Birds and Beasts 9
She left the window, advanced a step, and held out her finger to beckon
and encourage him. But the movement, gentle as it was, was misunderstood
by the bird; he spread his wings and darted up to the ceiling. Then she
spoke to him, and very humbly—she found it very easy to be
humble—besought him—
“Poor birdie, why should you be afraid of me? Do you think I want to
hurt you? I only ask you one favour—to kiss you once, just once,
before.... There, come, light there on my hand; let me just hold you;
you shall fly away again directly after. Come, dear birdie, I know I am
ugly to look at, but I am not cruel.”
And stepping softly, silently, she followed him about the room, with
outstretched fingers and smiling lips, almost like a mother, as if she
were talking to a little child. Then, as he would not come—
“Come, now.... Does my back shock you—like the others? Why should you
care if I _am_ hunchbacked, when you are so pretty? Come, pretty
birdie—if only to give me the strength I need so badly.”
She crumbled some bread on the table. This made the bird hesitate; he
did not come down at once, but, still perching aloft, gazed down at the
white crumbs, craning his neck, his eyes glittering with greediness.
Finally appetite overcame prudence. He darted down on to the table and
began to peck—_tock, tock!_ at the food, stopping every now and then to
shake out his feathers and cocking up his head to look about him.
Presently she scattered more crumbs, first on the floor and then on the
window-sill, and he soon came hopping up to them on his little pink
toes, flirting his tail and looking as happy as a king, the glutton!
What a darling he was, to be sure! She forgot all thoughts of death, to
see him so alive and so handsome, coming and going, marching up and down
with his mettlesome air, his rolling eye, his tossing head, his
everlasting pickings and peckings and his fine look of swagger and
impudence. He had a way of peeping at her askance, winking one eye with
a merry, mocking glint in it, that seemed to say unmistakably: “I don’t
mind eating your bread, because it’s downright good; but never you think
I’m going to give up my freedom for you. I shall be off and away again
just whenever I choose.”
Other times he would fix his little black beads of eyes meditatively
upon her face, scrutinising her features as if bent on reading her
inmost thoughts, but never missing a peck at the food for all that, or
one crumb of this long, luxurious repast.
When he had eaten up every scrap, she got some more and offered it him,
this time in her palm.
Up he fluttered, took his stand in front of her hand, examined it from
every side, from above and from below, wishing but not daring; then
suddenly caution carried the day, and he hopped away.
“Pst! pst!” she chirped to him, but never stirred. Her stillness
reassured him; with a determined air, feeling a sinking again in his
insatiable little stomach—it was not every day he had such a chance of
filling it—he hopped forward, then drew back again; finally, making up
his mind once for all, he began to peck warily at the contents of the
well-stored hand.
She watched him with delight and admiration. The sight of him and his
pretty ways stirred deep, unsuspected feelings within her. The blue sky
seemed to have entered at her humble window, as if the bird had brought
in along with him a fragment of space. Under his wing he hid, Claire
thought, all the gaiety and brightness of the spring.
Memories awoke in her heart; she dreamed of the woodlands, the fields of
golden grain, the water-springs, all the glories of kindly Mother
Nature. Three or four times in her colourless life she had been taken
into the country; she had heard the birds sing, the great trees swaying
and rustling in the breeze and the prattling of the brooks. One day—it
was fifteen years ago at least—she had actually dropped asleep on the
moss in the warm shadow of the woods, and when she awoke the old oaks
seemed to be smiling down on her.
Her black thoughts fled before this memory of rosy hours.
Besides, after days of gloom do not happier days follow? Had not he,
too, her little friend, had not he known the hardships of winter?
Shivering with cold, he had endured frost and bitter wind; his nest
battered by the hail, his plumage soaked by the rain, his wings stiff
with pain—was not all this far harder to bear than the gibes and insults
of a few silly girls, giddy-pated perhaps rather than really
ill-natured? Twenty times, a hundred times over, death had hovered near,
when the storms scattered the leaves and tore down the nests all round
him; but he had kept a good heart, and when spring-time came back again,
had he not been rewarded for his bravery by happy, happy days? As she
thought of the stubborn courage of the little sparrow, she was ashamed
of her own weakness.
