A STROLL WITH MRS BARNARD

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1717, 25 January 1905, Page 7

A STROLL WITH MRS BARNARD

(By Hamblen Sears.)

Mrs Biariiard took my eye and heart the moment I met her. She was beautiful beyond question, so beautiful that anyone would have an instinctive desire to caress her. When we came out after supper she sat down on the edge of the piazza close to my chair, and there in the twilight, surrounded by the trees and the topography of the footrhills of the Adirondacks, the desire getting the better of me, I almost put my arm around her neck. Fortunately, I pulled up in time; for, to tell the truth, we had known each other for only about ten minutes.

Yet when Captain Barnard left us a moment later I knew- that some thing was going to happen. The chords of my throat instinctively drew themselves into that old ditty about being in the gloaming, and then she looked up at me with those great brown eyes. That settled it. It was only a little movement quietly to draw her head down upon my knee, and in the silence that followed I was tenderly brushing the brown hair out of her e3 r es, murmuring all sorts of ridiculous things—when the Captain suddenly appeared on the piazza again. We both straightened up in haste and in some natural embarrassment, and .yet, plain as the whole thing must have been, that ridiculously old man did not appear to have noticed anything at all. He was certainly a ridiculous man. In the first place lie was seventy-four years old, gray and shaggy, and though he criticised the President, the Philippines and Cuba, he had been to neither Havana nor Manila, nor had he ever so much as laid eyes on the chief executive of this great country, for the simple reason that he had never been seventyfive miles away from the house upon tho piazza of which he now sat-. It was ridiculous enough for him to criticise automobiles, for example, which everybody criticises and which never got within a hundred miles of his home, nor for that matter ever can, until some one has intelligence enough to make a road out of the old brook-bed which uo had used that- afternoon, to the disgust of the horses and the complaints of a waggon. But of course that was noi > his strident criticisms on the •nnincs and Cuba, for everyone will ... ;V x ifet it is ridiculous in this country for a man to give out harsh and de-

tisive comment on men and pla os lie nao never seen. But tiie thing that made the Captain ridiculous beyond all else, as I considered it afterward, was that he took no notice of the rather unconventional attitude of Mrs Barnard t.' im moment ■when he appeared on that sentimental piazza. I wondered too —not then, but afterward —how many other masculine hands had softly brushed the hair out of those beautiful brown eyes. Instead of taking not'oe, "Ik** '~ a L > tain turned to me and said: ‘Would you like to try the woodcock early in the morning?” I hesitated a moment, andi tnen remarked in what I tried • make a nonchalant tone: “Would Mrs Barnard go too?” „ „ “Oh, she’s the best- of us all. That was enough. When I heard that we might roam together all day through the alders I tuv 1 ;d and looked down at her. She must have seen '1 e joy in my eyes, for she did something that gave me one of those tortured moments of ecstasy and pain such as are felt only at rare intervals by mankind, and mostly in novels at that. She turned her beautiful lace up to me, and without further comment put her foot into my lap. After the evening of sentiment, the morning of action. After the bustle of town, the calmness of the woods. It is such changes as these that make the spice of life and the health of the m.nd. Hene this morning, for example, I awoke with a start, looked at my watch and realised that t was only a scant half-hour to dress, eat breakfast, and catch the something train for the office, and then I sank back with calm relief to think over the incontrovertible fact that that train we a good two hundred and fifty miles away, and that it was not to know me in several days to come. Let it start exactly at something something. Let it be delayed up the line. Let the passengers curse the company again and run to their offices for fear of losing nine and one-quarter minutes. I cared not a whit. I had only to turn over to look out *>ro>i the foiest primeval, or upon the second growth at any rate; and for all I cared or could do at that moment offices and trains miigh-t slip into what somebody has politely termed the Inner Kettle of the Other Place: for by seven o’clock Barnard and I were seated in one of the hardy waggons that alone can stand the brook-beds of that country, with Mrs Barnard apparently satisfied to lie under the seat. So we drove through the wet, glistening morning out on the flat valley to one of the alder marshes, tied the old horse, and then started forward.^ It is a strange country that these little, long-billed, stub-t-* To i woodeocK prefer-—a marsh with the centre of the earth for its bottom and with its surface covered by alder'-bushes that seem planned to prevent anyone except woodcock from getting through. Mrs Barnard, however, seemed to know the place, for she set to work at once when the Captain, who spoke to her colloquially as “Lady,” requested her to get into the covert and report progress. This particular swale was long and narrow, and thus each of us took a side and moved cautiously along the edge of the alders ready for any sudden progress that her ladyship might report. The aut-unm day was up now re.cl in full blast-, cold, clear ancl fine. The leaves were gene, and the black aider twigs stuck up spitefully toward. Heaven. New and then we wiped from either eye a cold tear which the keen October air ha-ci brought them Mean tame tire Captain kept talking over things with Mrs p arnard. She sa d nothing, but moved on through the covert with scarcely a sound. So we walked on, now and- then giving a hoot to one another to keep the line and he sure that we should not fire a couple of dozen small but penetrating shot into something besides the birds feathers. Occasionally I got a glimpse of Mrs Barnard’s graceful body moving along cautiously. She mad© no- comments, but was thinking hard and studying everything that came within reach of her senses —when of a sudden she stopped and changed to stone. It was none of your picture points with lifted front paw—not at all. She crouched down close to* Mother Earth, or rather close to the bottomless bog, with one foot well in front, one hind leg stretched far back, and with that long, keen nose pushed forward to its utmost extent. There must be something there ; and asking her to keep ill for a space I tried to get in there t-o- her. But the alders were goo-d fighters, and it became necessary to get down on all fours and crawl along by the roots. Bo we came opposite one another with no-t more than twenty feet between us, and somewhere in that half-dozen yards stood a tiny woodcock, bright-eyed and intent, but so- keen and so well matched with the brown autumn that neither human nor canine eye could see her, look as either might. Nothing except a surer sense than sight knew that she was there.

