Читать книгу: «"Wee Tim'rous Beasties": Studies of Animal life and Character», страница 4

Outwardly the chrysalis was nothing but an extra leaf. Colour and form combined their skilful mimicry. Its colour was the green of the sallow; its form, the form of the sallow-leaf.

For fifteen days it hung unchanged and motionless. On the sixteenth change was obviously impending. The upper segments had lengthened, the lower segments had darkened. On the twentieth day came the last great change of all.

HE CHOSE THE LOFTIEST BRANCH OF THE LOFTIEST OAK IN THE FOREST.

It was a normal July day. Thunder was over the Downs. Now and again great rain-drops struck the sallow. They were few and far between, however. The thunder was content to grumble on the hills, leaving the valley to the sunshine. For all the midday heat the air was laden with moisture. This was at once both good and bad for the little Emperor, good because it made the bursting of his cerement easy, bad because it made the drying of his wings slow.

Still he had no choice in the matter; his time had come, and he must make the best of it.

WHITES.

Barely a minute passed between the first yielding of the shell and his complete emergence. He issued head foremost, groping with bewildered legs for something to cling to. He struck the only thing within his reach, the chrysalis case itself. To this he clung with desperation, and he had need to. As yet he had no means of flight.

There is no room for wing expanse inside a chrysalis. Material for wings was lying ready on his shoulders, it was moisture laden, packed in crumpled folds, and lifeless.

BRIMSTONES.

The thunder passed away seawards, drawing the valley moisture in its train. From eastward came a gentle drying breeze. It crept from leaf to leaf with its soft-whispered message until it reached the leaf that most had need of it.

The little Emperor trembled with excitement. His wings were coming into being. One by one, like petals of an opening flower, the clinging folds relaxed and told their secret. One by one the branching nervures hardened.

By sundown the great change of all was over. The Emperor, no longer little, was fit to mount his throne. Westward, as if in sympathy, the sky was flooded with imperial purple.

He chose the loftiest branch of the loftiest oak in the forest. Before him stretched an acre of clearing, thronged with his subjects. Every class was represented, or rather every class but one. Ages ago the Swallow tail disputed sovereignty with the Purple Emperor. Fortune declared against him, and he retreated, like some Hereward, to the fens. There to this day he holds a third-rate court.

PEACOCKS.

It was a brilliant gathering that greeted the Emperor. Every colour, every form was there. Whites and brimstones, silver-studded fritillaries, peacocks, red admirals, and painted ladies, walls and ringlets, hairstreaks, blues, and skippers, even the little Duke of Burgundy, even the white and admirable Sibylla.

HAIRSTREAKS.

Happy midsummer children! They flashed their dainty tints from leaf to leaf, from flower to flower, their life one long-drawn revel in the sunshine.

From his high throne the Emperor watched and envied. He was tiring of lonely grandeur. Now and again he soared a hundred feet into the air, then with his wings full spread and motionless, sailed slowly back on to the summit of the oak.

ADMIRALS.

Never was flight more exquisite. As he rose, one caught the glint of the imperial purple; as he descended, its full glory was revealed. Nowhere in nature is the pure radiant effulgence of that purple surpassed. It is the purple of the rainbow itself.

SKIPPERS.

THE WHITE AND ADMIRABLE SIBYLLA.

Once, and once only, did he deign to touch the ground. Deep in the hollow behind the clearing, where the footpaths crossed each other, a shallow muddied pool had formed. In it the Emperor saw, from on high, his own reflection. Perhaps it was mere vanity that drew him closer; perhaps the fancy that he saw a rival; perhaps, but this is not likely, thirst. Close to the margin lay a rough-edged clumsy flint. On this he settled, and, Narcissus like, feasted his eyes on his own beauty. He nearly met Narcissus’ fate. It was the flint that saved him. He felt the shadow, almost before it reached him, but even so he rose too late. For half a minute he, the Purple Emperor, was prisoner in a boy’s straw hat. Had the hat covered the flint completely, he must assuredly have graced a cabinet. Fortunately for him the flint was just an inch too wide. The hat lay slant-wise across it, leaving a narrow crescent outlet on each side.

