"Wee Tim'rous Beasties" Part 7

Some other time I will tell you how he pa.s.sed that summer, how he fought for and won a wife, how they built a nest together and made a store together, of the four little dormice, and of the sad fate that befel two of them. Here I can only tell the last scene.

It was late autumn. His wife had already felt the coming of winter, and retired to her six months' sleep. He himself had sealed her in.

He had taught the two small dormice how to build their nests (honeysuckle fibre and dead leaf), and pointed out the necessity of getting into them before Christmas. He had rebuilt his own nest in the same old hollow, for he knew that he could not hold out much longer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOTHER WAS CLIMBING PAINFULLY UP TO HIM.]

With every light breeze that crept down the hedgerow now came the rustle of the falling leaf. Each night he had seemed less inclined to wake, and this night he seemed less inclined than ever.

The sun had scarcely set before he felt chilled and uncomfortable. To warm himself he did three minutes' gymnastics. The end of them found him perched on the same old broken twig, and, when he looked down, even as before, mother was climbing painfully up to him.

It needed but a glance to see that she would not outlive the winter. Had she made a nest? No, she had not troubled. The hole she was in last year would do. Perhaps she would take his nest, he could easily build another.

Most certainly she would not. He could help her to put some leaves into hers to-morrow. But that night came the first frost.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUT THAT NIGHT CAME THE FIRST FROST.]

THE PURPLE EMPEROR

Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently.

Things were at their dullest.

Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender branches had formed a fas.h.i.+onable _rendez-vous_. Each evening she had seen her golden catkins studded with opals--the eyes of soft, furry, blundering moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her.

Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few hours in yokels' hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees forsook her for the bluebells.

But the kingfishers cared nothing for her appearance. They nested, as usual, deep in the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots.

The kingfishers were always in a hurry, and their colours were fussy and discordant. They flashed up and down the brook like a pair of demented fireworks. The whole bank reeked with the discarded meals of their progeny.

By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle, a down-lined cloak of green.

The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to look forward to.

On the one side lay the meadow-land, stretching in unbroken monotony to the sky-line; on the other, the brook; beyond its wooded bank, more meadow-land.

The brook was not what it had been. Its waters were being drawn away to thirsty London, and herein lay the sallow's chief vexation.

This year her upper boughs had never flowered. Summer arrived, and she had hoped against hope. They had never even put forth leaves.

To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as to be serious. It was the first warning of decay.

The Empress Mother came sailing over the hill, high in the sky as befitted her. Behind her, in the far distance, lay the white-ribbed downs, and, along their ridge, there stretched against the sky a thin, shadowy, broken line. It was the great oak wood, the dominion she had abandoned.

The Empress Mother was looking for a black sallow. Sallows there were in plenty in and about the great wood, but she wanted one all to herself; one fit for an imperial nursery. So she came with unerring instinct to the brook.

The air hung motionless in the grip of a midsummer noon. As she floated earthwards in stately majesty, the sunlight flung its radiance round her, and her broad, white ribbon gleamed on its velvet ground like molten silver.

The sallow humbly drooped her leaves as one who receives royalty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SMALL, GREEN-YELLOW, TRANSLUCENT CONE.]

For an hour the Empress Mother was busy. The leaves that she honoured were chosen with the nicest discrimination, and she honoured more than a dozen.

Each, as she left it, bore on its upper surface a small, green-yellow, s.h.i.+ny, translucent cone, rounded at the top, flat at the base, and ribbed along its sides.

For the rest of the day the sallow held her head high.

There were fourteen eggs in all. Six reached maturity, but we are only concerned with one of them. Outwardly he was much like the others. A day's exposure softened the yellow of his sh.e.l.l to olive. Save at the base he matched his leaf surroundings to a nicety. The base was suffused with a faint blush of purple. As the days pa.s.sed the purple darkened to black, and s.h.i.+fted upwards, leaving the parts beneath it pale and colourless. It seemed to struggle towards the sun. On the eighteenth day the sh.e.l.l parted at the summit, and the little Emperor was hatched.

His youthful Majesty was mostly dark brown head. Such body as he could boast of was tapering and greenish. But his head caught the eye. It was well-nigh as large as the egg from which he came. Until he had fed he seemed indifferent to his changed surroundings.