“Where be she, Lady; where, old gal?” And the Captain’s burly form loomed up behind Mrs Barnard. Not a quiver of the body did she make, oniy her brown eyes brightened

a bit. and turned in. their socket*, toward her-lord and masier. I took another step forward and the whole scene changed, lip got Madam ’Woodcock between us, moving straight for me and not over a loot above the ground, the quaint, depressed bill hanging low, the wide brown wings spread stiffly out. i i r £ I do not claim to be a shot—lar lioin it. They tell me no one who can puli a trigger will say he- is a shot. Btill occasionally I can hit the traditional barndoor, and one would say that- when a bird just clears the end of your barrel in plain view there might—nay, there really is some slight resemblance between tho animate and the inanimate tradition. And yet that, woodcock came at least ten feet at me straight as a die and low in under the bushes, and I —l not only never fired, but, with shame be it said, I literally dodged the Little fellow for fear he would hit my head. After he had passed I pulled trigger, however, with what came nigh to being unerring aim ; for the voice of the Captain lifted itself above the murmurings that I was confiding to the alders: “Hi, man!” cried he, “them shot o’ yourn’ makes holes! Duggumit, ain’t you seen me?'’ Checking my expletives to the alders. I asked one of those intelligent questions as to whether the shot had gone near him. “Not so doggoned fur off that I couldn’t hear ’em zipping,” he muttered. “Ain’t you never took a come-on bird afore?”

I told him I had been in the- comeon game once or twice, but with birds of another feather, and always in New York ; but after all his sarcasm was nothing compared to the expression in Mrs Barnard’s eyes. She could not understand it. She looked at me in wonder, and then, feeling that she must be wrong, she ranged here and thereabout the place searching for the little bird, who is to this da.y chuckling all the way up his long bill at the manner in which he walked out of as bad a. mess as ever woodcock got into. There is little to be said in such cases for publication. The guest is not inclined to interview, and the host, being of gentle breeding, even when he has never travelled seventy-five miles from his home, is apt to think more than he says. And as to the third party? Well, if you happen to wish to make a good impi'ession upon her, it is more or less an unfortunate episode. I could only sa.y to myself that at the next shot I’d be hornswoggled if I d dn’t. blow the whole bird into the next world.

The opportunity came soon enough. Mrs Barnard moved slowly on into the alders, and this time I followed in her wake. The bog got looser and more deceptive as we proceeded, but I paid not the slightest attention to the Captain’.remarks about the way those swamps had of letting one down, and so we wallowed on. In a few moments the water was to the tops of my long hoots, and that, uncomfortable sucking repeated itself regularly as one foot after another came up and out under protest. Lady was just ahead jumping gaily from lump to lump of sturdy SAvamp grass—then she suddenly dropped to a point again.

