sand-martins were gliding up and down, backwards and forwards through
the bridge, catching their food and talking to themselves. A big trout
rose to secure a mayfly from the deep pool below, and sent a circle of
wavelets spreading far and wide. A kingfisher flashed under the bridge,
all blue and green, and shot away noiselessly up the stream; and then a
red cow or two came down to drink, and after drinking stood in the water
up to their knees, and looked sublimely cool and comfortable. And the
river itself flowed on with a gentle rippling talk in the sunshine,
hushing as it entered the deep pool, and passing under the bridge slowly
and almost silently--“like an _andante_ passing into an _adagio_,” said
the musician to himself; and he walked on with eyes no longer fixed on
the ground, for even this little glimpse of beauty from the bridge had
been medicine to the brain, and it wanted more--it wanted to see and to
hear more things that were beautiful and healing.
He went on, still gloomy, but his gloom was no longer an angry and
sullen one. Through his eyes and ears came sensations that gradually
gladdened his heart, and relieved the oppression on his brain: he began
to notice the bloom on the hedges and in the fields; and the singing of
the larks high in air, though he hardly attended to it, made part of the
joyousness of nature which was beginning to steal into his weary being.
Presently he came to a little hamlet, hardly more than a cottage or two,
but with a little church standing at right angles to the road. The
churchyard looked inviting, for rose-bushes were blooming among the
graves, and it was shut out from the road by a high wall, so that he
would be unobserved there. He walked in and sat down on a tombstone to
rest.
He had not been there long, and was beginning to feel calmed and
quieted, when there broke out on him from the ivied wall the very same
shrill wren’s song that had so wounded his feelings in the morning. It
sent a momentary pang through him. There started up before his eyes the
broken ink-bottle, the smeared page, the bitter vexation and worry, and
the song not even yet begun. But the battle of body and brain was no
longer being waged, and as the tiny brown bird sang again and again, and
always the same strain, he began to wonder how such cheerful music
could ever have so maddened him. It brought to his mind a brilliant bit
of _Scarlatti_, in which a certain lively passage comes up and up again,
always the same, like a clear, strong spring of water bubbling up with
unflagging energy, and with a never-failing supply of joyousness. And
the wren and _Scarlatti_ getting the better of him, he passed out of the
churchyard, and actually began to feel that he was hungry.
Just across the road was a thatched cottage, standing in a little garden
gay with early summer flowers; beehives stood on each side of the
entrance, and a vine hung on the walls. It looked inviting, and the
musician stepped over the little stile, and tapped at the door, which
was open. A woman of middle age came forward.
“Can you tell me,” said he, “whether there is an inn anywhere near where
I could get some bread and cheese?”
She answered that there was no inn nearer than the next village, two
miles away. “But you look tired and pale, sir. Come in and have a
morsel before you go on; and a cup of tea will be like to do you good.
Sit you down in the porch and rest a bit, and I’ll bring you something
in a moment.”
The musician thanked her, and sat down in the porch by the beehives. It
was delicious there!--bees, flowers, sunshine; on the ground the shadows
of the vine-leaves that were clustering unkempt above his head; in the
distance golden meadows and elm-trees, and the faint blue smoke of the
town he had left behind him. Outside the porch hung a cage, in which was
a skylark, the favourite cage-bird of the poor; it had been interrupted
in its song by the stranger’s arrival, but now began again, and sang
with as good a heart and as lusty a voice as its free brethren in the
blue of heaven.
“What a stream of song!” thought the musician. “He sings like good old
Haydn! We can’t do that now. We don’t pour out our hearts in melody, and
do just what we like with our tunes.”
[Illustration: “How that bird does sing.”--P. 49.]
The lark ceased for a moment, and the ticking of the big clock within
the cottage suddenly called up in his mind the _andante_ of the _Clock
Symphony_, and the two bassoons ticking away in thirds with that
peculiar comical solemnity of theirs; and he leant back in the porch and
laughed inside himself till the lark began to sing again. Then he went
on mentally to the last _allegro vivace_, and caught up by its
extraordinary force and vivacity, his brain was dancing away in a flood
of delicious music, when the woman came out to him with a cup of tea and
bread and butter.
