“Bessie, my lassie,” exclaimed the Poet, as they entered their new
garden for the first time together, “what a time we shall have!”
When the Poet called his wife “lassie” she knew he was in a happy frame
of mind, and was happy herself. It was long since she had heard the
word; illness, overwork, and the dull surroundings of a London suburban
villa, had taken all the spring out of his body, and all its natural
joyousness from his mind. I call him Poet because it was the name by
which his best friends knew him; I cannot be sure that he ever wrote
poetry, and certainly he never published any; but they called him Poet
because he was dreamy, and hated the fag and the noise of London, and
pined for the country, and loved to talk of his old Yorkshire home and
its plants and animals, and its beck curling under heathery banks on the
edge of the moor. He was indeed only a London clerk, released at last
from long years of drudgery by a happy stroke of good fortune.
They had just arrived from London to take possession of their cottage
and garden in the country. It was a frosty evening early in March, and
the sun was just setting as they went up the garden together; it lit up
the bare boughs of a tree which stood just in front of the cottage.
“Look here, Bessie,” said the Poet; “that is a rowan tree, and it was
the sight of that rowan that fixed me. The cottage was snug, the garden
was good, but the rowans—there are three of them—were irresistible.
There were three just outside our garden in Yorkshire, and every August
the berries turned orange-red and made a glory before my window. Next
August you shall see them, and you’ll see nothing quite so good till
then.”
Bessie, London born and bred, was glad to get into the house, and make
herself snug before the fire, where the kettle was singing an invitation
to tea. She too was ready to welcome the slow and gentle ways of the
country, and to be rid of perpetual bell-ringing, and postmen’s knocks,
and piano-practising next door, and the rattle of carts and cabs; but I
doubt if the rowans would have decided _her_ choice. I think she thought
more of the useful fruits of the garden—of the currants and gooseberries
of which good store of jam should be made in the summer, of the
vegetables they would grow for themselves, and the strawberries they
would invite their London friends to come and share.
Next morning quite early the Poet threw his window wide open and looked
out into his garden. It was not a trim and commonplace garden; it was an
acre of good ground that had grown by degrees into a garden, as in the
course of ages of village life one owner after another had turned it to
his own purposes. The Poet looked over a bit of lawn, in the corner of
which stood one of his favourite rowans, to an old bulging stone wall,
buttressed up with supports of red brick of various shades, and covered
with ivy. Over the top of it he could see the church tower, also
ivy-clad, the yews of the churchyard, and the elms in the close beyond,
in the tops of which the rooks were already busy and noisy. A thick and
tall yew hedge separated the lawn from the village allotments, where one
or two early labourers were collecting the winter’s rubbish into heaps
and setting them alight; the shadow of the hedge upon the lawn was
sharply marked by a silvery grey border of frost. On these things the
Poet’s eye lingered with wonderful content for a while, and then
wandered across the allotments over meadow and rich red ploughland to
the line of hills that shut in his view to the south. There came into
his mind the name he used to give to the moors above his Yorkshire dale
in his young days when his mother read the Pilgrim’s Progress to her
children—the Delectable Mountains.
He was suddenly recalled to his garden by a low melodious pipe, as of a
bird practising its voice for better use in warmer days; it came from
one of the rowans. Sometimes the notes were almost whispered; sometimes
they rose for an instant into a full and mellow sweetness, and then died
away again. They were never continuous—only fragments of song; as if the
bird were talking in the sweetest of contralto voices to a friend whose
answers were unheard. No other bird was singing, and the rooks were too
far away in the elms to break harshly with their cawing on the
blackbird’s quiet strain.
The Poet listened for a while enraptured, watching the dark form of the
singer, and the “orange-tawny” bill from which the notes came so softly,
so hesitatingly; and then drew in his head and began to dress, still
keeping the window open, and repeating to himself—
“O Blackbird, sing me something well:
Though all the neighbours shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of garden ground
Where thou may’st warble, eat, and dwell.
“The espaliers, and the standards, all
Are thine; the range of lawn and park:
The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark,
All thine, against the garden wall.”
