Wood Magic: A Fable
and the cleverest of all the birds, and knew more than all put together.
Afar off, in the trees, there were six or seven thrushes, all declaring
that they were the best singers, and had the most speckled necks; and up
in the sky the swallows were saying that they had the whitest bosoms.
"Oo! whoo," cried a wood-pigeon from the very oak under which Bevis had
gone to sleep. "There are none who can fly so fast as I can. I am a
captain of the wood-pigeons, and in the winter I have three hundred and
twenty-two pigeons under me, and they all do exactly as I tell them.
They fly when I fly, and settle down when I settle down. If I go to the
west, they go to the west; and if I go to the east, then they follow to
the east. I have the biggest acorns, and the best of the peas, for they
leave them especially for me. And not one of all the three hundred and
twenty-two pigeons dares to begin to eat the wheat in August till I say
it is ripe and they may, and not one of them dares to take a wife till I
say yes. Oo-whoo! Is not my voice sweet and soft, and delicious, far
sweeter than that screeching nightingale's in the hawthorn yonder?"
But he had no sooner finished than another one began in the fir copse,
and said he was captain of one thousand pigeons, and was ever so much
stronger, and could fly ten miles an hour faster. So away went the first
pigeon to the fir copse, and there was a great clattering of wings and
"oo-whoo"-ing, and how it was settled Bevis could not tell.
So as he went on swinging, he heard all the birds quarrelling, and
boasting, and fighting, hundreds of them all around, and he said to the
chaffinch on the ash:--
"Chaffinch, it seems to me that you are all very wicked birds, for you
think of nothing but fighting all day long".
The chaffinch laughed, and said: "My dear Sir Bevis, I do not know what
you mean by wicked. But fighting is very nice indeed, and we all feel
so jolly when fighting time comes. For you must know that the spring is
the duelling time, when all the birds go to battle. There is not a tree
nor a bush on your papa's farm, nor on all the farms all around, nor in
all the country, nor in all this island, but some fighting is going on.
I have not time to tell you all about it; but I wish you could read our
history, and all about the wars that have been going on these thousand
years. Perhaps if you should ever meet the squirrel he will tell you,
for he knows most about history. As we all like it so much, it must be
right, and we never hurt one another very much. Sometimes a feather is
knocked out, and sometimes one gets a hard peck; but it does not do any
harm. And after it is over, in the autumn, we are all very good friends,
and go hunting together. You may see us, hundreds of us in your papa's
stubble-fields, Bevis, all flying together very happy. I think the
skylarks fight the most, for they begin almost in the winter if the sun
shines warm for an hour, and they keep on all day in the summer, and
till it is quite dark and the stars are out, besides getting up before
the cuckoo to go on again. Yet they are the sweetest and nicest of all
the birds, and the most gentle, and do not mind our coming into their
fields. So I am sure, Bevis, that you are wrong, and fighting is not
wicked if you love one another. You and Mark are fond of one another,
but you hit him sometimes, don't you?"
"Yes, that I do," said Bevis, very eagerly, "I hit him yesterday so
hard with my bat that he would not come and play with me. It is very
nice to hit any one."
"But you cannot do it like we do it," said the chaffinch, swelling with
pride again, "for we sing and you can't, and if you can't sing you have
no business to fight, and besides, though you are much older than me you
are not married yet. Now I have such a beautiful wife, and to tell you
the truth, Bevis, we do the fighting because the ladies love to see it,
and kiss us for it afterwards. I am the knight of this tree!"
After which Bevis, being tired of swinging, went to the summer-house to
read what he had written with his stump of pencil till he was called to
tea. In the evening, when the sun was sinking, he went out and lay down
on the seat--it was a broad plank, grey with lichen--under the russet
apple-tree, looking towards the west, over the brook below. He saw the
bees coming home to the hives close by on the haha, and they seemed to
come high in the air, flying straight as if from the distant hills where
the sun was. He heard the bees say that there were such quantities of
flowers on the hills, and such pleasant places, and that the sky was
much more blue up there, and he thought if he could he would go to the
hills soon.
CHAPTER III.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEASEL.
After awhile the mowers came and began to cut the long grass in the Home
Field, and the meadow by the brook. Bevis could see them from the
garden, and it was impossible to prevent him from straying up the
footpath, so eager was he to go nearer. The best thing that could be
done, since he could not be altogether stopped, was to make him promise
that he would not go beyond a certain limit. He might wander as much as
he pleased inside the hedge and the Home Field, in which there was no
pond, nor any place where he could very well come to harm. But he must
not creep through the hedge, so that he would always be in sight from
the garden. If he wished to enter the meadow by the brook he must ask
special permission, that some one might be put to watch now and then.
But more expressly he was forbidden to enter the Little Field. The grass
there was not yet to be mown--it was too long to walk in--and they were
afraid lest he should get through the hedge, or climb over the high
padlocked gate in some way or other, for the Long Pond was on the other
side, though it could not be seen for trees. Nor was he to approach
nearer to the mowers than one swathe; he was always to keep one swathe
between him and the scythes, which are extremely sharp and dangerous
instruments.
