Madame von Marwitz was sitting on the great terrace of a country-house
in Massachusetts, opening and reading her post, as we have already seen
her do. Impatient and weary as the occupation often made her, she yet
depended upon the morning waves of adulation that lapped in upon her
from every quarter of the earth. To miss the fullness of the tide gave
her, when by chance there was deficiency, the feeling that badly made
_café au lait_ gave her at the beginning of the day; something was
wrong; the expected stimulant lacked in force or in flavour, and coffee
that was not strong and sweet and aromatic was a mishap so unusual that,
when it occurred, it became an offence almost gross and unnatural, as
did a post that brought few letters of homage and appreciation. To-day
the mental coffee was as strong and as perfumed as that of which she had
shortly before partaken in her lovely little _Louis Quinze_ boudoir,
after she had come in from her bath. The bath-room was like that of a
Roman Empress, all white marble, with a square of emerald water into
which one descended down shallow marble steps. Madame von Marwitz was
amused by the complexities of luxury among which she found herself, some
of which, even to her, were novel. "_Eh, eh, ma chère_," she had said to
Miss Scrotton, "beautiful if you will, and very beautiful; but its nails
are too much polished, its hair too much _ondulé_. I prefer a porcelain
to a marble bath-tub." But the ingenuities of hospitality which the
Aspreys--earnest and accomplished millionaires--lavished upon their
guests made one, she owned, balmily comfortable. And as she sat now in
her soft white draperies under a great silken sunshade, raised on a
stand above her and looking in the sunlight like a silver bell, the
beauty of her surroundings--the splendid Italian gardens, a miracle of
achievement even if lacking, as the miraculous may, an obvious relation
with its surroundings; the landscape with its inlaid lake and wood and
hill and great arch of bluest sky; the tall, transparent, Turneresque
trees in the middle distance;--all this stately serenity seemed to have
wrought in her an answering suavity and gladness. There was almost a
latent gaiety in her glance, as, with her large, white, securely moving
hands, which seemed to express their potential genius in every deft and
delicate gesture, she took up and cut open and unfolded her letters,
pausing between them now and then to tweak off and eat a grape as large
as a plum from the bunch lying on its leaves in a Veronese-like silver
platter beside her.
This suavity, this gladness and even gaiety of demeanour were apparent
to Miss Eleanor Scrotton when she presently emerged from the house and
advanced slowly along the terrace, pausing at intervals beside its
balustrade to gaze with a somewhat melancholy eye over the prospect.
Miss Scrotton was struggling with a half formulated sense of grievance.
It was she who had brought Madame von Marwitz and the Aspreys together.
Madame von Marwitz already knew, of course, most of the people in
America who were worth knowing; if she hadn't met them there she had met
them in Europe; but the Aspreys she had, till then, never met, and they
had been, indisputably, Miss Scrotton's possession. Miss Scrotton had
known them slightly for several years; her father and Mr. Asprey had
corresponded on some sociological theme and the Aspreys had called on
him in London in a mood of proper deference and awe. She had written to
the Aspreys before sailing with Mercedes, had found that they were
wintering in Egypt, but would be back in America in Spring, ready to
receive Madame von Marwitz and herself with open arms; and within those
arms she had, a week ago, placed her treasure. No doubt someone else
would have done it if she hadn't; and perhaps she had been too eager in
her determination that no one else should do it. Perhaps she was
altogether a little too eager. Madame von Marwitz liked people to care
for her and showed a pretty gratitude for pains endured on her behalf;
at least she usually did so; but it may well have been that the great
woman, at once vaguely aloof and ironically observant, had become a
little irked, or bored, or merely amused at hearing so continually, as
it were, her good Scrotton panting beside her, tense, determined and
watchful of opportunity. However that may have been, Miss Scrotton, as
Madame von Marwitz's glance now lifted and rested upon herself, detected
the sharper gaiety defined by the French as "_malice_," lighting, though
ever so mildly, her friend's eyes and lips. Like most devotees Miss
Scrotton had something of the valet in her composition, and with the
valet's capacity for obsequiousness went a valet-like shrewdness of
perception. She hadn't spent four months travelling about America with
Madame von Marwitz without seeing her in undress. She had long since
become uncomfortably aware that when Madame von Marwitz found one a
little ridiculous she could be unkind, and that when one added
plaintiveness to folly she often amused herself by giving one, to speak
metaphorically, soft yet sharp little pinches that left one nervously
uncertain of whether a caress or an aggression had been intended.
