The Golden Bird | Page 3

seat beside Uncle Cradd, both of them in deep
converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle Cradd bumbled the
air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old bass, I should
have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the
devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon
his old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into
exile; but I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the
faded rose leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case,
for upon the seat beside me rode the Golden Bird in a beautiful crate,
which bore the legend, "Cock, full brother to Ladye Rosecomb, the
world's champion, three-hundred-and-fourteen-egg hen, insured at one
thousand dollars. Express sixteen dollars." And in another larger crate,
strapped on top of the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy
skirts, some coarse linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia
after a pattern in "The Review," and several pairs of lovely,
high-topped boots, as well as a couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his
family, to whom he had not yet even spoken. The family consisted of
ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn feminine darlings whose crate
was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog Farm, Boulder,
Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very much alive

foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or rather
my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely lingerie I
had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible war
had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I
had not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high
prices, because who could tell whether France would ever procure their
like again? They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery
and real Val, and anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred
dollars instead of the thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars
apiece, which to me did not seem exactly fair, as they were of just as
good family as he. I was very proud of myself for having been
professional enough to follow the directions of my new big red book on
"The Industrious Fowl," and to buy Golden Bird and his family from
localities which were separated as far as is the East from the West. My
company was responsible for my light-heartedness at a time when I
should have been weeping with vain regrets at leaving life--and perhaps
love, for I couldn't help hearing in my mind's ears that great dangerous
racer bearing Matthew away from me at the rate of eighty miles an hour.
I was figuring on just how long it would take the five to eight hundred
children of the Bird family, which I expected to incarnate themselves
out of egg-shells, to increase to a flock of two thousand, from which, I
was assured by the statistics in that very reliable book, I ought to make
three thousand dollars a year, maybe five, with "good management."
Also I was not at all worried about the "good management" to be
employed. I intended to begin to exert it the minute of my arrival in the
township of Riverfield. I had even already begun to use "thoughtful
care," for I had brought a box of tea biscuits along, and I felt a positive
thrill of affection for Mr. G. Bird as he gratefully gobbled a crushed
one from my hand. Also it was dear of him the way he raised his proud
head and chuckled to his brides in the crate behind him to come and get
their share. It was pathetic the way he called and called and they
answered, until I finally stopped their mouths with ten other dainties, so
that he could consume his in peace. Even at that early stage of our
friendship I liked the Golden Bird, and perhaps it was just a wave of
prophetic psychology that made me feel so warmly towards the proud,
white young animal who was to lead me to--

So instead of the despair due the occasion, I was happy as I jogged
slowly out over the twenty long miles that stretched out like a silvery
ribbon dropped down upon the meadows and fields that separate the
proud city of Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of
Riverfield, which nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps
time away under its huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept
perpetually green by the gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried
green fronds around their winter nakedness. As we rode slowly along,
with a leisure I am sure all the motor-car world has