by Mary Howitt.
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #10 (06 Mar 1847).
Spring.
Of the Pantry-door Key being lost, and then found.
It was very mild and pleasant weather, in the beginning of January; the Poet's two children ran about the garden with nothing on their heads but their beautiful long hair. Up in the pigeon-cote. there was a deal of discussion going on: Jessy and Crow, one pair of pigeons, were talking about having eggs, and a young brood; while Snowdrop and her little husband Cravates said it was quite too soon to think of such a thing. These pigeons belonged to the poet's children, who fed them twice every day, and loved them very dearly. They were very handsome pigeons: Jessy was quite a rainbow of colours, and he strutted prodigiously; Crow his wife was very dark, all purple and green; nobody would have taken her for a hen-pigeon, she was so large and grand. The other pair, Snowdrop and Cravates, were very different: she was as white as snow and looked as sleek and round as if she had been cut out of marble; her husband, Cravates, was of rich red brown with a white ring round his neck which the children called his cravat. On the floor of the dovecote lived a pair of guinea-pigs, Toby and Jenny. Toby was a quiet old fellow that lived very much to himself and never troubled his mind about anything; he squeaked a little to himself; he always found plenty to eat, and that was all he cared for. Jenny, his wife, was a little plump, busy, merry guinea-pig that not only looked after her own large family but kept up a deal of intercourse with the pigeons; they were on the best terms in the world, and now, when there was all this discussion about whether the pigeons should begin to lay or not, she sided with Jessy and his wife, and told them by all means to make a nest, and have a brood, for that it was an uncommonly fine season, there would be no more cold weather, not a bit! and even if there were, what would it matter;—fat, well-feathered birds like them never felt the cold; for her part she never felt it; she had forgotten what cold was. The poet's children, she said, never let them want; it was all nonsense talking about want; for her part she did not believe in the existence of such a thing! it was only a bugbear to frighten ignorant pigeons and guinea-pigs with. Jessy and Crow said the same; they said they always felt so warm about their hearts, and their feathers were so thick; that even after they had eaten their fill there was plenty of food, so they would have a brood.
Cravates and Snowdrop were convinced by what they heard, and when Crow's young ones began to Peep from the egg, Snowdrop had been sitting three days. Jenny, the guinea-pig, had seven little ones. It was the merriest little region of life that ever was seen, Guinea-pigs and pigeons were all as warm and fat as possible. The poet's children were as happy as these little creatures; they clapped their hands and screamed with delight when they saw the young pigeons come out of the shell. Snowdrop and Cravates were now full of family business, first one sat on the eggs, and then the other, and in two weeks they also would have two young pigeons.
There were many changes of weather in January; now it was fine and mild, and then it was bitterly cold, and froze, and snowed, and thawed, and froze again; the pond was covered with ice, and little boys slided. At the commencement of February it grew colder and colder every day; the earth was like a hard board, nothing could come out of it, and the little snowdrops and hepaticas and winter aconites that had ventured in the mild weather to put up their heads, now were quite sorry for it, and were so pinched with cold, they did not know what to do. They said to one another how cold the bed was, and they wished so much that snow would fall, and thus give them blankets and coverlets to keep them warm; but no snow came, and every day it froze harder and harder.
