|The snow has gone from the landscape and the sun, at the hour of
setting, has got round to the wood that crowns the hill on the other
side of the valley. Soon it will set on the slope of the hill and then
down on the plain. Then we shall know that spring has come. Two days
ago a blackbird, from the paddock below the orchard, added his golden
baritone to the tenor of the thrush who had been shouting good news
from the beech tree across the road for weeks past. I don't know why the
thrush should glimpse the dawn of the year before the blackbird, unless
it is that his habit of choosing the topmost branches of the tree gives
him a better view of the world than that which the golden-throated
fellow gets on the lower branches that he always affects. It may be
the same habit of living in the top storey that accounts for the early
activity of the rooks. They are noisy neighbours, but never so noisy as
in these late February days, when they are breaking up into families and
quarrelling over their slatternly household arrangements in the topmost
branches of the elm trees. They are comic ruffians who wash all their
dirty linen in public, and seem almost as disorderly and bad-tempered as
the human family itself. If they had only a little of our ingenuity
in mutual slaughter there would be no need for my friend the farmer to
light bonfires underneath the trees in order to drive the female from
the eggs and save his crops.
A much more amiable little fellow, the great tit, has just added his
modest assurance that spring is coming. He is not much of a singer, but
he is good hearing to anyone whose thoughts are turning to his garden
and the pests that lurk therein for the undoing of his toil. The tit is
as industrious a worker in the garden as the starling, and, unlike the
starling, he has no taste for my cherries. A pair of blue tits have been
observed to carry a caterpillar to their nest, on an average every two
minutes for the greater part of the day. That is the sort of bird that
deserves encouragement--a bird that loves caterpillars and does not love
cherries. There are very few creatures with so clean a record. So hang
out the cocoanut as a sign of goodwill.
And yet, as I write, I am reminded that in this imperfect world where no
unmixed blessing is vouchsafed to us, even the tit does not escape
the general law of qualified beneficence. For an hour past I have been
agreeably aware of the proximity of a great tit who, from a hedge below
the orchard, has been singing his little see-saw song with unremitting
industry. Now behold him. There he goes flitting and pirouetting with
that innocent grace which, as he skips in and out of the hedge just
in front of you, suggests that he is inviting you to a game of
hide-and-seek. But not now. Now he is revealing the evil that dwells in
the best of us. Now he reminds us that he too is a part of that nature
which feeds so relentlessly on itself. See him over the hives, glancing
about in his own erratic way and taking his bearings. Then, certain that
the coast is clear, he nips down and taps upon one of the hives with his
beak. He skips away to await results. The trick succeeds; the doorkeeper
of the hive comes out to enquire into the disturbance, and down swoops
the great tit and away he flies with his capture. An artful fellow in
spite of his air of innocence.
There is no affectation of innocence about that robust fellow the
starling. He is almost as candid a ruffian as the rook, and three months
hence I shall hate him with an intensity that would match Caligula's
“Oh, that the Romans had only one neck!” For then he will come out of
the beech woods on the hillside for his great annual spring offensive
against my cherry trees, and in two or three days he will leave them an
obscene picture of devastation, every twig with its desecrated fruit and
the stones left bleaching in the sun. But in these days of February I
can be just even to my enemy. I can admit without reserve that he is not
all bad any more than the other winsome little fellow is all good. See
him on autumn or winter days when he has mobilised his forces for his
forages in the fields, and is carrying out those wonderful evolutions in
the sky that are such a miracle of order and rhythm. Far off, the cloud
approaches like a swirl of dust in the sky, expanding, contracting,
changing formation, breaking up into battalions, merging into columns,
opening out on a wide front, throwing out flanks and advance guards
and rear guards, every complication unravelled in perfect order, every
movement as serene and assured as if the whole cloud moved to the beat
of some invisible conductor below--a very symphony of the air, in which
motion merges into music, until it seems that you are not watching a
flight of birds, but listening with the inner ear to great waves of
soundless harmony. And then, the overture over, down the cloud descends
upon the fields, and the farmers' pests vanish before the invasion.
