"Please, sir, be this note for you?" asked the waiter.
"For me,--yes; it is my name."
I did not recognize the handwriting, and yet the note was from one whose
writing I had often seen. But formerly the writing was cramped, stiff,
perpendicular (a feigned hand, though I guessed not it was feigned); now
it was hasty, irregular, impatient, scarce a letter formed, scarce a
word that seemed finished, and yet strangely legible withal, as the hand
writing of a bold man almost always is. I opened the note listlessly,
and read,--
"I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her go. Well! I did not
throw myself under the hoofs of the horses. I write this in a public-
house, not far. Will you follow the bearer, and see once again the
outcast whom all the rest of the world will shun?"
Though I did not recognize the hand, there could be no doubt who was the
writer.
"The boy wants to know if there's an answer," said the waiter.
I nodded, took up my hat, and left the room. A ragged boy was standing
in the yard, and scarcely six words passed between us before I was
following him through a narrow lane that faced the inn and terminated in
a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and making me a sign to go on, went
back his way whistling. I passed the turnstile, and found myself in a
green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill.
I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him) half
kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some object in the grass.
My eye followed his mechanically. A young unfledged bird that had left
the nest too soon stood, all still and alone, on the bare short sward,
its beak open as for food, its gaze fixed on us with a wistful stare.
Methought there was something in the forlorn bird that softened me more
to the forlorner youth, of whom it seemed a type.
"Now," said Vivian, speaking half to himself, half to me, "did the bird
fall from the nest, or leave the nest at its own wild whim? The parent
does not protect it. Mind, I say not it is the parent's fault,--perhaps
the fault is all with the wanderer. But, look you, though the parent is
not here, the foe is,--yonder, see!"
And the young man pointed to a large brindled cat that, kept back from
its prey by our unwelcome neighborhood, still remained watchful, a few
paces off, stirring its tail gently backwards and forwards, and with
that stealthy look in its round eyes, dulled by the sun,--half fierce,
half frightened,--which belongs to its tribe when man comes between the
devourer and the victim.
"I do see," said I; "but a passing footstep has saved the bird!"
"Stop!" said Vivian, laying my hand on his own, and with his old bitter
smile on his lip,--"stop! Do you think it mercy to save the bird? What
from; and what for? From a natural enemy,--from a short pang and a
quick death? Fie! is not that better than slow starvation,--or, if you
take more heed of it, than the prison-bars of a cage? You cannot
restore the nest, you cannot recall the parent. Be wiser in your
mercy,--leave the bird to its gentlest fate."
I looked hard on Vivian: the lip had lost the bitter smile. He rose and
turned away. I sought to take up the poor bird; but it did not know its
friends, and ran from me, chirping piteously,--ran towards the very jaws
of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away the beast,
which sprang up a tree and glared down through the hanging boughs. Then
I followed the bird, and as I followed, I heard, not knowing at
first whence the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it
near, was it far? From the earth, in the sky? Poor parent bird, like
parent-love, it seemed now far and now near; now on earth, now in sky!
And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the space, lo, the little
wings hovered over me!
The young bird halted, and I also.
"Come," said I, "ye have found each other at last,--settle it between
you!"
I went back to the outcast.