The first thing that he ate was his minute discarded sh.e.l.l, and, from this slender meal, resulted disproportionate energy. He started forthwith on his travels, outwards towards the light as far as he could go. On the leaf point he built himself a pigmy throne of silk; and this was his citadel for a week. He only left it to feed, nibbling the leaf edge jerkily on either side of him. At the week's end he lost his appet.i.te. His body was now of a decided green--green with the finest powdering of yellow. About his waist the yellow fused into a crescent. Nine of him would have measured an inch.

On the eighth day he ceased feeding altogether. He sat with his hind-quarters anch.o.r.ed to his throne, his head and fore legs raised from off the leaf, rigid and immovable. For three days he grew yellower and yellower. Then his skin split down his back, and he successfully accomplished his first moult. In his short span he pa.s.sed through many changes, but never one more quaint than this.

During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out before him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.

He moulted once again before the winter, but this was merely a growing moult. Until October he never left his leaf point. Then Nature herself warned him to seek shelter. The weather was breaking. Rain he did not mind, but wind was different. Suppose his leaf was torn from its socket and hurled a hundred yards into the field?

Leaves were falling all round him, and it was time to take up his winter quarters. He spent a day or two in reaching them, yet they were not far off--merely the junction of his own particular branch to the parent stem.

There, in the shelter of the fork, he spun himself a silken blanket, and in it he slept peacefully till April.

Peacefully through everything, and in spite of everything. Rain beat in drenching floods against the sallow, hailstorms lashed her branches, snow enshrouded her, h.o.a.r-frost bespangled her,--the little Emperor was quite unmoved. As the bark weathered from ebony to rusty olive, chameleon-like, he changed with it. This was the only outward sign he gave of life.

The catkins bloomed once more, and once more were rudely gathered. With the bursting of the leaf the little Emperor crept from his blanket. He found the world much as he had left it. Only the leaves were covered with soft down, smaller, and easier to bite. He was by now a full half inch in length, big enough to roam at large, and hungry enough to eat the tree. He started on the first leaf he came to, and, in five minutes, had gnawed a neat crescent out of it. There was method in his gnawing. He fixed his claspers firmly to the stalk, then stretched his head as far as he could reach, and nibbled the leaf edge backwards. When his feet reached his claspers, he commenced afresh.

Before the winter he had only fed at night; now he fed from sunrise to sunset, and at night as well. He fattened steadily, and in proportion, growing more slug-like every day. His horns but emphasized the likeness.

He carried them well forward, and, at his rare sleeping intervals, they lay flat against the leaf. Thus with his swollen waist he seemed to fall away both ends. Three times he outgrew his coat. Each time he had eaten till it stretched to bursting point. Each time the process of disrobing was the same.

He dragged his slow bulk to some thick ma.s.s of leaves, selected the innermost of them, and spun a web of silk upon its surface. From this he hung himself head downwards. His weight helped him, and, in due course, the old skin split along his back, and he emerged resplendent in a fresh, untarnished, elastic livery.

Each moult was marked by some embellishment. Rusty olive gave place to pale sap green, this in turn to the green of the young willow-leaf, and this again to the green of lush gra.s.s. Nor was the change in body colour all. His sides in time were decked with slanting stripes of yellow. A V-shaped orange girdle marked his waist. Its buckle was a tiny splotch of crimson. His horns were tipped with russet brown, and head and tail alike were faintly tinged with blue.

Yet, for all his rainbow tints, Nature had decreed that he should live invisible. To this end she had coloured him to match his food plant. The lines of yellow on his sides broke the monotony of green, as veins break the monotony of a leaf. The blue about him was sister to the blue of summer that played amid the foliage with quivering transparent lights and shadows.

Nor did the cunning harmony end here. In form as well as tint he cheated observation. His outline, as he lay at rest, formed the most perfect outline of a twisted leaf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROWING MORE SLUG-LIKE EVERY DAY. FOR ALL HIS RAINBOW TINTS, NATURE HAD DECREED THAT HE SHOULD LIVE INVISIBLE.]

Birds pa.s.sed him by unnoticed. Once, and once only, the ichneumon marked him down.