SHE SAT ON AN OAK PINNACLE OUTLINED AGAINST THE SKY.

THE EMPEROR ALIGHTED WITHIN A FOOT OF HER, … AS HE OPENED HIS WINGS TO SHOW THEIR BEAUTY.

An old collector would have doffed his coat to cover hat and flint alike, would have sat beside them patiently till nightfall, would have done anything to make certain of his prize. But this collector was only a boy. With youthful recklessness he raised the brim a hair’s-breadth off the flint, and, in a moment, the Emperor was fifty feet above him.

It had been a near thing. Higher he soared, and higher, exulting in his freedom, and, as he soared, he sighted the Princess. She sat on an oak pinnacle outlined against the sky. Who was she? Whence had she come? On her wings was the broad white ribbon of butterfly royalty.

SHE TURNED HER BACK ON HIM.

THE EMPEROR ONCE MORE SETTLED ON A NEIGHBOURING LEAF.

The Emperor alighted within a foot of her. For the first time in his life he felt humble. As he opened his wings to show their beauty, she turned her back on him; as he closed them again, she sought another tree. But the Emperor was not so easily baffled. He followed in hot haste, and once more settled on a neighbouring leaf. The Princess drooped her upper wings, as if she was asleep. But she was not. The Emperor crept along the leaves a little closer.

THE EMPEROR CREPT ALONG THE LEAVES A LITTLE CLOSER.

HE SHOWED HER THE BROAD, WHITE RIBBON THAT HE ALSO WORE.

It was the strangest courtship imaginable, for it was all on one side. From tree to tree they went, the Emperor flashing his purple in the sunshine, the Princess, to all appearance, unconscious of her suitor’s presence. Yet he tried every allurement he could think of. He circled round her, changing from purple to violet, from violet to velvet black. He soared above her skywards until he was a mere speck in the blue. He showed her the broad ribbon that he also wore. He even uncurled his slender saffron proboscis, and toasted his divinity in the sap of the oak-leaf.

What made her change her mind at the eleventh tree? What had he said to her? I cannot tell you, but I can tell you this. From that tree they rose together, circling round each other. Higher they went and higher, until the oakwood shrunk to a copse beneath them; higher and higher, until the sea was their horizon; higher and higher, until they passed from sight.

HE EVEN UNCURLED HIS SAFFRON PROBOSCIS, AND TOASTED HER IN THE SAP OF THE OAK-LEAF.

THE HARVEST MOUSE

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, the Harvest Mouse was the smallest of British beasties, absolutely the very smallest. Even the museum men, who look through microscopes, had to admit that.

Then a Liliputian shrewmouse turned up. He was found stretched dead in the middle of the path, and the time, as any book that deals with shrewmice would tell you, was the autumn. He was so small that, had he not died in the path, he would assuredly not have been found at all.

Now, because of his smallness, and because he was found dead in the autumn (from which you may assume that he was full-grown), he was sent to the museum men; and the museum men examined his teeth, and rubbed their hands with glee, for they found that his upper incisors were abnormal.

So they had his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for him—Sorex Minutus. The lesser shrew. The smallest British quadruped.

THEN A LILIPUTIAN SHREWMOUSE TURNED UP.

HE, AND HE ONLY, HAS A PREHENSILE TAIL.

Thus was one unique distinction stolen from the harvest mouse. But to this day the harvest mouse shrugs his furry shoulders and says, that there are plenty of dwarfs with abnormal teeth in his own family, if the museum men want them.

He can afford to be superior, for he has yet another unique distinction left, and that is not likely to be taken from him.

Of all the four-footed creatures in Great Britain and Ireland, he, and he only, has a prehensile tail. The middle of it he can bend through half a circle, the last half-inch he can wrap completely round a cornstalk. It is pale chestnut above, and pasty white below. Taken all round, it is the most marvellous tail in the United Kingdom.

A mass of whipcord muscle, it can be made rigid, or flexible, at will. He can sit back with his hind feet resting on one stalk, hitch his tail round another, and lean his full weight against it. His full weight is one-sixth of an ounce. Were the G.P.O. more friendly to naturalists, a score of him could travel for a penny; but, even so, his tail is trivial in proportion.

