The Wood-Pigeons and Mary

“Yes, I am very fond of picking them up,” said Mary. “I might have brought some in already, if I had had a basket with me.”

“Pleasance has one or two nice light ones on purpose,” said Miss Verity. “She will show you where she keeps them. If to-morrow is fine again, like to-day,” she went on, “I should like you to go a drive with me. I think Jackdaw and Magpie were very surprised at my not taking you to-day: I often fancy they go along with more spirit when there is some one with me; they like to hear our voices, and little Thomas and I seldom converse.” Little Thomas was the small groom who sat in the back seat, and he was noted for his silence, an uncommon quality in a boy!

Mary laughed.

“No,” she said, “I couldn’t fancy you having much conversation with little Thomas, certainly.”

She felt in her heart just a tiny bit disappointed that there was no likelihood of her going to the forest again the next day. But then her godmother was so good to her that she knew it would be very wrong and ungrateful not to be glad to do all she wished. And besides —

“If I wasn’t quite good, or at least trying to be so,” she said to herself, “the Cooies wouldn’t care for me, or make plans for me or show me things or anything. I am quite sure they would not.”

This was her last waking thought that night, and almost, I think, her first the next morning.

And when she was dressed, and stood for a moment or two at the casement window, which she had opened a little to have a breath of the forest air, there seemed to come an answer to her thought.

“Coo-coo, coo,” sounded softly from the direction of the trees, and Mary just at first hoped that it would be followed by the rustle of little wings and a morning visit from her two friends. But no, only the sweet voices again, this time a little farther off, and Mary, who was getting wonderfully quick at understanding her Cooies’ ways, knew that this meant they were not coming to visit her to-day, but that they were pleased with what she meant to try to do and feel.

The morning passed pleasantly, and the sky, which had been rather grey and overcast early in the day, cleared up about noon and promised to be bright and sunny for the remaining hours.

So Mary felt quite light-hearted when, shortly after luncheon, Miss Verity sent her to get ready for their drive.

“Wrap yourself up warmly,” her godmother said. “It gets chilly in the afternoon – or stay – I have an idea,” and with a smile on her kind face Miss Verity went upstairs, and Mary heard her talking to Pleasance.

In a few minutes she came back, carrying something over her arm which looked to Mary as if her Cooies and all their numerous relations had helped to make it! It was a little cape – made, not of fur, but of tiny feathers, too soft and small to bristle or break, of every shade of bluey-grey, and lined with white, still quite clean, though the cape was evidently old, and the white had grown rather creamy-coloured through lying by for many years.

“It was mine when I was a little girl like you,” said her godmother. “It was considered my very best, and somehow it never got dirty or seemed to need cleaning, though some of the shades are very delicate, as you see. It will be just the thing for you to wear when you drive with me these chilly afternoons.”

Mary eyed the cloak with great interest and approval.

“It is lovely,” she said, “and wonderful I don’t think you could get one like it in any shop now, godmother, could you?”

Miss Verity shook her head.

“I doubt if you could,” she said. “And I do not even know if it came from a shop long ago. It was given to my mother for me when I was only a baby by some friend of her mother’s, and it came ‘from abroad,’ which was all I ever knew about it. But we must be quick, dear; Jackdaw and Magpie are not fond of waiting at the door.”

Nor were they; as Mary ran downstairs she heard their bells tinkling impatiently. And when she called out cheerfully —

“We’re coming, ponies, we’re coming,” it seemed as if the little satisfied toss of their heads meant that they were pleased that she was coming too!

It was a cold day, but dry and crisp, and Mary felt very cosy with the soft grey cape on the top of her own little scarlet cloth jacket. Miss Verity drove quickly, though, as she told Mary, they had not so very far to go.

“But I shall have to stay half-an-hour or so at Crook Edge, the house I want to call at,” she added. “I am going to say good-bye to two girls, who have lived there for some years with their father. He died last year, and now they are leaving for good. Blanche, the elder, is going to be married, and her younger sister, who is scarcely grown-up, is to live with her. They are very sweet girls.”

“Are you very sorry to say good-bye to them?” Mary asked.

Miss Verity hesitated.

