Two small cages hung side by side just above the open door of a dingy
house in a dingy London street. It was a street in the region of Soho,
gloomy and forlorn; dirty bits of paper, fragments of old apples,
treacherous pieces of orange-peel, lay sticking in its grimy mud, and a
smutty drizzle was falling which could do no honest washing away of
grime, but only make it stickier. It was not a cheerful place to live
in, nor did the creatures living in it seem to rejoice in their
life,—all except the Canary in one of the two cages, who sang a
rattling, trilling, piercing song incessantly, with all the vigour of a
London street-boy whistling in the dark mist of a November evening. Cats
slunk about disconsolate; carmen sat on their vans and smoked
resignedly, with old sacks on their shoulders; women slipped sadly with
draggled feet into the public-house and out again for such comfort as
they could get there; but that Canary sang away as if it were living in
a Paradise. The street rang with the shrill voice, and a cobbler in the
shop opposite shook his fist at the bird and used bad language.
[Illustration: Downs and Dungeons.]
At last the Canary suddenly stopped singing, dropped to the floor of its
cage, pecked up a few seeds, and drank water; then flew up again to its
perch, and addressed the occupant of the other cage, a little
insignificant-looking brown Linnet.
“What ever is the matter with you? Here you’ve been two nights and a
day, and you don’t say a word, nor sing a note! You don’t even eat,—and
of course you can’t sing if you can’t eat.”
The Linnet opened its bill as if to speak, and shut it again with a gasp
as of a dying bird.
“Come now,” said the Canary, not unkindly, but with a certain
comfortable Cockney patronising way, “you _must_ eat and drink. We all
eat and drink here, and get fat and happy, and then we sing—Listen!” And
from the neighbouring tavern there came a chorus of coarse voices.
“This is a jolly street,” the Canary went on. “I was brought up in a
dealer’s shop in the East End, in very low society, in a gas-lit garret
among dirty children. Here we can be out of doors in summer, and see a
bit of blue overhead now and then; and in the winter I am warm inside,
with plenty of seed and water, two perches in my cage, and both of them
all to myself. It’s a life of real luxury, and makes one sing. I could
go on at it all day, trying to convince those miserable black Sparrows
that they do not know what happiness means. But really it chills one’s
spirits a little to have another bird close by one who mopes and won’t
sing. Perhaps you can’t? I have heard the dealer say that there are
birds that can’t: but I didn’t believe it. One can’t help one’s
self,—out it comes like a hemp-seed out of its shell.”
The Canary rattled off again for full five minutes, and then said
abruptly,
“Do you really mean you can’t sing at all?”
“I used to sing on the Downs,” said the Linnet at last, “but not like
that.”
“No, no,” said the Canary; “that’s not to be expected from such as
you—one must have advantages, of course, to sing well. A natural gift,
to begin with; and that only comes when you are well born. You see I
come of a good stock of singers. My father sang at the Crystal Palace
Show, and won a prize. I have heard the dealer say that we have a
pedigree going up for generations, and of course we improve as we go on,
because each of us gets the benefit of the education of all our
ancestors. Just let me show you what birth and education can do.” And he
set off once more with such terrific energy that the cobbler over the
way seized an unfinished boot, and looked as if he meant to hurl it at
the cage.
Fortunately the Canary ceased at that moment, and turned again to the
Linnet.
“You said you used to sing on the Downs. Pray, what are the Downs, and
why can’t you sing here? With plenty to eat and nothing to do and a
whole street of men and women to sing to, what more can you want? I fear
you have a selfish and discontented disposition,—want of education, no
doubt. But we must make allowance for every one, as Griggs the dealer
used to say when he got in new birds that couldn’t sing properly.”
“I don’t know why I can’t sing here,” the Linnet answered, rousing
itself a little, “but I can’t. You see we used to sing on the Downs as
we flew about in the sun and the breeze and the sweet-scented air; and
here I am shut up in foul air, with my wings tingling all day, and the
song sticks in my throat. There was a little brook where we lived, that
came out of the hill-side and sang gently all day and night as it ran
down among the daisies and the gorse. We couldn’t have gone on singing
if it had had to stop running. We drank of it, and bathed in it, and
listened to it; and then we danced away over the hills, singing, or
perched on a gorse-spray, singing. And we knew what our singing meant;
but I don’t know what yours means. It’s just a little like the song of
the Tree-pipit who lived at the foot of the Downs, but it’s far louder.”
“Naturally,” said the Canary. “I have no acquaintance with Tree-pipits,
but I presume they have not birth and education. But go on about the
Downs; perhaps if you were to talk about them you might find your voice.
