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A short story by Katharine Lee Bates |
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Robin Hood |
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Title: Robin Hood Author: Katharine Lee Bates [More Titles by Bates]
The early history of Robin Hood, like that of too many illustrious characters, is veiled in obscurity. I never knew his parents nor was I ever on speaking terms with any other member of his family. I cannot tell whether his nursery was set in an apple tree or elm or oak or pine, nor whether it was wind or boy or other untoward circumstance of nestling life that cast his helpless infancy adrift upon the world. Our earliest knowledge of Robin Hood dates from Sunday morning, June 16, 1901, when a group of Wellesley children, demurely wending their way to Sunday School across a bit of open green, heard chirps in the grass and picked up a baby robin, cold, hungry, bedraggled, pecked and generally forlorn. They took him to Sunday School, muffling him in a spick-and-span small handkerchief when his cries became too shrill and, after this vain attempt at spiritual comfort, gave him to one of their mammas, who, for several days, managed to sustain him on experimental diets. Thursday morning, being about to make her summer exodus, she cheerfully transferred her fosterling to me. Her farewell attention, a spoonful of milk poured down his yawning throat, nearly ended his adventures on the spot. He turned up his eyes, gasped and stiffened, but with admirable presence of mind she balanced him on his bill, gave him a dexterous tap in the crop and wiped up the milk from the table, while Robin, blinking ruefully, resigned himself to a nap in my pocket. He woke before we reached home, however, and demanded luncheon so imperiously that I called at the nearest house and begged for bread. At the drug store I paused again for water and, to make better connection between this fluid and the depths of that bright orange cavity which Robin so confidingly opened, I bought a medicine-dropper, but soon found that a finger-tip would do as well. Owing to these attentions by the way, Robin Hood was in an agreeable and sociable frame of mind when he first met his adopted family, yet all his baby graces gained for him only a mocking reception. He was such a dumpy, speckle-breasted fluff, with funny folding legs that could not hold him up on the perch, no tail and an utterly disproportionate amount of bill, that it was impossible to take him seriously, but his trustful little heart never once suspected that we were making fun of him. He cuddled down cosily on an improvised couch in the corner of a canary cage and devoted himself to a steady alternation of snoozes and gorges. Everybody laughed at him--the Dryad, who declared him a little monster of greediness and bad manners; the chipmunks, who peered curiously into his cage whenever we left it for sun and air on the piazza; even Joy-of-Life, who promptly sallied out with a long iron spoon to dig him worms. For Robin Hood would keep on ringing his dinner-bell, so to speak, even while the moistened bits of bread were being thrust down his vociferous throat, ceasing from that hungry clamor only when he was stuffed to the point of suffocation. Then, with a ridiculous little grunt, he would topple off the supporting hand back to his trundle-bed and doze like a dormouse only to awake, in half an hour or so, an utterly famished birdling, all one yellow gape of tremulous eagerness and outcry. At this stage of development, living to eat, and eating to sleep, Robin was left for several days in the care of Dame Gentle, kindest of neighbors, pending the absence of his foster family. Here he was petted to his babyhood's content and soon evinced a docile, affectionate disposition. He took a dislike to his cramped canary cage, but now he was strong enough to perch, and once placed on a chair rung by a hand he trusted, he would sit quiet from one feeding time to the next, or until he heard a familiar voice or step. Then, floppity-flop, down to the floor would tumble Robin and hop joyously to meet his friend. He soon had a soft, crooning little note for Dame Gentle, and all the summer long, while he became a general chatterbox, kept a peculiarly confidential accent and manner for her. We resumed our charge on the third of July, but on the Fourth our attention was somewhat diverted from Robin by the gift of a baby