It Was Hard For Her
Then To Face Her Neighbours, And Eventually She Went Away With Her
Mother To Live
At the new estancia; but even now at this distance of
time it is a pain to remember her when
Her image comes back to my mind
as I saw her on that chance visit to La Paja Brava.
Every evening during my stay, after mate had been served and there was
a long vacant interval before night, she would go out from the gate to
a distance of fifty or sixty yards, where an old log was lying on a
piece of waste ground overgrown with nettles, burdock, and redweed,
now dead and brown, and sitting on the log, her chin resting on her
hand, she would fix her eyes on the dusty road half a mile away, and
motionless in that dejected attitude she would remain for about an
hour. When you looked closely at her you could see her lips moving,
and if you came quite near her you could hear her talking in a very
low voice, but she would not lift her gaze from the road nor seem to
be aware of your presence. The fit or dream over, she would get up and
return to the house, where she would quietly set to work with the
other women in preparing the great meal of the day - the late supper of
roast and boiled meat, when all the men would be back from their work
with the cattle.
That was my last sight of Cipriana; what her end was I never heard,
nor what was done with the Paja Brava after the death of Don Evaristo,
who was gathered to his fathers a year or so after my visit. I only
know that the old place where as a child I first knew him, where his
cattle and horses grazed and the stream where they were watered was
alive with herons and spoonbills, black-necked swans, glossy ibises in
clouds, and great blue ibises with resounding voices, is now possessed
by aliens, who destroy all wild bird life and grow corn on the land
for the markets of Europe.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DOVECOTE
A favourite climbing tree - The desire to fly - Soaring birds - A
peregrine falcon - The dovecote and pigeon-pies - The falcon's
depredations - A splendid aerial feat - A secret enemy of the dovecote -
A short-eared owl in a loft - My father and birds - A strange flower -
The owls' nesting-place - Great owl visitations.
By the side of the moat at the far end of the enclosed ground there
grew a big red willow, the tree already mentioned in a former chapter
as the second largest in the plantation. It had a thick round trunk,
wide-spreading horizontal branches, and rough bark. In its shape, when
the thin foliage was gone, it was more like an old oak than a red
willow. This was my favourite tree when I had once mastered the
difficult and dangerous art of climbing. It was farthest from the
house of all the trees, on a waste weedy spot which no one else
visited, and this made it an ideal place for me, and whenever I was in
the wild arboreal mood I would climb the willow to find a good stout
branch high up on which to spend an hour, with a good view of the wide
green plain before me and the sight of grazing flocks and herds, and
of houses and poplar groves looking blue in the distance. Here, too,
in this tree, I first felt the desire for wings, to dream of the
delight it would be to circle upwards to a great height and float on
the air without effort, like the gull and buzzard and harrier and
other great soaring land and water birds. But from the time this
notion and desire began to affect me I envied most the great crested
screamer, an inhabitant then of all the marshes in our vicinity. For
here was a bird as big or bigger than a goose, as heavy almost as I
was myself, who, when he wished to fly, rose off the ground with
tremendous labour, and then as he got higher and higher flew more and
more easily, until he rose so high that he looked no bigger than a
lark or pipit, and at that height he would continue floating round and
round in vast circles for hours, pouring out those jubilant cries at
intervals which sounded to us so far below like clarion notes in the
sky. If I could only get off the ground like that heavy bird and rise
as high, then the blue air would make me as buoyant and let me float
all day without pain or effort like the bird! This desire has
continued with me through my life, yet I have never wished to fly in a
balloon or airship, since I should then be tied to a machine and have
no will or soul of my own. The desire has only been gratified a very
few times in that kind of dream called levitation, when one rises and
floats above the earth without effort and is like a ball of
thistledown carried by the wind.
My favourite red willow was also the chosen haunt of another being, a
peregrine falcon, a large handsome female that used to spend some
months each year with us, and would sit for hours every day in the
tree. It was an ideal tree for the falcon, too, not only because it
was a quiet spot where it could doze the hot hours away in safety, but
also on account of the numbers of pigeons we used to keep. The pigeon-
house, a round, tower-shaped building, whitewashed outside, with a
small door always kept locked, was usually tenanted by four or five
hundred birds. These cost us nothing to keep, and were never fed, as
they picked up their own living on the plain, and being strong fliers
and well used to the dangers of the open country abounding in hawks,
they ranged far from home, going out in small parties of a dozen or
more to their various distant feeding-grounds.
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