A few minutes later he was in the garden himself, scenting the dew and
the fragrant earth, listening to the blackbird—his own blackbird, that
meant to be his cherished guest all that spring and summer—to the
singing of a skylark high above the allotment field, and to the distant
murmur of the rooks. The garden was in disorder—what delicious work
there would be in it!—fruit-trees to prune, vegetables to plant, a big
strawberry bed to tend, borders to make gay. All this he would fain have
done himself, even though he knew as little of gardening as he did of
Hebrew; why not learn to do it himself, make mistakes and profit by
them? So he had written to the friendly Parson of the village, who had
been looking after his interests for him; but the Parson would not bear
of it, and he was despotic in his own parish. He had decided that old
Joseph Bates was to start the work and direct the Poet’s enthusiasm into
rational channels; and after breakfast Joseph and the Poet were to meet.
“A worthy old man,” the Parson had written; “you can’t do better than
give him a little employment; if he gives you any trouble, send for me
and I’ll settle him.”
So after breakfast—a delicious one it was, that first breakfast in the
country—the Poet left his wife to her household duties, and went again
into the garden to face Mr. Bates. He made his way towards his yew
hedge, where he could see the old fellow busy clearing the ground
beneath it of a melancholy tangle of decayed weeds. As he reached the
hedge, one blackbird and then another flew out with awkward impetuosity
and harsh chuckles, and the Poet stopped suddenly, sorry to have
disturbed his friends.
Joseph touched his hat. “Good morning, Sir,” he said, “and welcome to
your garden, if I may make so free. I’ve known it any time these fifty
years and more, and my father he worked in it long afore I were born.
We’d use to say as the Bateses belonged to this here bit of land years
and years ago, when times was good for the poor man; but ’tis all gone
from us, and here be I a working on it for hire. And ’tis powerful
changed since I were a lad, and none for the better either. Look at this
here yew hedge now; ’tis five and twenty year ago since I told Mr. Gale
as ’twouldn’t do no good but to harbour birds, and here they be. And
here they be,” he repeated, as another blackbird came scurrying out of
the hedge a little further down.
At this point Joseph broke off his discourse, thrust his arm into the
hedge, lifting the thick branches here and there, and pulled out a lump
of fresh green moss, the first preparations for a blackbird’s nest.
“Ah, ye blackguards,” he cried, “at it already, are ye? I’ll be bound
there are a dozen or two of ye somewhere or another on the premises. You
see, Sir, ’tis their nater, when they’ve had it all their own way so
long, and no one to look after ’em, a year come next June. They take it
as the garden belongs to them; they’re like rats in a stack-yard, and
you won’t have a thing to call your own by summer. But don’t you take
on, Sir,” he went on, seeing the Poet’s visage lengthening; “we’ll nip
’em in the bud in no time. There’s my grandson Dan, a wonderful smart
lad to find nests—you give him a sixpence, Sir, or what you please, and
he’ll have every nest in the garden in an hour or two. Take it in time,
Sir, as the doctor says to my wife when her rheumatics is a coming on.”
Mr. Bates chucked the unfinished nest on to a heap of weeds, thrust in
his arm again, and began a fresh search. The Poet’s face grew dark: he
could hardly find his voice.
“Bates,” he said at last, “stop that. You’ve taken one nest already, and
if you or your grandson take another here, I’ll send you straight about
your business. Do you think I took this garden to rob my blackbirds of
their nests?”
“Lord save us,” cried Joseph, suddenly bewildered by this vehemence, “do
I rightly understand you, Sir?”
“You needn’t understand me, if you can’t do so,” said the Poet, feeling
a great dislike and dread for this terrible old man and his barbarian
grandson; “but I mean to keep my blackbirds, so if you take another nest
I’ll find another man.”
Joseph admitted to his wife afterwards that he was “clean took aback by
this queer gentleman from London;” but, recovering himself quickly, he
stuck his spade into the ground to lean upon, and began a further
discourse.
“Begging your pardon, Sir, if I’ve in any ways offended you; but may be
you ben’t quite accustomed to our country ways. You see, Sir, a garden’s
a garden down our way: we grows fruit and vegetables in it for to eat.
If the birds was to be master here, ’twouldn’t be no mortal manner of
use our growing of ’em. Now I’ve heard tell as there’s gardens in London
with nothing but wild animals in ’em, and maybe folks there understands
the thing different to what we does.”
