“It wouldn’t be long,” said Elizabeth, “and she’ll have her brood out. You can do something else.”

Less Than a Bird

The story of a frail woman who tried to build a nest for her five strapping males.

Helen R. Hull

Illustrations by O. F. Schmidt

Redbook Magazine, vol. 74, Mar. 1940, pp. 24-25, 101-102.

The unseasonable warmth of that first week-end in May caused all the trouble—that and the fact that all four of the Rossbridge sons happened to be at home. Elizabeth Rossbridge had mourned during the past ten years because she never had the family all under the roof at once. Like trying to pick up quicksilver in her fingers, her attempts to corral them for Christmas or for a summer holiday. Robert, the youngest, was the only one who still belonged at home, and next year he would be off to college. This spring it happened, through bad luck and good, that each of the older three came home.

Albert, the engineer, had two months between a job in Brazil and another in Canada; his wife wished to visit her people, and Albert decided to visit his own. John had had a bad spill, skiing in New Hampshire during the Christmas vacation, and after several months in a dreadful harness at the hospital, had come home, as he said, to learn to walk again. He would have to spend the summer at Columbia, to make up the semester he had lost at college. And Henry, having passed his comprehensive examination for his doctor’s degree, had settled into his old room, his notes piled around him, to finish writing his dissertation.

Elizabeth had said: “Of course I’m sorry John mashed his hip all up, but still, here you are, all of you!”

“You aren’t sorry at all—you know you aren’t! It gives you a chance to boss me around again.”

“Oh, John, I am—” Elizabeth stopped, her blue eyes behind the rimmed spectacles troubled, as they all shouted with laughter. Even Clark, her husband, their father, was laughing. The boys liked to tease her, but Clark didn’t, usually. She had felt suddenly overwhelmed, one woman, rather small and faded, against five strapping males. Robert was still skinny, but John had put on weight during his convalescence. Albert and Henry matched their father in breadth of shoulder and height; their dark, strong faces were like his, except that Albert had a fine coppery hue from Brazilian sun, and Clark’s face was deeply lined. “They have a way of ganging up on me, when they’re all together,” she thought. But she concealed her dismay, just as she had always concealed her amazement that she was the mother of these four men.

Clark was different, with all his sons at home. His pride in them had a touch of patriarchal arrogance, almost as if he had made them by himself, without her help at all! Having them all there again was both more and less than she had expected. More work, of course. Katie Riley, the woman from the village who came in each day, was competent; but a family of six seemed to eat three times as much as one of three. More pleasure, in discovering in her gentle, unobtrusive fashion, what kind of maturity each of her sons had acquired. And somehow, more confusion in her own moods than she would ever have believed possible. Perhaps she was just tired. There had been a week or so of difficult strain until they knew whether John’s hip would heal properly. Perhaps fifty was an age of confusion. Perhaps she was like a field which had borne too many crops, and needed a period now to lie fallow, without emotional demands. After all, her youth, her delicate beauty, the resilience of her body, had all gone into the making of these men. Usually she responded with shy delight to the glances which measured her against them; what a little thing, to be the mother of such stalwart sons! Usually she knew that they loved her; Robert a little more than the others, because he was the youngest. She kept her own counsel about the various crises she had helped them meet, about the strength she had which was not brawn. She didn’t often mind their laughing at her, for she knew her mind was clear and literal, moving a little like the short, quick steps she had to take to keep up with their stride. She must be tired, that was why their laughter this spring seemed to have less tenderness, and their wit sometimes hurt her.

The rambling white house on the hill above the lake seemed crowded. She had never expected that. She had thought instead how empty it would feel when only she and Clark were left there. They had built it when Henry was a little boy; they had added a wing after John was born. They had planned, she and Clark, to move into the city after the children had grown up, but they never would. This was home, and the boys wanted it always as they had known it, even if John did spend Christmas in New Hampshire, and though Henry hadn’t been back for ten years, until this spring.

* * *

In April, Elizabeth took herself in hand. She would take a walk alone every afternoon, slipping out of the house when no one happened to look. An hour or two by herself, watching signs that the late spring had started to move, might cure her of this curious edginess. If she had a daughter, she thought, maybe she wouldn’t feel so—so outnumbered. Still, mothers and daughters didn’t always get along well; she could think of several girls who were more alien to their mothers than any son could be.

In late April she found the nest. She had sat down on the crumbling ways of the old boathouse, out of the sharp wind which ruffled the surface of the lake. She sat very still, liking the warm sun along the parting of her smooth dun hair; and presently she saw the bird watching her, a thrush, sleekly brown, its fawn breast beautifully spotted with brown. She did not move, not even when the thrush flew over her, so close she was sure she felt the air warm from its wings. After a moment she turned her head, slowly slowly, to see where the bird had gone. The end of the boathouse was open, and in a crotch of the scaffolding which held the rowboat, close under the pointed bow, the thrush balanced, tail cocked, weaving into the rough beginnings of a nest the bit of twig she had carried.

“Oh,” whispered Elizabeth, “the darling!” She sat there an hour, in quiet wonder, as if she shared a mystery. Then, while the bird was gone on one of her long flights for just the proper twig, Elizabeth went away. As she walked toward the house, she thought: “They won’t need the boat for weeks; it’s much too cold for the water. I won’t speak about the nest.”

