into a small box, in the lid of which one of the boys had bored a few
small holes to give him air. Some crumbs were dropped through the holes,
but they quite forgot to give him water, and the poor bird had to suffer
great torments of thirst. When night came at last and the family lay
down on their wretched mattresses in the corners of the room, Jubilee
expected to get some sleep; but even this was denied him. No sooner was
all quiet than the rats began to prowl about the room; and you may be
sure they soon smelt out Jubilee. They came and climbed up on to the
box, and when they heard him inside, they began to gnaw the wood between
two of the holes. Luckily the nights were still short, and the
poverty-stricken family were stirring early, or they would have got at
Jubilee before morning. Even as it was, the poor bird, who used to sleep
so peacefully after a good supper on the roof of the Royal Palace in the
snuggest corner of the nest, had to spend his whole night within a few
inches of half-a-dozen hungry monsters, who were thirsting for his
blood. He was almost out of his mind by morning.
The boys had each a piece of bread given them for breakfast, some crumbs
from which they gave their prisoner; and at the instance of their
mother, they also gave him some water, and Jubilee felt a little better,
and began to forget about the rats. Suddenly there came a knock at the
door. The father had gone to work; the mother opened it. A man in
uniform came in. Jubilee thought it must be a special messenger from the
Queen, come to demand his instant release.
But it was only the School Board attendance officer, who had come to see
why the boys were not at school. They shrank into a corner and presently
made for the door, but the officer was too quick for them. He told
their mother that he did not wish to have the father fined, and that if
the boys would go to the school with him at once, and promise to go
regularly, he would not summon him. The boys were frightened and went
off with the officer: and Jubilee was left alone with the mother, who
now began to try and clean up a bit, and make the room tidy; though,
indeed, poor thing, she was too thin and starved to do any real work.
Soon she came to the box where Jubilee was.
“Ah, poor bird!” she thought to herself, “you have come out of fresh
air, and away from kind friends, just as we did when we came to this
dreadful London. Oh, why did I ever leave the village, and father and
mother, and the orchards, and the meadows where we used to gather
buttercups and tumble in the hay?” And she sat down on a broken chair by
Jubilee’s box, and thought of the sweet air of the country, and wiped
away a few slow tears with her apron. At last she got up, and took the
box in her hands. “He’ll only starve here,” she thought, “and the rats
will get at him. I’ve a great mind to let him go.” But then she thought
how vexed the boys would be, and she gave up that idea. If she could
only sell him they might all be the better for it. She would try and
sell him for sixpence and they would buy a fourpenny loaf, and the boys
should have a penny each to console them for the loss of their bird. She
took him down the street in the box, turned down another street, and
offered him at a shop where numbers of birds in cages were hanging in
the window.
“Will you give me sixpence for this bird?” she asked. A pang went
through Jubilee; to be sold for a sixpence, and he a royal bird!
The shopman, who was in his shirt (and very dirty it was), and had an
evil face, and a short stubbly gray beard, looked with great contempt at
Jubilee.
“Sixpence,” he shouted; “why, it’s only a sparrow!”
“Oh,” thought Jubilee, “if I could only tell him that I am a Jubilee
sparrow, the only one in London, and worth a thousand times more than my
weight in gold!” He had heard this so often from his father, that he at
last had come to believe that if ever he really were to be sold they
would weigh him and multiply the result by a thousand.
“Sixpence!” cried the shopman. “Sparrows are dear at a penny!”
The poor woman was sadly disappointed, and so indeed was Jubilee. She
offered to sell the box as well, and after some bargaining, Jubilee and
his box were handed over to the man for the sum of threepence, on which
the starving family dined that day, and were thankful too.
Jubilee had not been long in the shop when the evil-faced man opened the
box cautiously and seized him before he could escape. Once more his legs
were tied together, and he was taken into a little dingy back room and
laid upon a table. Then the man shut the door, lit a gas-lamp, and took
out some paints and washes; and setting a canary in a cage before him,
began to paint Jubilee’s feathers to imitate it.
“What a fat little brute you are,” he said, as he poked his dirty finger
into the poor bird’s stomach. “But we’ll soon take that down; we’ll
soon starve you into a nice slim canary. No more fat living for you, you
little pig.”
