My Robin | Page 6

If our conversation on the enthralling
subjects of fertilizers and aphides seemed in its earnest absorption to
verge upon the emotional and tender he interfered at once. He
commanded my attention. He perched on nearby boughs and
endeavored to distract me. He fluttered about and called me with chirps.
His last resource was always to fly to the topmost twig of an apple tree

and begin to sing his most brilliant song in his most thrilling tone and
with an affected manner. Naturally we were obliged to listen and talk
about him. Even old Barton's weather-beaten apple face would wrinkle
into smiles.
"He's doin' that to make us look at him," he would say. "That's what
he's doin' it for. He can't abide not to be noticed."
But it was not only his vanity which drew him to me. He loved me. The
low song trilled in his little pulsating scarlet throat was mine. He sang it
only to me--and he would never sing it when any one else was there to
hear. When we were quite alone with only roses and bees and sunshine
and silence about us, when he swung on some spray quite close to me
and I stood and talked to him in whispers--then he would answer
me--each time I paused--with the little "far away" sounding trills--the
sweetest, most wonderful little sounds in the world. A clever person
who knew more of the habits of birds than I did told me a most curious
thing.
"That is his little mating song," he said. "You have inspired a hopeless
passion in a robin."
Perhaps so. He thought the rose-garden was the world and it seemed to
me he never went out of it during the summer months. At whatsoever
hour I appeared and called him he came out of bushes but from a
different point each time. In late autumn however, one afternoon I
SAW him fly to me from over a wall dividing the enclosed garden from
the open ones. I thought he looked guilty and fluttered when he
alighted near me. I think he did not want me to know.
"You have been making the acquaintance of a young lady robin," I said
to him. "Perhaps you are already engaged to her for the next season."
He tried to persuade me that it was not true but I felt he was not entirely
frank.
After that it was plain that he had discovered that the rose-garden was
not ALL the world. He knew about the other side of the wall. But it did
not absorb him altogether. He was seldom absent when I came and he
never failed to answer my call. I talked to him often about the young
lady robin but though he showed a gentlemanly reticence on the subject
I knew quite well he loved me best. He loved my robin sounds, he
loved my whispers, his dewy dark eyes looked into mine as if he knew
we two understood strange tender things others did not.

I was only a mere tenant of the beautiful place I had had for nine years
and that winter the owner sold the estate. In December I was to go to
Montreux for a couple of months; in March I was to return to Maytham
and close it before leaving it finally. Until I left for Switzerland I saw
my robin every day. Before I went away I called him to me and told
him where I was going.
He was such a little thing. Two or three months might seem a lifetime
to him. He might not remember me so long. I was not a real robin. I
was only a human being. I said a great many things to him--wondering
if he would even be in the garden when I came back. I went away
wondering.
When I returned from the world of winter sports, of mountain snows, of
tobogganing and skis I felt as if I had been absent a long time. There
had been snow even in Kent and the park and gardens were white. I
arrived in the evening. The next morning I threw on my red frieze
garden cloak and went down the flagged terrace and the Long Walk
through the walled gardens to the beloved place where the rose bushes
stood dark and slender and leafless among the whiteness. I went to my
own tree and stood under it and called.
"Are you gone," I said in my heart; "are you gone, little Soul? Shall I
never see you again?"
After the call I waited--and I had never waited before. The roses were
gone and he was not in the rose-world. I called again. The call was
sometimes a soft whistle as near a robin sound as I could make it--