The Poet was inclined to think he was being made a fool of: this mild
and worthy old man was quite too much for him. But he swallowed his
temper and made an appeal to Joseph’s better feelings.
“Bates,” he said, in that gentle pathetic tone that his friends knew so
well, “if you had lived in London for thirty years you would love to
have the birds about you. Don’t people down here like to hear them sing?
Don’t you feel a better man when you listen to a blackbird at dawn, as I
did this morning?”
“Bless your heart, Sir,” answered Joseph, beginning to understand the
situation, “I loves to hear ’em whistling, _in their proper place_!
There’s a place for everything, as the Scripture says, and the garden’s
no place for thieves; so we thinks down here, Sir, and if ’tis different
where you come from, there’s no call for me to be argufying about it.
We’ll let ’em be, Sir, we’ll let ’em be. I hope I knows my place.”
“Better than the birds, eh, Joseph,” said the mollified Poet. Joseph
resumed his digging, and, as the newspapers say, the incident was
closed.
Later in the morning the Parson dropped in to see his new parishioner,
and was told of Mr. Bates’s loquacity.
“Well, well,” he said, “old Joseph is an oddity, and you must take him
as you find him. But he’s quite right about the birds. They simply swarm
here: the rooks and sparrows take your young peas, the bullfinches nip
off your tender buds, and the blackbirds and thrushes won’t leave you a
currant or a gooseberry to make your jam of.” Bessie looked up from her
work with a face of alarm.
“You ask my wife,” continued the Parson. “One year when we were abroad
in June, and there was no one to keep watch, she hadn’t a chance with
anything except the plums. Next spring we took all the nests we could
find, and even then we came off second-best. Of course we like to hear
them singing, as you do, but when it comes to June, you know, you can
thin them off with a gun, and that frightens the rest. I always shoot a
few, and stick them up on the gooseberry bushes as scarecrows. I suppose
you’re not much of a hand at a gun? I or my boys will do it for you with
pleasure.”
“Oh, thank you,” cried Bessie, “I should be so sorry to have them
killed, but we _must_ have our jam now we’ve come to live in the
country. When the time comes, I’m sure Gilbert will be most grateful to
you.”
“No he won’t,” said the Poet:
“Though all the neighbours shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of garden ground
Where thou may’st warble, eat, and dwell.”
“Well, well,” said the Parson, rather puzzled, “there’s time enough,
there’s time enough. Tackle your weeds first, and plant your borders,
and if you want the policeman in June, here he is.” And the hearty
Parson took his leave, the Poet escorting him down the garden, where a
blackbird was still singing. They stopped and listened.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the Parson. “It’s a pity they’re such
rascals. I’m an enthusiastic gardener, and I have to choose between my
garden and the birds, and I think you’ll have to choose too.”
“Is there no compromise?” asked the Poet mildly.
“Not for an enthusiast,” said the Parson, decidedly.
“Then my choice is made already,” said the Poet. And so they parted.
So the birds built where and when they pleased, and brought up crowds of
hungry young ones; the old gardener kept his word and his place. They
throve upon a juicy diet of grubs and caterpillars, and the garden
throve in getting rid of these; so that by May it was such an Eden as
even the Poet’s fancy had never dreamed of. His ear was daily soothed
with a chorus of mellow song: he began to make a list of all the birds
that visited his garden, to take notes of the food they seemed to love,
and to record the dates of their nest-building, egg-laying, and
hatching. His eyes were daily feasting on the apple-blossoms and lilacs,
and there was promise of a full harvest of fruit on espaliers,
standards, and garden-walls. The rowans were gay with heavy bunches of
white flowers, which promised a glorious show of orange-red berries for
August.
Joseph Bates had long ago given up engaging his master in conversation,
and maintained in the garden an air of silent wisdom which quite baffled
the Poet’s advances; but in the village, when asked by his friends about
his employer, he would touch his forehead significantly, as implying
that the good man was “weak in the upper storey.”
Bessie’s careful mind was already providing for the fruit-harvest; a
huge cooking-vessel was procured, and scores of clean white jam-pots
graced the larder shelves. The Poet wrote to a congenial friend, an
ardent member of the Society for the Prevention of the Extinction of
Birds, who, living in a London suburb, had come to believe that in the
course of a few years the whole race of birds would be exterminated in
this country through the greed and cruelty of that inferior animal Man.
