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.
IN ALL SHADES.
BY GRANT ALLEN,
Author of ‘Babylon,’ ‘Strange Stories,’ etc. etc.
CHAPTER XLIII.
When Nora and the doctor reached the door of Orange Grove, they found Edward Hawthorn waiting to receive them, and the servants already busy trying to remove as far as possible the signs of the wreck so lately effected by the wild rioters. Several neighbouring planters, who had come down from the hills above, stood in armed groups around the gate; and a few mounted black constables, hastily summoned to the spot by the fire, were helping to extinguish the smouldering ashes. Only Delgado’s dead body lay untouched upon the sofa, stiff and motionless, for not one of the negroes dare venture to set hands upon it; and in the room within, Marian sat still, looking anxiously at Harry Noel’s pallid face and livid eyelids, and his bloodstained shirt, that yet heaved faintly and almost imperceptibly upon his broad bosom at each long slow-drawn inspiration.
‘He is living?’ Nora asked, in a hushed voice of painful inquiry; and Marian answered under her breath, looking up at the bluff doctor: ‘Yes; he’s living still. He’s breathing quite regularly, though very feebly.’
As for Macfarlane, he went to work at once with the cool business-like precision and rapidity of his practised profession, opening the bloodstained shirt in front, and putting his hand in through the silk vest to feel the heart that still beat faintly and evenly. ‘He’s lost a great deal of blood, no doubt, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said cheerily; ‘but he’s a strong man, and he’ll pull through yet; ye needn’t be too anxious—thanks to whoever put this handkerchief around his arm. It’s a good enough tourniquet to use on an emergency.—Was it you, Miss Dupuy, or Mrs Hawthorn?’
A round spot of vivid colour flashed for a moment into Nora’s white cheek as she answered quietly: ‘It was me, Dr Macfarlane!’ and then died out again as fast as it had come, when Macfarlane’s eyes were once more removed from her burning face.