He is so proud of it that he cleans it continually. Other mice clean their tails at odd times—only when they really seem to need it. The harvest mouse cleans his tail as a matter of regular toilet routine, and he does his toilet fifteen times a day. First his whiskers, then his head and ears, then his body, and finally his tail. He pulls it forward between his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It is quite worth it.

THE HARVEST MOUSE SAT ON THE TOP OF A STALK AND NIBBLED HIS SUPPER.

The harvest mouse sat on the top of a cornstalk and nibbled his supper. His first summer had been most successful. So much had been crowded into it that he could only dimly remember the oat-stack in which he was born. Even the hedgerow seemed difficult to recall. He had lived in that two months, next door to the wood-mouse, and from him he may have learnt something of the art of nest-building. Then he had wandered abroad. The field, on the left of the hedgerow as you walk westward, was, when he entered it, tinged with uncertain green,—a sand-stained green like that of shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week’s time, the sprouting corn had got the mastery, shrouding with its exquisite mantle the humble mother soil it seemed ashamed of; then, as if it had imprisoned the sunbeams, it turned to golden yellow, and now, wearying of conquest, had borrowed the copper radiance of a dying day.

THE WOOD-MOUSE.

It was with the first budding and ripening of the young corn that the harvest mouse tasted the true joy of living. In the hedgerow it had been mere existence; for there had been no real scope for his tail. The grasping portion of it could only encircle the tiniest twigs. Here, Nature herself seemed to have been at pains to suit him. Whichever way he looked, there stretched before him long yellow avenues of pygmy trees. Had they been passed through a gauge, they could not have better suited his proportions. He could whip his tail round any one of them. As he travelled from ear to ear, there was always something handy to grip on to. To reach the top of a cornstalk from the ground took him just two seconds and a half. He ran up it, he did not condescend to climb. Once among the ears, he travelled with little jumps, sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the corn, and help him, sometimes boldly leaping from the summit, and trusting confidently to his tiny hands and feet to pull him up a foot or so below. Even if he blundered to earth he had nothing to fear, for, of all the denizens of the cornfield, he alone could thread the avenues in perfect silence.

(L) IN THE FIRST BUDDING AND RIPENING OF THE WHEAT HE TASTED THE TRUE JOY OF LIVING.

(R) SOMETIMES WAITING FOR THE WIND TO SWAY THE CORN AND HELP HIM.

The stoat heralded his coming by a stealthy swish that could be heard full twenty yards away. Many a foolish bewildered vole he caught, but never a harvest mouse.

The rat’s approach was a blundering four-footed crescendo, clear to mouse-ears as is the ringing of a horse’s hoofs to man. Little else appeared at all. Now and again came a foolish hen-faced pheasant, strayed from its nursery, and screaming for its keeper. One was shot as it crossed the path in front of him, but we must not say anything about that. Now and again a corn-crake, moving in silence, bowed to the ground, but betrayed by its loquacity. Now and again a trembling glass-eyed rabbit. To each and every footstep he had one invariable response. He ran up the nearest cornstalk, as high as he could go, and watched the author of it pass beneath him. He was rarely sighted. Once a weasel leapt at him. The weasel is a pretty jumper, but this time a tendril of convolvulus upset his aim. Before he reached the ground again the mouse was five and twenty feet away, playing with his tail.

Half the summer passed before he tired of these diversions. The coming of the sparrows put an end to them. They came just as the corn-ears had commenced to harden. There must have been a thousand. They were not in the field all day, but, while they were there, life was not worth living. Picture it to yourself. A thousand unkempt, shrieking hooligans, plucking at the corn-ears, flinging the milky grain aside half eaten, filling the air with the whirring of their wings as they sighted man a hundred yards away, back again as man departed, quarrelling incessantly, blatant, noisy, vulgar. The cornstalks were no place for mice while sparrows were about.

AS DAINTY A LITTLE HARVEST MOUSE AS EVER CROSSED A CORNFIELD.