The poet's children, like their pigeons, felt very little of the cold, for they were well fed, and full of life and strength, and had warm woollen clothes on; twice every day they went and fed their pigeons and their guinea-pigs. Snowdrop's young ones were ready to be hatched, and Crow's were growing famously; but they had as yet only greyish down on their little bodies. One day they said to their mother that something "bit them." "It is only the cold," she replied; "silly little things!" and she told them to lie closer under her feather petticoat, which was lined with down, and so they did; and they felt no more cold, for their mother and her feather petticoat were as warm as a little fire. Just then, old Jessy, the father, came in; he had been taking his morning airing, and it was amazing what a deal of cold air seemed to come in with him; the very tips of his feathers seemed frozen; but he said he was as warm as toast; that he felt nothing of the cold. He said he had been up at the rookery; that they were all in a pretty state there; they had begun to build some days before, while the weather was mild; but that talking of a famine; they looked very discontented and down-hearted, and they said they did not know what would be the end of all this; they could get nothing out of the ground, and they could get nothing out of the air,—what then was to become of them? Jessy said it was very unpleasant to hear all this; and he told them that, for his part, he believed there was plenty of food to be had, if they would only look for it; he had often heard their outcries of famine, but he thought it was all discontent, and of people's own bringing about. The rooks were very angry to hear him talk thus, and if he had not flown off he did not know what the consequences might have been; he then went into the poet's garden, and there were all the foolish flowers that had come out too soon, shivering like naked beggars in the street, till it was quite unpleasant to see them; he told them, that they should have stopped at home by their warm fires, and in bed among the blankets, and that if they would run themselves into trouble, they must take the consequences. The flowers made no reply, for their poor mouths were so stiff with cold that they could not open them. The next thing he saw were the little birds of the garden; there were robins, and tomtits, and redstarts, and hundreds of sparrows; they had all puffed out their feathers like so many muffs to keep them warm, and they looked plump enough, but all they talked about was this famine. There was nothing to be had, and they thought they must all die; they looked very dismal and dispirited; they could not even twitter; they did nothing but hop about on the hard, stony ground, and pick at little bits of dirt, out of which nothing came; or if anything eatable were in it, ten to one but three or four of them fell to quarrelling about it. They told dismal tales about many that had died, and said they expected that they too should die of want; they said everything was against them this winter; that last summer so little hedge-fruit came to maturity, and thus the great store of nature was empty; there were no berries on the pyracantha that grew up one side of the poet's house this year, and that was a great loss; and they did not know why, but the poet's children seemed to have forgotten them, they found no crumbs now, as they used to do. Oh! it was very melancholy, and they knew that they should all die of want. The blackbirds and the thrushes that sate on the boughs about, sighed out the same melancholy ditty; they said that this great frost had locked up the pantry door, and there was no chance but of their dying of hunger.
It troubled Jessy the pigeon to hear all this. He felt very uncomfortable, and he wished not to believe what the had heard. He told his wife, and Snowdrop, and her husband, and old Jenny the guinea-pig; and just as he had finished, up came, like two beautiful angels, the poet's children, and scattered tares and peas for the pigeons, and brought bread and milk and green sprouts for the guinea-pigs. There was such plenty in this dovecote; there could be no want out of doors—there could be no famine;—it must be discontent, and improvidence, and bad management which brought the others into their evil plight. Whilst the pigeons were thus settling the question, old Toby, the father guinea-pig, who had not yet spoken, asked abruptly, "why did they lock the pantry door—we always let ours stand open, and therefore we have plenty." They all said that Toby had hit the right nail on the head, and Jessy said, before long he would go out and ask the same question of all the discontented out of doors.
The frost grew harder and harder, and one morning a heavy yellowish cloud filled the sky, and the white feathery snow began to fall; all day and all night it fell. The garden was beautiful; it lay two foot deep on the ground, and on the upper surface of every leafless branch and bough, and bent the evergreens like heavy plumes. Every thing was as silent as death; not a bird twittered. The little snowdrops, and hepaticas, and winter aconites, said one to another when the snow began to fall; "the blessing is come at last; now we shall go to sleep and lie warm and snug till the better days come." They closed their eyes, and fell into the sweetest sleep, and the soft, delicate snow, like loving hands, heaped up the Warm covering around them.
The little birds—robins, and redstarts, and tomtits, and the little good-for-nothing sparrows—peeped from under the broad leaves of the ivy that thickly covered the whole of the poet's house, and did nothing but sigh all day long. "It will be a deep, deep snow," said they;" it may perhaps lie four or five weeks; the pantry-door key will be lost in the snow, and how shall we ever get the door open again!" The snow fell thicker and faster, and in the afternoon the poet's gardener cut a path through the snow from the kitchen door to the dove-cote. The old garden blackbird, the bird that had cheered the hearts of the poet and his children all last summer, sate half-starved in a hole in the sycamore tree, and saw the two children, wrapped up in great coats and cloaks till only their eyes and the tips of their noses could be seen, go from the kitchen-door along the path that had been cut in the snow to the dove-house. They carried tares and peas in a basket, and soaked bread in a basin; they were going to feed their favourites, and never once thought of all the little hungry stomachs and longing eyes that were all around them.
