More Tales of the Birds

by W. Warde Fowler

“The man flung something over the cage, and I was in darkness. I suppose he went on with his wicked work, for after a while the cage door was opened, and another Linnet was put in, struggling and furious: and this happened several times. Each time the door was opened I made a frantic effort to get out, and the others too, and the little cage was full of loose feathers and struggling birds. One of us did get away, with the loss of his tail, and most gladly would I have given my tail for liberty and one more sight of my mate and the eggs.

“At last the cage was taken up: we all fluttered and scrambled over each other, thinking something better was going to happen now. But nothing happened for a long time, and then nothing but misery. Half dead with jolting, shaking, and swaying, we found ourselves at last in a small close room, where we were taken out and examined one by one, and put into separate small cages, so small that we could hardly turn round in them. The room was full of these cages, and there was a continual noise of hysterical fluttering and sorrowful twittering. None of us cared to talk, and there was nothing but misery to talk about. Seed and water were given us, and we ate and drank a little after a while, but there was no delight in that lukewarm water and that stale seed.

“But I had better stop: I’m sure you want to sing again. And there is nothing more to tell; one by one my fellow-captives were taken away, and I suppose what happened to me happened to them too. Caged we all are, and expected to sing, and to forget the Downs and the gorse and the brook and the fresh air! But we don’t and we can’t,—it is the little life left within us, to hope against hope for the Downs again.”

“Don’t you think it may be all a dream?” said the Canary, kindly; “are you sure there are such things as you talk of? You can’t see the Downs from here, can you? Then how do you know there are such things? It’s all a dream, I tell you: I had such a dream once, of rocky hills and curious trees, and fierce sun, and a vast expanse of blue waves, and all sorts of strange things that I have heard men talk of; but it was only because my grandmother had been telling us of the old island home of our family, that belongs to us by right if we could only get there. I never was there myself, you see, yet I dreamed of it, and you have been dreaming of the Downs, which no doubt belong to your family by right.”

“I can’t see the Downs,” said the Linnet, “but I can feel them still, and I know that my feeling is true.”

After this there was silence for a few minutes. Suddenly the Canary burst into song, as if to drive away the Linnet’s sad thoughts. And so indeed he meant it, and also to ease his own mind, after it had been bottled up so long. Little did he know what was to come of that outburst, as he poured forth rattle and reel, reel and rattle, every feather quivering, the cage vibrating, the air resounding, the street echoing! Children playing in the gutter stopped to look up at the cages, at the triumphant yellow bird in all the glow of effort, and at the ugly brown one that seemed trying to hide away from this hurricane of song. Even the costermonger’s placid donkey in the cart two doors away shook its long ears and rattled its harness. A policeman at the end of the street turned his head slowly round to listen, but recollected himself and turned it slowly back again. The red-faced cobbler, who had been more than once to the drink-shop while the birds were talking, once more seized the hob-nailed boot he was mending, and as the Canary burst afresh, and after a second’s pause, into a still shriller outpouring, he glanced out of the open window up the street, saw the policeman’s back vanishing round the corner, and then took wicked aim and flung the boot with all his force at the unconscious singer.

The song suddenly ceased; there was the crash of wood and wirework tumbling to the ground, and the gutter children scrambled up and made for the fallen cage. The cobbler rushed out of the opposite house, snatched up the boot and vanished. A woman with dishevelled hair came tearing into the street and picked up the cage. It was empty, and the door was open. She glanced up, and with a sigh of relief saw the Canary still safe in his cage.

The cobbler’s arm had swerved ever so little, and the boot had hit the wrong cage. The door had come open as it reached the ground, and the Linnet had escaped. The woman thanked her stars that it was “the ugly bird” that was gone, and so too did the cobbler, now repentant, as he peered from behind the door of his back-kitchen. The Canary sat still and frightened on his perch, and for a full hour neither sang a note nor pecked a seed.

When the cage fell and the door had come unlatched, the Linnet was out of it in a moment, but, dizzy and bruised with the fall, and feeling his wings stiff and feeble, he looked for something to rest on. The first object that met his eyes was the donkey in the coster’s cart,—and indeed there was nothing else in the street that looked the least bit comfortable. Donkeys had been familiar to Lintie on the Downs, and among the thistles they both loved. So he perched on the donkey’s back, his claws convulsively grasping the tough grey hair.

The sharp eyes of a small muddy boy in the gutter instantly caught sight of him, and with a shrill yell he seized an old tin sardine-box with which he had been scraping up the mud for a pie, and aimed it at the bird. But that yell saved Lintie; the donkey shook his ears as it pierced their hairy recesses, and the bird at the same instance relaxed his hold of the hair and flew up above the house-roofs.