Never was a spot less disturbed by the activities of the world, nowhere was solitude more calculated to win man from his fellows and leave him to the companionship of trees and animals. Beyond the arbour lay a meadow, a brook, woods. No human habitation anywhere near. Peace—the great peace of nature. Sheltered by the high wall, animals lived happy and unafraid of man, from whom they received only kindness. I can remember goldfinch nests among the rose bushes within reach of my hand. I was early taught to touch them only with my eyes.
In her very bedroom, the lady of the manor gave shelter to swallows. Traces of nests may still be seen on the great rafters of the ceiling. In spring, one day at dawn, the travellers, arriving from their great journey, would come tapping with beak and claw at the high windows. The aged dame would immediately rise and let in her friends. Greetings would ensue—enthusiastic greetings after the long separation. Three or four birds, sometimes half a dozen, would wheel about the vast chamber, with little sharp cries expressing joy in their return and their hospitable reception. They perched on the great wardrobes, and twittered for happiness, their little ruby throats swelling below their black hoods. All day long they came and went. Soon, one might see a swallow drop on to the water of a trench, and rest there with wings outspread, then rise into the air, and gather on her wet feathers the dust of earth needed to make mortar for her nest. Then began the work of masonry. The basket-shaped wall rose quickly, formed of thin layers of clay, one above another, and as soon as the nest was finished, an indentation fashioned in the edge by the dainty black beak informed one that the laying of eggs had begun.
Three or four nests among the rafters became in time a whole aviary, for the young birds, returning the following year, often selected their birthplace as a home. There they reared their family. At first peep of dawn, the father from outside and the mother from inside begged to have the window opened. They met each other with expressions of delight and flew skyward in quest of the supply of insects imperiously demanded by the noisy and hungry nestlings. As soon as the successful hunter appeared, and before he could fairly get his claws into the earthen parapet, six gaping throats were outstretched to catch the prey. This business filled the day. A newspaper, spread on the floor, received all incongruous happenings. In the evening, when the lamp was lighted, we were sometimes startled by a sudden outburst of quarrelling up among the rafters. It might be that a small bird was out of his customary place, and was beginning his apprenticeship in life by defending his rights, as well as he could, against the selfish infringements of an enterprising brother. A muffled call from the mother stilled the tumult, and fear of punishment brought the children back to moderation, or perhaps resignation. And then autumn took on the sharpness of winter, and all the swallows, assembled on the summit of a neighbouring elm, held a great council of departure. They talked the whole day. But their discussion, unlike ours, was a preface to action. They started before sunrise of the day after. Sadly their old friend bade them farewell: "Go, my dear ones, you intend to come back, but the time is not far when I shall no longer be here to open the window at your home coming!" The swallows still return. But for a long time, a very long time, the window has not been opened.
Alas! the loveliest part of the setting has likewise disappeared. The white dome of the fountain, with its rosy colonnade, has been broken up, and replaced by a hideous rockery in the style of Chatou. The seemly classic rectangular flower beds, with their severe arrangement, have made room for a wide lawn dotted with artistic plots of shrubbery. The long arbour and the Judas trees have blazed in the fireplace on winter evenings. But, near or far, imagination can restore them. I find myself walking through twisted underbrush to spy upon domestic scenes in nests. I have retained a particularly vivid memory of the tragedy which revealed to me for the first time the distressing vicissitudes of the struggle for life.
At the foot of the long arbour lay a dying birdling. He had as yet no feathers, but a thin black down covered his bluish skin now painfully heaving with the last spasms of agony. My first motion was to climb in search of the nest from which the victim had fallen. I had not mounted a yard from the ground before I found a little dead body similar to the one I had just seen, and while I peered upward into the shadow, what should tumble on to my head but a third member of the same brood. I finally distinguished the nest, and soon little, stifled cries warned me of something going on in it. I bent to one side, to get a better view, and discovered in the midst of the down-lined dwelling a great grayish black bird surrounded by three wretched wee ones who had not as yet been tossed into the abyss, but who were rendered miserably uncomfortable by the inordinate growth of their big brother.
A cuckoo had deposited her egg there, and the parents, stupidly deceived, lavishing the same care upon the intruder as upon their own young, had succeeded only in absurdly favouring the strongest. Meanwhile, he had grown to twice or thrice the size of his "brothers," and without, presumably, seeking any satisfaction but his "liberty," as the economists put it, he was taking up the room of others, for the sole reason that the development of his organs required it.
Like all young birds, the baby cuckoo automatically flapped his wings, to exercise his joints. In a normal nest, this movement of each inmate is limited and regulated by the same movement on the part of the others. But here, too great strength was in conflict with too great weakness, and the cuckoo's thick, stumpy wings, on which feathers were already appearing, spread to the very edge of the nest, lifting the feeble little ones on to the monster's back, whence a shake flung them overboard. The crime occurred even while I watched. The worst of it was seeing the stupid parents, in spite of all, diligently feeding the infamous fratricide. Careless of the lamentations of their own children, they could see in the nest only the huge hollow of a voracious beak, which gobbled whatever they brought, notwithstanding the timid efforts of the competitors, doomed beforehand to defeat. And so the disproportion in growth augmented daily, the one taking everything, and the others condemned to watch him helplessly. The social question is repeated in every thicket on earth!
For the principle of the thing, I replaced two little birds in the nest. They were promptly hurled to the ground. Next day, the whole crime was accomplished, and the false father and the false mother were still idiotically wearing themselves out to nourish their children's murderer. What to do about it? How many human stories there are, in the likeness of that incident! One cannot even justly blame the cuckoo, if the great principle: "Remove yourself, that I may have your place!" remains in this universe the watchword added by Providence to the express recommendation to love one another.