In a close little room, in a narrow little street of a large town, poor
Mrs. Lee, pale and worn, and rather acid, was scraping bread and butter
for her children’s breakfast, and doling out cups of watery tea. Five
young ones, of various ages, hungry and untidy, sat expectant round the
table. Two places were still vacant; one, the father’s, as you might
guess from the two letters awaiting him there, and the other for the
eldest son, who helped his father in the workshop. In that shop father
and son had been already hard at work for a couple of hours, stuffing an
otter which had been brought in the day before.
Now the two came in; the father keen-eyed but sad-looking, the son a big
bold lad, the hope of an unlucky family.
Mr. Lee sat down and opened one of the two letters. As he read it, his
face grew dark, and his wife watched him anxiously.
“Not an order, Stephen?” she asked.
“O yes, it’s an order,” he said bitterly; “a very nice order. It’s an
order to pay up the rent, or quit these premises. Twenty pounds, and
arrears five pounds ten. Where am I to get twenty-five pounds just now,
I should like to know? Look at the jobs we’ve had all this last winter,
barely enough to feed these little beggars, let alone their clothes. A
few miserable kingfishers, and a white stoat or two, and such-like
vermin. This otter was a godsend, and I shall only get a guinea for it.
There’s Lord —— gone round the world, and no orders from him: and young
Rathbone killed by the Boers, and no one with any money to spare, or
this fellow wouldn’t be pressing so. I tell you, Susan, I don’t know how
to pay it.”
“Well, don’t pay it,” she said; “it’s not worth paying for. Take a house
in Foregate Street, where people can see you, if you want to get on;
I’ve told you so again and again. You’ll never get new customers in this
slum.”
“I like to pay my debts,” he answered slowly, “and the workshop here is
good. But there’s one advantage in Foregate Street, Susan: it’s nearer
the workhouse!”
“Don’t talk nonsense before the children, Stephen. What’s the other
letter?”
“I don’t know the hand,” he said, fingering it as he drank his tea. “I
daresay it’s an offer to make me chief stuffer to the British Museum,
or—Hallo!”
All eyes were fixed upon him; his teacup descended with a rattle into
the saucer. The mother got up and came to look over his shoulder. And
this was the letter:—
London, _April 15, 1901_.
Sir,—I learn from my friend Mr. Scotton of Eaton Place that you supplied
him a year ago with a full clutch of British Kite’s eggs. I hope you
will be able to do the same for me this year, as you know where they are
to be obtained. I have in my cabinet full clutches of nearly all the
British-breeding birds of prey, but the Kite is now so rare that I had
despaired of adding its eggs to my collection till my friend gave me
your address. I am ready to offer you twenty-five guineas for a clutch
properly authenticated as British, and if you should be able to get me a
bird as well I will give you ten guineas more, and employ you to set it
up. I trust this offer will be satisfactory to you.
Yours truly,
William Gatherum.
“Satisfactory! I should think so,” cried the eldest son.
“Satisfactory! Why, you’ll get fifty guineas, if you ask for them,
Stephen,” said the excited mother.
“Well, we could pay the rent anyhow with what he offers,” said Stephen,
as he put the letter in his pocket. “But to tell you the truth, Susan, I
don’t much like the job. I’ve a tender feeling about those eggs.”
“Don’t like the job!” she cried, looking at him almost fiercely. “Why,
what’s the matter with it? Look at these children—haven’t they as much
right to be fed as young Kites?” And Stephen, looking on his young
birds, felt a twinge at his heart, while the fledglings opened all their
young mouths at once in a chorus of protest.
“It’s a bad trade,” he said at last: “I wish I had never taken it up. So
long as I collected in foreign parts, it was all very well, and I was
young and independent; but now I’m getting old, Susan, and the
travellers won’t take me with them; and here in England there’s no price
for anything but what’s a rarity—and rarities do me as much harm as
good. I tell you, Susan, those Kite’s eggs last year were the very
mischief: it got about that I had taken them, and my name’s in bad odour
with the best naturalists. It’s those private collectors, with their
clutches and their British-killed specimens that I have to live by now;
and a precious set they are! What’ll they do with all their cabinets, I
should like to know! Sell them to be scattered all over the place! Stow
them away in a garret and forget all about them! Die some day, and have
the public-house people picking ’em up cheap at your sale, to put in a
glass case in the parlour! It’s infernal; I don’t like this job, Susan.”
Susan’s tears were beginning to run down. The sun had shone upon her for
a moment, and then suddenly gone behind a cloud again. Two or three of
the children, seeing their mother troubled, began to roar. Poor Stephen
swallowed his tea, and fled from the confusion to his workshop, followed
by his son.
“We must do this job, dad,” said Tom, when they were alone.
“I tell you I don’t like it, my lad,” said his father: “’tis bad for us
in the long run, and bad for the Kites too. Your mother will say I am a
fool; but there are not half a dozen pairs left in the kingdom, and I
can’t go and persecute them for these private collectors. There’s a lot
of nonsense talked about these things—extinction of birds, and all the
rest of it: but the Kites are going sure enough, and I won’t have a hand
in it.”
“We must do this job all the same, this year,” said Tom, “for the sake
of the rent, and then let ’em alone. We must pay that rent, Kites or no
Kites: and see what’s to be done next.”
“Well then,” said his father, “you must go without me. You know where to
go. There’s no County Council order there against taking the eggs, but
all the same, I hope you won’t find ’em. Don’t take a gun: I won’t have
the old birds killed, for any collection, public or private.”
Great was the rejoicing in the family when Tom was found to be packing
up. His mother gave him a few shillings from her scanty stock, and urged
him to bring a bird as well as the eggs; but this Tom steadily refused
to do. “Dad’s tender about it,” he said. “We only want the rent, and
when that’s paid, I shall look out for another start in life.”
Stephen Lee sat down and wrote this letter to Mr. Gatherum, which next
morning greatly astonished that young gentleman in London.
Sir,—It is true that I robbed a Kite’s nest a year ago for your friend
Mr. Scotton, and I am sorry I did it, for it was a mean and cruel act in
this country, where Kites are almost extinct. Please excuse my freedom.
As I have a wife and six children to feed, and my rent to pay after a
bad season, I must accept your offer, and do another mean and cruel act.
My wife says that my children have as much right to live as the Kites,
and that as I was brought up to this business I must take it as it
comes. Women are mostly right when there are children to be thought of,
and I must pay my rent. I am sending my son, as I don’t relish the job
myself.
Your humble servant,
Stephen Lee.
By return of post there came a letter for Stephen, containing a cheque
for twenty-five guineas, which he handed to his astonished wife. The
letter ran thus:
Dear Sir,—I send you a cheque for present needs. Your feelings do you
credit. I showed your letter to a famous ornithologist, who said that
you are a fine fellow, and I am a pestilent one. All I ask of you in
return for the cheque is to save the eggs before your son takes them. I
am going to Spain, and will send you my skins to set up, and mention
your name to others. Let me know as soon as you can whether the eggs are
saved.
Yours faithfully,
W. Gatherum.
Mr. Lee rushed to the nearest telegraph office, and wired after his son,
“Hold your hand till I come.” Then he put up travelling bag, and went
off by the next train for Wales.