"The pantry-door is fast locked, and the key is now lost!" was sighed out all that night from under the roof and from the crannies of the old walls, and from under the ivy leaves, and from the hollows of the sycamore trunk. "The pantry-door key is lost, and we shall die of hunger!" The poor rooks left off building; the snow lay a foot deep in every unfinished nest; the last year's rooks asked the old ones if they had ever known the pantry-door key lost before. Very few of them ever had; they had heard their grandfathers talk of such a thing in their time, but they did not think it could have been as bad as this! The key of the pantry-door had never certainly been quite lost before; but they hoped it might be found. The young rooks were quite disheartened, they did not believe that the key ever would be found. They were ready to grow desperate; it was all that the most experienced could do to persuade them to patience and hope.
The poet stood at his window and looked out; the snow had lost its first purity; it had fallen from the tree branches and had been shaken out from the evergreens, lest it should break them; it lay like a casing of marble over all the earth: it was hard frozen, and glittered in the sun like crystal points. It was now a week since it had fallen, and there seemed no chance of the frost going. The poet saw his children rush from the dove-house with their rosy faces and bright eyes: Crow's two young pigeons were full feathered; how they had grown! and Snowdrop's were like two little balls of down. The children were on their way to tell this to their father.
But before they came he had something to tell them. As he stood at his window he had seen the rooks on their way through the cold wintry sky to the distant meadows. What could the poor rooks find there for food? The thought fell on his heart with a sadness. He thought of all the suffering creatures in this bitter season, and he wished that he could help and save them all. Whilst he was thus thinking, he heard the twittering of the little birds in the laurestinas round the window, and he saw the old blackbird sitting just above in the arbutus. Hunger had made them very tame. He heard their mournful twitter, and he understood it—for a poet understands all languages, especially those which come from sorrowful hearts. At that moment his two children came in: "Hush," said he, and they trod as softly as falling snow; "listen to what the little birds are all saying. They say, 'The pantry-door is locked, and the key is lost! There is no one to feed us, and we shall all die of hunger!' This is what the little birds are saying."
The tears started to the children's eyes, and their father continued, "Thus say the little birds; and they speak truly; their pantry door is locked, and the key is lost; many of them will die; they are now like so many little skeletons; they have puffed out their feathers to keep them warm, but they are starved for all that; for the famished have so little warmth within them. 'We shall all die of hunger,' say they. 'Alas! that the pantry-door should be locked and the key lost! No one pities us—we shall all die!' 'Do not despair!' replies that old blackbird in the arbutus," said the poet, directing with his finger the tearful eyes of the children to the bird,—"'do not despair; help comes often when we least expect it. Bear on patiently a little longer,—a little longer bear up, and help will come!'" These were the words of the blackbird, which the poet told to his children; but scarcely were they ended when the blackbird turned its head quickly and then fell, as if dead, from the bough into the snow. Without a word to the children, the poet rushed out, and the next moment they saw him in the garden before the window; all the little birds flew away frightened; and, treading ancle deep in snow, he brought in the dead blackbird.
"Poor, dear blackbird!" said the children, with almost breaking hearts, when they saw it in their father's hands in the warm room where he brought it. "Poor, dear little thing! and it has died of want, and we have never fed the birds all this hard time!"
"Yes," said their father, "it is a serious thing when creatures with appetites find the pantry locked, and the key lost. You must think about these things!"
"But I think," said he, again speaking, and this time more cheerfully, "that this bird is not dead; I believe it is only benumbed, and I think we can revive it." The children rushed about like wild creatures, for they had such loving hearts. They could find neither a cage nor a basket at the moment, but they brought an old last year's garden-bonnet, trimmed with blue ribbon; they put some warm flannel in it, laid the bird within it, and then tied the bonnet in a handkerchief; their father said he would take charge of it for them, in his study, and they must go and see if they could not get the pantry open for the other poor little birds.