But the evil had been of short duration. A month had seen the end of it. During that month the ways of the mouse were humble. He wandered in and out the undergrowth, feeding on what the sparrows had discarded. Not that he was really afraid of them. Had they cared to eat him, they assuredly would have done so at the start. But they never missed the opportunity of making him jump, and involuntary jumping is always unpleasant.

However, the life below had its compensations. He would certainly have lost her in the waving maze above. As it was, he saw her at the end of a straight avenue, and he could more or less mark her direction. She was running at full speed, as dainty a little harvest mouse as ever crossed a cornfield.

HER FRONT WAS OF THE PUREST WHITE, AND TWISTED IN A DAINTY CURVE TO MATCH HER FEATURES.

Her coat was of the softest fawn-chestnut; sharply contrasted with her pure white front, and twisted in a dainty curve to match her features. Her feet and tiny claws were the pink of a sea-shell. Her eyes were small (harvest mice have small eyes), but they were very gentle. As she sighted him, she swung lightly up a thistle stem, and sat for a moment balanced on the head. Evidently he was not altogether uninteresting.

HER EYES WERE SMALL, BUT THEY WERE VERY GENTLE.

Far into the evening he pressed his suit. When the inevitable rival mouse appeared, half the sun’s disk was already masked by the hedgerow. Ungainly, straggling shadows spread across the field, dark bars across a lurid crimson ground. Never was finer mise-en-scène for such a conflict. They fought on the very summits of the stalks, and the sun just managed to see the finish.

NEVER WAS FINER MISE-EN-SCÈNE FOR SUCH A CONFLICT.

They built the nest together. It was his part to bite the long ribbon leaves from their sockets, hers to soften them and knot them and plait them until they formed a neat, compact, and self-coherent sphere.

Nine cornstalks formed the scaffolding. Six inches from the ground she built between them a fragile grass-blade platform. Then she started on the nest itself. Her only tools were her fore-paws, tail, and teeth. The latter she employed to soften stiff material. The weaving she did from below upwards by pure dexterity of hand and tail. For six hours she worked indefatigably, and in six hours it was finished. But it was not meant to live in; it was merely a nursery. All day long the happy pair enjoyed each other’s company aloft, leaping from corn-ear to thistle-head, from thistle-head to poppy, and back again to corn-ear, feasting, frivolling, stalking bluebottles. Their life was one long revel in the sunshine; for the harvest mouse has this distinction also, that, like a Christian, he loves the blue of the sky and sleeps at night.

FRIVOLLING.

But he is wise in his generation, and lives far from the haunts of men. You must be quieter than a mouse if you want to see him.

FOR AN HOUR THEY ENJOYED THE NOVEL SENSATION.

At night they lived in a tiny burrow, a foot below the surface of the ground. They had no claim to it, but they had found it empty. Empty burrows belong to the first mouse that comes along.

Once only did they stay above the surface after sundown. For an hour they enjoyed the novel sensation. Then the long-drawn wail of the brown owl drove them below in haste.

THEN THE LONG-DRAWN WAIL OF THE BROWN OWL DROVE THEM BELOW IN HASTE.

Perhaps they realized that prey on the surface is the owl’s ideal. It is also the hawk’s. But, where under-keepers are armed with guns, the night-bird has the better prospects. Both would have their wings clear as they strike. The owl’s great chance comes when the corn is “stitched” in shocks of ten. Then he quarters the stubble, and nothing clear of shelter escapes him.

So the summer had passed—the perfect summer that comes once in a century. Day after day the sun had blazed through a cloudless sky; night after night the dews had fallen and refreshed the earth. The young mice, though pink, as yet, about the nose and waistcoat, were as promising as young mice could be. Everything was altogether and completely satisfactory.

So, as the western sky crimsoned and the shadow of each cornstalk gleamed like copper on its neighbour, the harvest mouse stole down from his eminence and sought his burrow, for, as I have said before, the nest was only a nursery.