“How that bird does sing!” he said to her. “It has done me worlds of
good already!”
“Ah,” she answered, “he has been a good friend to us too. It was my boy
that gave him to me--him as is away at sea. He sings pretty nigh all the
year round, and sometimes he do make a lot of noise; but we never gets
tired of him, he minds us so of our lad. Ah, ’tis a bad job when your
only boy will go for to be a sailor. I never crosses the road to church
of a stormy morning and sees the ripples on the puddles, but I thinks of
the stormy ocean and my poor son!”
The musician asked more about the sailor; and he was shown his likeness,
and various relics of him that the fond mother had cherished up. And
when he rose to go he shook hands with the woman warmly, and told her
that he would one day bring his wife and ask for another cup of tea.
Then he started off once more, refreshed as much by the milk of human
kindness as by the tea and bread and butter.
He soon began to feel sleepy, and looked for a quiet spot where he could
lie down in the shade. Crossing two or three fields he came to a little
dingle, where a stream flowed by a woodside; on the other side was a
meadow studded with elms and beeches, and under the shade of one of
these, close to the brook, and facing the wood, he lay down, and was
soon fast asleep.
He was woke up by a musical note so piercing, yet so exquisitely sweet,
a _crescendo_ note of such wonderful power and volume, that he started
up on his elbow and looked all round him. It was not repeated; but in a
minute or two there came from the wood opposite him a liquid trill; then
an inward murmur; then a loud jug-jug-jug; and then the nightingale
began to sing in earnest, and carried the musician with him into a kind
of paradise. He did not think now of the great composers; this was not
Beethoven or Mozart; this was something new, and altogether rich and
strange. Every time the bird ceased he was in suspense as to what would
come next; and what came next was as surprising as what went before. At
last the nightingale ceased, and dropped into the thick underwood; but
the musician lay there still, and mused and dozed.
At length he started up and looked at his watch; it was past seven
o’clock. He hurried off homewards in the cool air, refreshed and
quieted, thinking of nothing but the things around him, and now and then
of the cottage, the lark, the brookside, and the nightingale. But
presently there came into his recollection the old poet’s lines, and he
repeated them over to himself, for they seemed in harmony with his mood,
and with the coolness, and the sunset. Then as a star comes out in the
twilight, there came upon his mind a strain worthy to be married to
immortal verse; like the star, it grew in brightness every moment, until
he could see it clear and full. In a moment paper and pencil were in his
hand, and the thought was fixed beyond all fear of forgetting. By the
time he reached home, the whole strain was worked out in his mind, and
he wrote the first draft of it that same evening, as he sat contented in
his parlour, with his wife sewing by his side.
After this nothing went wrong with the cantata. It was finished, it was
a great success, and the music to the old poet’s words was
enthusiastically encored. The audience called loudly for the composer,
and the Prince of Wales sent for him, and congratulated him warmly. And
the day after the concert he took his wife out into the country, and
they had tea at the cottage; the lark sang to them, the flowers were
alive with murmuring bees, and the musician’s mind was free from all
care and anxiety.
As they sat there, he told his wife the whole story of that eventful
day, not even keeping from her the thought that had passed through his
mind on the bridge. When he had finished, she laid her hand on his, and
said, in her comfortable womanly way--
“You were out of tune, dear, that’s what it was. And you can’t make
beautiful music, if you’re out of tune: everything you see and hear
jars on you. You must tell me next time you feel yourself getting out of
tune, and we’ll come out here and set you all right again.”
They went comfortably back to the town, after a day of complete
happiness. As they neared their own door, they saw the street-boy
leaning again over their railings, and cat-fishing as usual in the area.
He was whistling with all his might; but this time it was “Weel may the
keel row.” They took it as a good omen; and the astonished urchin found
himself pounced on from behind, carried into the house by main force,
and treated with cake, and all manner of good things, while the musician
sat down to the piano and played him all the beautiful tunes he could
remember. He did not come to fish in their area any more after this; but
a few days later he was heard whistling “Vedrai carino” with an
abstracted air, as he leant over a neighbour’s railings, amusing himself
with his favourite pastime.
A JUBILEE SPARROW.
