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Page 38
"How did you hear it?" asked the children.
"A thrush sang it to me one night."
"One night?" said the children. "Then you mean a nightingale."
"I mean a thrush," said the old man. "Do I not know the note of one
bird from another? I tell you that pine-tree by my cottage has a legend
of its own, and the topmost branch is haunted. Must all legends be
about the loves and sorrows of our self-satisfied race alone?"
"But did you really and truly hear it?" they asked. "I heard it," said
the old man. "But, as I tell you, one hears and one hears. I don't say
that everybody would have heard it, merely by sleeping in my chamber;
but, for the benefit of the least imaginative, I will assure you that
it is founded on fact."
"Begin! begin!" shouted the children.
"Once upon a time," said the old man, "there was a young thrush, who
was born in that beautiful dingle where we last planted the ---- fern.
His home-nest was close to the ground, but the lower one is, the less
fear of falling; and in woods, the elevation at which you sleep is a
matter of taste, and not of expense or gentility. He awoke to life when
the wood was dressed in the pale fresh green of early summer; and
believing, like other folk, that his own home was at least the
principal part of the world, earth seemed to him so happy and so
beautiful an abode, that his heart felt ready to burst with joy. The
ecstasy was almost pain, till wings and a voice came to him. Then, one
day, when, after a grey morning, the sun came out at noon, drawing the
scent from the old pine that looks in at my bedroom window, his joy
burst forth, after long silence, into song, and flying upwards, he sat
on the topmost branch of the pine, and sang as loud as he could sing to
the sun and the blue sky.
"'Joy! joy!' he sang. 'Fresh water and green woods, ambrosial sunshine
and sunflecked shade, chattering brooks and rustling leaves, glade, and
sward, and dell. Lichens and cool mosses, feathered ferns and flowers.
Green leaves! Green leaves! Summer! summer! summer!'
"It was monotonous, but every word came from the singer's heart, which
is not always the case. Thenceforward, though he slept near the ground,
he went up every day to this pine, as to some sacred high place, and
sang the same song, of which neither he nor I were ever weary.
"Let one be ever so inoffensive, however, one is not long left in peace
in this world, even in a wood. The thrush sang too loudly of his simple
happiness, and some boys from the town heard him and snared him, and
took him away in a dirty cloth cap, where he was nearly smothered. The
world is certainly not exclusively composed of sunshine, and green
woods, and odorous pines. He became almost senseless during the hot
dusty walk that led to the town. It was a seaport town, about two miles
from the wood, a town of narrow, steep streets, picturesque old houses,
and odours compounded of tar, dead fish, and many other scents less
agreeable than forest perfumes. The thrush was put into a small
wicker-cage in an upper room, in one of the narrowest and steepest of
the streets. "'I shall die to-night,' he piped. But he did not. He
lived that night, and for several nights and days following. The boys
took small care of him, however. He was often left without food,
without water, and always with too little air. Two or three times they
tried to sell him, but he was not bought, for no one could hear him
sing. One day he was hung outside the window, and partly owing to the
sun and fresh air, and partly because a woman was singing in the
street, he began to carol his old song.
"The woman was a street singer. She was even paler, thinner, and more
destitute-looking than such women usually are. In some past time there
had been beauty and feeling in her face, but the traces of both were
well-nigh gone. An indifference almost amounting to vacancy was there
now, and, except that she sang, you might almost have fancied her a
corpse. In her voice, also, there had once been beauty and feeling, and
here again the traces were small indeed. From time to time, she was
stopped by fits of coughing, when an ill-favoured hunchback, who
accompanied her on a tambourine, swore and scowled at her. She sang a
song of sentiment, with a refrain about
'Love and truth,
And joys of youth--'
on which the melody dwelt and quavered as if in mockery. As she sang, a
sailor came down the street. His collar was very large, his trousers
were very wide, his hat hung on the back of his head more as an
ornament than for shelter; and he had one of the roughest faces and the
gentlest hearts that ever went together since Beauty was entertained by
the Beast. His hands were in his pockets, where he could feel one
shilling and a penny, all the spare cash that remained to him after a
friendly stroll through the town. When he saw the street singer, he
stopped, pulled off his hat, and scratched his head, as was his custom
when he was puzzled or interested.
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