I
The Baron sat perched on an old gnarled oak, gazing across the deep
ravine below him, where the noisy river leapt from pool to pool. He had
been far over the moorland that day with his wife, searching for a safe
nesting-place, and had given up the search in despair and returned to
his old home; but the Baroness had dallied and been left behind, and now
he was expecting her as the sun began to sink in the west. He sat there
silent and sad, the last, so he thought, of an ancient race; his head,
almost white with age, slightly bent downwards, and his long forked tail
sadly weather-worn and drooping.
It was a fresh evening in early April, and one sweet shower after
another had begun to entice the ferns to uncurl themselves, and the oaks
on the rocky slopes of the Kite’s fortress to put on their first ruddy
hue; and now the showers had passed, and the setting sun was shining
full in the old Baron’s face as he sat on his bough above the
precipices. But neither sun nor shower could rouse him from his reverie.
Suddenly he raised his head and uttered a cry; and at the same moment
you might have seen the Baroness gliding slowly over the opposite hill.
As she neared him, she stopped in mid-air over the roaring torrent and
answered his call; and then he slipped off his bough, like a ship
launched into the yielding water, and silently joined her. They flew
round and round each other once or twice, and the fisherman on the rocks
below looked up and gazed at them with admiration. You could tell them
apart without difficulty: the Baroness was the larger bird of the two,
and her feathers were in better order—she was still young, not more than
twenty or so; while the old Baron looked worn and battered, though the
red of his back was brighter, and his fine tail was more deeply forked
than that of his lady.
[Illustration: The Last of the Barons.]
They began to circle round each other slowly, hardly moving their wings,
but steering with their long tails, and soon they were far above the
isolated hill which was known as the Kite’s fortress. Sweeping in great
circles higher and higher, they seemed to be ascending for ever into the
blue, never to come down again; now and again a white cloud would pass
above them, against which their forms looked black and clear-cut, and
then it would drift away, and you had to look keenly to see them still
sailing slowly round and round, tiny specks in the pure ether.
All this time they were talking about a very important matter; not
chattering and fussing, as common birds do—starlings, sparrows, and such
low-born creatures—but saying a few words gravely as they neared each
other in their great circles of flight, and thinking of the next
question or answer as they parted for another sweep.
“Well,” said the Baron after a while, “have you found a better place
than this, where our persecutors cannot reach us without risking their
miserable lives?”
“No,” she answered, “none as good as this, and I have been far over the
moors toward the setting sun. There are the crags looking down on the
flat country and the sea, but they are not so well wooded, and they are
too near that seaside town where we have enemies. I have looked at many
other places too, but there were none to please me much.”
“I thought so,” said the Baron. “I have known all this country, every
tree and every crag, since I first learnt to fly on the hill down below;
and there is no such place as this. I and my old Baroness brought up
many broods here, and now that I have a young wife again, she wanders
about and wants to find a new home.”
“But men found you out and shot her here,” said the Baroness. The Baron
sailed away from her in a wide sweep, but soon returned and spoke
gravely again.
“Don’t talk of that, dear,” he said. “I have found another wife, and
that was more than I could expect. I searched far and wide, over land
and over sea; I reached the ugly country to the south, where the smoke
made my eyes water, and the fields were no longer green, and no mice or
beetles were to be found; I turned again for fresher air, and came to a
wild and treeless sea-coast, where the Gulls mobbed me and a gun was
fired at me: but not one of our kind did I see—only the stupid Buzzards,
and a Kestrel or two. I gave it up, and thought I was indeed the last of
the Barons.”
“And then you found me after all near your old home,” said the Baroness,
tenderly. “And we have brought up two broods, though what has become of
them I know not. And last year we should have done the same, but for the
creatures that came up the valley when we were just ready to hatch.”
“Ah,” sighed the Baron, and swept away again in a grand ascending curve.
“Why should they wish to ruin us?” asked she, as with motionless wings
he came near her again. “Do we do them any harm, like the Ravens who dig
out the young lambs’ eyes, or the vulgar Jays and Magpies—poachers and
egg-stealers?”
“Do them harm?” said the Baron, with anger in his voice. “Look at the
white farmhouse down yonder! They are good people that live there, and
know us well. For generations my family has been on friendly terms with
them; they know we do not steal, or pick the lambs’ eyes, and in hard
winters they do not grudge us a duckling or two, for if we were to die
out it would be bad luck for them. We have our own estate, which seldom
fails us; we have the wide moorland and are content with it, and can
live on it without meddling with old friends’ property, like the
Buzzards and the Ravens.”
“Then why are those other men so mad against us?” asked the Baroness
again. “Is not this our own fortress, our old estate, entailed from
father to son as you have so often told me, and called by our name? Why
do they come and trouble us?”
“Perhaps the old Raven was right,” said the Baron, after a wide sweep;
“he told me he had spent years among them as a captive, and had learnt
their language and their notions. A great change, he told me, had come
over them in the course of his long life. They are now too much
interested in us, he said. Once they did not care at all about us, and
then we flourished. Now they are poking and prying everywhere; they run
about on all sorts of machines, find us out, and won’t let us alone.
They go to the ends of the earth to worry us birds, wear our feathers in
their hats, and put our skins and our eggs in their museums. It isn’t
that they hate us, he said: it’s much worse than that. No, they pretend
to love us, and they show their love by coming and spying after us and
watching all we do. They are so fond of us that they can’t keep their
hands off us; and the harder it is to find us the more trouble they
take. Yes, I believe that old Raven was right! Man takes such an
interest in us that there will be none of us left soon!”
“Let us try once more,” said the Baroness, with all the hopefulness of
youth. “Come down and find a tree on the steepest face of the old
fortress. It is quite time we were beginning; the oaks are reddening.
Let us do what we can, and hope they will not take an interest in us
this year.”
The Baron silently assented, glad that the ancestral rock should not be
deserted; and descending rapidly, still in circles, they reached it as
the sun set. Next morning at daybreak the tree was chosen—an oak, high
up on a rocky shelf, looking to the west across the ravine and the
tumbling river. And before the sun was high the foundation of the nest
was laid.