“For my own sake, yes. But I am glad for them. It would have been too quiet a life at Crook Edge. It is an out-of-the-way place, at the side of the loneliest part of the forest.”

“Everywhere about here seems to have to do with the forest, doesn’t it?” said Mary.

“Yes, it never lets itself be forgotten,” her godmother replied, glancing as she spoke at the dark green line a little distance off, which seemed as it were to follow them as they went, “and we who love it and almost feel as if we were its children, don’t want ever to forget it.”

“No, no, of course not,” said Mary eagerly. “I feel like that too, though I haven’t been very long here. I know quite how you mean.”

Miss Verity smiled, the very pleased kind of smile that, as Mary had learnt to know, told of her liking to feel that her little god-daughter understood and sympathised in feelings that some children would not have been able to share.

They did not talk much more till they reached Crook Edge, where Miss Verity’s young friends were looking out for them. The elder of the two girls, whose name was Blanche, was very pretty, almost the prettiest person, Mary thought, that she had ever seen. She was tall and slight and very fair; perhaps the black dress she still wore made her seem taller and slighter and fairer than if she had been in colour, and her expression was very sweet. She looked so lovingly at her younger sister, who was also pretty, though not as pretty as Blanche, that Mary could not help thinking to herself that it must be very nice to have a kind grown-up sister! And also felt very pleased when both the girls kissed her as she sprang out of the pony-carriage.

“What a delicious cloak,” said Blanche, as she was helping her visitors to take off some of their wraps in the hall. “It suits your house, Miss Verity. It is really like a dove’s mantle.”

“Yes,” Miss Verity replied, “it is a rather remarkable cloak, and the odd thing is that though I have had it nearly all my life, I do not really know its history, and there is no one who can tell it to me.”

“I have never seen a cloak the least like it,” said Blanche, stroking the soft feathers as she spoke. “But then,” she went on, half-laughingly, “it only suits Dove’s Nest. Nothing there seems quite like anywhere else: don’t you think so, Mary?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “Everything is prettier and funnier than anywhere else.”

“I always envy the name,” said Blanche. “Our name is so ugly and rough – Crook Edge; but it doesn’t matter now, as it will so soon be our home no longer,” and she gave just a little sigh.

“Are you sorry to go away?” asked Mary, looking up gently with her wistful hazel eyes.

“One is always sorry to go away from what has been a home,” said Blanche. “And Milly and I love the forest. By the bye, Miss Verity, we have had the white dove here again since I saw you, – the large white dove.”

“Have you, my dear?” said Miss Verity, looking interested. “That means good luck, I feel sure.”

“Good luck and good-bye,” said Blanche. “Yes, she came and perched on a tree in the garden, and cooed so sweetly. The gardener says she is too large for a dove; that she must be some kind of wood-pigeon only.”

“Unless,” added Milly, “unless, as he says, ‘she’s one as has strayed from furrin parts.’ But I don’t think so. She looks quite at home, and not at all cold or starved. Anyway Blanche and I always call her the white dove. She is so pretty, and one day we thought we saw something gleaming on her neck, like a tiny gold chain – that almost seems as if she was a pet bird, doesn’t it?”

“Or a fairy one?” said Miss Verity, smiling.

They had lingered at Crook Edge rather longer than Mary’s godmother had intended, and though the day was still fine, it was beginning to get dark and the clouds were massing as if rain might be not very far off. Mary gave a little shiver, and Miss Verity looked a trifle uneasy.

“You are not cold, dear?” she said.

“Oh no,” said the little girl, “I don’t think I could be, with this cloak. It was just a sort of feeling, you know, when the night seems to be coming.”

All the same, she said to herself, though Miss Verity whipped up the ponies and they went along at a good pace:

“I wish we were at home.”

And, wonderful to tell, before she had time to wish it again, there they were! For the next words Mary heard were, —

“Wake up, dear. We are at Dove’s Nest.”

And when she opened her eyes, there was Miss Verity’s face smiling down on her, as she half-lay, half-sat in her place with her head on her godmother’s shoulder, and Myrtle and Pleasance looking a little concerned, as “the ladies” had been later of returning than usual, but rather amused too, and both quite ready to lift “Miss Mary” out and carry her to the warmth and brightness indoors.