Sir Bevis repeated these promises so seriously, and with so demure and
innocent an expression, that no one could doubt but that he would keep
them strictly, nor, indeed, did any idea of exceeding these limits occur
to him. He was so overjoyed at the vast extent of territory, almost a
new world thrown open for exploration, that he did not think it possible
he could ever want to go any farther. He rushed into the Home Field,
jumping over the swathes till he was tired, and kicking the grass about
with his feet. Then he wanted a prong, and a stout stick with a fork was
cut and pointed for him, and with this he went eagerly to work for five
minutes. Next he wanted some one to bury under the grass, and could not
be satisfied till the dairy-maid was sent out and submitted to be
completely hidden under a heap of it.
Next he walked all round the field, and back home down the middle.
By-and-by he sat down and looked at the mowers, who were just finishing
the last corner before they went into the meadow by the brook. While he
was sitting there a number of greenfinches, and sparrows, and two or
three hasty starlings (for they are always in a hurry), came to the
sward where the mowers had just passed, and searched about for food.
They seemed so happy and looked so pretty, Bevis thought he should like
to shoot one, so away he ran home to the summer-house for his bow and
arrow. Hastening back with these, he built a heap of the grass to hide
behind, like a breastwork, and then sat down and watched for the birds.
They did not come directly, as they ought to have done, so he kicked up
his heels, and rolled over on his back, and looked up at the sky, as was
his wont. Every now and then he could hear Pan whining woefully in his
tub a long way off. Since the whipping the spaniel had been in disgrace,
and no one would let him loose. Bevis, so delighted with his field to
roam about in, quite forgot him, and left him to sorrow in his tub.
Presently he heard a lark singing so sweetly, though at a great
distance, that he kept quite still to listen. The song came in verses,
now it rose a little louder, and now it fell till he could hardly hear
it, and again returned. Bevis got up on his knees to try and find where
the lark was, but the sky was so blue there or the bird so high up, he
could not see it, though he searched and searched. It was somewhere in
the next field, far beyond the great oak where he once fell asleep.
He then peered round his heap of grass, but there were no greenfinches
near; they had come out from the hedges, and the starling had come from
the hollow pollard where he had a nest, but all had settled a long way
off from his hiding-place. Bevis was very angry, so he stood up, and
pulled his bow with all his might, and let the arrow fly into the air
almost straight up. When it had risen so far, it turned over and came
down among the flock of birds and stuck in the ground.
They flew away in terror, and though he had not killed any, Bevis was
highly delighted at the fright they were in. He picked up his arrow,
and tried another long shot at a rook on the other side of the field,
but he could not send it so great a distance. As he ran for it, he saw
that the rook's back was towards him, and, thinking that the rook could
not see him, he raced on quietly to try and catch him, but just as he
got close, up rose the rook over the hedge with a "Caw, caw!" Whizz!
went Bevis's arrow after him, and fell on the other side of the hedge,
where he was not to go.
In his anger at the rook's behaviour Bevis forgot all about his promise;
he jumped into the ditch regardless of the stinging-nettles, pushed his
way up through the briars, tearing his sleeve, forced his way across the
mound, and went on his hands and knees through the young green fern on
the other side (just as Pan would have done) under the thick thorn
bushes, and so out into the next field. It was the very field where he
and Pan had wandered before, only another part of it. There was his
arrow ever so far off, sticking upright in the grass among the cowslips.
As he went to pick up his arrow he saw another flower growing a little
farther on, and went to gather that first; it was an orchid, and when he
stood up with it in his hand he heard a mouse rustle in the grass, and
stepped quietly to try and see it, but the mouse hid in a hole.
Then there was an enormous humble-bee, so huge that when it stayed to
suck a cowslip, the cowslip was bent down with its weight. Bevis walked
after the giant humble-bee, and watched it take the honey from several
cowslips; then he saw a stone standing in the field, it was not
upright, but leaned to one side--yet it was almost as tall as he was. He
went to the stone and looked all round it, and got up on it and sat
still a minute, and while he was there a cuckoo came by, so close, that
he jumped off to run after it. But the cuckoo flew fast, and began to
call "Cuckoo!" and it was no use to chase him.
When Bevis stopped and looked about he was in a hollow, like a big salad
bowl, only all grass, and he could see nothing but the grass and
cowslips all round him--no hedges--and the sky overhead. He began to
dance and sing with delight at such a curious place, and when he paused
the lark was on again, and not very far this time. There he was, rising
gradually, singing as he went. Bevis ran up the side of the hollow
towards the lark, and saw a hedge cut and cropped low, and over it a
wheat-field. He watched the lark sing, sing, sing, up into the sky, and
then he thought he would go and find his nest, as he remembered the
ploughboy had told him larks made their nests on the ground among the
corn.
He ran to the low hedge, but though it was low it was very thorny, and