They could not understand what the birds said as well as their father, because they were only poet's children; so in the evening when all the birds had had a good dinner, he told them what had been said. They had said that the old blackbird was right; help had come when they least expected it; somebody had picked the lock or burst the pantry door open, and behold every shelf was full of bread! They wondered how it was;—they were only birds, and so they could not tell; this, however, was certain, there was plenty now, where but a minute before, there had been famine. It was just as the good blackbird had said. He was a prophet and a poet, and yet he who knew all this, and had cheered them with hope, was dead! That was a sad thing! They must confess that he was a great poet; they had not thought much of him when he was alive; but they must raise a monument to him now he is dead. "But he is not dead," said the children, "he is all alive in the magpie's cage, and very happy!"
"But they do not know it," said the father; "they think him dead, and mourn for him. They thought very little of him when he was amongst them, but they will honour him now they think him dead." The frost still lasted; and the pantry remained as full as ever. Jessy went and told them in the dove-house that he knew he was right. It was all a needless outcry about the famine; the birds only wanted to excite compassion, that they might induce the pigeons and guinea-pigs to give up their food; they made themselves look miserable and half famished to get fed without working; that they were as brisk now as larks; that he heard a deal said still among the rooks about this pantry door key being lost, but after what he had seen he put no faith in it. It was a mere pretence.
At the end of February the frost broke up; the snow melted all at once; the hard stony ground was like a wet sponge, The grass looked green, and the tree stems brim-full of life; the little snowdrops, and hepaticas, and winter aconites looked round them in astonishment. "Something must have happened," said they one to another; for they were not wide awake yet—" we must have been asleep a long time; come let us get up, we feel such life and strength within us! Hark, that must be a thrush. It is spring, as sure as we are alive!"
The little dear robins and redstarts came hopping among the flowers, and they welcomed each the other; and then the flowers understood all about the dreadful time that had been since they went to sleep. Many birds were dead; that was a certainty; many a dear little bird that had sung to the flowers last summer would never sing to them again! Among those that had died, they said, was the grand old poet, the blackbird; he was a wonderful creature; he suffered dreadfully in the famine; but he tried to cheer all their hearts, and foretold the better time, and the opening of the pantry door, just before it took place; but he never saw it himself. That was the one sorrow they had to deplore; and they did deplore it sincerely.
The flowers were very sorry, tears hung in the snowdrop's beautiful eyes, for she loved the blackbird. At that moment all the little birds flew away, for they heard footsteps coming down the garden walk. It was the poet's children, with the great magpie's cage, in which was the blackbird. They set it just opposite the snowdrops and the other flowers, for they said, "he shall see how beautiful the garden is the moment he gets out of the cage."
The blackbird sprang from the open door of the cage, and flew into a hawthorn tree that grew just by. All the little flowers saw him, and could hardly believe their eyes. The moment he alighted on the tree he carolled forth such a hymn of thankfulness and joy as filled the whole garden. The little birds could scarcely believe their ears. He was alive and well! His song told everything, and every one interpreted it his own way. The poet heard it as he sat in his study; it told him that the spring time—a time of plenty and of gladness—was at hand. A gushing tide of love and gratitude warmed his heart; he took up his pen, and wrote words which were immortal.
It reached the fat pigeons on the house-top, as they were strutting about with their young broods, now out in the great world for the first time; and old Jessy said to his wife, that if it really were true about the famine, he was glad that such a fine singer as the blackbird had got well through it! It reached the poor rooks, that had suffered so dreadfully in the famine, as they sate on their elm-tree tops, and taxing the song for a good omen, they began their building again that very moment. As to the little flowers down in the garden-beds, they were so full of joy, that they reared up their heads, and opened their beautiful eyes to the sun, and shot down their little roots under ground, and woke the sleepy worms and little shining insects, and told them it was time to be stirring, for the beautiful spring season had just begun.
All that day nothing was heard but a shouting on the tree-tops—the burden of the song was the same everywhere—"The key that was lost so long has been found; the pantry door stands wide open; and there is plenty for all!" The poet's children walked hand in hand in the garden, and were happier than ever.