How Miss Verity had managed to drive with her godchild peacefully making a pillow of her arm is a puzzle I cannot explain.

But as Mary slipped off the feather cloak, feeling as warm as a toast, she looked at it rather curiously, for she had her own thoughts about it.

“Shall I keep it in my room, godmother?” she asked. “That is to say, if you mean to lend it me again.”

“You may count it yours as long as you are here,” Miss Verity replied. “I am sure you will take care of it. And – then we shall see.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mary, adding, “I don’t think I should like to take it away with me. It would get dirty in a town, and that would make me unhappy. I have one drawer upstairs with nothing in. I should like to keep it in there.”

“Very well, you may, and Pleasance will give you some nice tissue-paper to cover it with.”

Pleasance did not forget to do so. Mary found two or three large sheets of pale-blue paper lying ready on her bed late that evening, in which she carefully wrapped the mantle.

Perhaps it was because she did this the last thing before going to sleep, that she had strange dreams that night, in which the cloak, and the wood-pigeons, and pretty Blanche and her cousin Michael and her godmother all seemed to be mixed up together, though in the morning she could not distinctly remember anything except that the dreams had been interesting and pleasant.

“I wonder if my Cooies could tell anything about the feather cloak,” she thought, “and oh, I do wonder if the white dove is any relation of theirs, or if they know her.”

And this morning too she jumped out of bed the very moment Pleasance came to call her, so that she might dress quickly and have a minute or two to stand at the window before the bell rang, so that if the wood-pigeons were anywhere near, they could come to talk to her.

Chapter Ten.

“You Cannot Have Read Many Fairy Stories.”

But no, she stood there, opening the window a little, though it was decidedly cold, in vain. There was no sign or sound of her friends, and Mary felt disappointed and rather cross when the bell rang, and she had to hasten downstairs without even the pretty greeting, she loved so well, reaching her from the neighbouring trees.

“They are really rather unkind,” she thought. “I do believe they know everything, or at least most things about me. I am sure they know I want to see them this morning. I daresay I shall hear nothing more of them – ever – or perhaps they’ll come, but after I am gone; very likely the white dove will come back to Crook Edge after Blanche and Milly are gone. I don’t believe birds have got any hearts, whether they’re half fairies or not.”

“Mary,” said Miss Verity, who noticed Mary’s moods more than the little girl knew, “will you gather some fir-cones for me this afternoon? I shall not be going a drive, as the ponies need shoeing, and besides that, I have some long letters to write. So you can amuse yourself in the forest if you like.” Somehow Mary’s spirits rose when she heard this; for though feeling, as she was, rather offended with the wood-pigeons, it made her, all the same, hopeful that she might come across them.

And as soon as possible after her early dinner she set off, carrying the basket that Pleasance had given her to fill with fir-cones.

“I think I must look like a rather big Red-Riding-Hood,” she thought, as she passed through the wicket between Dove’s Nest and the forest; “though my basket is empty and hers was full, and I am hoping to meet the Cooies and not fearing to meet a wolf! And though my coat is red like hers, it is a jacket and not a cloak.”

But she walked a good way without meeting anything, and again she began to feel rather cross with her little friends.

“I shall just not think any more about them,” she said to herself. “I need not go farther; there are lots of nice cones here. I will just fill the basket and go home, and I will tell godmother that I don’t care to come to the forest after all. It is too dull.”

It did seem very silent that afternoon; all the summer and even autumn sounds had gone, only the wintry ones of a branch snapping and falling, or leaves softly dropping, their little lives over. And now and then some faint strange bird’s note or cry, as the winged traveller passed rapidly overhead, which sounded to Mary’s fancy like a farewell.

“It’s going away,” she thought, “to some lovely warm place for the winter. Perhaps it has come from far north, where it is still colder than here, and is just only passing. I don’t think I like the winter after all, I wish you would take me with you, birdie,” and she gave a little shiver, for she had been standing about, as she picked up the cones. And the cold feeling reminded her of the soft, bright warmth of the secret part of the forest, and made her again reproach the Cooies in her heart, for she felt sure there would be no use in trying to find the white gate or to pass through it, if she did find it, without their help.

