PARK PEARLS.
By the cottage, a stranger is hailed with sharp palpable hostility, followed by a guttural sentence inwardly spoken. The watchdog pours out his durable qualities on the intruder’s ear. To prevent any misunderstanding, he tells, most forcibly, of the consequences of a nearer approach. As the inmates of the hamlet are thus warned, an unknown face gazes on him, waiting at the wicket. I love the creature’s voice. It sounds of a home, although not mine. It hints of a domestic circle with chubby bairns, little dumpy arms, tiny prattling feet, dirty faces—as all children have if left to their own sweet will—children of the woods and parks, little rural arabs—the human world in miniature uncontrolled. The barking is incessant. A mellow voice spreads over the grassy lawns; on the pensive air, a hollow metallic ringing is carried out, eddying as tiny wavelets to the shore of a tiny pool—the music of an echo, touching the high towers of the mansion-house, rebounding to the forest edge—clear, fine, and pleasing. The winter sunny rays moisten the crust by the gateway, and the earth seems saturated by a shower which fell days ago—a shower of snow. Around the open glade, a stately circle of beech and fir trees marks the park’s outline. The day is cold and damp; the seasons hang in the balance.
In summer here, I know a tree whereon the cushat builds, a tree of fir. On the green soft cushion around its base the children gather needles and pins for youthful household purposes—age reflected in infancy. These trees are honestly Scotch, riveted to the soil; the nettle and the thistle lower in the scale. Around the wood-pigeons’ abode, mighty beeches extend their branches, and sycamores shelter the approach—trees born of ancestral days, veterans of the forest; and at eventide, when the sun is warm, carrying its fire-flame westwards, the low Coo, coo! familiarly resounds over the park—a plaintive moaning from the tree-top. The lark from the mossy meadow tells his tale of love and devotion, going high above the forest shadows, revelling in the ether, shouting vocally in the sky, making the aërial hall ring with its joyous out-pourings—a musical day-star, a pearl from earth and the clod paying homage at the footstool of light.
Over the emerald ground-work, a rook is seen; when the wind is high, he courts the lee-side of the forest, and hugs the bushes on the border, passing like a mighty rushing blast, causing the dead leaf to swirl on the grass. Atop the fence circling the copse, the magpie sits with piratical flashes in his eye, brooding over the stratagem required for further business. Down to the field he goes, and over the meadow-land on strong wing, tail floating gaily in the breeze; a gem, a pearl, a bird of surpassing beauty, up to the fir-trees, chattering harshly, loudly, defiantly. A continuous warble, an entertaining exhibition of voice-power on the part of the hedge-sparrow, enlivens the bushes under the shadow of the beeches; its capabilities of a very high order—a low, sweet, liquid song. In a meditating mood it sits; with an inquisitive air it looks for food under the stems. Its little nest is cosy; its contents four blue turquoises set in a brown environment.
Cuck-oo, cuck-oo! What a mystic sound! a half-human, a legendary echo, a resemblance half-bird, half-mammal expression; a source of infinite conjecture, a perfume from an unseen flower. There it sits, a brown, dark, spotted-like creature, with long arrow-like body, lengthy ocean-steamer-formed bird, a true migrant, a sailor on the winds, a voyager across the oceans; an outlaw, a bohemian, living by the way, dropping its egg in the nest of some absent one, leaving the care of its offspring to another; an ichneumon in feathers. Cuck-oo, cuck-oo! The sound comes from the bushes out there. No! There he sits still, not knowing he is observed. Strange bird, dweller in eternal summer climes, hater of northern blasts; and as you reflect, he is gone down the grove to seek his mate.
Following each other, wailing, calling, the lapwings dive, rise, and scream again, flapping their rounded paddles—brilliant pearls of colour touched by the sunlight. What hilarity; what gestures they cut over the park, down the slope, and across the fields. Joyful birds, birds of the earth and the fullness thereof. The cheerful merry notes come on the breeze, and contain a wildness, a free, piquant taste of nature’s highways. In spring, the notes bring with them the milkboy’s song and the ploughman’s whistle. You feel the air refreshed; a balminess fills the glade, seeks between the tree arms, clusters round the hedge, reassuring the crocus and the primrose. Your heart goes out to meet the bird, even be it unseen, as if photographed on the mind; the rural scene within a certain range springs before the imagination, called up afresh. All nature claps its hands in pride and ecstasy.
With a hurried Cha, cha, cha, cha! the blackbird leaves the stone wall—a cock-bird, black as jet—to attend his lady on the park’s surface. A rollicking sprightliness characterises his movements; his tone is sharp, full of intricacies, hard to interpret. In autumn, when the nests are empty, how delightful to walk through the copse—a clump of dwarfed trees, everything in repose. The nests, the homes, the beds of the departed little ones, rest there between the forks and amongst the benty undergrowth, remnants of blithe mirth-making and droll expressions. A few feathers—vivid remembrance of garments—the broken twigs and sere leaves are toys. Singing now is in silvery strains; before, it was golden; now restricted in its compass and its range.
