The Cardinal rested a second before he tried again. That steadied him and gave him better command of himself. He could tell that his notes were clearing and growing sweeter. He was improving. Perhaps she was interested. There was some encouragement in the fact that she was still there. The Cardinal felt that his time had come.
"Come here! Come here!" He was on his mettle now. Surely no cardinal could sing fuller, clearer, sweeter notes! He began at the very first, and rollicked through a story of adventure, colouring it with every wild, dashing, catchy note he could improvise. He followed that with a rippling song of the joy and fulness of spring, in notes as light and airy as the wind-blown soul of melody, and with swaying body kept time to his rhythmic measures. Then he glided into a song of love, and tenderly, pleadingly, passionately, told the story as only a courting bird can tell it. Then he sang a song of ravishment; a song quavering with fear and the pain tugging at his heart. He almost had run the gamut, and she really appeared as if she intended to flee rather than to come to him. He was afraid to take even one timid little hop toward her.
In a fit of desperation the Cardinal burst into the passion song.
He arose to his full height, leaned toward her with outspread quivering wings, and crest flared to the utmost, and rocking from side to side in the intensity of his fervour, he poured out a perfect torrent of palpitant song. His cardinal body swayed to the rolling flood of his ecstatic tones, until he appeared like a flaming pulsing note of materialized music, as he entreated, coaxed, commanded, and pled. From sheer exhaustion, he threw up his head to round off the last note he could utter, and breathlessly glancing down to see if she were coming, caught sight of a faint streak of gray in the distance. He had planned so to subdue the little female he courted that she would come to him; he was in hot pursuit a half day's journey away before he remembered it.
No other cardinal ever endured such a chase as she led him in the following days. Through fear and timidity she had kept most of her life in the underbrush. The Cardinal was a bird of the open fields and tree-tops. He loved to rock with the wind, and speed arrow-like in great plunges of flight. This darting and twisting over logs, among leaves, and through tangled thickets, tired, tried, and exasperated him more than hundreds of miles of open flight. Sometimes he drove her from cover, and then she wildly dashed up-hill and down-dale, seeking another thicket; but wherever she went, the Cardinal was only a breath behind her, and with every passing mile his passion for her grew.
There was no time to eat, bathe, or sing; only mile after mile of unceasing pursuit. It seemed that the little creature could not stop if she would, and as for the Cardinal, he was in that chase to remain until his last heart-beat. It was a question how the frightened bird kept in advance. She was visibly the worse for this ardent courtship. Two tail feathers were gone, and there was a broken one beating from her wing. Once she had flown too low, striking her head against a rail until a drop of blood came, and she cried pitifully. Several times the Cardinal had cornered her, and tried to hold her by a bunch of feathers, and compel her by force to listen to reason; but she only broke from his hold and dashed away a stricken thing, leaving him half dead with longing and remorse.
But no matter how baffled she grew, or where she fled in her headlong flight, the one thing she always remembered, was not to lead the Cardinal into the punishment that awaited him in Rainbow Bottom. Panting for breath, quivering with fear, longing for well-concealed retreats, worn and half blinded by the disasters of flight through strange country, the tired bird beat her aimless way; but she would have been torn to pieces before she would have led her magnificent pursuer into the wrath of his enemies.
Poor little feathered creature! She had been fleeing some kind of danger all her life. She could not realize that love and protection had come in this splendid guise, and she fled on and on.
Once the Cardinal, aching with passion and love, fell behind that she might rest, and before he realized that another bird was close, an impudent big relative of his, straying from the Limberlost, entered the race and pursued her so hotly that with a note of utter panic she wheeled and darted back to the Cardinal for protection. When to the rush of rage that possessed him at the sight of a rival was added the knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave of anger swept the Cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. Like a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that Limberlost upstart, and sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. With beak and claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with his own blood, the Cardinal remembered his little love and hastened back, confidently hoping for his reward.
She was so securely hidden, that although he went searching, calling, pleading, he found no trace of her the remainder of that day. The Cardinal almost went distracted; and his tender imploring cries would have moved any except a panic-stricken bird. He did not even know in what direction to pursue her.
Night closed down, and found him in a fever of love-sick fear, but it brought rest and wisdom. She could not have gone very far. She was too worn. He would not proclaim his presence.
Soon she would suffer past enduring for food and water.