vireo, apparently wounded by a fall from the nest. This green jewel, wild as a windy leaf at first, was soon tamed, but his diet proved a difficult problem. Robin Hood was only too ready to eat anything and everything, but the tiny vireo, though calling piteously for food, turned his bill away in sore disappointment from our various offerings. He would not touch the crumbs of softened bread, nor Robin's favorite mess of mashed potato and hard-boiled egg-yolk. We consulted all our bird-books, and when we learned that the case demanded "masticated insects," we sat down and looked at each other in despair. I generously offered to catch any number of insects, if Joy-of-Life would do the masticating, but little Liberty Bell finally compromised on a masticated raspberry. The next day, mocking-bird food was procured for him, and this he swallowed with apparent relish, but still he did not thrive. On Sunday, the seventh, an eager troop of children brought to our door another fallen vireo, this wee waif seeming in worse state than the other. We named him Church Bell and cherished him as tenderly as our ignorance might, but I hope Cornelia never had half the trouble with her jewels that our pair of emeralds gave us. Their sharp, incessant, querulous pipe, the utterance of pains we could not soothe, was so trying to the nerves that, when I heard Joy-of-Life dropping books, I would transfer the nest from her desk to mine, and when Mary came up with a message from the grocer to find me spilling ink, she would take the vireos down to her ironing board and drown their plaints by her lusty voice of song. They were exquisite little creatures to see, and as trustful with us as was Robin himself, but we never had the key to their mystery. They would cry even in sleep and had hours of violent trembling. We would sometimes put them in the rough, outdoor cage which had been built for Robin, a large, square, unfloored box with roof and walls of woven wire. He looked big and lubberly beside them, like Puck beside Oberon and Titania, but he was always good-natured with his dainty guests and often tried to join in the conversation as they sat, pressed close together, on the far end of the twig which served him for a perch, lamenting like elfin Banshees. A touch of chilly weather ended their brief tragedy. Liberty Bell was hushed forever in the dawn of Tuesday, the ninth, and by Wednesday noon Church Bell lay silent beside him in the rockery which was already the burial cairn of three beloved chickens, Microbe, Pat and Cluxley. Meanwhile Robin Hood had been causing his share of anxiety. The birdlings were all so tame that, in feeding them, we used to throw back that half of the cage-top which served as lid, whereupon they would fly up to the edge of the box and sit there in a row for dinner. Occasionally one of the vireos would flash up into a low tree and wail for food until we had to bring the step-ladder and fetch him down. But it was not until Robin's winglets were fairly grown that he seemed aware of the existence of trees. Then, suddenly, one azure afternoon, he glanced up, cocked his head, spread his untried Icarus-plumes and was off. In instant consternation, the whole family trooped after him, so far as groundlings could, while he flew from tree to tree and roof to roof. Chirping in his affectionate fashion, he peeped down upon us with evident surprise as if to ask, "Why don't you come, too? It's much nicer up here." Innocent of mirrors, he probably thought that we looked just like him, or that he looked just like us, and he could not understand why we chose to be earth-gropers when the leafy branches swayed so delectably in mid-air. But he was such a social and kindly little bird that, on our repeated calls, he came dipping down to us and, without protest of a feather, let himself be shut into his cage again. Now we were face to face with the question that had already cast its shadow before. Should we make a life-long captive of our Robin, who took so pleasantly to human ways, or should we give him the perils and delights of liberty? Mary's eyes were very wistful, and Joy-of-Life and I reiterated to each other that our house-reared bird would be handicapped in the greenwood struggle for life, that he was necessarily weaker and less wary than other young robins, that there were white kittens next door, that a gaunt, gray hunting-cat had been seen lurking about the wire box--and yet, all the while, we knew what we must do.