He was up betimes. He was a light sleeper, and half a noise of that kind would have roused him. It was clank and whirr and swish and rattle in one. At first it sounded from the far corner on the right; then it passed along the hedgerow, growing more and more menacing until it seemed to be within a yard of him. Then it shrank away to nothing on the left, ceased for a moment, and, in obedience to human shouting, commenced afresh. So from corner to corner, crescendo and diminuendo. The harvest mouse was in the very centre of a square field.

HE CLIMBED BETWEEN TWO TOWERING STALKS.

IN FIVE MINUTES HE WAS UP ALOFT ONCE MORE.

When the sound seemed at its greatest distance, he climbed between two towering stalks and strained his eyes in its direction. He could not see for more than twenty yards before him. The world beyond was wrapt in soft white mist. Never had he seen anything so uncanny. Yet, had he been an early riser, he might have seen it often. Even as he watched it, it seemed to shrink away before the sunshine. The hedgerow loomed like a mountain-ridge before him. Down he slid, making a bee-line for the nest. That was all right; but his wife was evidently perturbed. Her mouth was full of grass-blades, and she was sealing every crevice on its surface. In five minutes he was up aloft once more. The whirring still continued, and now, through the lifting haze, he could distinguish its origin. Horses it was for certain, ay, and men—a small man sat upon the leading horse; but there was something behind these.

Had the harvest mouse ever seen a windmill, he would assuredly have concluded that a young one had escaped, and was walking in ever-narrowing circuits, round the field. The mist lifted further, and he saw the thing more clearly. Its great red arms swung dark against the sky, gathering the corn in a giant’s grasp to feed its ravenous cutters. Round and round the field it went. Each time as it travelled to the distant corners the mouse dropped down to earth; each time as it thundered close at hand, he dashed like lightning up the stalk to look. Sometimes his wife came with him. Closer it drew and closer. Nor was the mouse the only thing that noticed it. All things that lived within the field, all things that loved its borders, were crowding in mad confusion to its centre.

THE MOUSE CREPT TWO GRAINS HIGHER WHEN HE SAW HIM.

First came the hare. His was a wild, blundering, panic-stricken stampede. He hurtled through the corn, crossing his fore feet at every second leap, his eyes starting backwards from his head, his ears pressed flat against his back. He passed the harvest mouse heading for the farther side, and the harvest mouse saw him no more, for he broke cover, trusting to his speed. Then, one by one, bewildered rabbits. Backwards and forwards they rushed. Now they sat up and listened; now they flung their white tails skywards, and vanished down some friendly seeming alley. In two minutes they were headed off.

Among the rabbits, of all things, a stoat! The mouse crept two grains higher when he saw him. He stole in and out the undergrowth with easy confidence, yet in some sense unstoatlike. The mouse looked down, and for a moment caught his eye—the most courageous eye in all the world. Something was very wrong indeed with the stoat—he never even bared his teeth.

Next, a flurried brood of nestling partridges, flattened to earth, and piping dismally to one another. Time after time they passed and repassed below him, until at last they were utterly weary, and crouched in a huddled mass together, with uplifted hunted eyes.

Then the rats and mice and voles. House-mice and wood-mice, red voles, and grey. Last of all, Berus the adder. Not a mouse stepped aside, as he worked his slow, sinuous length between the cornstalks. He, too, was of the hunted to-day.

Nearer and nearer drew the hoarse rattle of the reaper. More and more crowded were the few yards round the harvest mice. A large brown rat limped through, bleeding about the head. He had come in from the firing-line, and had incompletely dodged a stone. The stoat flung its head up as it scented him, but let him pass. He had never let a rat pass in his life before.

Only a square of forty yards remained, packed from end to end with desperate field-folk. Each prepared for its last stand in different fashion.

BERUS THE ADDER MADE A FLATTENED SPIRAL OF HIS COILS.

The rat selected a stout thistle-clump, planted his back against it, and sat back on his haunches. Berus the adder made a flattened spiral of his coils, and raised his head a trifle off the ground, ready to fling his whole weight forward from the tail. The pheasant chicks ceased piping, and lay still as death. The red voles and wood-mice dashed aimlessly to and fro. The stump-tailed voles trusted to the ludicrous cover of the broken ground. The stoat arched his back and bared his teeth to the gums. But the harvest mice sat on the top of the stalk and awaited events, to all seeming unmoved. Perhaps they were too small to be frightened. They were certainly too small to be confident. Yet, as things turned out, the top of the stalk was the safest place of all. Swish went the cutter. The nest was scattered to fragments before their eyes, and the rush began.

