THE TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

Western Star, 31 March 1911, Page 4

THE TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

A STORY OF AN OMEN. . < Once in my East Anglian rambles 1 I came to a little rustic village, re-! mote from railroads and towns, ; which has a small, ancient, very , curious-looking church standing by ! ( itself in a green meadow half a mile | away. I was told that the rector j kept the key himself, and that ho ! was something of a recluse, a studi- I ous, learned man. Doctor of Divinity and so on. j 1 Accordingly I went to the rectory, a charming house standing in its own extensive grounds with lawns, shrubbery, large garden, and shade ] trees, and a wood or grove of ancient oaks separating It from the village. I found the rector digging | in his garden, and could not halp seeing that he was not too well pleased at my request ; hut when I begged him not to leave his task, ' and promised to bring back the key, if he would let me have it, he throw : down his spade and said, “No, he must accompany me to the church himself, as there were points about it which would require to be ex- : plained.” There was no monuments, and when, we had looked at the interior, and he had pointed out the most interesting features, he came out and sat down in the porch. “Arc you an archaeologist, or what ?” he said. I replied that I was nothing so important, that I merely took an ordinary interest in old/churches. I was mainly interested in living things—a sort of naturalist. Then he got up and walked back. “In birds ?” ho asked presently. “Yes, especially in birds.” “And what do you think about omens—do you believe in them ?” The question made me curious, and I replied with caution that I would toll him if he would first tell me the particular case he had in his mind just then. He was silent ; then when we had got back to the rectory he took me round the house to where a large French window opened on the lawn and a shrubbery beyond. “This,” he- said, “is the drawing-room, and my wife, who was very delicate, used always to sit there behind the window, on account of tho aspect. We had a nightingale then ; we had always had him since I came to this 1 parish many years ago. He was a most beautiful singer, and every morning, as long as tho singing time 1 lasted, he would perch on thah small tree on the edge of the lawn, directly before the window, and sing for an hour or two at a stretch. Wo were very proud of our bird, and thought him better than any nightingale we had ever heard. And he was the only one in the neighbourhood ; you would have had to go a mile to find another.

'“One morning about eleven o’clock I was writing in my study at the other side of the house, when my wife came in to me looking pale and distressed, and said a strange thing had happened. She was sitting at her work behind the closed window when n little bird dashed violently against the glass ; then it had flown a little distance away and, turning, dashed back against the glass as at first ; and again it flew off, only to turn and strike th& glass even more violently than before ; then she saw it fall fluttering down, and feared it had' injured itself badly. I went quickly out to look, and found the bird, our nightingale, lying gasping and shivering on the stone step beneath the window. I picked it up and held it to the air in my open hand ; but in two or three seconds it was dead. “I lost my wife shortly! afterwards. That was five years ago, and from that time wc have had no nightingale here.’’ —“Oornhill.”