This enthusiast was now bidden to come in a month’s time, eat his fill
of fruit, and bask in one garden where birds still built and sang and
fed in unmolested freedom. Nor did the blackbirds watch the ripening
treasure unmindful of the future; they, and the thrushes, and the
starlings, while they did their duty towards the grubs and caterpillars,
looked forward to a plentiful reward, and told their young of new treats
and wonders that were yet in store for them.
And now a spell of fine sunny weather began to bring out a blush on the
cherries and gooseberries and red currants; the roses burst into bloom;
and the Poet and his wife were busy tending and weeding the garden they
had learnt to love so well. In the warm afternoons he sat out reading,
or walked up and down the path through the allotments listening to the
birds and nursing his thoughts; and the villagers were quite content to
see him doing this, for, as one of them expressed it to Joseph Bates,
“he do make a better scarecrow than all the old hats and bonnets in the
place.” So the Poet, with his white terrier at his heels (he kept no
cat, I need hardly say), was all unknown to himself doing a work of
grace for his neighbours.
He noticed, in these perambulations, that the birds now sang less
frequently and heartily; but then there were more of them than ever, for
the young ones were now all about the garden, and had grown so bold and
tame that they would hardly get out of the Poet’s way as he moved gently
along his paths. He loved them all, and thought of them almost as his
own children; and no shadow of a foreboding crossed his mind that they,
born in his garden, reared under his protection, could ever vex the even
flow of his happiness.
One fine evening, just as the strawberries were ripening, the Member of
the S.P.E.B. arrived on his visit. It was agreed that they should open
the strawberry season next morning after breakfast; for that, as the
Poet observed, is the real time to eat strawberries, “and the flavour is
twice as good if you pick them yourself in the beds.” So in the fresh of
the morning they all three went into the garden, and the Poet pointed
out with pride the various places where the birds had built.
“We’ve had half a dozen blackbirds’ nests that we know of,” he said,
“and probably there are others that we never found. See there—there’s a
nice crop of blackbirds for a single season!”
Out of the strawberry beds, hustling and chuckling, there arose a whole
school of youthful blackbirds, who had been having their first lessons
in the art of sucking ripe fruit. The elders set off first, and the
young ones followed unwillingly, one or two bolder spirits even yet
dallying in the further corner of the bed.
The Member hardly seemed enthusiastic; he had been invited from London
to eat strawberries, not to see the birds eat them. The Poet half
divined his thoughts: “Plenty for all,” he cried; “we share and share
alike here.”
They began to search; but alas! wherever a ripe fruit betrayed itself
among the leaves, its juicy flesh had been cut open by a blackbirds
bill. A few minutes’ hunt had but scanty result, and the Poet became the
more uncomfortable as he caught sight of Joseph Bates’s face, wearing an
expression of taciturn wisdom, which suddenly emerged from behind a row
of peas and disappeared again.
“Poet,” said the Member, raising himself and straightening an aching
back, “if it’s share and share alike, does that mean that each of us is
only to count as one blackbird? I say, my good fellow, you really must
net this bed if we’re to get anything out of it.” In this suggestion he
was warmly seconded by Bessie, aghast at finding her treasure slipping
from her so fast.
The Poet was a little disconcerted; but he faced it out bravely, and
with the obstinacy of his northern blood:
“The _unnetted_ blackhearts ripen dark,
All thine, along the garden wall,”
he quoted “No; I will net no fruit in this garden.”
“Then it will be _all theirs_, and no mistake,” said the Member. “Poet,
I shall go back to London and found a Society for the Protection of Man
from the Birds. The plain fact is that you have too many birds here;
they have increased, are increasing, and ought to be diminished.”
“Such language from you—you,” cried the Poet, half angry and half
amused: “look at all the work they have done for me this spring in
clearing off all manner of pests: think of all the songs they have sung
for me! Are they to have no reward?”
“But haven’t you worked in your garden too, and are _you_ to have no
reward?” said the perverse Member. “Why can’t they go on with their
grubs and caterpillars, instead of devouring your strawberries, which
are in no way necessary to their existence?”
