"Wee Tim'rous Beasties" Part 6

"Only a small one--seeds, I think," said the dormouse. "I was very drowsy when I made it, and I daren't hope that it is in good order."

"Where is it?" said the squirrel.

"The second hazel on the left," said the dormouse; "the third hollow from the top."

The second hazel on the left was twenty yards away. Before the dormouse had finished speaking the squirrel had started, and the boughs by which she reached it were still quivering as she returned.

"There's your store."

The dormouse looked up, and gave a dolorous squeal of disappointment. A straggling nosegay was being thrust through the roof, and he realized at once that the seeds had sprouted.

"Why didn't you nibble the ends off?" said the squirrel. "You can't expect seeds to be seeds for ever. Oh, it's your first hibernation, is it? Well, you'll know better next time. Here's a nut for you." She had held it concealed in her palm, and produced it like a conjuror.

"She's not such a bad sort, after all," thought the dormouse, as he proceeded to examine the nut.

It was a hard nut, and would take some getting through. He sat back on his haunches, grasped it in his eight little fingers, gave it a twirl or two, and commenced gnawing three strokes a second. He gnawed for two minutes without a break.

It was harder than any other nut he remembered. He had never been more than a minute getting through one; sometimes they had obligingly split in half before he had fairly started. He tried another part, and worked even more vigorously than before.

a.s.suredly it was the very hardest nut in all the world. Twenty minutes'

hard work produced a small round hole, ten minutes more enlarged it so that he could thrust his lips inside. Then he sucked vigorously to secure the kernel, and secured instead a mouthful of black dust.

Of course the squirrel had known it all along. It did not need the guffaw he heard above to tell him that. This time he did not even protest. His spirit was broken. He was cold and tired and hungry. He merely huddled in a corner, still grasping the nut, and breathing in queer short gasps.

"Never mind, dormouse," shouted the squirrel, "you will know a bad egg next time. Try this."

For five seconds there was a faint rasping sound, then a sharp crack, and the rustle of two half-nutsh.e.l.ls through the leaves. One of them struck the side of the hazel-stump and bounded off like an elastic ball. Before the dormouse had collected his wits, a fine kernel was thrust through the nest and the squirrel had once more regained her bough.

"Eat it," she shrieked; "eat it before the sun goes down. It's going now."

And it was. Before a quarter of the kernel was accounted for, the western sky had turned to lurid orange; before the half was gone, the chill struck him. The nut dropped from his nerveless hands, his limbs tightened, his ears sank into his skin, his eyelids drooped, and he was asleep once more.

The primroses had long yielded pride of place to the daffodils; these in turn had paled before the marsh marigolds, but the most glorious yellow in the picture was the Sulphur b.u.t.terfly. He zigzagged lightly down the hedgerow, catching the suns.h.i.+ne at every turn, and the marigolds drooped their heads at the sight of him. Close to the nest he dropped on a briar-leaf, like a floating petal. He was more than colour now--he was form. For a full minute he poised there motionless, the most exquisitely graceful, the most exquisitely coloured of all our b.u.t.terflies, and, for a full minute, the dormouse watched him.

Next came a quivering, amber-tinted flight, resolved at rest into a delicate medley of green and white and saffron. It was the orange-tip, and the dormouse rejoiced, for the orange-tip meant spring. Such dainty frailty could never stand the winter.

To tell of all he heard and saw that day would fill a book. At first, as he peered through the crevices, he only grasped the more vivid tints--the azure of the hyacinth, the roseblush of the almond, the crimson glow of the clover, the purple of the foxglove. Then, as his senses quickened, the whole glorious colour-scale, from ashbud to whitethorn, stood revealed.

From heaven above came the skylark's defiant challenge; from earth beneath the fussy scream of the blackbird; on all sides the tweetings, twitterings, chirrupings, chirrings and pipings of petulant finches, and, in tender modulation to the avian chorus, the deep-throated, innumerable, drowsy hum of insects. Colour and sound, love and war, it was spring indeed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IT WAS THE ORANGE-TIP.]

For the dormouse, one tiny penetrating note dominated all. He knew that the singer of that note was four-footed. Have you ever heard a cricket's serenade? It was something like that. Have you ever heard a tree-creeper talking to itself? It was something like that also. He looked down and saw, as he expected, a round fur ball rolling in and out the gra.s.s-stems.

At times the ball sat up and sniffed. He knew the puny fists and tapering snout at once. It was the shrewmouse. "Shrewmouse!" he cried, "is it time?" But the shrewmouse had crouched to dodge the shadow of a pa.s.sing bird, and he saw him no more. However, he had seen enough. He stretched his hands and feet as though he would rack them from their sockets. Like Tennyson's rabbit, he fondled his harmless face in the most elaborate of toilets, then he took one nibble at the remnant of the squirrel's nut, and dropped off to sleep till the twilight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEFORE HIM LAY THE TWILIGHT WORLD HE LOVED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FIGURE SOMEWHAT STOUT," SAYS THE BOOK.]