I should like to hear you sing; I might give you some hints; and if we
are to be neighbours, I should wish you to acquit yourself properly
here—you really are not fit to be seen in such a street as this, but if
you could sing our people might think better of you. Now go on, and when
I want to sing I’ll tell you to stop for a bit.”
This was really very kind and condescending of the high-born Canary, and
so the Linnet felt it: and sitting a little more upright on his perch,
he began. “I was born on those Downs nearly three years ago. The first
thing I can remember is the lining of our nest, which was so soft that I
have never felt anything like it since, except the thistledown from
which we used to get the seed when we were on our rambles in the autumn.
And the next thing I recollect is the prickles of the gorse-bush in
which our nest was hidden, and the splendid yellow bloom, and the strong
sweet scent it gave to the air. We were always being fed by our parents,
but I needn’t trouble you with that.”
“No,” said the Canary, “but I’m glad you were fed well, all the same:
it’s the main thing for song and satisfaction. Well, go on; this is all
dreadfully provincial, but one must make allowance, as the dealer said.”
“When we grew big enough we all five got up to the edge of the nest one
by one, and our mother teased us to come out through the green prickles
the same way that she came in and out to feed us. One by one we
fluttered out, and perched on a bare hawthorn twig close by. Never shall
I forget that moment! The world was all open to us,—a world of rolling
green Downs, flecked here and there with yellow gorse like that of our
home, and ending in a sparkling blue that I afterwards found was the
sea. Skylarks were singing overhead: a Stonechat was perched on a
gorse-twig close by, balancing himself in the breeze,—a fine bird, with
black head and russet breast. Swallows darted about catching the flies
that haunted the gorse-bloom; and our own people, the Linnets, were
dancing about in the air and twittering their song, or sitting bolt
upright on the gorse over their nests, singing a few sweet notes as the
fancy took them. We could tell them from all the others by the way they
perched, and we tried to do it ourselves. I would show you myself how a
Linnet perches when it’s free, but I hardly have the strength, and I
might knock my head against these wires.”
“Don’t trouble about it,” said the Canary; “it’s no doubt a vulgar
pastime, which would not be appreciated in educated society. Go on; I’m
not much bored yet—anything will do that will make you sing.”
“I’ll get on,” said the Linnet; “but I have never felt such pain as in
telling you of those happy times. We grew up, and in the later summer we
joined a great gathering of our people from other Downs, and went down
to the sea-side. There were thousands of us together, and yet there was
always food for us. Thistles, charlock, all sorts of tall plants grew
there, on which we perched and hung, and pecked the delicious seeds. We
could all twitter by that time, though we did not know how to sing
properly; and the noise we made as we all rose together from a meal in
the fresh sea air made all our hearts cheerful. And here, moving along
the coast, and always finding food, we passed the winter. In the
bitterest cold the seeds were always there; and at night we crept into
hollows under shelter of the cliffs and slept soundly. Very few of us
died, and those were nearly all old birds who were not strong enough to
bear the force of the fierce winds that now and then swept along the
coast and hurled the spray into the hollows where we roosted.”
“Ah,” said the Canary, “think what a privilege it is to be safe here in
your own house, with food and water given you gratis, no rough winds,
and a warm room in winter, that makes you sing, sing!” And off he went
into one of his gay, meaningless songs, and the cobbler looked fierce
and red in the face (he had been to the public-house while the Linnet
was talking), and laid his hand again upon a hob-nailed boot. But the
Canary again stopped in time, and when the din ceased, the Linnet went
on.
“When the days grew longer, and the sun gained strength, we broke up our
great company. New thoughts and hopes broke in upon our hearts,—hopes
that for me were never to be realised,—and a new beauty seemed to come
upon all of us. My forehead and breast took a crimson hue, and my back
became a beautiful chestnut; I know I was a handsome bird, for one
little darling told me so, and said she would unite her lot with mine.
With her I left the sea, and followed the Downs inland till we came to
the place where I was born; and there, in a gorse-bush near our old
home, we decided to build our nest. Do you know how to build a nest?”
“No,” said the Canary. “We have those things done for us if we want
them, while we sit and sing, in polite society. I can’t imagine how you
could stoop to do such work yourself, as you seem to have the making of
good breeding in you. But we must make allowance!”
