"So dear! So dear!" crooned the Cardinal
She had taken possession of the sumac. The location was her selection
and he loudly applauded her choice. She placed the first twig, and
after examining it carefully, he spent the day carrying her others just
as much alike as possible. If she used a dried grass blade, he carried
grass blades until she began dropping them on the ground. If she
worked in a bit of wild grape-vine bark, he peeled grape-vines until
she would have no more. It never occurred to him that he was the
largest cardinal in the woods, in those days, and he had forgotten that
he wore a red coat. She was not a skilled architect. Her nest
certainly was a loose ramshackle affair; but she had built it, and had
allowed him to help her. It was hers; and he improvised a paean in its
praise. Every morning he perched on the edge of the nest and gazed in
songless wonder at each beautiful new egg; and whenever she came to
brood she sat as if entranced, eyeing her treasures in an ecstasy of
proud possession.
Then she nestled them against her warm breast, and turned adoring eyes
toward the Cardinal. If he sang from the dogwood, she faced that way.
If he rocked on the wild grape-vine, she turned in her nest. If he
went to the corn field for grubs, she stood astride her eggs and peered
down, watching his every movement with unconcealed anxiety. The
Cardinal forgot to be vain of his beauty; she delighted in it every
hour of the day. Shy and timid beyond belief she had been during her
courtship; but she made reparation by being an incomparably generous
and devoted mate.
And the Cardinal! He was astonished to find himself capable of so much
and such varied feeling. It was not enough that he brooded while she
went to bathe and exercise. The daintiest of every morsel he found was
carried to her. When she refused to swallow another particle, he
perched on a twig close by the nest many times in a day; and with sleek
feathers and lowered crest, gazed at her in silent worshipful adoration.
Up and down the river bank he flamed and rioted. In the sumac he
uttered not the faintest "Chip!" that might attract attention. He was
so anxious to be inconspicuous that he appeared only half his real
size. Always on leaving he gave her a tender little peck and ran his
beak the length of her wing--a characteristic caress that he delighted
to bestow on her.
If he felt that he was disturbing her too often, he perched on the
dogwood and sang for life, and love, and happiness. His music was in a
minor key now. The high, exultant, ringing notes of passion were
mellowed and subdued. He was improvising cradle songs and lullabies.
He was telling her how he loved her, how he would fight for her, how he
was watching over her, how he would signal if any danger were
approaching, how proud he was of her, what a perfect nest she had
built, how beautiful he thought her eggs, what magnificent babies they
would produce. Full of tenderness, melting with love, liquid with
sweetness, the Cardinal sang to his patient little brooding mate: "So
dear! So dear!"
The farmer leaned on his corn-planter and listened to him intently. "I
swanny! If he hasn't changed his song again, an' this time I'm blest
if I can tell what he's saying!" Every time the Cardinal lifted his
voice, the clip of the corn-planter ceased, and Abram hung on the notes
and studied them over.
One night he said to his wife: "Maria, have you been noticin' the
redbird of late? He's changed to a new tune, an' this time I'm
completely stalled. I can't for the life of me make out what he's
saying. S'pose you step down to-morrow an' see if you can catch it for
me. I'd give a pretty to know!"
Maria felt flattered. She always had believed that she had a musical
ear. Here was an opportunity to test it and please Abram at the same
time. She hastened her work the following morning, and very early
slipped along the line fence. Hiding behind the oak, with straining
ear and throbbing heart, she eagerly listened. "Clip, clip," came the
sound of the planter, as Abram's dear old figure trudged up the hill.
"Chip! Chip!" came the warning of the Cardinal, as he flew to his mate.
He gave her some food, stroked her wing, and flying to the dogwood,
sang of the love that encompassed him. As he trilled forth his tender
caressing strain, the heart of the listening woman translated as did
that of the brooding bird.
With shining eyes and flushed cheeks, she sped down the fence. Panting
and palpitating with excitement, she met Abram half-way on his return
trip. Forgetful of her habitual reserve, she threw her arms around his
neck, and drawing his face to hers, she cried: "Oh, Abram! I got it!
I got it! I know what he's saying! Oh, Abram, my love! My own! To me
so dear! So dear!"
"So dear! So dear!" echoed the Cardinal.
The bewilderment in Abram's face melted into comprehension. He swept
Maria from her feet as he lifted his head.
"On my soul! You have got it, honey! That's what he's saying, plain
as gospel! I can tell it plainer'n anything he's sung yet, now I sense
it."
He gathered Maria in his arms, pressed her head against his breast with
a trembling old hand, while the face he turned to the morning was
beautiful.
"I wish to God," he said quaveringly, "'at every creature on earth was
as well fixed as me an' the redbird!" Clasping each other, they
listened with rapt faces, as, mellowing across the corn field, came the
notes of the Cardinal: "So dear! So dear!"
After that Abram's devotion to his bird family became a mild mania. He
carried food to the top rail of the line fence every day, rain or
shine, with the same regularity that he curried and fed Nancy in the
barn. From caring for and so loving the Cardinal, there grew in his
tender old heart a welling flood of sympathy for every bird that homed
on his farm.