But patience is generally rewarded in the end, and Mary had shown patience in her actions if not in her thoughts, for she had by this time well filled her basket. And as she dropped into it the last cone or two it would hold, she heard the murmur that she had, though scarcely owning it to herself, been listening for all the afternoon.

“Coo-coo,” – very faint and distant at first, then clearer and nearer, till, on to each shoulder there came a rustle and a tiny weight, and – they were there! In rather a teasing mood, however!

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” they cooed. “How is your basket filled?”

Mary shrugged her shoulders, but she only heard a “cooey” laugh.

“No, no, you can’t shake us off,” they said.

“Quite contrary, indeed,” quoted Mary. “I should say it to you, not you to me. You know how I’ve been wanting you and watching for you at my window, and now you’ve let half the afternoon go without coming near me. It’s too late now for anything.”

“You are quite mistaken,” was the reply. “There is plenty of time. Business first and pleasure afterwards. You have got a nice basketful of cones, so now you can come with us with a clear conscience.”

“I wish you wouldn’t bother about my conscience; it’s all right,” said Mary, rather crossly still, though in her heart she quite trusted the Cooies, and was delighted to go with them. “What shall I do with the basket?” she went on.

“Leave it here – on the path. It will be quite safe. You are close to the white gate, though you did not know it,” said Mr Coo. “Turn round.”

So Mary did, putting down her basket, and feeling rather like a big ship steered by a very small person at the helm. And sure enough, the tiny path, or passage rather, scarcely to be called a path, was there at her side, though she had not seen it when busy gathering the cones.

It seemed less of a scramble this time, and only a very few paces to go, before they were at the gate. Mary had no grey feather in her cap this time as an “open sesame,” and no need for one apparently, for the white gate opened of itself as soon as they reached it, “without the least fuss. I suppose it is because the Cooies are on my shoulders,” thought she.

And just as they got to the other gate the wood-pigeons hopped down, and actually, with their beaks, or feet, or somehow, pushed it open, without any difficulty, holding it back till Mary had passed through, when it gently closed.

The little girl stood still, looking round her in expectation of seeing the crowds of birds as before. But not one was there! The place, though lovelier that ever, she thought, as she glanced at the beautiful light, flickering and filtering through the interlacing bushes, and rested her eyes on the fresh green, and felt the soft warmth creeping caressingly round her, was quite deserted. And as she turned to her little friends in surprise, they answered, as now often happened, her unspoken question.

“No,” they said, “you will not meet any of our relations to-day. They are very busy elsewhere, as you will hear. But that will make it all the easier to show you the arbours you so much want to see.”

“Thank you,” said Mary, not sorry to hear this, for the crowds of birds had just a little worried her, and she was feeling rather stiff and tired with the cold and with stooping so much to pick up the cones.

“But in the first place,” said one of the Cooies – I think it was Mr Coo – “you must rest a little and get warm.”

He looked at her as he spoke, with his head on one side. He and Mrs Coo were not on her shoulders now, as I said, but on the ground a little in front of her. “You have not got on your new cloak to-day,” he said. “It would have kept you warm.”

“Of course I couldn’t wear it to run about the forest in,” said Mary. “Well, to pick up cones in – I’ve not had much running about to-day, certainly. But how did you know about it?”

“Never mind just now,” was the reply. “Sit down,” and glancing round, Mary saw her mossy chair there as before, though she felt sure that a moment or two ago its place had been empty. But she was very glad to settle herself in it all the same, and before she had sat still for two minutes she felt rested and refreshed.

“It is a nice chair,” she said, patting the arms, on which the Cooies were now perched, approvingly. “Now tell me, please, where are all your hundreds of relations to-day? What are they busy about?”

“They are preparing for a great ceremony,” said Mr Coo, solemnly. “The day after to-morrow is fixed for it to take place. Our Queen – Queen White Dove – every year gives – ”

“Your Queen,” exclaimed Mary. “I never heard of her before – I did not know you had a Queen! Queen White Dove,” and something seemed to come into her mind as she spoke, as if she did remember – what was it?