Who knows?—perhaps the bird had been sent to call her back to duty, to
encourage her never to despair, to bring her a lesson straight from
Mother Nature. Something of Nature’s tender care for the weak and
unprotected was in his coming to visit her garret; it was not for
nothing he had chosen out the barest and poorest of them all, driving
away with the rustle of his tiny wings those other dark, overshadowing
wings—the wings of death. She found herself calling down blessings on
him, thanking him for arriving so opportunely, weeping with joy to see
his graceful gambols; for he was not frightened now, but bright and gay,
and rather amused than otherwise at the four walls that had suddenly
replaced the boundless plains of air.
A new life began for the two.
Monsieur Friquet—that was the name she had given him—seemed to be quite
content to take his place as house-mate with the poor work-girl, whose
heart was so full of affection, and who, to his partial eyes, looked as
pretty as the prettiest things he had ever seen in the world outside.
Did she not always wear a kind smile on her lips whenever she came home?
And is not kindness, when all is said and done, the same thing as
beauty?
Monsieur Friquet had forgotten all about the distractions of the
streets. Like a rakish younger son who has been living for years on his
wits, he thoroughly enjoyed this life of slippered ease in a cosy house,
where, it is true, the sun did not often penetrate, but then neither did
the wind. Its quiet was unbroken all day long while his mistress was
abroad, allowing him to doze and dream away the long hours till her
return set stove and saucepans in activity again.
He was a lazy loon, and nothing could have suited him better than to
have a place at table laid out for him morning and evening, without his
having so much as to put his head outside the door.
He had known so many of his comrades who had perished miserably under a
cat’s claws, at the corner of a gutter-pipe or in the treacherous shadow
of a chimney-stack; so many who, grown old and impotent, and unable to
find themselves a warm lodging, had died a lonely death on some deserted
housetop; in fact, he had witnessed so much disappointment and
disillusion and misery that he was ready—some days, at any rate—to swear
he would not exchange for all the spacious blue of heaven shining in
through the windowpane the indigo-blue paper with white bunches of
flowers that covered the garret walls.
He had put on flesh, and his chirp had grown thick and fruity; nowadays
the graceless fellow had nothing but ill to say of the freedom he had
lost, but which, after all, was limited, in summer, to scolding and
squabbling in the tree-tops, and, in winter, to freezing on a wretched
perch.
And _pr’t! prr’t! chirp! chirp!_ he went, in scorn of everything that
could remind him of the old bad times of his life.
How much better to sit soft and warm over a good feed of bird-seed, to
sleep away his afternoons in slothful ease, never to soil his feathers
scratching for doles in a dungheap, but to live like a gentleman on his
means, among his own belongings, without even a thought of work or
worry!
Monsieur Friquet, you see, was a philosopher of an accommodating temper.
Thank God! everybody does not think alike; for what would become of the
sky and the woodland if all the race of sparrows forsook them like him
for cosy quarters and a free table? He was one of those selfish folk who
deem all is well directly all is well with them, and who only think of
being on the best terms with the world and with themselves, without ever
a care beyond.
True, he was barely awake ere he saw his kind mistress bustling about in
her room and filling up his bowl with new milk; true, she shared her
loaf and her eggs with him, always giving him the best of everything and
cheerfully keeping the crust and the white for herself; true, all day
long the table was laid for him, and he had nothing to do but to eat and
drink to his heart’s content, like the regular glutton he was; but
Monsieur Friquet never once thought at the cost of what painful
sacrifices he enjoyed all these good things.
Claire had resumed the cruel slavery of the workroom.
Every morning, at seven o’clock, she set out, a meagre hunch of bread in
her basket, and along the sleeping streets where the yawning passers-by
were few and far between, half dozing herself, but brave and thinking of
Monsieur Friquet, she would make her way to the dismal room where she
was to be kept prisoner all day. Her companions never dreamed what
strength to bear unhappiness a friend affords, a good friend you are
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