And if you will follow them into the fields you will find infinite tiny
holes that they have drilled and from which they have extracted the
lurking enemy of the drops, and you will remember that it is to their
beneficial activities that we owe the extermination of the May beetle,
whose devastations were so menacing a generation ago. And after the
flock has broken up and he has paired, and the responsibilities of
housekeeping have begun he continues his worthy labours. When spring has
come you can see him dart from his nest in the hollow of the tree and
make a journey a minute to the neighbouring field, returning each
time with a chafer-grub or a wire-worm or some other succulent, but
pestiferous morsel for the young and clamorous family at home. That
acute observer, Mr G. G. Desmond, says that he has counted eighteen such
journeys in fifteen minutes. What matter a few cherries for a fellow of
such benignant spirit?
But wait, my dear sir, wait until June brings the ripening cherries and
see how much of this magnanimity of February is left.
Sir, I refuse to be intimidated by June or any other consideration.
Sufficient unto the day---- And to-day I will think only good of the
sturdy fellow in the coat of mail. To-day I will think only of the brave
news that is abroad. It has got into the hives. On fine days such as
this stray bees sail out for water, bringing the agreeable tidings that
all is well within, that the queen bee is laying her eggs, “according
to plan,” and that moisture is wanted in the hive. There are a score
of hives in the orchard, and they have all weathered the winter and its
perils. We saw the traces of one of those perils when the snow still lay
on the ground. Around each hive were the footmarks of a mouse. He had
come from a neighbouring hedge, visited each hive in turn, found there
was no admission and had returned to the hedge no doubt hungrier than he
came. Poor little wretch! to be near such riches, lashings of sweetness
and great boulders of wax, and not be able to get bite or sup. I see him
trotting back through the snow to his hole, a very dejected mouse. Oh,
these new-fangled hives that don't give a fellow a chance.
In the garden the news is coming up from below, borne by those unfailing
outriders of the spring, the snowdrop and the winter aconite. A modest
company; but in their pennons is the assurance of the many-coloured host
that is falling unseen into the vast pageant of summer and will fill the
woods with the trumpets of the harebell and the wild hyacinth, and make
the hedges burst into foam, and the orchard a glory of pink and white,
and the ditches heavy with the scent of the meadowsweet, and the fields
golden with harvest and the gardens a riot of luxuriant life. I said
it was all right, chirps little red waistcoat from the fence--all the
winter I've told you that there was a good time coming and now you see
for yourself. Look at those flowers. Ain't they real? The philosopher in
the red waistcoat is perfectly right. He has kept his end up all through
the winter, and has taken us into his fullest confidence. Formerly he
never came beyond the kitchen, but this winter when the snow was about
he advanced to the parlour where he pottered about like one of the
family. Now, however, with the great news outside and the earth full of
good things to pick up, he has no time to call.
Even up in the woods that are still gaunt with winter and silent, save
for the ringing strokes of the woodcutters in some distant clearing, the
message is borne in the wind that comes out of the west at the dawn of
the spring, and is as unlike the wind of autumn as the spirit of the
sunrise is unlike the spirit of the sunset. It is the lusty breath of
life coming back to the dead earth, and making these February days the
most thrilling of the year. For in these expanding skies and tremors of
life and unsealings of the secret springs of nature all is promise and
hope, and nothing is for regret and lament. It is when fulfilment comes
that the joy of possession is touched with the shadow of parting. The
cherry blossom comes like a wonder and goes like a dream, carrying the
spring with it, and the dirge of summer itself is implicit in the scent
of the lime trees and the failing note of the cuckoo. But in these days
of birth when
“Youth, inexpressibly fair, wakes like a wondering rose.”
there is no hint of mortality and no reverted glance. The curtain is
rising and the pageant is all before us.
[Illustration: 0249]
[Illustration: 0250]