Innocent Birds (16 page)

M
R
. P
IM
waited a moment. He had climbed the garden stile before Chick. Mr. Chick had stood back a little, because he knew that Pim had a son who would some day come home very rich from Derby in Spain.

Mr. Chick remarked, as he stood back there too to let Mr. Pim enter the inn first, ‘that he thought it was going to snow.’

Mr. Chick had a habit of always saying ‘it was going to snow’ when the weather was unusually mild.

Mr. Pim sat at the head of the table, where he could be easily seen by any one who wished to have the honour of filling his cup, and where he could see the black glove left behind by the former landlord, Mr. Told, and preserved for his own hoped-for use by Mr. Bugby.

This glove—a symbol of his happy wishes—Mr. Bugby kept upon the picture of the member of Parliament for the Weyminster district, a gentleman who was once found at a social
gathering
shaking hands with the overcoats.

Farmer Barfoot now knocked with a shilling upon the table, and Wimple, who was sitting near by, nodded at the shilling. Farmer Barfoot
called for some drink. Mr. Pim withdrew his eyes from the black glove when Mrs. Bugby brought in the jug, and looked at her. Wimple looked at her too, and made a gesture as if he held out a tape measure to get her right length for the grave.

Mrs. Bugby took down the mugs from their nails and placed them on the table. The men watched her. She still lived.

It is always nice to live in the exciting
expectation
of a startling event. It is pleasant, too, to exchange opinions around an inn table as to exactly how and where the event will take place. And even if one is the person doomed—and lucky to live in Madder such a doomed one is—he or she can often wallow in the same morbid pool as well as the other watchers.

‘Betty do tell I,’ said Farmer Barfoot in a low tone when Mrs. Bugby was gone, ‘that the poor ’oman will walk woon day, when the sun do shine, up to wold owls’ barn and hang sheself.’

‘’Tis a barn,’ remarked Wimple in a discreet voice, just to show how right the farmer always was, ‘w’ere a rope do hang that poor Job did make use on
because there weren’t but one
apple on ’s tree in ’s garden, and ’e did used to swear to all ’twas a good tree.’

‘They poor gloomy owls do perch there,’ said Pim, ‘for when I was a poor man, and used to work for farmer, I did see they on thik large beam in barn.’

Mr. Chick stretched out his legs and looked sadly at the sacking that was bound about them.

‘I do see,’ he said, in a tone that the prophet Jeremiah might have been proud of, ‘a wide rushing river, that do run under the arches of a wold bridge; ’tis to wide deep river that poor ’oman will go.’

‘She be always looking into garden well,’ said Farmer Barfoot, leaving Betty, because of the excitement of the subject, out of the
conversation
; ‘an’ no doubt there be water in en.’

‘There be deep water in en,’ said Chick.

‘True, there be,’ remarked Pim grandly.

Mrs. Bugby, being nicely placed where the deep water was, the company looked at Mister Pim.

Confirmation had come about Pim’s riches that very day, undoubted proofs being received by Farmer Barfoot and by Susy, the church cleaner.

At Stonebridge market that very afternoon, when Farmer Barfoot, with Betty safely tucked into the trap, was taking the reins into his hands, John the hostler, whose roundness grew rounder each market day, and his nose redder, inquired excitedly, ‘Do ’ee know Pim of Madder, who did use to go about town asking a question of nature?’ Farmer Barfoot, taking a rein in each hand, nodded.

‘Questioning Pim be Mister Pim now,’ said John, stepping out of the way of the wheel.

In the morning, too, old Teddy, whose fancy
amongst other oddities was to go about the country saying that Miss Pettifer was in love with him, and that he wasn’t going to be like good Joseph, called at Susy’s cottage to try and sell her a pair of bootlaces. Teddy found Susy sitting upon a box in her woodshed, looking more wide than ever because of the lowness of the shed, and employing her time in teaching a puppy, the same puppy that Polly had played with, to say the Lord’s Prayer.

‘Our Father,’ repeated Susy.

‘Bain’t bootlaces,’ said Teddy, who had changed his position from the cottage door to the woodshed without being noticed by Susy.

‘No, ’e bain’t bootlaces,’ said Teddy, and Susy smiled, knowing well enough, though she was so simple, that God didn’t mind what Teddy said.

The puppy barked, being annoyed at this interruption of its lesson.

‘If I were as rich as Mr. Pim,’ remarked Teddy, ‘’twould be Our Father Teddy, wi’ most of next year’s babies.’

Susy laughed, for both she and God Almighty liked poor Teddy.

‘I be getting too wold for they manners,’ she said.