“Are they necessary to ours?” retorted the Poet. This brought the
argument to a standstill: it had got twisted up in a knot. The Member
wished to say that he had not been asked into the country to restrict
himself to the necessaries of life; but friendship prevailed, and he
suppressed himself. They returned to the house a trifle dejected, and
trying to keep the tempers which those thoughtless birds had roused.
The next day the Poet arose very early in the morning, to gather
strawberries for breakfast before the birds should have eaten them all.
But the birds had got up still earlier, and were there before him; and
now for the first time they aroused in his gentle heart a mild feeling
of resentment. He stood there and even expostulated with them aloud; but
they gave him little heed and as soon as his back was turned they were
down on his strawberries again. That day he was persuaded to have a boy
in, who was to come next morning at daybreak, and keep the birds away
till after breakfast; then (so the Poet bargained) they should have
their turn. Joseph Bates, with much satisfaction, but nobly concealing
his triumph, undertook to procure a trusty and humane boy.
Next day the Poet in the early morning threw open his window and looked
out on his garden. The humane boy was there, faithful to his trust—so
faithful that, even as the Poet looked, he drew from his pocket a
catapult, picked up a stone, and discharged it (luckily without effect)
at a black marauder. The Poet quickly huddled on his clothes, and
hurried down into the garden, only to find the humane boy on his knees
among the dewy plants, eagerly devouring the fruit that the blackbirds
should have had!
In two minutes he was turned neck and crop out of the garden. The Poet
utterly refused to listen to his plea that a boy had as good a right to
a strawberry as a blackbird. He was beginning to get irritated. For the
moment he loved neither boys, nor strawberries, nor even blackbirds.
Misfortunes never come alone, and as he turned from the garden gate he
began to be aware that it was raining. He looked up, and for the first
time for weeks he saw a dull leaden sky, with here and there a ragged
edge of cloud driven across it from the west. The thirsty soil began to
drink in the moisture, and dull and dusty leafage quickly grew clean and
wholesome; but the strawberries—such few as they could find—had no
flavour that day; and now too the slugs came out refreshed, and finished
the work of the blackbirds.
The rain went on next day, and when at last it stopped the
strawberry-bed was sodden and uninviting. The Member, tired of staying
in the house, and eager to get back to his London suburb, where certain
fruits should now be ripening on the walls of a small rectangular
garden, happily free from birds, proposed that they should travel
thither, and perhaps take a short tour on the Continent. By August, he
urged, the garden would be delightful again, and the rowan-berries would
be in all their glory; and perchance even the blackbirds would have gone
into the country for a change, willing to leave poor Man a trifle in his
own garden, after six months of stuffing themselves and their young.
To this plan the Poet was brought to consent for he felt a little tried
by his friends both human and winged. But Bessie would not go; she had
too much to do at home, she said. The fact was that during those rainy
days she and the Member had entered into a conspiracy with Joseph Bates
and the cook—a conspiracy of which indeed, poor soul, she felt a little
ashamed; but the sight of those empty white jam-pots was too much for
her, and a little plotting seemed unavoidable if they were to get
filled. Joseph was instructed to procure a supply of nets, and the cook
a supply of sugar. The conspirators kept their secrets, and for once a
plot went off without detection. The day arrived; the Poet was carried
off, half unwilling, into exile: by nightfall Joseph had netted all the
gooseberries and currants, and within a week a fair fruit-harvest graced
the cupboard shelves.
The blackbirds and their friends knew not what to make of it. It was bad
enough to be disturbed, just as you were enjoying a juicy gooseberry, by
the Poet mooning up and down the garden path; but to have their sweet
freedom curtailed by grievous netting in the one romantic home of
liberty left them in a malicious and self-seeking village—this was the
unkindest cut of all. Depressed and angry, they determined to withdraw
for a while and moult, and to leave the garden to the mercy of the grubs
and wasps; when August came they might perhaps return to see how far
wilful Man was having his own way.
Mid-August arrived, with its gentle indications of approaching autumn,
its deepening colours and grey dewy mornings. The rowan-berries were
turning a rich red, and Bessie longed for the Poet’s coming that he
might fill his eyes with this last glory of the garden before the autumn
set in. The nets had been long removed from the bushes, and the birds
were beginning to return to the garden and resume their duties as
grub-eaters—nay, some of them were even breaking out again into song.