Miss Scrotton was plaintive, and she could not conceal it. Glory as she
might in the _rôle_ of second fiddle, she was very tenaciously aware of
what was due to that subservient but by no means insignificant
performer; and the Aspreys had not shown themselves enough aware,
Mercedes had not shown herself aware at all, of what they all owed to
her sustaining, discreet and harmonious accompaniment. In the carefully
selected party assembled at Belle Vue for Madame von Marwitz's
delectation, she had been made a little to feel that she was but one of
the indistinguishable orchestra that plucked out from accommodating
strings a mellow bass to the one thrilling solo. Not for one moment did
she grudge any of the recognitions that were her great friend's due; but
she did expect to bask beside her; she did expect to find transmitted to
her an important satellite's share of beams; and, it wasn't to be
denied, Mercedes had been too much occupied with other people--and with
one other in particular--to shine upon her in any distinguishing degree.
Mercedes had the faculty, chafe against it as one might--and her very
fondness, her very familiarity were a part of the effect--of making one
show as an unimportant satellite, as something that would revolve when
wanted and be contentedly invisible when that was fitting. "I might
almost as well be a paid _dame de compagnie_," Miss Scrotton had more
than once murmured to herself with a lip that trembled; and, obscurely,
she realised that close association with the great might reveal one as
insignificant rather than as glorified. It was therefore with her air of
melancholy that she paused in her advance along the terrace to gaze out
at the prospect, and with an air of emphasized calm and dignity that she
finally came towards her friend; and, as she came, thus armed, the
blitheness deepened in the great woman's eyes.
"Well, _ma chèrie_," she remarked, "How goes it?" She spoke in French.
"Very well, _ma bien aimée_," Miss Scrotton replied in the same
language. Her French was correct, but Mercedes often made playful
sallies at the expense of her accent. She preferred not to talk in
French. And when Madame von Marwitz went on to ask her where her fellow
_convives_ were, it was in English that she answered, "I don't know
where they all are--I have been busy writing letters; Mrs. Asprey and
Lady Rose are driving, I know, and Mr. Asprey and Mr. Drew I saw in the
smoking-room as I passed. The Marquis I don't think is down yet, nor
Mrs. Furnivall; the young people are playing tennis, I suppose."
Miss Scrotton looked about the terrace with its rhythmic tubs of
flowering trees, its groups of chairs, its white silk parasols, and then
wandered to the parapet to turn and glance up at the splendid copy of an
Italian villa that rose above it. "It is really very beautiful,
Mercedes," she observed. "It becomes the more significant from being so
isolated, so divorced from what we are accustomed to find in Europe as a
setting for such a place, doesn't it? Just as, I always think, the
people of the Asprey type, the best this country has to offer, are more
significant, too, for being picked out from so much that is
indistinguishable. I do flatter myself, darling, that in this visit, at
least, I've been able to offer you something really worth your while,
something that adds to your experience of people and places. You _are_
enjoying yourself," said Miss Scrotton with a manner of sad
satisfaction.
"Yes; truly," Madame von Marwitz made genial reply. "The more so for
finding myself surrounded by so many old acquaintances. It is a
particular pleasure to see again Lady Rose and the vivacious and
intelligent Mrs. Furnivall; it was in Venice that we last met; her
Palazzo there you must one day see. Monsieur de Hautefeuille and Mr.
Drew I counted already as friends in Europe."
"And Mrs. Asprey you will soon count as one, I hope. She is really a
somewhat remarkable woman. She comes, you know, of one of their best and
oldest families."
"Oh, for that, no; not remarkable. Good, if you will--_bon comme du
pain_; it strikes me much, that goodness, among these American rich whom
we are accustomed to hear so crudely caricatured in Europe;--and it is
quite a respectable little aristocracy. They ally themselves, as we see
here in our excellent host and hostess, with what there is of old blood
in the country and win tradition to guide their power. They are not the
flaunting, vulgar rich, of whom we hear so much from those who do not
know them, but the anxious, thoughtful, virtuous rich, oppressed by
their responsibilities and all studying so hard, poor dears, at stiff,
deep books, in order to fulfil them worthily. They all go to
_conférences_, these ladies, it seems, and study sociology. They take
life with a seriousness that I have never seen equalled. Mrs. Asprey is
like them all; good, oh, but yes. And I am pleased to know her, too.