“Are you sure you never heard of her before?” asked the wood-pigeons, their heads very much on one side. “But it does not matter. You will, I hope, see her for yourself, as I will explain, if you will not interrupt. She gives a prize every year for some special thing, the finding or making of which calls for skill and perseverance on the part of her subjects. This year the prize is promised to the bringer of the whitest feather. It must be as white as her own plumage, which I must tell you has never yet been matched. So there has been a great deal of search for such a feather, and work too, as some of us have endeavoured in various ways to whiten to great perfection some of our own feathers, though it remains to be seen if we have succeeded. Myself, I doubt it,” he went on (for Mr Coo had taken up the thread of the discourse), “and as the ceremonial will be a very great and beautiful sight, we have obtained leave for you, Mary, to be present at it, provided – this condition cannot be avoided – you yourself are one of the competitors.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Mary. “Please explain. I should so like to come, and you would manage somehow, wouldn’t you, for me to get leave from godmother.”

“One question at a time, if you please,” said Mr Coo, in the tone which rather provoked Mary always. “Being a competitor simply means that you too will try to win the prize.”

Mary’s face fell.

“Oh then it’s no good,” she said. “I can’t possibly find the whitest of white feathers.”

Neither of the wood-pigeons spoke for a moment or two. They only looked at each other. Then said Mr Coo, —

“You are not a stupid child, Mary, yet you are rather slow and dull sometimes. How about your feather cloak?”

“Oh,” said Mary again, “that’s no good. If you know about the cloak, and I suppose you do, in some queer way, for I’ve never told you what it’s like, you must know that it isn’t white at all. It’s made up of all sorts of shades of bluey-grey – like your feathers – even pinky-looking here and there.”

“Ah,” said Mr Coo. “Yes, I am aware of that.” Mary opened her eyes.

“Then what do you mean?” she asked.

This time Mrs Coo replied. She never liked to be left out of the conversation for long.

“You cannot have read or heard many fairy stories, my dear.”

“Yes indeed I have, heaps,” said Mary, more and more puzzled. “Tell me why you think that.”

“We cannot explain,” said Mrs Coo. “It’s against the rules. There are some things that humans must find out for themselves,” and Mary understood that it would be no use questioning more.

Then, as she was now quite rested, the wood-pigeons proposed that they should take her round the bowers. They hopped on in front, Mary following. And oh, how pretty the bowers were! They were alike and yet different. Inside each, hung, quite high up, a little coloured lamp. It did not seem as if anything were burning in it: it was more as if some of the wonderful light in the whole place, whose source was one of the secrets, had been caught into the lamp and tinted with its exquisite colour. Such colours as Mary had never dreamt of, even though they somehow reminded her of the countless shades of her own little cloak. And there were no two lamps the same, nor were there any two bowers the same, as I have said.

For the varieties of foliage were endless. Some were very fine and small – like great masses of what we call “maiden-hair fern”; some larger and richer, like the trees Mary had read of in the tropics of the everyday world, but all foliage only – no flowers. And in each bower there were cosy-looking nests, and silvery-looking perches, and trickling water, as clear as crystal – everything to make a birds’ paradise. No wonder that the Cooies and their countless relations loved to come for a rest, in the midst of their busy lives, to the secret place of the great forest.

“Now you have visited all the bowers,” said the wood-pigeons at last, and Mary, glancing round, saw that they were back again at the entrance, where stood the mossy chair.

“Not your Queen’s one?” she asked. “Has she not one of her very own, even though I suppose in a way the whole place belongs to her. Our Queen, you know, Queen Victoria, has several palaces just for herself, though of course all our country is hers too.”

“No,” was the reply. “This is not our Queen’s home. She only visits it. Even this beautiful place is not beautiful enough for her.”

Mary drew a deep breath.

“Then,” she said, “I suppose her home is in real real fairy-land, and you say this is only on the borders. And,” as a sudden thought struck her, “she visits outside of here too, sometimes. I remember now why I seemed to know about her. It must be the Queen who goes now and then to coo to Blanche and Milly at Crook Edge. A most beautiful, quite, quite white dove, with a ring of gold round her neck.”

“You may call it gold,” said Mr Coo, “but it is really more beautiful than any gold you have ever seen. Yes – that is our Queen. Your friends are highly favoured. They are good, and they have had sorrow – ”