But one evening, July 7th, just as we had finished giving Robin Hood a particularly good supper on the edge of his box, he suddenly soared and left us. The house stands "About a young bird's flutter from a wood," and, to our dismay, Robin Hood made thitherward as if it were Sherwood Forest, disappeared among the dusky treetops and returned not a chirp to all our agitated calling. He had not passed a night out of doors for the three weeks that he had been under human guardianship, and we felt that anything from a fatal chill to a fatal hawk might befall him. But the first sound that greeted my waking senses in the morning was Mary's delighted, rich-toned, "Why, Robby!" and there, on top of his cage, sat a hungry, happy little bird, chirping eagerly and gesticulating with one wing in a funny fashion of his own, peculiar to seasons of excitement. Mary--be it said in passing--was Cecilia's predecessor and for several years, at the outset of our housekeeping, gave us a devotion only surpassed by her devotion to her own large and lively family. They lived but a few miles away, in the Boston suburb known as Jamaica Plain, and Mary was subject to violent attacks of homesickness, especially at Christmas, Easter, Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving, so that we were usually deprived of her services when we needed them most. Once at home, she would feast and frolic until she had made herself just sick enough to have a pathetic pretext for prolonging her absence day after day. When she turned up at last, her Irish wit would inevitably forestall and frustrate any little unpleasantness that might be awaiting her. I had mentioned at table one evening, while Mary was changing the courses, that, lunching with our college president that day, I had enjoyed luscious grapefruit fresh from the West Indies, "brought her by a private hand from Jamaica." From her next truancy Mary returned with a bulging paper bag in her arms, which, even while my lips were parting to utter a deeply meditated reproach, she dumped upon me with her rosy cheeks aglow and her round blue eyes all twinkles. "Here's grapefruit for yez, brought by a private hand from Jamaica--Plain." The family, waiting about gleefully to hear me deliver that purposed scolding, broke into a shout of laughter, and the honors of the day rested, as always, with the culprit. During one of these vacations, intolerably prolonged by excuse after excuse, our patience gave way and we availed ourselves of a sudden chance to put in her place, as temporary substitute, a highly competent (and expensive) Scandinavian woman. Thus we entered upon a month of unparalleled luxury, for Gunilla proved to be a cook of the first order. We were quite below her standard of household opulence and elegance, as we realized when she asked us, with her invariable bearing of respectful dignity, if we would kindly tell her where our wine cellar was located, but she was disposed to take a rest between great houses and provided for our simple needs with indulgent efficiency as long as her whim lasted. Although she had broiled and roasted for a governor, a bishop, and various magnates of industry, she turned to scrubbing for recreation as naturally as czars and kaisers turn to chopping wood. She beat every particle of dust, after sweeping, out of broom and whisk, and before hanging out the clothes, she scoured the line and every astonished clothespin. The sheets and other flat pieces sent home from the laundry she straightway plunged into her own tubs. Her pantry shone with obtrusive cleanliness and every dish came glistening to the stiff, high-lustered table-cloth, where her spiced breadsticks were cradled in fresh napkins for each dinner. Her kitchen range fairly dazzled the eye with its sable brightness, and we were so proud of the toothsome concoctions that came crackling and crinkling from it as to give, under her smiling encouragement, a ruinous series of banquets to our campus friends. Promptly on Gunilla's departure, Mary came charging back to us, fired with jealous wrath. Indeed, she would talk of little else but the enormities of extravagance committed by "The Gorilla," until Robin Hood's advent effected a welcome diversion. For the week following his first venture into the trees Robin grew braver and stronger every day. He had no feathered acquaintance and kept close at home, hopping about under the rosebushes with a comical air of proprietorship, bathing in an old flower-pot saucer in his open cage and sitting sociably, for hours at a time, on Joy-of-Life's window ledge or Mary's, or on my window box for winter birds. He could feed himself by this time, but he still liked better to be fed. His table manners showed marked improvement from his "little monster" age. He no longer guzzled, and was becoming quite capable of picking up his own living. Sometimes, when the ants were abundant, he would try the experiment of self-support for half an afternoon. He was still a very guileless birdling, and would