Mrs. Furnivall had promised her long since, she tells me, that it should
be. She and Mrs. Furnivall are old school-mates."
Miss Scrotton, all her merit thus mildly withdrawn from her, stood
silent for some moments looking away at the lake and the Turneresque
trees.
"It was so very kind of you, Mercedes, to have had Mr. Drew asked here,"
she observed at last, very casually. "It is a real opportunity for a
young bohemian of that type; you are a true fairy-godmother to him;
first Mrs. Forrester and now the Aspreys. Curious, wasn't it, his
appearing over here so suddenly?"
"Curious? It did not strike me so," said Madame von Marwitz, showing no
consciousness of the thrust her friend had ventured to essay. "People
come to America a great deal, do they not; and often suddenly. It is the
country of suddenness. His books are much read here, it seems, and he
had business with his publishers. He knew, too, that I was here; and
that to him was also an attraction. Why curious, my Scrotton?"
Miss Scrotton disliked intensely being called "my Scrotton;" but she had
never yet found the necessary courage to protest against the
appellation. "Oh, only because I had had no hint of it until he
appeared," she returned. "And I wondered if you had had. Yes; I suppose
he would be a good deal read over here. It is a very derivative and
artificial talent, don't you think, darling?"
"Rather derivative; rather artificial," Madame von Marwitz replied
serenely.
"He doesn't look well, does he?" Miss Scrotton pursued, after a little
pause. "I don't like that puffiness about the eyelids and chin. It will
be fatal for him to become fat."
"No," said Madame von Marwitz, as serenely as before, her eyes now on a
letter that she held. "Ah, no; he could rise above fat, that young man.
I can see him fat with impunity. Would it become, then, somewhat the
Talleyrand type? How many distinguished men have been fat. Napoleon,
Renan, Gibbon, Dr. Johnson--" she turned her sheet as she mildly brought
out the desultory list. "And all seem to end in n, do they not? I am
glad that I asked Mr. Drew. He flavours the dish like an aromatic herb;
and what a success he has been; _hein_? But he is the type of personal
success. He is independent, indifferent, individual."
"Ah, my dear, you are too generous to that young man," Miss Scrotton
mused. "It's beautiful, it's wonderful to watch; but you are, indeed,
too kind to him." She mused, she was absent, yet she knew, and knew that
Mercedes knew, that never before in all their intercourse had she
ventured on such a speech. It implied watchfulness; it implied
criticism; it implied, even, anxiety; it implied all manner of things
that it was not permitted for a satellite to say.
The Baroness's eyes were on her letter, and though she did not raise
them her dark brows lifted. "_Tiens_," she continued, "you find that I
am too kind to him?"
Miss Scrotton, to keep up the appearance of ingenuousness, was forced to
further definition. "I don't think, darling, that in your sympathy, your
solicitude, where young talent is concerned, you quite realize how much
you give, how much you can be made use of. The man admires you, of
course, and has, of course, talent of a sort. Yet, when I see you
together, I confess that I receive sometimes the impression of a
scattering of pearls."
Madame von Marwitz laid down her letter. "Ah! ah!--oh! oh!--_ma bonne_,"
she said. She laughed out. Her eyes were lit with dancing sparks. "Do
you know you speak as if you were very, very jealous of this young man
who is found so charming?"
"Jealous, my dear Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton's emotion showed itself in a
dark flush.
"_Mais oui; mais oui_; you tell me that my friend is a swine. Does
that not mean that you, of late, have received too few pearls?"
"My dear Mercedes! Who called him a swine?"
"One doesn't speak of scattered pearls without rousing these
associations." Her tone was beaming.
Was it possible to swallow such an affront? Was it possible not to? And
she had brought it upon herself. There was comfort and a certain
restoration of dignity in this thought. Miss Scrotton, struggling
inwardly, feigned lightness. "So few of us are worthy of your pearls,
dear. Unworthiness doesn't, I hope, consign us to the porcine category.
Perhaps it is that being, like him, a little person, I'm able to see Mr.