On the evening of the 21st of June, 1887, a cock sparrow sat on the roof
of St. James’s Palace, in London, gazing down now into St. James’s
Street, now into Pall Mall, where the preparations were almost finished
for the Jubilee which was to take place next day. Flags were being fixed
at all the windows, and Chinese lanterns hung out for the illuminations;
seats were being everywhere contrived for the spectators, and all was
bustle and activity. Every one seemed in good humour; it was plain that
all were bent on showing the good Queen who had reigned fifty years
without a blot on her fair fame, that their hearts went out to her in
sympathy and goodwill. Yet any one skilled in the ways of birds, who
could have seen the sparrow as he sat there, would have judged from the
set of his feathers that _his_ mind was very far from being at ease.
“There’s no time to lose,” he muttered to himself; “she’ll have to sit
all day and all night, or we sha’n’t do it after all.” He flew down to a
snug corner behind a tall brick chimney looking to the south, where his
wife was sitting on a nest with four eggs in it.
“My dear,” he said; “you mustn’t leave the nest to-day; you know my
hopes and wishes; you will disappoint me dreadfully if you can’t manage
to hatch out an egg to-morrow. It really is our duty, as we live in a
palace, to have a nestling hatched on the Jubilee day. Why, my people
have lived here ever since the Queen came to the throne, and one of my
ancestors was born on the very day of her accession! we must keep up the
tradition, and, my dear, it all depends on you. Remember, I picked you
out of a whole crowd down in St James’s Park, and I made no inquiries
about your connections; you may have come from a Pimlico slum for all I
know. But I saw you had good qualities and I asked no questions. Now do
try and do yourself justice. Sit close, and don’t on any account leave
the eggs, and I will bring you all sorts of good things from the Prince
of Wales’ own kitchen.”
The hen sparrow fluttered her wings a little and meekly assured her
husband that she would do her best. “It’s hard work,” she added; “my
poor breast is getting quite bare, and I’m so hungry. But I’ll sit till
August to please you, you beautiful and noble bird.”
“That’s right,” said the cock sparrow, much pleased; and indeed he was a
fine bird, with his black throat and blue head, and mottled brown back.
He flew straight down to the back door of Marlborough House, where the
Prince of Wales lives (he patronized no human beings but royalty and the
aristocracy), and finding the usual supply of crumbs and scraps put out
by the royal kitchen-maid, he made a good meal first himself, and then
set to work to carry his wife her supper.
The day was very hot and very long, and the warmth greatly helped the
weary hen in performing her duties. She stuck to her post all the time
she was having her supper, and she knew that her eggs would soon be
hatched; but neither she nor her husband had quite reckoned for the
warmth of the day. Just when the cock was going to roost, well satisfied
with his wife, and certain that his fondest hopes would be realized
to-morrow, crack, crack! peep, peep! out came a tiny sparrow from the
egg in the warmest corner of the nest, full three hours before the
Jubilee day was to begin!
She called her husband--
“Oh what a little darling,” she cried. “Oh, what a lovely little yellow
beak! and what a sweet crumply little red skin!” And she forgot all
about the Jubilee.
“What a horrid little wretch you mean,” said the cock sparrow. “An
impudent, pushing little ugly brute, to come out just at the wrong time!
And he would have seized it and thrust it out of the nest, if the poor
delighted mother had not spread her wings quite over it.
“Oh, don’t be so cruel,” she said, “please don’t; I’ll hatch another
to-morrow, if I possibly can. I’ll sit all day, and never even want to
go and see the procession, as you promised I should.”
“Very well,” said the cock. “You stay here and sit close till you’ve
hatched another. Not one bit of food shall that little monster have from
me, till his brother is born. And if he is _not_ born to-morrow, it’ll
be very much the worse for you, my dear!”
He went to roost again, and his wife cuddled herself down once more on
the eggs, and fondled her little new-born chick. All night long the
hammering of boards went on in the streets below, where the preparations
were being finished for the procession, and the poor hen passed a very
sleepless night. Her body was tired, and she was dreadfully afraid of
her husband’s anger, if she should fail in her duty. “But, after all,”
she thought, “one must go through a good deal if one is to have a
husband who lives in a palace and is connected with the highest families
in the land!”