fall sound asleep squatted down on any sunny shelf of rock or even in the middle of a path, regardless of the prowling tabbies that had already made way with our stonewall colony of chipmunks. We encouraged him to frequent his safer haunts on roof and window box by keeping fresh water and plentiful supplies of mocking bird food ready for him there, but we had to know where he was from dawn to dark, although the July dawns seemed to come in the middle of the night. Morning after morning, not daring to trust our innocent even with the early worm, I would slip on dressing-gown and slippers and be out seeking him by three or four. And there, hopping across the already heated concrete, would come skurrying an enthusiastic little speckle-breast, flapping one wing in salutation and twittering indignantly, "Morning! Breakfast! Morning! Breakfast!" as if he had been up reading the newspaper for hours. He would ride trustfully on my hand into the house, take his food and drink, and then contentedly go to sleep again, perched, by preference, on top of a door. But one Saturday morning I called Robin Hood in vain. The air, ringing with bird-carols, held no music so precious as his hungry chirp. Joy-of-Life was now a thousand miles away, but Mary and Dame Gentle joined anxiously in the search. We were a distracted household when, at eight, a ruddy young Audubon from the hilltop arrived, bringing in one hand our overjoyed little truant, and in the other another fledgling robin, with the merest beginnings of a tail--a waif picked up by the roadside. Audubon reported that, as he was busy in his garden, a young robin had flown down and alighted at his feet, fluttered there a moment and raised the nestling cry for food. Happy Robin Hood, to have chosen from all the boys of Wellesley the one wisest in benignant woodcraft! Audubon slipped quietly to the ground, caught a caterpillar and held it out to Robin, who came fearlessly to his hand and choked the furry delicacy down. Then Audubon was sure that this was our famed fosterling and, taking up the unsuspicious little fellow, hastened to bring him down the hill to his home. The new arrival from the greenwood, whom we dubbed Friar Tuck, promptly belied that jovial memory. He was a wild, sullen, desperate little outlaw, whose chirp was a metallic click and whose bill had to be pried open before he would eat. Not even Robin Hood's hospitable chatter could dispel his scared, defiant misery, and on the second morning, unable to bear the look he turned up to the trees, we lifted the cage lid and let him fly. We never, to our knowledge, saw Friar Tuck again, and although we often listened for his uncanny chirp, it was not heard--not even by Mary, whose imagination so expanded under these Natural History studies that she would rush upstairs several times a day to report all manner of rainbow-colored fowl that she had discovered in the thickets. By the following winter, her Celtic vision had soared beyond all bounds. "The cherubs are shoveling snow off the porch of Paradise this morning," I once happened to remark, whereat Mary, plumping down the hot coffee-pot helter-skelter, sprang open-eyed and open-mouthed to the window, gazing ecstatically up into the white whirl of the storm. "I see thim! I see thim! The shining little dears! It's using their wings for shovels they are, and I see one of their feathers afloating down in the snow." As the summer went on, Robin Hood became the pet of the neighborhood. Even Giant Bluff, who had moods of declaring that "what with 'Biddy-Biddy' on one side, and 'Robby-Robby' on the other, this hill ain't fit for nothin' but females to live on," would bring tidbits to our Speckle, who soon saved him the trouble by making frequent calls at the front door. A guest of that house used to come to her window in the early morning and sing him "Robin Adair," while he stood on the opposite roof attentively listening, his head cocked and his bright eye turned on the serenader. But he was a loyal little soul. He spent much of his time on Dame Gentle's piazza, and although Joy-of-Life, just before her departure, treating him for asthma--due, the sages said, to an overhearty diet in his inactive babyhood--had popped an unhappy worm dipped in red pepper down his throat, yet even this Robin could forgive. It had hurt his feelings at the time. He had withdrawn to his best-beloved branch on his best-beloved oak and maintained an offended silence for half an hour, but with the sting his anger went, and for days after Joy-of-Life's disappearance, Robin would fly up to her window ledge and chirp to the closed blinds. During this second week of freedom, his experience was enlarged by a thunderstorm, which he contemplated with lively astonishment from within my window, but the next morning worms were plentiful, and there, to Giant Bluff's inordinate pride, was Robin trotting about the lawn like an old hand, turning up bits of turf with a grubby little bill and actually getting his own breakfast. A day