Drew's merits and demerits more impartially than you do. That is all. I
really ought to know a good deal about Mr. Drew," Miss Scrotton pursued,
regaining more self-control, now that she had steered her way out of the
dreadful shoals where her friend's words had threatened to sink her;
"I've known him since the days when he was at Oxford and I used to stay
there with my uncle the Dean. He was sitting, then, at the feet of
Pater. It's a derivative, a _parvenu_ talent, and, I do feel it, I
confess I do, a derivative personality altogether, like that of so many
of these clever young men nowadays. He is, you know, of anything but
distinguished antecedents, and his reaction from his own _milieu_ has
been, perhaps, from the first, a little marked. Unfortunately his
marriage is there to remind people of it, and I never see Mr. Drew _dans
le monde_ without, irrepressibly, thinking of the dismal little wife in
Surbiton whom I once called upon, and his swarms--but swarms, my
dear--of large-mouthed children."
Miss Scrotton wondered, as she proceeded, whether she had again too far
abandoned discretion.
The Baroness examined her next letter for a moment before opening it and
if she, too, had received her sting, she abandoned nothing.
She answered with complete, though perhaps ominous, mildness: "He is
rather like Shelley, I always think, a sophisticated Shelley who had sat
at the feet of Pater. Shelley, too, had swarms of children, and it is
possible that they were large-mouthed. The plebeian origin that you tell
me of rather attracts me. I care, especially, for the fine flame that
mounts from darkness; and I, too, on one side, as you will remember, _ma
bonne_, am _du peuple_."
"My dear Mercedes! Your father was an artist, a man of genius; and if
your parents had risen from the gutter, you, by your own genius,
transcend the question of rank as completely as a Shakespeare."
The continued mildness was alarming Miss Scrotton; an eagerness to make
amends was in her eye.
"Ah--but did he, poor man!" Madame von Marwitz mused, rather
irrelevantly, her eyes on her letter. "One hears now, not. But thank
you, my Scrotton, you mean to be consoling. I have, however, no dread of
the gutter. _Tiens_," she turned a page, "here is news indeed."
Miss Scrotton had now taken a chair beside her and her fingers tapped a
little impatiently as the Baroness's eye--far from the thought of pearls
and swine--went over the letter.
"_Tiens, tiens_," Madame von Marwitz repeated; "the little Karen is
sought in marriage."
"Really," said Miss Scrotton, "how very fortunate for the poor little
thing. Who is the young man, and how, in heaven's name, has she secured
a young man in the wilds of Cornwall?"
Madame von Marwitz made no reply. She was absorbed in another letter.
And Miss Scrotton now perceived, with amazement and indignation, that
the one laid down was written in the hand of Gregory Jardine.
"You don't mean to tell me," Miss Scrotton said, after some moments of
hardly held patience, "that it's Gregory?"
Madame von Marwitz, having finished her second letter, was gazing before
her with a somewhat ambiguous expression.
"Tallie speaks well of him," she remarked at last. "He has made a very
good impression on Tallie."
"Are you speaking of Gregory Jardine, Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton repeated.
Madame von Marwitz now looked at her and as she looked the tricksy light
of malice again grew in her eye. "_Mais oui; mais oui._ You have guessed
correctly, my Scrotton," she said. "And you may read his letter. It is
pleasant to me to see that stiff, self-satisfied young man brought to
his knees. Read it, _ma chère_, read it. It is an excellent letter."
Miss Scrotton read, and, while she read, Madame von Marwitz's cold, deep
eyes rested on her, still vaguely smiling.
"How very extraordinary," said Miss Scrotton. She handed back the
letter.
"Extraordinary? Now, why, _ma bonne_?" her friend inquired, all limpid
frankness. "He looked indeed, a stockish, chill young man, of the
cold-nosed type--_ah, que je n'aime pas ça!_--but he is a good young
man; a most unimpeachable young man; and our little Karen has melted
him; how much his letter shows."
"Gregory Jardine is a very able and a very distinguished person," said
Miss Scrotton, "and of an excellent county family. His mother and mine
were cousins, as you know, and I have always taken the greatest interest
in him. One can't but wonder how the child managed it." Mercedes, she
knew, was drawing a peculiar satisfaction from her displeasure; but she
couldn't control it.
"Ah, the child is not a manager. She is so far from managing it, you
see, that she leaves it to me to manage. It touches and surprises me, I
confess, to find that her devotion to me rules her even at a moment like
this. Yes; Karen has pleased me very much."