The next day was, as we all remember, another very hot one. The sun
blazed down upon the poor hen sparrow, who was obliged to keep sitting
close all day, until she really thought she must have died with heat and
anxiety. Not for one minute would her husband allow her to leave the
nest and look at the processions. He perched on a chimney whence he
could see her on the nest, and also see the procession coming through
from Buckingham Palace; and he described it all to her from his chimney,
but what was the good of that? She might just as well have read it in
the newspapers the next morning.
All day long she sat on those three remaining eggs, and it really seemed
as if they would never crack. The cock got more and more angry and
impatient. “We shall be disgraced,” he cried, when the processions were
all over, and still no second chick; “we shall be disgraced, and we
shall have to leave the Palace. I shall, at least; you may stay if you
like: you have no connection with the royal family and no sense of
shame.”
The hen could say nothing. She was doing her best, poor thing, and she
could do no more. Hour after hour passed, and still no egg burst. At
last, as the big clock on the Palace struck seven, crack! peep!--a
second little sparrow poked out its bill into this wicked world.
The cock sparrow was in a state of wild excitement. He pushed his wife
off the nest, and declared he was going to take charge of it all
himself.
“Oh, what a beauty!” he exclaimed; “so different from that other little
wretch! Fly at once, my dear, to Buckingham Palace, and let Her Majesty
know. She’ll be delighted. And only think if you were to bring back some
crumbs from the hand of royalty itself! I’ll take care of it meanwhile.”
Off flew poor weary Mrs. Sparrow on her errand. But when she got to
Buckingham Palace, she didn’t know how to find the Queen; so she flew
down into Palace Road, and picked up a crumb or two in front of a
baker’s shop there, which she brought home in her beak.
“Well done!” cried her husband, without waiting to ask where they came
from. “Crumbs from Her Majesty’s own hand! wasn’t she
[Illustration: A Jubilee Sparrow.--P. 61.]
delighted? Did she say it was to be called ‘Jubilee,’ in honour of the
day? Of course she did. Jubilee he shall be; and there isn’t another
young one in London to compare with him.”
There was indeed a terrible to-do made about this little nestling, which
was ugly enough in the eyes of every one but its parents. The news of it
spread about, and from all parts of London sparrows came to see it. All
sorts of tales were told of it, and the further you got from St.
James’s, the more wonderful they were. In the Strand they told how the
bird broke the egg as the Queen was passing by, and how Her Majesty
happened to look up to see what o’clock it was, and seeing the old
sparrow on the roof, bowed to him most graciously. Further east, the
sparrows of St. Paul’s Cathedral narrated how a bird had been born on
the roof of Buckingham Palace, just over the Queen’s own bedroom window,
and how Her Majesty, on hearing the news, had sent for a long ladder,
and ordered the Lord Chamberlain to take up some choice dainties to the
parents on a plate of solid gold. And far away in the East-end, the
black and sooty sparrows who inhabit those parts, and who firmly believe
themselves and their race to be the most important part of the whole
population of London, were much stirred by a rumour that a sparrow had
been born in the West-end, which had been declared by the Queen to be
heir to the throne, and that the days of the rule of man were coming to
an end, and the sparrows were going to have it all their own way.
Thus the fame of little Jubilee spread over the whole of London, and
even into the country, for the sparrows that were going out of town for
the summer carried the news with them, and the whole world of sparrows
were in a few days chattering and quarrelling about it.
Meanwhile Jubilee was being stuffed with all sorts of good things, and
in the second week of his existence very nearly died of over-eating. If
he had been fed with wholesome flies, like the others, he would have
taken no hurt; but his father was always bringing bread-crumbs from the
Prince of Wales’s back-door, and these, when forced down the wide-open
yellow throat of poor Jubilee, were apt to choke him sadly.
“Never mind,” said the father, “it will all help to strengthen his
blood, and make him a fit neighbour for kings and princes!”