The pheasant from the cover skulks hastily away, and in the sun shines as a pearl of great price. His ruby head he cannot hide—it is too lovely. It sets off as a coronet his kingly robes. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ An irresistible habit attends the luckless bird; he peers from the herbage, and the sun catches the treacherous colours, denouncing the retreat of this majestic park glory. There is an unspeakable mellowness. Insect and bird, both are loth to frolic; they are not now so fond of being seen, eluding the watchful eye; contented trills are all that is now heard. Yellow, full-eared cornfields, charged with the honey of a season, like soldiers, laden with booty, now ‘pile their arms’ in squares and companies over the harvest battle-field.
With the stillness of a mid-day in the park, at that moment when even the birds are gone, the insect world vanished, there is a sudden seeming pause. The daisy and the clover say it is the meridian, the exact moment when the dial casts no side shadow. It resembles the dinner-hour, the din and rattle hushed for a time. When the cuckoos meet here in the gushing summer day, when the down-pouring of the golden rays from the clear sky parches the pebbly brook, and curls up the grass of the park, then the combination of pride, blitheness, and mid-day fervour of breezes modified, refined by the park trees, disperse in the quiet inclosure, and mingling in space with the warm air, vanish, as it were, in an unanswerable manner.
Kittiwakes from the rocky heights wander, by the aid of their beautiful wings, over the park round the copse, circling, screaming with angry voice, with a majesty, an aristocratic air, no flurried haste. These wings are seasoned by the salt of the ocean. They move over the reefs, the shoals, the surface-swells of the landscape; but their gaze pierces not the crest of the earth, but is thrown back tauntingly, while their eyes search pleadingly. These water-washed pearls rest in twos and threes, white dots on the carpet of green. The daisy, dandelion, clover, and the tints of many grasses, cut out lovely patterns before your eyes; the primrose makes a golden margin, the bushes raise the edge. In the language of flowers, the surface holds communion. Above the long rank growth on the ditch-side, the sorrel loves to dwell, and thistles keep watch over their lowly neighbours.
A transient glimpse of a pretty bird in the depths of the bushes rivets the attention—a redstart!—jerky, flirting beauty. This tangled undergrowth seems a fit habitation only for the badger, or a likely cover for the fox. That admixture of ruby and turquoise might well adorn the scrupulously trimmed lawn before the mansion-house. Why stay in such a sequestered nook? You are an uncommon friend. Right glad am I to make the acquaintance of such as you, even here. How restless you wander along the bough, your shrill note doubtless being apprehensive of danger, away under the bushes without a parting word. A robin fills the place—that hero of many a tale, that picture-painted creature evolved from the reddish-tinted egg shells. His family meet him on the broom that overhangs the bank. The earthwork has fallen, disclosing the boughs that were once underground, appearing now like strong cables from ship to anchor. Its home is there, behind the rootlet, and between that and the earthen wall. At evening, puffed up, ball-formed, it sits challenging a robin not far off in vocal speech, a ruby spot, a blood-stained front without a scar. The notes remind you of olden days. Something is gone, is awanting; a vagueness immeasurable borders the song. There is a want, although he sings in language liquid and clear. It is in harmony with the half-sleeping water babbling through the grasses. He is a wild Red Indian, sighing, jerking, laughing, smiling at the weather of the seasons.
Two, three! Keep still; there go the rabbits. Move your foot amongst those dead leaves—magic, they are gone! Thud, thud! be it anger, fear, or defiance. Thud! the very earth vibrates in harmony with the animals’ spirit. Over the entrance, on the tree-roots grow long variegated lines of stainless white vegetation—whiter under there, against the earth—a soft quartz in a soft rock. That sapling is dead, nipped in its youth. Its leaves are golden, its virgin beauty was green. All other trees are in their native garb. In its fall, its dying agony, its roots wrenched from the soil, the earth still adhering; it had groaning, fallen, clenched its comrade; and now petrified, its arms are rigid, death-like. The bunnies burrow under the shelter of the upturned sapling; but otherwise its history is wrapped in unconcern. Only the bee, that in its flight catches the reddish glow, and halts to know the cause. The common blue butterfly, in its diurnal flight over the park in search of sweets, at times erects its wings, there exhibiting the rows of matchless pearls imprinted on the border of its garment. The wren leaves not the tree in its misfortune, but twits its plaintive miniature trill from under the withered leaves and débris swept against its surface, accumulating with every fresh breeze.
Again the participating musical stumble of the blackbird comes from the tree-branch on the copse margin—a male voice, a bass, with variations of chattering fluency. Late insects linger at the outskirts, and roam the extent of the park. The insect hum rises from the herbage here and there; a bee, trapped by the spider’s snare, hums, buzzing vengeance on the fisher casting his silken net there. In the bushes, a slight fluttering—a leaf floats unheard to the ground, to increase the mouldy earth. The repose is broken again and again—droning beetles, and the tingling flight of the moths fluttering around the willows at the burn. The tawny owls hoot, throwing a weird enchantment on things adjacent, their muffled, softened wings carrying them from view along the forest edge. A solitary starry pearl, a snowdrop of the heavens, bursts the crust of the empyrean—then it is night.