“Well, we did it,” the Linnet continued, “and I never enjoyed anything
so much. My darling and I had a great stir in our hearts, you see, and
we could not stop to think whether it was genteel or not. There was stir
and force and great love in our hearts, which taught us how to do it,
and carried us through the work. And then the eggs were laid,—six of
them; I knew them all from each other, and every one of the spots on
each of them. While she sat on them, steadily, faithfully, wearing away
her best feathers with the duty, I danced in the air, and brought her
food, and sang my love to her from the twigs of the gorse; for I loved
her, how I loved her! My heart went out to her in song, and she knew
every note I sang.”
“Then sing now,” said the Canary. “Show me how you did it, and we shall
get on better.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” said the Linnet, “and I am going to tell you why.
One day I was looking for food for my sitting mate, when I saw another
cock Linnet on the ground, hopping about and picking up seed. How the
seed came to be there I did not stay to ask, nor notice anything unusual
about the manner of the bird; it was high time that my wife should be
fed. The traitor called me to share the seed; it was our well-known
call, and I answered it as I flew down. For a moment I noticed nothing,
and was about to fly off when I saw that that bird had a string round
his leg, which came from behind a little thorn-bush in front of the
hedge close by. I started, suspicious, and at that same moment down came
on the top of me a heavy net, half stunning me, and a man came from
behind the bush and seized me. I struggled, but it was no use. With a
grimy hand he held me fast and put me into a cage like this, and in a
cage I have existed ever since, without hope or liberty or the power to
sing as I used to.”
“What became of your mate and the eggs?” asked the Canary, interested
for the first time in his life in some one besides himself.
“How should I know?” answered the Linnet. “She could not well feed
herself and hatch the eggs. I don’t wish to think about it, for she is
lost to me, and the Downs are lost to me, and all is lost to me that
made life worth living. The bitterness of that first moment in the cage
I won’t and can’t describe to you. If you were turned out of your cage
into the street to keep company with the Sparrows, you might feel a
little, a very little, like it. At first it was furious anger that
seized me, then utter blank stupefying despair.
“The man flung something over the cage, and I was in darkness. I suppose
he went on with his wicked work, for after a while the cage door was
opened, and another Linnet was put in, struggling and furious: and this
happened several times. Each time the door was opened I made a frantic
effort to get out, and the others too, and the little cage was full of
loose feathers and struggling birds. One of us did get away, with the
loss of his tail, and most gladly would I have given my tail for liberty
and one more sight of my mate and the eggs.
“At last the cage was taken up: we all fluttered and scrambled over each
other, thinking something better was going to happen now. But nothing
happened for a long time, and then nothing but misery. Half dead with
jolting, shaking, and swaying, we found ourselves at last in a small
close room, where we were taken out and examined one by one, and put
into separate small cages, so small that we could hardly turn round in
them. The room was full of these cages, and there was a continual noise
of hysterical fluttering and sorrowful twittering. None of us cared to
talk, and there was nothing but misery to talk about. Seed and water
were given us, and we ate and drank a little after a while, but there
was no delight in that lukewarm water and that stale seed.
“But I had better stop: I’m sure you want to sing again. And there is
nothing more to tell; one by one my fellow-captives were taken away, and
I suppose what happened to me happened to them too. Caged we all are,
and expected to sing, and to forget the Downs and the gorse and the
brook and the fresh air! But we don’t and we can’t,—it is the little
life left within us, to hope against hope for the Downs again.”
“Don’t you think it may be all a dream?” said the Canary, kindly; “are
you sure there are such things as you talk of? You can’t see the Downs
from here, can you? Then how do you know there are such things? It’s all
a dream, I tell you: I had such a dream once, of rocky hills and curious
trees, and fierce sun, and a vast expanse of blue waves, and all sorts
of strange things that I have heard men talk of; but it was only because
my grandmother had been telling us of the old island home of our family,
that belongs to us by right if we could only get there. I never was
there myself, you see, yet I dreamed of it, and you have been dreaming
of the Downs, which no doubt belong to your family by right.”
“I can’t see the Downs,” said the Linnet, “but I can feel them still,
and I know that my feeling is true.”
After this there was silence for a few minutes. Suddenly the Canary
burst into song, as if to drive away the Linnet’s sad thoughts. And so
indeed he meant it, and also to ease his own mind, after it had been
bottled up so long. Little did he know what was to come of that
outburst, as he poured forth rattle and reel, reel and rattle, every
feather quivering, the cage vibrating, the air resounding, the street
echoing! Children playing in the gutter stopped to look up at the cages,
at the triumphant yellow bird in all the glow of effort, and at the ugly
brown one that seemed trying to hide away from this hurricane of song.
