his food there without the least trouble. And there they were that July afternoon, sometimes running so quickly that you quite lost sight of their little black legs, then stopping suddenly and moving their tails rapidly up and down for a few moments, then pouncing upon some unlucky insect on the grass, or perhaps pursuing it in the air with a quick fluttering of wings and tails; and all the while uttering that contented little double-note of theirs, which seemed to say to the occupants of the old panelled rooms above them, “This is real happiness; we take what comes, and ask no questions; we don’t puzzle our heads over Philosophy, and Biology, and Constitutional History, and Economical Science. Why, even you wouldn’t be trying to find out a reason for everything, if you weren’t afraid the Examiners were going to ask you for it! Come down here and lie on this beautiful lawn in the shade, and forget all about the why and the wherefore. Take things as you find them; there are no Examiners about just now!”

The two young men were not thinking of the wagtails; but neither were they thinking of anything else in particular, and the invitation to go and lie on the lawn found its way somehow into their temporarily vacant minds. They put on their flannels and their boating coats and went and stretched themselves at full length under the cool shade of an acacia. There they lay quite quiet and happy, and were for some time so silent that the wagtails ventured up quite close to them without any sign of fear.

One was a poet; at least his friends thought him one, and as he himself was not quite sure that they were right, it is not impossible that he had a few poetic streaks in his nature. The other was a student of science, and spent most of his time in cutting earth-worms and frogs into beautiful little slices, and looking at them through a microscope. They had a liking for each other, because neither fully understood the other’s thoughts and ambitions; so there was plenty of room for comfortable silence, and cosy human companionship.

At last the silence was broken by the poet. He spoke as much to himself as to his friend.

“It’s very puzzling,” he said.

“Very,” said the man of science, without taking his pipe from his lips, and not in the least knowing what the other was thinking of. At this moment a young wagtail took a long run, and stopped, in all the innocent fearlessness of youth, within half-a-dozen yards of them. There was a pause again.

“I never can make out,” at last pursued the poet, “why Shakespeare wrote no more plays during the last years of his life. He wasn’t old, and he must have had plenty of time at Stratford.”

“He probably liked better to lie in his garden and think of nothing at all,” said the other. “But I don’t see why you want to find out. Much better to leave the poor man alone.--”

“Why, what do you do all day up at the Museum?” asked the poet. “I thought you were always trying to find out something or other. I dare say you’d like to find out why that bird wags its tail,” he added, as the young wagtail made another little run forward, and stood there just in his line of vision with her tail going gently up and down.

“Why it wags its tail?” said the man of science: “you just catch it and bring it up to the Museum, and we’ll soon tell you why it wags its tail. It’s only a matter of nerves and muscles, and spinal cord you know, and all that sort of thing. The professor would soon put you up to all that. But that reminds me that I said I’d help him with some specimens this afternoon, and it’s past three o’clock.” And up he jumped, and ran off to get his hat, startling the young wagtail, which flew away to the other end of the lawn.