It was useless for me- to try to move,' since the exertion required to move one leg was enough to disturb any bird within a hundred-fo-ot radius. AndI stood, or rather sunk, where I was, waiting for Mrs Barnard to get the bird up. It was a reasonably clear opening and everything promised well, provided the woodcock got up before the bog covered my eyes. Frankly, the race was worth gambling on, with odds in favour of the cock; for as we Avaited I began to feel a certain cold-, clammy moisture penetrating viciously to my person somewhere about midway between the shoulder and the knee, and it required not a great ability to recognise that the penetration was proceediig rapidly upward. At this moment the Captain appeared ahead and the Avoodcock likewise. With one solemn resolution on my lips I folio wed the long beak around to the left and dropped him just beyond her ladyship. The Captain remarked that this was better, and he had set busily to work to- sc curb the bird when my comment that “this” was an expressive sight worse* drew his attention to me. Even then I was forced to ask Irm if ho would mind Letting the feathered creature go Avhile he helped me to health and happiness.

“My!” said he, coming through the bushes, “There ain’t much of you left, be there? I dunno’s the rest is worth savin’.”

I told him I had a certain personal interest in the remnant, and that if he would lend a hand I’d like to* make a break for liberty. Thus Avith much reaching out of hands and long and steady pulling I gradually oozed and sucked out of the mess and recovered the. use of my own legs. And as I salon a clump endeavouring to clean up, Mrs Parnard came along and deposited the soft, little body in my hand.

We have beard so much lately of the shooting of birds and beasts with the camera that a man who kills one of the feathered sons or daughters of Creation is coming to. be known in certain quarteirs ns the person who immediately precedes

the baker and the candle-stick maker in Mother Goose’s ancient rhyme. And at, like the procedure of Madam Carrie Nation, while the object is worthy it lacks temperance in its execution. There are many song-birds which it is pleasanter and better to hear than to eat, and they are killed only by the men who bear that name, or who should bear it. if they do not now. But on the other hand there are many birds that furnish good and heaitny food and that do not sing, which being furnished for food in any case, might far more properly and to much greater advantage be killed by men who protect their country, who watch carefully by summer and winter to see to it that they increase in numbers and flourish in their native haunts, than by the barnyard tradesmen. We were wrong not to encourage the sportsman some years ago., and now we have no buffalo.. If we do not encourage hnn now, we shall soon have no woodcock. It is because you and I want now and then to get a deer in Maine that there are more deer there to.-day than there have been m the last hundred years. It, therefore, becomes somewhat of a paradoxical truism that the men who want to, and who do, kill game are the men who not only keep them alive, but see to it that they increase.

And, in the midst of all this, those who know enougn get their chance to wander over the hills and through the swales, watching all that the good earth has to tell, getting the health and the y that comes only from the trees and tho fields, and all that in them is, coning hack by and by to the work that must be done by some one to keep this country moving on to leadership. Jack, being an extremely dull boy, if he lias all work and no play, is no imaginary person; and if Ave cannot all be great men, we can certainly all avoid being nil drones by getting a genteel sufficiency of play. Furthermore-, the real sportsman gets a deal more out of his day in the woods than the mere killing. He gets an inside suggestion of what there is in the world besides railroad shares and corporate interests and excessively late and indigestible suppers, and he learns to put the last throe in their proper places. Going a -Avood cocking at seven in the morning, as we did that day, he learns how the woodcock lives, what. it. feeds o-n, what its little family A\ T ays are, and more especially he learns to praise the Lord in iiis inmost soul for that He has laid out so fair a world and set such wonders thereon. For while you wander in the covert, full of the work of your dogs, in constant expectancy, there is little room in your head for the cares of business, yet there are vacant

igeonholes for the learning of the woods. And at the end you hold in your hand the material for a meal which the other man who* Avould only shoot with the camera Avill not hesitate* to go and buy with money. So avc moved along for the rest of the morning, now and then getting a shot, frequently resulting in a miss on my naif, never so resulting on the Captain’s part. He did not aim at all; he merely pulled the trigger, and the “feathered critter” fell. It wa.s all instinctive Avith the fine old woodsman. But after awhile av© moved up to a deserted farm-house and had our luncheon of sandAviches and pie. It was as avb sat thus that I caught sight of something just above the horizon more familiar than woodcock. Yet it could not be, not here in the-.middle of New York State with no bodv of water anywhere about. No*, nod Yet I looked again. Certainly that queer movements of the Avings, those long/ urn gainly necks, that strange formation in he* flight—•

“Captain, am I crazy, or are those ducks?”

Hie turned and took a long look at. the speeding specks, and then got hastily to his feet.

“Du"gummed if them ain’t mallards!” .said ho in wonder. “Where be they v-goin? Where?” And then we Avatched them and saw them light in a field of wheat stubble.