"Of course that old-fashioned formality would in itself charm Gregory.
He is very conventional. But I do hope, my dear Mercedes, that you will
think it over a little before giving your consent. It is really a most
unsuitable match. Karen's feelings are, evidently, not at all deeply
engaged and with Gregory it must be a momentary infatuation. He will get
over it in time and thank you for saving him; and Karen will marry Herr
Lippheim, as you hoped she would."
"Now upon my word, my Scrotton," said Madame von Marwitz in a manner as
near insolence as its grace permitted, "I do not follow you. A
barrister, a dingy little London barrister, to marry my ward? You call
that an unsuitable marriage? I protest that I do not follow you and I
assert, to the contrary, that he has played his cards well. Who is he? A
nobody. You speak of your county families; what do they signify outside
their county? Karen in herself is, I grant you, also a nobody; but she
stands to me in a relation almost filial--if I chose to call it so; and
I signify more than the families of many counties put together. Let us
be frank. He opens no doors to Karen. She opens doors to him."
Miss Scrotton, addressed in these measured and determined tones, changed
colour. "My dear Mercedes, of course you are right there. Of course in
one sense, if you take Gregory in as you have taken Karen in, you open
doors to him. I only meant that a young man in his position, with his
way to make in the world, ought to marry some well-born woman with a
little money. He must have money if he is to get on. He ought to be in
parliament one day; and Karen is without a penny, you have often told me
so, as well as illegitimate. Of course if you intend to make her a large
allowance, that is a different matter; but can you really afford to do
that, darling?"
"I consider your young man very fortunate to get Karen without one
penny," Madame von Marwitz pursued, in the same measured tones, "and I
shall certainly make him no present of my hard-earned money. Let him
earn the money for Karen, now, as I have done for so many years. Had she
married my good Franz, it would have been a very different thing. This
young man is well able to support her in comfort. No; it all comes most
opportunely. I wanted Karen to settle and to settle soon. I shall cable
my consent and my blessings to them at once. Will you kindly find me a
servant, _ma chère_."
Miss Scrotton, as she rose automatically to carry out this request, was
feeling that it is possible almost to hate one's idols. She had
transgressed, and she knew it, and Mercedes had been aware of what she
had done and had punished her for it. She even wondered if the quick
determination to accept Gregory as Karen's suitor hadn't been part of
the punishment. Mercedes knew that she had a pride in her cousin and had
determined to humble it. She had perhaps herself to thank for having
riveted this most disastrous match upon him. It was with a bitter heart
that she walked on into the house.
As she went in Mr. Claude Drew came out and Miss Scrotton gave him a
chill greeting. She certainly hated Mr. Claude Drew.
Claude Drew blinked a little in the bright sunlight and had somewhat the
air of a graceful, nocturnal bird emerging into the day. He was dressed
with an appropriateness to the circumstances of stately _villégiature_
so exquisite as to have a touch of the fantastic.
Madame von Marwitz sat with her back to him in the limpid shadow of the
great white parasol and was again looking, not at Karen's, but at
Gregory Jardine's, letter. One hand hung over the arm of her chair.
Mr. Drew approached with quiet paces and, taking this hand, before
Madame von Marwitz could see him, he bowed over it and kissed it. The
manner of the salutation made of it at once a formality and a caress.
Madame von Marwitz looked up quickly and withdrew her hand. "You
startled me, my young friend," she said. In her gaze was a mingled
severity and softness and she smiled as if irrepressibly.
Mr. Drew smiled back. "I've been wearying to escape from our host and
come to you," he said. "He will talk to me about the reform of American
politics. Why reform them? They are much more amusing unreformed, aren't
they? And why talk to me about them. I think he wants me to write about
them. If I were to write a book for the Americans, I would tell them
that it is their mission to be amusing. Democracies must be either
absurd or uninteresting. America began by being uninteresting; and now
it has quite taken its place as absurd. I love to hear about their fat,
bribed, clean-shaven senators; just as I love to read the advertisements
of tooth-brushes and breakfast foods and underwear in their magazines,
written in the language of persuasive, familiar fraternity. It was
difficult not to confess this to Mr. Asprey; but I do not think he would
have understood me." Mr. Drew spoke in a soft, slightly sibilant voice,
with little smiling pauses between sentences that all seemed vaguely
shuffled together. He paused now, smiling, and looking down at Madame
von Marwitz.
