Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume II. Lever Charles James
that it may be affirmed he is not worse than his fellows whose heart has only one undefended bastion. I am not anxious to claim for my Engadiner any more than ordinary powers of resistance: neither his race nor his country, the habits of his life, nor his principles – if it be permitted to use the word – had taught him such self-control; but, if they had – if they had steeled his nature against every common seduction, they could not have stifled within him the native passion for bird-catching, or, what is very much akin to it, bird-stealing. He would as soon have thought it needful to restrict his lungs in their requisite quantity of atmospheric air, as to curb what he regarded as a mere human instinct. If Engadiners were made for any thing, it was for bird-catching: no one did any thing else, thought, spoke, or dreamt of any thing else, in the Engadine. It was not a pastime, or a caprice; it was not that the one was skilful, or that the other was adroit at it, but the whole population felt that birds were their natural prey, and that the business of their life was comprised in catching, feeding, training, sending, and selling them all over the globe – not only in Europe, but over the vast continent of America. Wherever birds had fanciers, wherever men cared for the tints of plumage or the warbling mellowness of their notes, there an Engadiner was sure to be found. And who has ever studied their nature like one of these mountaineers, who knows all their habits and their tastes, their seasons of migrating and returning, how they build their nests, and all their likings and their antipathies – the causes which influence their selection and abandonment of a peculiar locality, the meaning of their songs – ay, and they are full of meaning – of welcome, of sorrow, of love, and of despair? None like an Engadiner for all this! Few would have the patience, fewer still the requisite gifts of acuteness, with uncommon powers of eye and ear – of eye to discern the tints of plumage among the dark leaves of the pine-forest – of ear to catch and imitate the notes of each tribe, so that birds themselves should answer to the sounds.
The Engadiner stirred not from his hiding-place the whole day; he watched the moving throng passing to and from the village church; he saw the Bauers pass by, some in the Sunday “waggons,” their horses gaily caparisoned, with huge scarlet tassels beneath their necks, and great wide traces all studded with little copper nails; and the more humble, on foot, the men dressed in their light Bavarian blue, and the women clad in a coarser stuff of the same colour, their wealth being all centred in one strange head-dress of gold and silver filigree, which, about the size and shape of a peacock’s tail when expanded, is attached to the back of the head – an unwieldy contrivance, which has not the merit of becomingness; it neither affords protection against sun or rain, and is so inconvenient, that when two peasant women walk together they have to tack and beat, like ships in a narrow channel; and not unfrequently, like such craft, run foul of each other after all.
The Engadiner watched these evidences of affluence, such as his wild mountains had nothing to compare with, and yet his heart coveted none of them. They were objects of his wonder, but no more; while every desire was excited to possess the little bird, whose cage hung scarcely three yards from where he lay.
As evening drew nigh, the Engadiner became almost feverish in excitement: each stir within the house made him fear that some one was coming to take the bird away; every step that approached suggested the same dread. Twice he resolved to tear himself from the spot, and pursue his journey; but each time some liquid note, some thrilling cadence, fell like a charm upon his ear, and he sank down spell-bound. He sat for a long time with eyes rivetted on the cage, and then at length, stooping down, he took from the ground beside him a long branch of pine-wood; he measured with his eye the distance to the cage, and muttered to himself an assent. With a dexterity and speed which in his countrymen are instincts, he fastened one handle of his scissors to the branch, and tied a string to the other, making an implement like that used by the grape-gatherers in the wine season. He examined it carefully, to try its strength, and even experimented with it on the jessamine that grew over the front of the cottage. His dark eyes glistened like burning coals as the leaves and twigs were snapped off at a touch. He looked around him to see that all was still, and no one near. The moment was favourable: the Angelus was ringing from the little chapel, and all the Dorf was kneeling in prayer. He hesitated no longer, but, lifting the branch, he cut through three of the little bars in the cage; they were dry and brittle, and yielded easily: in a moment more he had removed them, leaving a little door wide enough for the bird to escape. This done, he withdrew the stick, detached the scissors, and in its place tied on a small lump of maple sugar – the food the bird loves best. Starling, at first terrified by the intrusion, soon gained courage and approached the bait. He knew not that a little noose of horse-hair hung beneath it, which, no sooner had he tasted the sugar, than it was thrown over his neck and drawn tight. Less practised fingers than the Engadiner’s could scarcely have enclosed that little throat sufficiently to prevent even one cry, and yet not endanger life.
Every step of this process was far more rapid than we have been in telling it. The moment it was effected, the Engadiner was away. No Indian ever rose from his lair with more stealthy cunning, nor tracked his enemy with a fleeter step: away over the wide plain, down through the winding glens, among the oak-scrub, and into the dark pine-wood, who could trace his wanderings? – who could overtake him now?
With all his speed, he had not gone above a mile from the Dorf when Fritz missed his treasure. He went to take his bird into the house for the night, when the whole misfortune broke full upon him, For a few seconds, like most people under sudden bereavement, his mind could not take in all the sorrow: he peered into the cage, he thrust his fingers into it, he tumbled over the moss at the bottom of it; and then, at length, conscious of nis loss, he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed as though his heart was breaking.
Men and women may find it hard to sympathise with such sorrow. A child, however, can understand a child’s grief, for Fritz had lost every thing he had in the world. This little bird was not only all his wealth, all his ambition, his daily companion in solitary places, his hope, his friend, but somehow it was linked mysteriously with the memories of his own home – memories that every day, every hour, was effacing – but these, Star still could call up in his heart: to lose him was, therefore, to cut the last slender cord that tied him to the past and linked him to the future.
His violent sobbing brought Grettl’a to him, but he could tell her nothing – he could only point to the cage, which now hung on its side, and mutter the one word, —
“Hin! hin!” – Away! away!
The little girl’s grief was scarcely less poignant than his own. She wrung her hands in all the passion of sorrow, and cried bitterly.
The Bauer and his wife now came to the spot, the one to join in, the other to rebuke, their afflictions. How little the children noticed either! Their misery filled up every corner of their minds – their wretchedness was overwhelming.
Every corner of the little hut was associated with some recollection of the poor “Star.” Here, it was he used to feed – here, he hopped out to greet Fritz of an evening, when the bad weather had prevented him accompanying him to the fields. There, he was accustomed to sit while they were at supper, singing his merry song; and here, would he remain silently while they were at prayers, waiting for the moment of their rising to utter the cry of “Maria, hülf uns!”
Each time the children’s eyes met, as they turned away from looking at any of these well-known spots, they burst into tears: each read the other’s thoughts, and felt his sorrows more deeply in the interchange.
What a long, long night was that! They cried themselves to sleep, to awake again in tears! – now, to dream they heard “Star” calling to them – now, to fancy he had come back again, all wayworn and ruffled, glad to seek his usual shelter, and be with friends once more – and then they awoke to feel the bitterness of disappointment, and know that he was gone!
“And he told me, Grettl’a – he told me ‘A good word brings luck!’” sobbed Fritz, whose despair had turned to scepticism.
Poor Grettl’a had no argument wherewith to meet this burst of misery – she could but mingle her tears with his.
We frequently hear of the hard-heartedness of the poor – how steeled they are against the finer affections and softer feelings of the world; but it might be as well to ask if the daily business of life – which to them is one of sheer necessity – does