or two later our fledgling began to sow wild oats. Thursday afternoon Mary missed him and, hunting for him beyond the cairn, which she designated "The Pets' Cemetery," found him lending charmed attention to a big, red-breasted robin, who dashed off so guiltily that he bumped himself against the fence. All Friday our Speckle was shy and wild, flying about the edge of the wood with this first friend of his own feather, but he came to perch on the piazza rail at twilight, as usual, keeping us company while we took our open-air dinner, and responding to our blandishments with a drowsy chirp. When he soared to choose his slumber-spray in one of the tall trees before the house, we strained our eyes to follow him into the shadows and called up laughing counsels and good-nights as long as he would answer. But the next morning an evil-eyed black cat sat on our steps and, hour after hour, no Robin Hood appeared. Mary spent most of the forenoon in the woods and, after luncheon, we both went calling through a leafy world with a Babel of chirps about us. "Thim birds, they're just a-mocking me," wailed Mary. But suddenly we both heard, hurrying along the air, that dear, unmistakable baby squawk, and in an instant more our own little Speckle came plumping down on my head, where he rode triumphantly into the house, flapping his funny right wing all the way and gasping with speed and excitement. He had perhaps been in a fight, for one side of his guileless face was badly pecked. Throughout the afternoon he devoured one full meal after another, allowing ten-minute siesta intervals, with all the enthusiasm of a prodigal son, and then he must have a bath, and then he must be held and petted, and all the while--yep, yep, yep! flop, flop, flop!--he was trying to tell the story of his terrible adventures. Whatever they were, he was a reformed little robin, and spent the Sunday partly on my window box, where he would play for fifteen minutes together with the nutshells that the chickadees had emptied, and partly under a leafy canopy in the oak within easy squirrel-leap beyond, not having a chirp to chirp to any bad bird who would lead him into mischief. For a fortnight longer Robin was our daily joy. It seemed to make us intimates of the woods to hear, as we were walking there, the hail of a familiar voice from overhead and look up to see our own small Speckle peeping down at us from some breezy twig against the blue. For he soon recovered from his penitence and went sailing through the trees on ever longer voyages of discovery, being often out of call for two or three hours at a time. But he was always on the window box, where no other robin ever came, in the early morning from half-past three on to seven, overflowing with conversation and insisting on intelligent replies to his remarks. At intervals throughout the day, too, I would hear a soft thud on the box, followed by a chirp-p-p and the flap-p-p of a very impatient and business-like little wing. On these occasions Robin Hood was quite too much occupied with his greenwood affairs to feed himself, and I must needs drop book or pen and cram refreshment down his importunate yellow gullet till it could hold no more. Then he would hop across to his Japanese water-cup, take a dozen eager dips, wipe his bill first on one side, then the other, on the edge of the box, and then, flapping his wing for good-by, sweep off again. In the middle of every forenoon and, during the hottest weather, of the afternoon as well, he alighted on his cage and called imperiously to Mary to bring him fresh water for his bath. We shut him in during this and during his sun-baths, since he enjoyed these rites so much as to be even more than commonly oblivious of cats. On the evening of July 24 the mercury "dropped on us," as Mary said, some thirty degrees, and a drenching rain fell all night--a new experience for Robin Hood, who appeared at my window Thursday morning, a draggled little vagabond. Had there been no wise robin at hand to teach him how to take the oil from his back pockets and convert his airy fluff into a tight-fitting waterproof? He was glad to come in out of the wet and spent the forenoon in Mary's kitchen, letting her fondle him as she would, but flying with alarm from the proffered caresses of market-man and grocer-boy. In the course of the next few days, however, he began to protest a little when even his old friends stooped to take him up. He would hop backward, snapping his bill, but he seldom flew and, if the hand did not remain closed upon him, but left him perching free on wrist or finger, he was entirely content. On August 8 we did our Robin wrong. An expected dinner guest had expressed a desire to see him and, as by this time he was spending his nights, presumably, in a far-off Robin roost, for which he sometimes started early in the afternoon, Mary caught him during the absorbed ecstasy of his sun-bath and shut him into the cage. This was still a favorite resort of his, and he did not object in the