The rabbits started it. They flattened their ears, shut their eyes, and made a blind dash for the open. Not a rabbit escaped, for there were dogs. The rats fared no better; they held their ground to the last, and were mercilessly bludgeoned. The partridges were cut to pieces. Most of the mice and voles shared their fate. The stoat died game. He charged one yokel and routed him. Then he was set upon by three with sticks. In the open the stoat is no match for three with sticks.

Berus the adder lay still in a hollow. The cutter passed completely over him. He was always ready, but his earth-colour saved him the necessity of striking. As the evening shadows lengthened, he stole grimly from his shelter, crossed the field, climbed the slope, and regained his furze-bush.

THE HARVEST MOUSE’S NEST.

And the harvest mice? The mother-mouse dashed to her nest as she saw it falling, and a wheel of the reaper passed over her. The father-mouse was saved, but through no merit of his own. Until the reaper was actually upon him, he clung to his stalk with tail and eighteen toes. Then it was too late to leave go. The great red arms gathered his stalk in the midst of a hundred others, swept the whole on to the knives, and dropped them on the travelling canvas platform. Up he went, and down again. For a moment he thought that he was being stifled. His eyes started from their sockets. His ribs seemed to crumple within him—fortunately they were elastic, as ribs no thicker than a stout hair must be. Then the pressure relaxed. The automatic binding was complete, and one more sheaf fell with a thud to earth. In that sheaf was the harvest mouse, bruised but alive, a prisoner in the dark. The stalks pressed tight against his body; but for the pitchfork he could never have got out.

The pitchfork shot through the middle of the mass, and missed him by half an inch. Once more he felt his surroundings flying upwards, but this time they fell more lightly. They formed the outside of a stitch of ten. As the fork was withdrawn the binding of the sheaf was loosened. He could breathe with comfort, and he could also see. He peered out, and found the whole face of Nature changed. The waving cornfield had gone. In its place was a razed expanse of stubble. The corn-sheaves stretched in serried piles across it. The harvesting had been neatly timed. Behind the hedge was the crimson glow of sunset. After all, that had not changed.

For an hour he waited within the sheaf, dubious and uncertain. Then he stole from his shelter. Within five yards he found her, gripping the shattered fragments of the nest. Close by lay a bludgeoned rat, and, five yards farther on, there sat a living one. It had its back to him, but by its movements he could see that it was feeding.

The field was flooded with moonlight. On all sides resounded the ominous hum of beetles’ wings. Nature had summoned her burying squad. They had their work cut out, and blundered down from every quarter. For death had been very busy, and it was not the death that needs seeking out. About the centre of the field the ground was stained with smears of half-dried blood. So the beetles came in their thousands, and before morning broke their task was done.

But the harvest mouse did not wait till the morning. The fragments of his nest were empty, and he dared not look to see what the rat was eating.

He reached the sheaf-pile only just in time, for the brown owl was still abroad, quartering the field with deadly certainty of purpose. As he crept beneath it, he heard the brown rat scream.

His was the last sheaf to be piled, it was also the last sheaf to be lifted. It travelled to the stack on the summit of the last load, and, by a happy chance, formed one of the outside layer. By scratching and gnawing continuously for an hour, he worked his way to the butt of it, paused for a moment on the precipitous steep, and then scrambled lightly down to earth. A perpendicular descent was nothing to him.

The foundations of the stack were already tenanted. Some of the inmates had been, like himself, conveyed in sheaves, but more had rushed for shelter across the bared expanse, which, on all previous nights, had been a cornfield. There were mice of all kinds, there were half a dozen rats. Before a week had passed, like had joined like. The rats were undisputed masters of the basement; midway lived the common, vulgar mice; and, highest of all, as befitted them, for they only could thread the interstices of the upper sheaves, and they only had prehensile tails, the harvest mice.