She woke early next morning, wondering what had happened to give her the elation with which her eyelids opened. Then she heard in the great oak outside her windows, on which the new leaves were like tiny pink curled feathers, the lovely mounting spiral of the thrush’s song.... She went each day to sit on the ways; she thought the thrush accepted her coming; there was no interim to gain assurance before the wings rushed past her, so close she caught her breath with pleasure. The nest was finished; Elizabeth even saw the final stages, as the bird rounded the interior, molding it with her soft and speckled breast. Each morning she woke just as daylight crept over the curve of the world, to listen to the song, spiral and answer threading together—vox angelica, she thought. By standing on tiptoe at the entrance, she could peer into the nest, bracing herself with a hand against the rough upright. On Friday of that first week in May there were three eggs, smaller than a robin’s, but the same turquoise blue. The thrush flew past her as she stood there, poised on delicate feet among the eggs, settled over them, looking at Elizabeth with bright unalarmed wise eyes.

As Elizabeth walked toward the house that afternoon, she pulled off her sweater, thinking how suddenly the day had grown warm. She stopped, her hands trembling. They might want the boat this week-end! They couldn’t touch it, she wouldn’t let them. Her heart thumped as she climbed the steps. They had a special kind of feeling about that boat; they had built it themselves, Clark and the boys; each spring some of them worked on it, scraping and painting and calking. If she could think of something else for tomorrow—a trip somewhere—

At dinner Henry warranted her premonition. He said: “I got the paint for boat today. What say we all hands work on her tomorrow, and go fishing Sunday?”

“You can’t,” said Elizabeth. “There’s a thrush under it.”

“Under our boat?” Robert looked incredulous. “Thrushes don’t build in houses.”

“This one did.” Elizabeth was breathless. “I saw her. She’s got three eggs.”

“We’ll, she had her nerve,” said John. “We’ll move her out.”

“You can’t! She’d never come back.”

“We’ll go look at it, Beth.” Clark sounded reassuring. “It’s Henry’s last week-end; it’s going to be fine and warm—we can fix it all right.”

* * *

After dinner they all walked down to look at it, the song of the male bird floating over their heads, the twilight primrose through the pale new leaves on all the trees.

“It wouldn’t be long,” said Elizabeth, “and she’ll have the brood out. You can do something else.”

They overruled her, the three older boys and Clark. Robert was silent; in his troubled glance Elizabeth saw his desire not to be a sissy in the eyes of his brothers, in spite of his impulse to side with her.

“You can’t be so unreasonable as that, now Mother,” said Clark, and Elizabeth turned away to hide her unsteady mouth, her eyes that burned with no tears. When Clark called her Mother, he had his mind made up. “Spoil Henry’s last week-end for the sake of a whim? Why, Henry helped build that boat.”

“I can’t bear it,” she whispered, and hurried away from them. Clark came to her door late that night, and asked uneasily if she felt all right. She pretended she slept. The thrush’s song the next daybreak was like a funeral dirge. She did not get up for breakfast, and when Robert came to the door, she said she had a headache.

“We fixed the nest just fine,” he said awkwardly. “In a crotch of the tree. We didn’t touch the eggs at all. Listen, Mother, we tried the boat, and she doesn’t leak scarcely any. So we’re going fishing today—and can Katie put up a lunch?”

“Why not have hard-boiled thrush’s eggs?” cried Elizabeth. “Go away!”

When the house was quiet, their deep male voices, the beat of their feet gone, Elizabeth got up. She dressed quickly, in the suit she wore for trips to town; she packed a few things in her overnight bag; she borrowed twenty-five dollars from the purse in which she kept the household money. She drank the coffee Katie had kept hot for her, and said: “I am going to the city. I don’t care what you order for dinner.”

She would leave no note. They could figure it out for themselves. She simply couldn’t stand them any longer. Perhaps the difference between men and women was just too great. Men needed women for a while; they wanted sons; when the sons were little, they needed a mother; but now—She could walk to the station in the village; her bag wasn’t heavy.

* * *

She stood in front of the house, surprised at the thick warmth of the air. Robert would probably strip off his shirt; he would be sick with sunburn by the evening—he had her thin, fair skin. She didn’t care! She started along the drive; her feet lagged, and then she stood still. She didn’t want to see the nest, now that the vandals had ruined it, but she couldn’t feel worse than she did. She set down her bag, and ran across the sloping lawn down toward the boathouse.

At first she couldn’t see the nest; had they just tossed it cruelly away? Then she saw it, as Robert had said, in a crotch of the low willow. One of them—Robert or Clark, she knew—had woven a thatch of branches in the crotch, had made a low triangle of branches, like an old rail fence, in which the nest sat, as firm, as secure against the wind as the thrush might have built. They hadn’t been utterly wanton, for all their effort was useless. Her heart hurt her side, pounding, and she couldn’t breathe the heavy hot air. She sank down on the ways, knowing the dreadful emptiness of the boathouse behind her. She mustn’t have a heatstroke before she got away; she didn’t want to see one of them again, ever! She closed her eyes, her lids still burning with the need for tears she could not shed.

Then she heard it! That whir of wings over her head! She was afraid to open her eyes; she dared not look. It couldn’t happen; no bird would ever return to a nest with which inhuman hands had tampered. She heard it again, and unsealed her eyes. She would see, she knew, only a distracted thrush, caught in the terrible frustration of her mysterious fulfillment of her life cycle.

After a moment she saw the bird, balancing on a branch of the willow, the small new leaves like green beads along the drooping stems. The thrush moved her head to one side and to the other, her bright, unalarmed wise eyes on Elizabeth, her throat curving with its soft plumage.

Then, amazingly, with a swift, single movement, she reached the nest, and poising on delicate feet among the eggs, settled over them.

* * *

“It can’t be true,” thought Elizabeth. “I’m making it up, because I can’t bear it otherwise.” Then from a near-by tree she heard the alarm-note, the strong clucking note, of the mate. “It is true,” she thought. She pulled off her hat, and leaned back against the post. Far off across the lake she saw the small dark blob that was the boat. “It’s more than they deserve,” she thought. And then she was crying, softly, thinking: “Well, I can’t do less than a bird, can I?”