Even the costermonger’s placid donkey in the cart two doors away shook
its long ears and rattled its harness. A policeman at the end of the
street turned his head slowly round to listen, but recollected himself
and turned it slowly back again. The red-faced cobbler, who had been
more than once to the drink-shop while the birds were talking, once more
seized the hob-nailed boot he was mending, and as the Canary burst
afresh, and after a second’s pause, into a still shriller outpouring, he
glanced out of the open window up the street, saw the policeman’s back
vanishing round the corner, and then took wicked aim and flung the boot
with all his force at the unconscious singer.
The song suddenly ceased; there was the crash of wood and wirework
tumbling to the ground, and the gutter children scrambled up and made
for the fallen cage. The cobbler rushed out of the opposite house,
snatched up the boot and vanished. A woman with dishevelled hair came
tearing into the street and picked up the cage. It was empty, and the
door was open. She glanced up, and with a sigh of relief saw the Canary
still safe in his cage.
The cobbler’s arm had swerved ever so little, and the boot had hit the
wrong cage. The door had come open as it reached the ground, and the
Linnet had escaped. The woman thanked her stars that it was “the ugly
bird” that was gone, and so too did the cobbler, now repentant, as he
peered from behind the door of his back-kitchen. The Canary sat still
and frightened on his perch, and for a full hour neither sang a note nor
pecked a seed.
When the cage fell and the door had come unlatched, the Linnet was out
of it in a moment, but, dizzy and bruised with the fall, and feeling his
wings stiff and feeble, he looked for something to rest on. The first
object that met his eyes was the donkey in the coster’s cart,—and indeed
there was nothing else in the street that looked the least bit
comfortable. Donkeys had been familiar to Lintie on the Downs, and among
the thistles they both loved. So he perched on the donkey’s back, his
claws convulsively grasping the tough grey hair.
The sharp eyes of a small muddy boy in the gutter instantly caught sight
of him, and with a shrill yell he seized an old tin sardine-box with
which he had been scraping up the mud for a pie, and aimed it at the
bird. But that yell saved Lintie; the donkey shook his ears as it
pierced their hairy recesses, and the bird at the same instance relaxed
his hold of the hair and flew up above the house-roofs.
The air up there was even worse than down in the street. It was still
drizzling, and the fine rain, clogged with the smoke from countless
crooked chimney-pots, seemed to thicken and congeal upon every object
that it met. It clung to the Linnet’s feathers, it made his eyes smart,
and his heart palpitate fiercely; he must rest again somewhere, and then
try his wings once more.
Fluttering over those horrible chimney-pots, he spied at last a roof
where there was an attempt at a little garden: a box of sallow-looking
mignonette, and two or three pots of old scarlet geraniums. Lintie
dropped upon the mignonette, which refreshed him even with its sickly
sweetness, and for a moment was almost happy. But only for a moment;
suddenly, from behind one of the geranium-pots there came a swift soft
rush of grey fur, a lightning-stroke of a velvet paw, a struggle in the
mignonette, and Lintie emerged with the loss of three white-edged
tail-feathers, while a pair of angry yellow eyes followed his scared
flight into the grimy air.
The very fright seemed to give his wings a sudden convulsive power.
Where they were carrying him he could not tell, and the loss of three of
his steering feathers mattered little. Over the crooked chimneys, over
dismal streets and foul back-yards he flew, till the air seemed to clear
a little as a large open space came in sight. There were tall fine
houses round this space, but all the middle part of it was full of trees
and shrubs, and even flower-beds. The stems of the trees were dead-black
with smoke, and the shrubs looked heavy and sodden; but yet this was the
best thing that Lintie had seen for many long and weary days. Even the
sounds as well as sights revived him, for surely, heard through the roar
of the great street hard by, there came the cooing of Woodpigeons,—the
very same soothing sound that used to come up to the Downs from the
beech-woods, that hung on their steep sides.
He flew down into one of the thick shrubs, found a way in, and hid
himself. He seemed as secure as in his native gorse-bush; and as it was
dark in there and he was tired, and evening was not far distant, he put
his head under his wing and went to sleep.
He had not slept very long when he was waked up by a sparrow coming into
the bush and beginning to chatter loudly. The next minute there came
another, then a third, a fourth, half-a-dozen together, all chattering
and quarrelling so noisily that for the moment they did not notice the
stranger. But more and more came bustling in, and the din and the hubbub
were so overwhelming that Lintie felt he must go at all risks. He moved,
was detected, and instantly pounced upon.
“Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing in our roosting-bush?
What do you want here? No vulgar vagrants here! Take that, and that, and
that!”