Luckily the entreaties of his mother, who declared he would die if he
were not fed properly, had some effect, and Jubilee grew to be a
fledgling without falling a victim to his own greatness. When he was
ready to leave the nest, the others, who had been carefully brought up
to consider themselves nobodies, and to bow before Jubilee in
everything, were told to go and shift for themselves--their mother might
look after them if she liked. As for Jubilee, he was to be under his
father’s care for a while longer, and to be introduced to the world
where he was to cut such a great figure. He had by this time, as you may
suppose, come to think a good deal of himself; and to say the truth,
there was no such conceited young jackanapes of a sparrow to be found in
the whole of London. But all the parent sparrows had taught their young
ones to look up to him, and his high mightiness had things pretty much
his own way.
The royal families being by this time gone out of town, it was not
possible to have him presented at court; so the father sparrow was
obliged to be content with taking him to the water in the park, to
introduce him to the ducks. He did indeed drop a hint or two about going
to Windsor Castle when Jubilee should be strong enough; but he had never
been so far himself, and had some doubts in his own mind as to his
reception by the rival sparrows of that royal residence. Supposing they
had produced a Jubilee sparrow there too! It might be wiser not to go so
far a-field.
The ducks were very gracious to Jubilee. They informed him that they
were the property of the state, and under the especial care and
patronage of the nobility and gentry. They lamented that the royal
princes and princesses did not often come to feed them, and told him how
two centuries ago, that excellent monarch Charles the Second had made it
a regular practise and duty to walk in the park for the purpose of
throwing bread to the ducks of that day. They said that Jubilee might
come every day and share the things that were given them.
So Jubilee led a happy life for a while in the society of the ducks, and
became more vain than ever. He was very bold, and would hardly get out
of the way of the passers-by. And this vanity and boldness led to a turn
in the fortunes of this sadly spoilt young bird, which it is now our
painful duty to relate.
One day he was left by his father with the Ducks, and was listening to
their aristocratic conversation, taking a bathe in the water now and
then, and preening himself in the sunshine, when two very ragged and
dirty boys came by. One of them had a large hunk of bread which he was
eating, and as he passed the ducks he threw them a few crumbs. The ducks
did not mind where they got their bread; whether it were given them by a
monarch or a street-boy was all the same to them; and young Jubilee of
course did as they did. So it came to pass that he flew down from the
bush where he happened to be perching at the moment, and dexterously
picked up a crumb which had fallen just at the edge of the water.
The boys, seeing this, threw him another and then another, nearer and
nearer to themselves; and Jubilee, in all his pride and self-confidence,
came close up to them. Suddenly one of the boys whipped off his cap, and
flung it with such good aim, that it knocked over poor Jubilee, and half
stunned him; the other boy instantly pounced down upon him, and he was a
prisoner in a pair of grimy hands. He called out loud to the ducks, but
they only said “quack-quack,” and went off to the other side of the
water, as they saw no more bread was coming.
“Serves him right!” said an old drake: “you ducks made such a fuss about
that little piece of impudence, that he was getting quite unbearable.”
Meanwhile, to prevent his escape, as he struggled and pecked with all
his might, his captor put him into his pocket; where he found himself in
company with a morsel of mouldy cheese, a half-eaten apple, two or three
bits of string, the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, the head of a herring,
and the bowl of an old clay pipe; all of which, combined with the
dirtiness of the pocket itself, made up such a smell that Jubilee will
never forget it to the last day of his life. The only comfort was that
there was one place where light showed through the pocket; and for this
he made and tried to struggle out. The boy, feeling him struggling, gave
his pocket a slap, which quieted master Jubilee for a time; but after a
while he recovered and began to make for fresh air again. This time the
other boy saw his beak coming out and warned his companion in time; so
Jubilee was taken out, and they tied the poor prisoner’s legs together
with one of the bits of string, and put him into another pocket in
company with a dead mouse. And now he had to lie still and take things
as they came. He was tired out with fear, and struggling, and hardly had
life enough left in him to be angry or cry out.
It was some time before he was released from the company of the dead
mouse. When he was taken out of the pocket, he found himself in a dark
and grimy room, with hardly any furniture, no fireplace, and only one
small window high up in the wall. What a change from St. James’s Palace!
He was in fact in the cellar of a small house in a back street in
Westminster, where the father of the boys lived: a very poor man, whose
wages were so small, even when he was lucky enough to get work, that he
could only afford to rent a cellar; and here he and his wife and their
two boys lived.