slightest until a young robin playmate with whom he was in the habit of flying to the roost whistled for him from a scarlet oak. Then Robin chirped to us to let him out, growing frantic with excitement as we, hitherto so prompt to obey his behests, made no move for his release. He called and called again, beating about the cage and even breaking into a song of wild entreaty. Shame-faced and conscience-stricken, we yet put him off, expecting our guest minute by minute. It was nearly seven when regrets were telephoned, but by that time Robin was in a panic and smote our hearts by the terror with which he fluttered back from us as we bent over the cage. The instant the lid was raised he whirred up to the scarlet oak, where his faithful chum still waited, but before their belated departure Robin flew down to Dame Gentle's window and told her all about it, and then over to Giant Bluff's piazza, where he rehearsed his grievances again in a scolding chirp never heard from him before. We closed the house on the fourteenth and went away, unforgiven by Robin Hood, who has never, so far as I know, come to human hand since Mary's clasp betrayed him to captivity. During those six days we caught flying glimpses of our estranged fosterling, easily recognized from a distance by the two white feathers in his tail, and a few times he started, by sheer force of habit, to hop across the road to us from Dame Gentle's, but, half-way over, he would turn sharply about, give an angry little yep, and hop back again. When we reopened the house in late September, not even Dame Gentle had recent news of Robin Hood, and all the winter long we carried a sorrowful sense of broken friendship. We were anxious about our hand-reared birdling, too, hardly daring to hope that he could survive the perils of migration. What a desperate adventure it seemed!
"See those prints, right where Robin Hood used to sit and watch us take our supper!" I exclaimed, a wild hope knocking at my heart, but Joy-of-Life thought it a case of hungry tree sparrows and, with her especial tenderness for the plucky, one-legged fox sparrow that had consorted with them all winter, went in to find them a choice handful of scraps. But when, a few minutes later, I entered my chamber, there outside his accustomed window, on the feeding-box now drifted over with snow, sat a great, plump, glossy redbreast, staring into the room with Robin's own bright eyes and cocking his head to listen to our welcome. He fluttered back to the nearest tree, when we opened the window, indicating that he had learned a thing or two, in the gossip of the long aerial journeys, about the human race, nor did he ever again enter the house nor let us touch him, but he kept close by, for weeks, perching in his old familiar places on roof and rail and window-ledge, hopping in our walks and gamboling in our eyes. Out in the open, he would come within a few inches of us and there take his stand and chirp the confidences that we would have given all our dictionaries to comprehend. He was such a tall, stately robin, with such an imposing air of travel and experience as he stood erect, swelling his bright breast with the effort to relate his Winter's Tale, that Joy-of-Life rechristened him Lord Bobs. In course of time our gallant fledgling appeared in company with a mate, most disappointing to our romantic anticipation,--a faded crosspatch old enough to be his grandmother, a very shrew who scolded him outrageously whenever she saw him lingering beside us. She told him we were ogres, alligators, everything that was horrible and dangerous, and threatened to peck out his last pin-feather unless he flew away from us at once. A selfish old body she was, too, monopolizing the rock-bath, as if she were taking a cure for rheumatism, whole hours at a time, while Robin Hood, hot and dusty, waited on her pleasure in the drooping branches above. But despite her shrill remonstrances, he would still visit the window box, perching on Downy Woodpecker's marrow-bone for an opera stage and trilling his matins and vespers to our delighted ears. We were as proud of Robin Hood's singing as if we had taught him ourselves. Between his carols our troubadour would take a little refreshment, trying in turn Nuthatch's lump of suet, Bluejay's rinds of cheese, Junco's crumbs and his own mocking-bird food, or quaffing rain water from Chickadee's nutshell cups. He would sometimes hop to the sill and, close against the glass, watch all the doings in that world which lay about him in his infancy. We looked forward to an hour when he might bring his own little speckles to play, as he had loved to play, with the empty nutshells, but Mrs. Robin hustled him off to the woods for the nesting season and we were never able after that first spring to distinguish him with certainty among our robin callers. None the less he had made the summer and all summers happier for us by his gracious though guarded pardon for our unkindness.
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