第82章

Cheri is the Canary-bird,--a yellow bird with a white tail, when the cat leaves him any tail at all. He came as a gift, and I welcomed him, but without gratitude. For a gift is nothing. Always behind the gift stands the giver, and under the gift lies the motive. The gift itself has no character.

It may be a blunder, a bribe, an offering, according to the nature and design of the giver; and you are outraged, or magnanimous, or grateful. Cheri came to me with no love-token under his soft wings,--only the "good riddance" of his heartless master. Those little black eyes had twinkled, those shining silken feathers had gleamed, that round throat had waved with melody in vain. He had worn his welcome out. Even the virtues which should have throbbed, tender and all-embracing, under priestly vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,--only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but Cheri, my cherished one.

He has been with me now nearly a year, and every trick of his voice and head and tail is just as fresh, graceful, and charming as on the first day of his arrival. He is a constant recreation and delight. I put him in my own room, and went up to look at him two or three times the first evening. Every time I looked he would be quite still, but his little black beads of eyes shone wide open in the candle-light, and Irecalled how Chaucer's "Smale foules maken melodie That slepen alle night with open eye,"and reflected that Cheri certainly made melodie enough in the daytime to be ranked with the poetic tribe; but one night, after he had been here long enough to have worn away his nervous excitement, I happened to go into the room very softly, and the black beads had disappeared. The tiny head had disappeared, too, and only a little round ball of feathers was balanced on his perch. Then I remembered that chickens have a way of putting their heads in their pockets when they go to sleep, and poetry yielded to poultry, Cheri stepped out of Chaucer, and took his place in the hencoop.

He has had an eventful life since he came to me. In the summer I hung him on a hook under piazza for the merry company of robins and bluebirds, which he enjoyed excessively. One day, in the midst of a most successful concert, an envious gust swept down the cage, up went the door, and out flew the frightened bird. I could have borne to lose him, but I was sure he would lose himself,--a tender little dilettante, served a prince all the days of his life, never having to lift a finger to help himself, or knowing a want unsatisfied. Now, thrown suddenly upon his own resources, homeless, friendless, forlorn, how could ever make his fortune in this bleak New England, for all he has, according to Cuvier, more brains in his head in proportion to his size than any other created being? I saw him already in midsummer, drenched with cold rains, chilled and perishing; but sharper eyes than mine had marked his flight, and a pair of swift hands plunged after him into the long grass that tangled his wings and kept him back from headlong destruction. Amicable relations between Cheri and the cat are on a most precarious footing. The cat was established in the house before Cheri came,--a lovely, frolicsome kitten, that sat in my lap, purred in my face, rubbed her nose against my book, and grew up, to my horror, out of all possibility of caresses, into a great, ugly, fierce, fighting animal, that comes into the house drenched and dripping from the mud-puddle in which she has been rolling in a deadly struggle with every Tom Hyer and Bill Sayers of the cat kind that make night hideous through the village. This cat seems to be possessed with a devil every time she looks at Cheri. Her green eyes bulge out of her head, her whole feline soul rushes into them, and glares with a hot, greeny-yellow fire and fury of unquenchable desire. One evening I had put the cage on a chair, and was quietly reading in the room below, when a great slam and bang startled the house. "The bird!"shrieked a voice, mine or another's. I rushed upstairs. The moonlight shone in, revealing the cage upturned on the floor, the water running, the seeds scattered about, and a feather here and there. The cat had managed to elude observation and glide in, and she now managed to elude observation and glide out. Cheri was alive, but his enemy had attacked him in the flank, and turned his left wing, which was pretty much gone, according to all appearances. He could not mount his perch, and for three days, crouching on the floor of his cage, life seemed to have lost its charm. His spirits drooped, his appetite failed, and his song was hushed. Then his feathers grew out again, his spirit returned to him with his appetite, and he hopped about as good as new. To think that cat should have been able to thrust her villanous claw in far enough to clutch a handful of feathers of him before she upset the cage!

I have heard that canaries sometimes die of fright. If so, Ithink Cheri would have been justified in doing it. To have a great overgrown monster, with burning globes of eyes as big as your head and claws as sharp as daggers, come glaring on you in the darkness, overturn your house, and grab half your side with one huge paw, is a thing well calculated to alarm a person of delicate organization.