Every feather of Jubilee’s wings and tail had to be painted separately,
and washed before it was painted; and the poor worn-out bird had to lie
there on the table all that day with his legs tied, and was given
nothing to eat. After it was all over he was untied and put in a small
cage, but kept in the same dingy inner room, away from the street. Two
days later he was taken out again, and the whole process had to be gone
over once more; and all this time he was getting thinner and thinner. It
was a week after he had been sold, before he was pronounced fit to be
taken into the shop, and hung in the window in his cage; a label was
tied on to it on which was written--
“Canary, a Bargain.
“Warranted Sound. Only 3/6.”
Poor Jubilee! He was at least worth three and sixpence, and his affairs
were beginning to go up again. If he could only have the luck to be
bought by one of the royal family, all might be well again. But it was
not to be. And for a long time nobody even offered to buy him. A fat
bullfinch was sold, and Jubilee was quite glad to get rid of him; he was
so fat, and so proud of his portly red waistcoat. Linnets and
Goldfinches went, and others took their places, and there was always a
pretty brisk sale of canaries. But Jubilee was neglected, probably
because he used to sit on his perch and mope and ruffle his feathers,
from hunger and hatred of the world. He looked sulky, and of course he
never sang; so the customers would have nothing to say to him. It was a
sad downfall for him, to sit in a cage all day and mope, and have faces
made at him by street-boys, who loved to flatten their noses against the
window and make all sorts of horrible noises and cat-calls, until the
old man ran out with a stick and drove them away. But hunger and
misfortune had done Jubilee some good, though it had made him very
miserable. He had lost all his old pride, and had had all the nonsense
knocked out of his head which his foolish father had stored up there.
One day he was sitting on his perch, dull and listless as usual, and
terribly annoyed by the shrill singing of three canaries who were in the
window with him, and were always making fun of him because he was only a
sham canary and couldn’t sing; when two boys stopped at the window. They
were of quite a different kind from any who had been there before; they
did not flatten their noses against the glass, or make horrible noises;
they wore good clothes, and had broad white collars which were quite
clean, instead of dirty old handkerchiefs. They looked a good deal at
Jubilee, and were evidently talking about him; but he could not hear
what they said. At last they came into the shop and offered the old man
two shillings for him.
“Make it half-a-crown,” said he, “and you shall have him;” for he was
anxious to get rid of Jubilee. He might begin to moult, or the paint
might wear off; and then there might be mischief.
The boys consented to give half-a-crown, and took Jubilee away with
them. How glad he was to get out of that shop! Surely better times were
coming! He was once more in the hands of the aristocracy, and certainly
they handled him much more gently than the street boys. They carried him
to a big house in Belgravia, put him in an empty cage, and began to
examine him closely. Then they took him out and turned up his feathers.
“I thought so,” said one: “I told you so when we were looking at him
through the window. That fellow’s a regular old thief. It’s nothing but
a common sparrow. Run and ask father to come and see him.”
The other boy soon returned with a kind-looking gentleman, who laughed
when he saw Jubilee, and told the boys they were lucky to have caught a
well-known thief and impostor. Then he sent for a cab, took the cage and
the boys, and drove down to the street where the old man lived, taking
up a policeman on the way. And in another half-hour Jubilee found
himself at a police-station; he was put in a sunny window, and the paint
partly washed off him, the old man was locked up in a cell, and the
gentleman and the boys were to come next day and give evidence.
The next day Jubilee was brought into court in his cage. It was not very
pleasant; for he was half yellow and half his natural brown, and all the
people laughed at him when he was handed up to the magistrate to be
looked at. But a kind-hearted policeman, who had taken care of him the
evening before, and given him seeds and water, had pity on him, and took
him out of court as soon as he had been looked at, and washed the paint
quite off him, and put him back in his sunny window. The case was soon
proved, and when the old man had been sent away to prison for obtaining
money on false pretences, the policeman asked the boys if he might keep
the bird, as it was only a sparrow, and his sick wife would be very glad
of it to keep her company while he was out on his beat. The boys gladly
let him have it, and Jubilee was once more carried off in his cage to a
new residence.
This was a small two-storied house in Pimlico. The policeman carried him
up-stairs to his wife who lay ill in bed.
“Ah, Harry dear,” said she, “I’m so glad to see you; I’ve been waiting
so long for you. I thought the morning would never come to an end. And
what have you got there?”