He drove a stake to mark the spot where the killdeer hen brooded in the
corn field, so that he would not drive Nancy over the nest. When he
closed the bars at the end of the lane, he always was careful to leave
the third one down, for there was a chippy brooding in the opening
where it fitted when closed. Alders and sweetbriers grew in his fence
corners undisturbed that spring if he discovered that they sheltered an
anxious-eyed little mother. He left a square yard of clover unmowed,
because it seemed to him that the lark, singing nearer the Throne than
any other bird, was picking up stray notes dropped by the Invisible
Choir, and with unequalled purity and tenderness, sending them ringing
down to his brooding mate, whose home and happiness would be despoiled
by the reaping of that spot of green. He delayed burning the
brush-heap from the spring pruning, back of the orchard, until fall,
when he found it housed a pair of fine thrushes; for the song of the
thrush delighted him almost as much as that of the lark. He left a
hollow limb on the old red pearmain apple-tree, because when he came to
cut it there was a pair of bluebirds twittering around, frantic with
anxiety.
His pockets were bulgy with wheat and crumbs, and his heart was big
with happiness. It was the golden springtime of his later life. The
sky never had seemed so blue, or the earth so beautiful. The Cardinal
had opened the fountains of his soul; life took on a new colour and
joy; while every work of God manifested a fresh and heretofore
unappreciated loveliness. His very muscles seemed to relax, and new
strength arose to meet the demands of his uplifted spirit. He had not
finished his day's work with such ease and pleasure in years; and he
could see the influence of his rejuvenation in Maria. She was flitting
around her house with broken snatches of song, even sweeter to Abram's
ears than the notes of the birds; and in recent days he had noticed
that she dressed particularly for her afternoon's sewing, putting on
her Sunday lace collar and a white apron. He immediately went to town
and bought her a finer collar than she ever had owned in her life.
Then he hunted a sign painter, and came home bearing a number of pine
boards on which gleamed in big, shiny black letters:
+----------------------+
| NO HUNTING ALLOWED |
| ON THIS FARM |
+----------------------+
He seemed slightly embarrassed when he showed them to Maria. "I feel a
little mite onfriendly, putting up signs like that 'fore my
neighbours," he admitted, "but the fact is, it ain't the neighbours so
much as it's boys that need raising, an' them town creatures who call
themselves sportsmen, an' kill a hummin'-bird to see if they can hit
it. Time was when trees an' underbrush were full o' birds an'
squirrels, any amount o' rabbits, an' the fish fairly crowdin' in the
river. I used to kill all the quail an' wild turkeys about here a body
needed to make an appetizing change, It was always my plan to take a
little an' leave a little. But jest look at it now. Surprise o' my
life if I get a two-pound bass. Wild turkey gobblin' would scare me
most out of my senses, an', as for the birds, there are jest about a
fourth what there used to be, an' the crops eaten to pay for it. I'd
do all I'm tryin' to for any bird, because of its song an' colour, an'
pretty teeterin' ways, but I ain't so slow but I see I'm paid in what
they do for me. Up go these signs, an' it won't be a happy day for
anybody I catch trespassin' on my birds."
Maria studied the signs meditatively. "You shouldn't be forced to put
'em up," she said conclusively. "If it's been decided 'at it's good
for 'em to be here, an' laws made to protect 'em, people ought to act
with some sense, an' leave them alone. I never was so int'rested in
the birds in all my life; an' I'll jest do a little lookin' out myself.
If you hear a spang o' the dinner bell when you're out in the field,
you'll know it means there's some one sneakin' 'round with a gun."
Abram caught Maria, and planted a resounding smack on her cheek, where
the roses of girlhood yet bloomed for him. Then he filled his pockets
with crumbs and grain, and strolled to the river to set the Cardinal's
table. He could hear the sharp incisive "Chip!" and the tender mellow
love-notes as he left the barn; and all the way to the sumac they rang
in his ears.
The Cardinal met him at the corner of the field, and hopped over bushes
and the fence only a few yards from him. When Abram had scattered his
store on the rail, the bird came tipping and tilting, daintily caught
up a crumb, and carried it to the sumac. His mate was pleased to take
it; and he carried her one morsel after another until she refused to
open her beak for more. He made a light supper himself; and then
swinging on the grape-vine, he closed the day with an hour of music.
He repeatedly turned a bright questioning eye toward Abram, but he
never for a moment lost sight of the nest and the plump gray figure of
his little mate. As she brooded over her eggs, he brooded over her;
and that she might realize the depth and constancy of his devotion, he
told her repeatedly, with every tender inflection he could throw into
his tones, that she was "So dear! So dear!"
The Cardinal had not known that the coming of the mate he so coveted
would fill his life with such unceasing gladness, and yet, on the very
day that happiness seemed at fullest measure, there was trouble in the
sumac. He had overstayed his time, chasing a fat moth he particularly
wanted for his mate, and she, growing thirsty past endurance, left the
nest and went to the river. Seeing her there, he made all possible
haste to take his turn at brooding, so he arrived just in time to see a
pilfering red squirrel starting away with an egg.
With a vicious scream the Cardinal struck him full force. His rush of
rage cost the squirrel an eye; but it lost the father a birdling, for
the squirrel dropped the egg outside the nest. The Cardinal mournfully
carried away the tell-tale bits of shell, so that any one seeing them
would not look up and discover his treasures. That left three eggs;
and the brooding bird mourned over the lost one so pitifully that the
Cardinal perched close to the nest the remainder of the day, and
whispered over and over for her comfort that she was "So dear! So dear!"