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And amid what surroundings! Endless colonnades of cypresses; long, motionless drapings of gray moss; broad sheets of noisome waters, pitchy black, resting on bottomless ooze; cypress knees studding the surface; patches of floating green, gleaming brilliantly here and there; yonder where the sunbeams wedge themselves in, constellations of water-lilies, the many-hued iris, and a multitude of flowers that no man had named; here, too, serpents great and small, of wonderful colorings, and the dull and loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a century old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes and creatures of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and scarlet fruit in deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic insects, gorgeous dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: the blue heron, the snowy crane, the red-bird, the moss-bird, the night-hawk and the chuckwill's-widow; a solemn stillness and stifled air only now and then disturbed by the call or whir of the summer duck, the dismal ventriloquous note of the rain-crow, or the splash of a dead branch falling into the clear but lifeless bayou.
The woman stirred drowsily and arose, throwing back her heavy hair from her face. The flush of sleep still dyed her cheek a rich crimson, which came and went slowly in the light of the young sun, vying in depth now with the silk of her gown, now with the still deeper tones of a mountain red-bird which splattered into rainbow tints the waters of the brook.
Then she added with a smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance." "She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal this morning." Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to study her. "All right!" he said suddenly.
I moved from tree to tree, crawling in the open bits, and scanning each circle of green dusk before I moved. A red-bird fluttered on my right, and I lay long watching its flight. Something moved ahead of me, but 'twas only a squirrel. Then came a mocking laugh behind me. I turned sharply, but saw nothing. Far up in the branches there sounded the slow flap of an owl's flight.
Oh my! but wouldn't I like to have him! May I bring my trap some time, and will you help me to ketch one o' them little bits o' brown ones? You can beat me ketchin' 'em!" Several times to-night I have gone across and listened under Georgiana's window. The servant must have set the cage in her room, for, as I listened, I am sure I heard the red-bird beating his head and breast against the wires.
The church-yard was peaceful and silent as the pulseless dust in its numerous sepulchres; a beautiful red-bird sat on the edge of a marble vase that crowned the top of one of the monuments, and leisurely drank the water which yesterday's clouds had poured there, and a rabbit nibbled the leaves of a cluster of pinks growing near a child's grave.
For the greater part of the time, the only notes of the Mocking-Bird, when he is not engaged in mimicry, are a sort of melodious whistle, consisting of two notes about a fourth apart, uttered in quick, but not rapid, succession, and hardly to be distinguished from those of the Red-Bird of Virginia.
She always took a nap after dinner, lying on a little couch under the two windows in the settin' room, where the fire-place was, and the old clock, and the mahogany chest that had come from North Carolina, given her by her grandmother, and her red-bird in a cage. Grandpa always fell asleep in his chair while reading the Petersburg Observer, which came the day before.
And she did search my eyes and face in silence. "What more," I cried again, "in God's name?" She rested her face on her palm, looking thoughtfully across the yard. Over there the red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned down towards me. Love was on her face now.
The oaks which he had planted shook out their glossy green in the morning gale, and in the tulip-trees, which had snowed their petals on the ground in wide circles defined by the reach of their branches, he heard the squirrels barking; a red-bird from the woody depths behind the house mocked the cat-birds in the quince-trees.
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