It is time to describe him.

"Figure somewhat stout," says the book, "a single pair of pre-molars in each jaw, first toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical," etc.

The dormouse was anything but stout--six months' fasting, save for half a nut, had effectually restrained any tendency that way. No doubt in other respects he was in fair accordance with museum pattern, but he differed in one essential particular--he was alive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS EYES? NOR PEN NOR CAMERA CAN PRESENT THEM.]

His colour? When he had first retired to rest he had closely resembled a young red vole, buff grey all over save for his white waistcoat and the hair-parting along his back and down the ridges of his limbs. This was a delicate auburn. During his sleep the auburn had overspread his back, softened into cream colour on his sides, and thence into a pure white front. Ages ago his ancestors had been white all over; now, amid changed surroundings, the white only lingered where it was least conspicuous.

His eyes? Nor pen nor camera can present them. Imagine a black pearl imprisoning a diamond; imagine a dewdrop trembling on polished jet; add to these beauties _life_, and you will have the dormouse eye.

His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous, hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the dormouse tail; but the hairs along it do more than merely part. They curl, upwards from the root, downwards to the point, and form a plume.

The plume is a natural parachute, not so obvious, perhaps, as in the squirrel's case, but, weight for weight, of equal service.

His feet? Ten toes behind and eight before, sharp-pointed toes that grip the slenderest twig, and catch the slightest foothold in the bark.

His ears? Small, say the books. Not small, but rather hidden in the deep surrounding fur.

Had you seen the dormouse at the moment of his final awakening, you might have recognized him from this description. A few minutes later and the grey, flitting shadow might easily have baffled you. For, as he reached the surface of his nest, the sun went down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHARP-POINTED TOES THAT CATCH THE SLIGHTEST FOOTHOLD IN THE BARK.]

Before him, at last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage--the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of a lost soul.

It was the barn owl starting on her rounds. The dormouse cowered back until she pa.s.sed--white--gleaming, swift and silent as a moth.

There was no discordant note. Wood, meadow, and hedgerow were bathed in liquid blue. The very tree trunks stood out as indigo against the sky.

Daisy and marigold, hyacinth and clover were attuned to the same soothing minor chord. The work-a-day world was at rest, but the sleep-a-day world was holding high revel.

Before he was halfway down the stump he had caught the glint of twenty pairs of eyes. The voles and wood-mice had waited, like himself, until the owl had pa.s.sed. Before each tuft of gra.s.s now stood its latest tenant.

From beneath the root of a neighbouring hazel came a stealthy procession of five bank voles. Each, as it gained the entrance, performed its normal round. First it sniffed for weasel, then it sat up and washed its face, then it sniffed again, finally it stole off, foraging among the gra.s.s-stems. He saw his friend the shrewmouse scuffling with its mate; he saw the wood-mice nut-grubbing; he saw the night reunion of the stump-tailed voles; but the first of his own kind that he saw was mother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IT WAS THE SAME SOFT FUR THAT HE HAD NESTLED IN LAST YEAR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONCE MORE HE FELT THE MAGIC PULSE OF LIFE WITHIN HIM.]

He had swung himself to the top of a broken twig, and, as he looked down, perceived her climbing stiffly up towards him. Mother had aged since the autumn, but, when she drew closer, he knew her well enough; it was the same soft fur that he had nestled in last year.

Together they went out into the night. Once more he felt the magic pulse of life within him, and ran to the top of the hedge and down again twenty times for the mere joy of running. Head upwards he flew, head downwards, backwards, forwards, sideways. Sometimes he paused for a moment, lightly balanced on a branch end, then swung himself to the next friendly projection. Sometimes there was no pause. In one easy unbroken course he travelled to the end, cleared the intervening gap, and landed on the neighbouring branch below. He never missed, he never stumbled; for he was tumbler and wire-walker and saltimbanque in one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE WAITED FOR HER AS LONG AS HE DARED.]

And mother? Mother had lost some of her spring, but she had developed judiciousness, and a fine eye for country. It was this latter which, to her son's amazement, usually kept her two bushes ahead. It was this which made him miss her as the day broke.

He had been to the very topmost pinnacle of a thorn-bush; halfway down he had leapt four feet on to a neighbouring hazel; he had looked back in self-congratulation at the abyss, and, when he had turned again, she had disappeared.

He waited for her as long as he dared, and then crept back subdued and lonely to his nest. Next evening perhaps he would see her again. But the next evening pa.s.sed, and the next, and the next, and he never saw her again until the end.