“Something to make the time go quicker for you,” said the policeman; and
he put the cage down on his wife’s bed, and told her the story of the
sparrow.
“Poor bird,” said she, “poor thing. I can feel for him, as I’m caged up
too, and can’t get out into the fresh air. But thank you, Harry, for
thinking of me. He’ll be a companion to me, these long dreary mornings.
But what shall we call him?”
“Well,” said Harry, “I reckon he’s about two months old; and to-day’s
the 20th of August; so that just about takes us back to Jubilee day. I
think he must have been born very near about the Jubilee. Let us call
him Jubilee.”
And Jubilee felt that he was among friends, for now he had his right
name, and was made much of, and was really of some use. And the
policeman’s uniform was consoling too: for it brought back to his mind
St. James’s Palace, and the policemen walking up and down the street
below, and the scarlet-coated sentinels marching to and fro in front of
the Prince of Wales’s gates.
And so two or three weeks went by, and Jubilee sat on his perch, and was
fed well with seeds, and wished he could have sung like the canaries to
show his gratitude and make the time pass quicker for the suffering
wife. She grew paler and paler, and wearier and wearier, and seemed to
take pleasure in nothing but Jubilee, and in looking for the time when
her husband should come home. She would take the bird out of his cage,
and he would hop about on the bed, and take seeds and crumbs out of her
hand. He did not want to escape, and meet with new perils and
adventures. Never had Jubilee been so happy before.
One day the doctor came, and told her husband that if his wife was ever
to get well, she must go into the country for fresh air. It was hard on
Harry, for he could not go with her; he must stay in London, and earn
his living. But he took his savings out of the bank, and with these he
contrived to get his wife taken to Victoria station, and thence in the
train to the Sussex village where her parents lived. And of course
Jubilee went with her.
I cannot stop to tell the wonders of that journey for Jubilee, or the
delight of getting into pure fresh breezes among the Sussex downs. He
was put into a window in an old red-brick cottage, where he soon learnt
to forget all about London, and the pride of his early days, and all the
horrors he had gone through. And, in spite of his being only a sparrow,
and having never a song to sing, he was able to soothe the sick wife’s
weary hours, and perhaps loved her as dearly as she loved him.
But she got no better; and one day the doctor said that a telegram must
be sent at once to fetch her husband from London. When he came in the
afternoon, she was lying unconscious, with Jubilee on a chair beside the
bed. Jubilee did not know what followed; but before it was dark the
policeman had taken his cage to the window and opened the door, saying
in a voice that trembled as the bird had never heard it tremble
before--
“We shall not want you any more, little Jubilee; go your way, and take
our thanks with you.”
Jubilee flew out of the cage into the free air. What has since become of
him I cannot tell you. But we may be sure that he did not go back to the
perils of London streets, or to the pride and glory of a royal palace.
THE FALCON’S NEST.
Up the little street of thatched fishermen’s cottages, that ran inland
from the stony beach and then curved away under the swelling down, there
hurried early one May morning a dark-eyed girl, with a wounded pigeon in
her hand. The wings of the bird were fluttering, as if it were in pain;
a feather dropped here and there upon the road, and there was blood at
its beak. The girl pressed it to her cheek in loving pity, and her loose
dark brown hair fell over it, as the morning breeze followed her from
the sea.
She stopped at a cottage gate, half way up the street, unlatched it with
her free hand, passed through the little garden, and ran into the
cottage without knocking. No one was in the little room.
“Harold!” she cried. “Harold! where are you?”
A boy of fifteen, tall and lithe, bonny-looking, and fair-haired, came
in through the back door. He wore a blue jersey, and seemed made for a
seafaring life.
“Why, Molly, it’s not seven o’clock, and we haven’t had breakfast yet. I
thought you girls were in bed at this time of day. Hallo! What’s the
matter with the pigeon?”
He took the bird out of her hand, for Molly, in spite of her fourteen
years, had begun to cry, and could not answer his question. He turned
the bird over gently and smoothed its feathers. Then he fell to stroking
Molly’s hair.
“Poor old Molly,” he said soothingly. “Don’t cry. Was it the cat?”
Molly sat down, took the pigeon back from him, and dried her eyes on its
silky plumage.