The only drawback to their happiness was the arrival of two nephews of
the Poet for their holidays, who prowled about the garden with an
air-gun, letting fly little leaden bullets at the birds with very
uncertain aim.
These boys, thus employed the Poet found on his return, and strictly
enjoined to restrict their sport to such cornfields as they might find
to be the especial prey of the omnivorous sparrow. He noted the presence
of his birds with joy, and was still more delighted to find his
treasured rowans covered with pendulous bunches of magnificent red
berries, which would be a daily treat to his eyes for weeks to come.
They had home-made jam that evening, and he took it as a matter of
course and asked no questions.
The next morning broke fresh and fine, and the Poet threw open his
window long before any one in the house was stirring. His mind was
filled with comfortable thoughts of home after the discomforts of
foreign travel; how delicious was a garden in August—one’s own garden,
with one’s own birds and flowers and trees!
Ah, hapless Poet! Do not look at your beloved rowans; there is a sight
there that will not please you!
Three blackbirds, a missel-thrush, and half-a-dozen starlings, were hard
at work snipping off the berries, and gaps in the golden bunches already
told the tale of what was to happen; the ground below was strewn with
the relics of the feast, which these careless epicures were leaving to
rot unheeded. The Poet’s face grew dark.
“Confound it all,” he broke out, with quite unusual vehemence, “they
can’t have everything!” And he looked about the room—the truth must
out—for something to throw at his darlings. But if he threw his boots or
his soap, he might have to go and pick them up again, with Joseph Bates
looking on sardonically; and then another thought, a wicked thought,
came into his head and prevailed over him. He crepe softly downstairs,
found the air-gun and the box of little bullets lying on the hall table,
and carried them guiltily upstairs. The gun was loaded the indignant
Poet leant out of the window and took a trembling aim at one black
robber. His finger was on the trigger, and in another moment he might
have been a conscience-stricken man for life, when a bright metallic
sound suddenly broke upon his ear and held his hand.
Tac-tac-tac! Tac! Ta-tac!
What was it that seemed so familiar to his Yorkshire ears, bringing up
mental visions of long rambles over bracing moors? Softly as a cat the
Poet stole downstairs again, replaced the gun on the table, and returned
swiftly with a field-glass, which now showed him, as he expected, the
grey-black plumage and white crescent of a Ring-ousel. Little did that
wandering stranger, so happy in the discovery, here in the far south, of
its beloved northern berries, imagine that its voice had saved the
Poet’s hands from bloodshed, and his mind from a lifelong remorse!
He knelt long at the window, watching the berries disappear without
demur, dreaming of rushing streams and purple heather, and welcoming in
his heart the stranger to the feast. Then rousing himself he fetched his
wife to share his pleasure, and told her of his boyhood among the moors,
and of the Ring-ousel’s nest found in the gorsebush as he was fishing in
the tumbling beck. And then he told her of the air-gun—and she told him
of the conspiracy.
From that moment peace returned to the garden and to the Poet’s mind.
All day long they heard and saw the Ring-ousel, who could not find it in
his heart to leave the berries, and delayed his journey southward for a
whole day to enjoy them. Joseph Bates looked at him with indifference
when the Poet pointed him out. “The thieves are welcome to anything they
can get there,” he said, pointing to the tree: “that fruit’s no mortal
use to no one. But they’ve had a lot more than their share this year of
what’s good for us poor men and women,” he added; “and if I may make so
bold, Sir, I would throw it out as that kind of thing should not happen
next year.”
The Parson came up the garden walk and joined the group: the news of the
Ring-ousel had reached him.
“There he is,” said the Poet “and there they all are, taking my berries
as they’ve taken my fruit. And as far as I’m concerned they may have it
every bit; but for my wife’s sake I must consent to a compromise, if
there is one.”
“Well,” said the Parson, “give them a tithe of all you have. Give them
every tenth fruit tree, and a corner of the strawberry bed. As for the
rowan-berries, you must let them go.”
“And welcome,” said the Poet; and Bessie and old Joseph made no
objection.
Next year the Parson’s compromise was carried out; and Man successfully
asserted his right to share in the Blackbirds’ feast.