So they all shouted in chorus, pecking at him the while, and the noise
was so unusual that two young men of the law, looking out of a
first-floor window in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, took their pipes out of
their mouths and listened.
“It’s all over with me at last,” thought Lintie; but he made one brave
effort to escape, found his way out of the bush, and flew into the open
roadway, pursued by half a hundred sparrows.
“What in the world is up?” said one of the men up in the window. “By
George, it’s murder they’re at,” he cried, as he saw a whirling,
screaming cloud of sparrows on the ground below him, and their victim
resigning himself to inevitable death. In a moment his pipe was on the
floor, and he himself was in the street. The sparrows flew away
swearing; Lintie crouched on the ground, a heap of dishevelled feathers.
The student took him gently in his hand and carried him into the house.
“They’d all but done for him, the beggars,” he said to his friend. “I
fancy he might come round if we only knew what to do with him. I say, I
wish you’d see whether M—— has gone home; it’s only just round in New
Square,—you know the staircase. He’ll like to see the bird anyhow, and
he can doctor it if he thinks it worth while.”
The friend went out, grumbling but compliant, and in five minutes
returned with the Ornithologist, keen-faced and serious. He took the
bird in his hand.
“It’s only a damaged cock linnet,” he said at once and decisively: “an
escaped one, of course, for his crimson has turned a dirty yellow, you
see, as it always does in confinement. I think he may live if he’s cared
for. If he does, I’ll take him on my cycle into Sussex on Saturday, and
I’ll let him go there. Can you find a cage?”
An old cage was found somewhere, and Lintie was a prisoner once more;
but he was past caring about that, and simply sat huddled up at the
bottom of it with his head under his wing. The Ornithologist called a
cab,—a very unusual step for him,—put his great-coat over the cage, and
drove off to the West End.
Two days later the Ornithologist was wheeling swiftly southwards, with a
little cage fixed to the saddle in front of him. The motion was not
unpleasant to Lintie when once they were free of streets and crowds, and
out of suburbs, even to the last new house of dreary Croydon. He was in
a cage still; but birds, even more than other animals, have a subtle
inward sense of sympathy that tells them surely in whose hands they are.
Lintie was in the strong hands of one who loves all birds, and whose
happiness is bound up in theirs.
When they came to the North Downs between Croydon and Reigate, he
stopped and looked about him. The fringe of London still seemed there;
he saw villas building, men playing golf, advertisements in the fields.
“Better go on,” he said to himself; “this is too near London for a
damaged linnet.” And they slipped rapidly down into a verdant vale of
wood and pasture.
At last they began to mount again. The Ornithologist had avoided the
main route, and was ascending the South Downs at a point little known to
Londoners. Near the top the hollow road began to be fringed by the
burning yellow of the gorse-bloom; the air grew lighter, and the scent
of clean, sweet herbage put new life into man and bird. The Linnet
fluttered in his cage with wild uncertain hopes; but that determined
Ornithologist went on wheeling his machine up the hill.
In a few minutes they came out of the hollow road on to the bare summit
of the Down. It was an April day; the drizzle had given way to bright
sunshine and a bracing east wind. Far off to the south they could see
the glitter of the sea fretted into a million little dancing waves.
Nearer at hand were the long sweeping curves of chalk down, the most
beautiful of all British hills, for those who know and love them; with
here and there a red-tiled farmhouse lurking in a cool recess, or a
little watercourse springing from the point where down and cultivation
meet, and marking its onward course by the bushes and withy-beds beside
it.
A Wheatear, newly arrived in the glory of slaty-blue plumage, stood
bowing at them on a big stone hard by. A Stonechat, on the top twig of a
gorse-bush, bade a sturdy defiance to all bird-catchers. The Cuckoo
could be faintly heard from the vale behind them; still the
Ornithologist held his hand.
Suddenly there came dancing overhead, here, there, and everywhere, gone
in a moment and back again, half a dozen little twittering fairies; and
then one of them, alighting no one knows how or when, sat bolt upright
on a gorse-bush, and turned a crimson breast and forehead towards the
Ornithologist. His hand was already on the cage-door; in a moment it was
open, and Lintie was gone.
I cannot tell you whether those linnets were his own friends and
relations; but I think that, thanks to the Ornithologist’s true
instinct, he was not far from his old home. And as the summer was all
before him, and the hearts of linnets are kind, and Nature in sweet air
repairs all damage quickly, I cannot doubt that his sky soon cleared,
and that the heavy London thundercloud rolled far away out of his
horizon.