“No,” she said, still choking a little, “it wasn’t the cat, it was a
terrible great bird. Why should he have come at _my_ pigeon, that _you_
gave me, when there were so many others for him? I saw him, as I was
dressing, come right down, and just as he was seizing poor Snowdrop I
threw my shoe at him and frightened him, and then he let go Snowdrop,
and made a swoop into Mrs. Timms’s garden, and carried off another
pigeon instead. Oh, the horrible, cruel creature!”
Harold gave a long whistle. “It’s the falcon,” he said, “from the red
cliffs. I know him, the cruel brute! He’s got his nest there, Molly, and
he’s feeding young ones. That’s why it is he comes here now. Never you
mind, Molly,” he added, as he saw the pigeon was dead, “I’ll give you
another, and what’s more, I’ll have those young falcons to make all
safe.”
Molly looked at him with her usual admiring gaze. Harold and she had
been playmates since they were small children and lived as next door
neighbours, and though they did not see quite so much of each other now
that Harold’s father was dead, and his mother had come to live in a
smaller cottage further up the street, they were still as fond of each
other as ever. Molly had long ago given up her whole soul to Harold: she
had no secret from him. He had been a brother to her all her life, and
even more than a brother. Perhaps if she had had any brothers they
would have either despised her and kept her down, or they would have
spoilt her, but Harold did neither. He was her sun, cheering and warming
her; as to being obliged to do without him, that was a thing she had
never thought of.
But some little time before the appearance of the falcon Harold had
suddenly taken it into his head that he must go into the royal navy. A
coast-guard friend of his had for some time been trying to persuade him
to join a training-ship, but Harold had steadily refused, thinking that
a fisherman’s free life was the happiest in the world. But as he grew
older he began to discover that the fisherman’s freedom was bought at a
high price. They had to sell their fish for very little, and other
people made the money they ought to have had. And for a great part of
the year very little was done in the way of fishing, except lobster-and
crab-catching, and lobsters and crabs were getting scarcer than they
used to be. There were in fact too many fishermen, and they were
gradually catching all the crabs and lobsters on the coast. And so
Harold at last came to the conclusion that if he was to support his
mother in her old age he should set himself to some work which would
make him sure of a fixed income, and if possible a rising one.
When Molly learnt that her Harold was actually going to leave her, and
that in a few days she would see the last of him for a long time to
come, her whole life seemed to be going to change. It was as if her boat
had suddenly sprung a leak, and was sinking away from beneath her. The
village, the bay, the beach, the lanes, could never be the same without
Harold. She had been used to lean on him, to rest her whole being
against his; and she did not know that even boys and girls, like men and
women, must lose the props they make for themselves, and yet contrive
somehow to stand without their help. Seeing her sorrowful eyes, and
wishing to see them bright again, rather than feeling with her in her
pain, he had given her the pigeon; and now the cruel falcon’s talons had
torn her sensitive little heart almost as ruthlessly as the bird’s
tender breast.
Harold came out of the cottage door and looked at the weather. It was a
still spring morning with a silky mist lying about the hills, which
would clear away if the slightest breeze got up.
“I’ll go to-day, Molly,” he said, “and you shall come with me if you
like. We’ll have one jolly day together before I go to the
training-ship. The tide runs eastward up till twelve, and will bring us
back easily in the afternoon. Come down to the beach in half an hour:
I’ll have the boat ready, and some bread and cheese. You ask your mother
for some cold tea.” And Harold, delighted with his plan, and with his
mind as cloudless as a sunny summer’s day, ran off to get his boat
ready, hardly finding time to give Molly the kiss that her uplifted
grateful face demanded of him.
In half an hour she and the boat were both ready, and they passed out of
the little bay, she steering and he rowing, as the mist began to lift
from the curving outlines of the downs. It was very restful to Molly to
glide over that silky sea, with the gulls quietly sailing above, the
breeze from the land just breathing on her, and Harold’s bright face
opposite to her; and for a while she was perfectly happy, thinking of
nothing. But suddenly the sound of a big gun reached them, and looking
out to sea they saw the distant masts of a huge ironclad, and a white
curl of smoke, which had already risen high in air by the time the sound
reached them. As they looked, another white puff, and, as it slowly
rose, another faint boom. Harold’s eyes sparkled, and he rested on his
oars, and turned to watch the ship.
