Part 18

“He said I was to have change of scene, and cold water, and--”

“Exactly,” said the crow. “He’s quite wrong. You would certainly have died if you hadn’t come to me. You are suffering from a tumor inquisitivus esuriens of a very virulent kind. I can take it out for you.” And he began to sharpen his beak on the bough.

“Is it a very--a very dangerous operation?” asked Kelpie.

“One and a half per cent survive it,” said the crow.

“I think I would rather not have it done,” said Kelpie.

“Very well,” said the crow; “but you won’t live through the winter. And if you don’t make haste and go,” he added fiercely, “I’ll do it whether you like it or not!”

Kelpie flew away as fast as she could, and never stopped till she was a good mile away, and she left that part of the country the very same day. She resolved to ask no more questions, but to pass the rest of her life as well as she could, and die contentedly in the winter. As for foreign travel, that was plainly no good now; so she thought she might as well return to the pleasant place where she had been brought up, try and find some of her relations, and get a little help and comfort before she died.

Slowly and sadly she made her way towards Oxford. It was now getting towards November, and the country was growing sad with falling leaves and creeping mists; but that was quite in keeping with her own feelings, and she did not notice the absence of the sun, or feel any sorrow at the browning of the trees and fields; only just one little gleam of sunshine brought her a moment’s pleasure, when she saw the spires of Oxford catch it in the distance, as she came flitting up the river-bank from the point where she had struck the Thames.

About two miles below Oxford she met a boat coming easily down stream, with two human beings in it; one was sculling, the other steering. She stopped on the towing path at a safe distance from them, and waited till they should pass. They were within a few yards of her, and she was just going to take flight again, when the one who was steering called out to the other in a voice she remembered only too well,

“Easy a moment, Poet, I want to look at that bird.”

Kelpie stood quite quiet, except that her tail was moving up and down with great rapidity. The Poet looked round and saw her.

“Aha, Chick,” he said (his friend was called Chick because he spent so much time in studying the development of fowls in the egg), “do you remember that hot afternoon when we lay in the garden and watched the wagtail? I suppose you’ve found out by this time why they wag their tails?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Chick. “Nor have you found out why Shakespeare wrote no plays the last three years of his life.”

“Quite true,” said the Poet; “but then I don’t work at the Museum, where they find out everything!”

“No, they don’t,” said Chick; “you’re quite out of it. Spare your irony for once. I’ll just tell you what happened that afternoon. I kept thinking of that bird all the way up to the Museum after I left you, for when I came to think of it, that tail-wagging was rather an interesting point. So when I got there, I asked the Professor about it. Well, he was a bit bothered with his specimens that afternoon, and rather short in his temper, and I was late, which made him worse; so he gave me a lecture on the spot. He’s a good lecturer, you know, even when he’s quite serene: but when he’s savage there’s no one like him. He comes out with home-truths then, and blows you into little bits. I wish you would come and let him demolish you, Poet, it would knock such a heap of rubbish out of your poetic head.”

“Very likely,” said the Poet: “but what nonsense did he knock out of your head? Plenty there to operate upon.”

“I quite allow it,” said Chick. “That is a scientific view of education which you poets would do well to act on. But the Professor growled at me when I asked him why wagtails wag their tails, and said there would have been some use in asking how they do it. And then he took me into his room, and showed me diagrams, and explained the muscular system of a bird, which I never understood before; and he kept me a whole hour there, till at last he got quite sweet again. And after that he said he’d give me a piece of advice, which I’ll hand on to you, and I hope it will do you good.”

“I’m sitting at your feet,” said the Poet, “go on.”

“Well, what he said was this: ‘You young fellows are a deal too anxious to get hold of a reason for everything; and I dare say you think it a fine thing to come and try to puzzle us with questions. Now what you have to learn here at present is not reasons, but facts. Leave alone for the present these questions that begin with the word why; there are many of them that can never be answered, as far as I can see, or they can only be answered by getting together and properly arranging a great quantity of facts. Your wagtail question is just one of this kind. You have no more business to be asking me such a question, than a young wagtail has to be asking its parents why it wags its tail. You stick to facts, and don’t ask why a thing is, until you know altogether and exactly that it is and how it is.’

“And I’ve been sticking to facts ever since,” added Chick; “and you’d much better do the same. Pull on, Poet; and whenever you see a wagtail think of what I’ve told you, and your poetic brain will be all the better for it.”

“There she goes,” said the Poet: “I wonder why she stopped so long. I really think she was listening to us.”

“I might have spared you the Professor’s sermon,” said Chick. “Pull on, Poet; go ahead. Here we are running into the bank while you’re asking questions that begin with why!” And they dropped slowly down the stream.

The Poet was quite right. Kelpie had been listening--drinking in every word of the Professor’s sermon. A delicious and soothing feeling grew upon her at each sentence, and when it was over she sprang upon her wings with a sense that a whole load of trouble had been taken off her mind.

“They were all wrong,” she said to herself: “thrush, jackdaw, kingfisher, and especially that wicked old crow. Why couldn’t they tell me the truth? But that’s a question that begins with why, and I must stick hard to facts.”

Kelpie kept hard to her facts, and found her happiness in doing so. She kept to flies, beetles, and small crustaceans; she kept hard to her husband when the pairing-time came, and to her eggs and young; she kept to the laws of her kind, and left the questions that begin with “why” to the Professor and his species.

THE LIGHTHOUSE.

It was a wild and gusty day early in April; a wet wind from the south-east drove the waves into a little bay, where the sea had long ago forced an opening in the great chalk rampart of the coast. The downs rose steeply above this opening, their short sweet grass freshened by rain and wind; down below in the hollow a little stream, clear as every chalk-stream is, trickled through the long grass, still brown with the sun of last summer, and nestled here and there under a fringe of dwarf willows or alders. As it reached the shore, which was a huge bank of rounded flints from the white cliff, the brook spread itself out for a little space on a stony bed, and played with a few green weeds that had fastened themselves upon the larger pebbles, then crept quietly into the flinty bank, and vanished utterly before it lost itself finally in the sea-waves.

Early in the morning of that April day you might have seen a tiny bird fly in from the sea, and settle, more dead than alive, upon the top of the bank. Here the strong wind, coming now from behind it, blew up its feathers and made it so uncomfortable that in a minute or two it fluttered down the stones to the wider bit of stream beyond; and then again, seeing still better shelter a little further on, it struggled along the brook till it reached the first little group of fringing willows, and there, close to the water, in a little hollow under the bank, where the willow-roots were thick and close, and where a turn in the brook gave respite from the gusts and rain, it felt itself safe and tolerably warm, began to preen its feathers, and at last put its head under its little brown wing and slept.