"You speak foolishly," said Madame von Marwitz. "But he would have
thought you wicked."
"Because I like beauty and don't like democracy. I suppose so." Still
smiling at her he added, "One forgets democracies when one looks at you.
You are very beautiful this morning."
"I am not, this morning, in a mood for unconventionalities," Madame von
Marwitz returned, meeting his gaze with her mingled severity and
softness.
And again, with composure, he ignored her severity and returned her
smile. It would have been unfair to say that there was effrontery in Mr.
Drew's gaze; it merely had its way with you and, if you didn't like its
way, passed from you unperturbed. With all his rather sickly grace and
ambiguous placidity, Mr. Drew was not lacking in character. He had risen
superior to a good many things, the dismal wife at Surbiton and the
large-mouthed children perhaps among them, and he had won his
detachment. The homage he offered was not unalloyed by humour. To a
person of Madame von Marwitz's calibre, he seemed to say, he would not
pretend to raptures or reverences they had both long since seen through.
It would bore him to be rapturous or reverent, and if you didn't like
him, so his whole demeanour mildly demonstrated, you could leave him,
or, rather, he could leave you. So that when Madame von Marwitz sought
to quell him she found herself met with a gentle unawareness, even a
gentle indifference. Cogitation and a certain disquiet were often in her
eye when it rested on this devotee.
"Does one make conventional speeches to the moon?" he now remarked,
taking a chair beside her and turning the brim of his white hat over his
eyes so that of his face only the sensual, delicate mouth and chin were
in sunlight. "I shouldn't want to make speeches to you if you were
conventional. You are done with your letters? I may talk to you?"
"Yes, I have done. You may talk, as foolishly as you please, but not
unconventionally; whether I am or am not conventional is not a matter
that concerns you. I have had good news to-day. My little Karen is to
marry."
"Your little Karen? Which of all the myriads is this adorer?"
"The child you saw with me in London. The one who stays in Cornwall."
"You mean the fair, square girl who calls you Tante? I only remember of
her that she was fair and square and called you Tante."
"That is she. She is to marry an excellent young man, a young man," said
Madame von Marwitz, slightly smiling at him, "who would never wish to
make speeches to the moon, who is, indeed, not aware of the moon. But he
is very much aware of Karen; so much so," and she continued to smile, as
if over an amusing if still slightly perplexing memory, "that when she
is there he is not aware of me. What do you say to that?"
"I say," Mr. Drew replied, "that the barbarians will always be many and
the civilized few. Who is this barbarian?"
"A Mr. Gregory Jardine."
"Jardine? _Connais-pas_," said Mr. Drew.
"He is a cousin of our Scrotton's," said Madame von Marwitz, "and a man
of law. Very stiff and clean like a roll of expensive paper. He has
asked me very nicely if he may inscribe the name of Mrs. Jardine upon a
page of it. He is the sort of young man of law, I think I distinguish,"
Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes on the landscape, "who does not smoke
a briar wood pipe and ride on an omnibus, but who keeps good cigars in a
silver box and always takes a hansom. He will make Karen comfortable
and, I gather from her letter, happy. It will be a strange change of
_milieu_ for the child, but I have, I think, made her independent of
_milieus_. She will write more than Mrs. Jardine on his scroll. It is a
child of character."
"And she will no longer be in Cornwall," Mr. Drew observed. "I am glad
of that."
"Why, pray? I am not glad of it. I shall miss my Karen at Les
Solitudes."
"But I, you see, don't want to have other worshippers there when I go to
stay with you," said Mr. Drew; "for, you know, you are going to let me
stay a great deal with you in Cornwall. You will play to me, and I will
write something that you will, perhaps, care to read. And the moon will
be very kind and listen to many speeches. You know," he added, with a
change of tone, "that I am in love with you. I must be alone with you at
Les Solitudes."
"Let us have none of that, if you please," said Madame von Marwitz. She
looked away from him along the sunny stretches of the terrace and she
frowned slightly, though smiling on, as if with tolerant affection. And
in her look was something half dazed and half resentful like the look of
a fierce wild bird, subdued by the warmth and firmness of an enclosing
hand.