“I expect it’s the _Monarch_,” he said. “I know she’s cruising about
here. Just think, Molly! Some day perhaps you’ll hear the big guns and I
shall be on board. And thinking of you,” he added, as his face came
round to look at Molly with a look half of pity, half of pride. But
there was a big tear slowly slipping down Molly’s brown cheek. The
thought of Harold’s going had come over her like a cloud, and the rain
was beginning to fall. For a moment he felt angry; plunged the oars
into the water, and rowed on strongly with just a faint flush on his
cheek. Then seeing her face turned away, so that he should not see the
tear, and the little mouth compressed and chin held firm so as to keep
another from escaping, he shipped his oars, jumped across to her, and
with boyish energy gave her a host of rough kisses on each cheek. Then
he took her face between his hands and said--
“Molly, don’t you be silly. If you’re going to cry every time you hear a
big gun fired I’ll sail right away to the other side of the world and
marry some one over there. But if you’ll be a good girl I’ll come back
some day and be a coastguard, and then we can live in one of those
cottages by the flagstaff, and you shall polish the windows and the
floors till they shine like mother’s china. And when I get to Portsmouth
I’ll have a likeness taken in uniform, and you shall have it to hang up
in your own room. Now then, let go, silly, or we shall be on the rocks!”
He disengaged himself from the fervid embrace in which Molly had caught
him, and was back in his seat, pulling hard into the current of the
tide again, which was now carrying them fast along the foot of the
cliffs. They rounded one little headland, and then another, and
presently found themselves under a deep curve of the cliffs, here some
three or four hundred feet high, quite inaccessible from above, where
the rocks were almost perpendicular, but broken somewhat at the base by
the action of the sea. These cliffs--the red cliffs as they were called
from their colour--were the favourite breeding place of many birds, and
they were dotted all over, as the boat rounded the headland, with
kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, and other sea-birds, who sailed up
into the air, or far away to sea, with loud cries, as the intruders came
nearer. Harold paid them little attention, but made straight across the
curve towards the opposite headland, where the cliff seemed almost to
beetle over, and where the shadow, as they had been rowing eastwards and
it was still morning, lay heavy and black over the water. Here, he knew,
the peregrine falcon built its nest nearly every year: for the nest
could only be reached from the sea, and no hardy climber had as yet
attempted to get at it by that way. Once the male bird had been shot,
and for two or three years no nest had been built; but another pair had
found the place out, and this year had been so far lucky enough to
escape the guns of collectors and gamekeepers.
Harold put in to the shore, and moored the boat to a stone. No falcon
was in sight. He told Molly to lie down in the boat quite still; and
stretching himself beside her on his back, he fed her with bread and
cheese, keeping a sharp lookout all the while. For a long time they lay
there, and it was a happy time for both of them. The gentle sigh of the
waves daintily lapping the stones, and the call of the sea-birds
overhead, were all the sounds they heard, except the occasional distant
boom of a gun, which still sent a little pang through Molly’s tender
heart. But she thought of the coastguard’s cottage, and all the time
that was to be passed before she could be polishing its floors and
windows for Harold melted away before that vision of happiness, which
stood out like a distant peak when all the nearer hills and vales are
hidden in a morning mist.
So they lay there in the boat, waiting for the falcon to appear, for it
was hopeless to try and discover the nest until one of the old birds
should return to it with food for the young. Every now and then Molly’s
rosy mouth opened to receive a bit of bread and cheese, offered it on
the point of Harold’s clasp-knife, which his coastguard friend had given
him; but at last there was no more, and lulled by the gentle motion of
the boat, she fell into a peaceful doze. She awoke, feeling Harold’s
hand on her mouth.
“Don’t speak, Molly,” he whispered; “look there! That’s the wicked thing
that killed your Snowdrop.”
She looked up and saw a large bird hovering just at the edge of the
cliffs above them. Its great wings were spread out, as it sailed round
and round for a while, looking to see that the coast was clear: and
their sharp eyes could see that it carried something in its talons.
Then, seeing nothing to disturb its solitude, it wheeled slowly down the
cliff, and perched on a projecting bit of rock, not very high above
their heads, and stood there, proud and fierce, with one foot still
grasping its victim, which they could now see was a young leveret,
bleeding and struggling in its last agony. When the last struggle was
over, and not before, the sharp, cruel, beak was driven like a knife
into the leveret’s neck, and the fur torn from its back; and when the
butcher’s work was complete, the great bird slowly rose on its wings,
and sailed into the air once more with the bleeding victim.