“They can’t be ducks,” said I presently. “It don’t matter much what they can be,” said lie. “Them’s mallards for sure, doAvn there in the stubble.” “Then I’m for ’em.” I said, and off avo went.. It Avas a strange afternoon for a man Avho has lrted his bird-shooting life among ducks in the stands and bateries by the sea. Here, av © were several hundred miles from salt water and some-

ing close upon a hundred miles from fresh water of any size, without docoys, with Mrs Barnard on our hand. w ith half-a-dozen woodcock in our poeets, going wild-duck shooting in the mountains. It seemed that about twenty of the brown, and green feathered wanderers had .really foregathered in a marshy stubble field surrounded by long grass. And after much consultation we came up to the shot from behind the long grass and crawled through this to the odgc. It might have been the seacoast, or the l shore of a lake, loi the long grass made out into the fields as i.;> pomt-s of land into the sea.

The Captain sneaked out upon one point- and I took Mrs Barnard to another. Her ladyship trusted me, I knew, but she could not understand this

concealment., nor yet my commands forbidding her to go and point the bird* •which she well Know were near by. Still she trusted- me and waited, as ft female always should. There were the ducks in full view trotting about the ivheac field, hut wiiiE no assurance- that they would come our way. Then the wise old Captain moved cautiously backward the Aiay w© had come, circled the little rise of ground and came up on the other side. Presently they saw him and started clumsily upward. First came a vvide circle ; then a narroAver one, as is their AA’ont, and in another moment they SAVung m over me.

I gave- them both barrels, and dropped the last bird. On they went in the circle and the old man cracked twice and got tAvo out of the buncli. Mrs Barnard began to get nervous, but a promise of later companionship quieted her, and the birds came round again. Another shot —another bird, and aU was over; for the Avan deters had wandered elsewhere. Thereupon the real qualities •f Mrs Barnard truly came forth. She not only brought in the four ducks, but she followed two which had separated from the others into the timber near by, nicked out one that was wounded, and finally thinking -she was pointed at Die other brought up a partridge that I carefully missed and that fell to that uncanny accuracy of the Captain’s aim r less shot-gun. As the sun began to get beloAV the horizon and the cold October air came down from the hills wo trudged along with droopiug heads and loaded pockets, Mrs Barnard trotting peacefully at our herds. It is not for a man who tells of an unpoetic day with the birds to drift at eventide into poetry or into poetic descriptions, but to my mind suck a twilight at that month of the year is something you feel in yor poetry belt strong and sure. All along the western horizon the leafless trees stand up with the red light behind them like an etching, only never was there such light and such sharp branches on etcher’s copper. That same strange afterglow brings out all the colours everywhere, and reflects like silver from the pools in the ruts of the roact and the burrows of the fields. Somehow you tramp along in silence ard think not of the day's sport, nor yet of the office, but in a stupid Anglo-Saxon way of fee joy of living, of respect for the Mind that can panat such sky and hills and trees and light, of pride in benig part of it all,and of —of what I cannot just set down here, though I Avish I could—a little sense of surety that God’s in His H«avcn and all’s right with the world.

And so- we thus came t-o tlie old house* again, and sat us doAvn by a huge fire with uo other light in the room. Airs Barnard curled up on the rug beiore the blaze; the Captain sat in a chair with his feet stretched out to the burning gIoAV and his healthy old eyes gazing into the embers; and I lay on the rug by her ladyship with my fingers in her soft hair and my thoughts wandering hither and thither, while the av-.xkl-cock sizzled cheerfully in preparation of a meal that was no doubt fit for the gods, but was ultimately consumed with infinite relish by common or garden mortals.

I do* not knOAA r if there* be finer ho-m-s in this world, but I do know that he who* has not had such, Avho does not l'ecall such ends of tried days Avhen the body is so gloriously weary and the mind so rested —he would better go- far in search of them than Avalt to pile up another million. Some people can make money at any time; others can never make" it. But rich or poor, the man who does not know the October woods in our northern country is a miserable critter, and deserves neither affluence nor peace of mind. My memento of those few days with he Contain is Mrs Barnard*. I felt that it Ava-s love at first sight, and so it. turned out to be. For now at home she sits by me and looks up at me as of old, and never seems to* regret that she has cast in her lot Avith me for better, for worse. Tho other la-oy of mv household objected at* frisk and l she has come in a way to accept tfa® situation when we are hi fee eounrvy, there is a balk at any such live in town, for there, she says: Sucii dentures are positively not decent.