‘Not when nights be dark,’ replied Teddy, showing his bootlaces to the little dog, and telling it how much they cost him to buy, and how little he got when he sold them.

Teddy’s belief and the hostler’s remark now bore the human thoughts at ‘The Silent Woman’ to Mr. Pim.

‘How will rich Fred come to Madder?’ asked Farmer Barfoot of Pim.

‘Riding,’ replied Pim.

With their imagination quickened by the beer, the company saw this event in different ways.

Farmer Barfoot, who had seen a picture paper that morning, expected Fred to come riding upon an Indian elephant, as the young prince in the picture was doing; Wimple, who
remembered
a word or two in Mr. Tucker’s last sermon, saw Fred’s carriage as a fiery chariot; and Chick saw it as a great car filled with strap leggings, and all intended for him.

Clouds of tobacco wreaths, like haloes, hung about each man’s head, the most dense and blue-coloured encircling Mr. Pim as if to show to all present that he was above the common. His mind was filled with great and rich thoughts. Even the very mugs upon the table took upon them a new grandeur when he looked at them, as though they were made of gold. Indeed his thoughts of late had risen high: he lived as a gentleman.

‘Had he not been picked out from all Madder,’ thought Pim, ‘as the one to be envied?’ His first separation from the crowd came with the shining glass and black varnish of the wonderful
carriage that brought Annie. And was not he, ‘Pim,’ known in all that part of the country as the man who couldn’t believe that it really was doing ‘just thik,’ with the kindly aid of one or other of the pretty Annies, that brought a child into the world? And who was it but Mr. Pim that was bold and orthodox enough—although the Church had always insisted that the thing was possible—to credit to the Father of all for the second time in two thousand years a human begetting? Even though he was called from the stony ground of the Madder hills, Pim’s new theology had carried him far; as far, indeed, as any countryman with a walking-stick, and a rich gait copied from Squire Kennard and landlord Bugby, could go.

Nothing now could burst the bubble of Pim’s glory, unless it were the unlucky return of Fred in poverty; but the chance of such an unlikely ending never entered Mr. Pim’s head for one moment.

Farmer Barfoot now took his pipe out of his mouth, and knocked it gently upon his
odd-shaped
boot as though he knocked at the door of Betty’s mind. Bending down his head sideways, in a way that might have appeared comical to any sober gentleman, had one been there, Mr. Barfoot listened, and nodded three times. Raising his head again, the farmer coughed. Evidently Betty must have spoken. Moving back a little in order to give himself more room, Farmer
Barfoot slowly raised Betty and placed her upon the table amongst the mugs. This raising of Betty being done with all proper care and
ceremony
, as a priest would elevate the Host, Mr. Barfoot, with a faith that would gladden the heart of any true Catholic, remarked mysteriously that ‘Betty be talking.’

‘What be it Betty do say?’ asked Mr. Chick, with a befitting gravity.

‘Betty do say,’ affirmed the farmer, ‘that though all we do fill Pim’s mug for ’e, yet there be something that they rich men do always fancy that Pim bain’t a-gotten.’

Mr. Chick looked at his legs; he wondered whether Betty was going to say ‘gaiters.’

‘Women!’ shouted Farmer Barfoot.

The farmer turned to Pim in triumph, who in his turn regarded Betty with a slight but
unmistakable
frown.

‘Be they tothers,’ he inquired, ‘made different to me Annie who were brought home to Madder so proper?’

‘Betty do say,’ said Farmer Barfoot, ‘that the difference bain’t all in their clothes.’

Mr. Pim’s frowns left him, and he grew thoughtful.

‘I do mind Minna,’ said Mr. Pim, with a sigh that showed that even a rich father could regret the past at certain times; ‘’twas the day of the Norbury flower-show.

‘’Twas a rainy day, and Minna did say to I,
“Wold Potten’s shed be a good dry place for we two to go to.”

‘“T’ other maidens bain’t same as I,” Minna did say, when we were sitting in a coffin that were stuck up against shed wall.

‘“’Tis a white frock you be wearing,” I did tell she.

‘“But grandfer do say that though I be different, I be nice.”

‘“John be the woon for thik nice,” I did tell she. An’ ’twas a pity coffin were stuck up so silly, for ’e did fall sideways and brought Potten back into shed.’

‘Betty be speaking,’ said the farmer, holding up his hand to silence Pim. ‘’Twould be right an’ proper—they be Betty’s words—for rich Pim to ’ave all they young maidens drove upstairs to ’im in flocks an’ herds’—‘And teams,’ said Chick, who was a carter—‘then all they
differences
an’ doubtings would be clear as heavenly sun to ’im.’

‘So ’twould,’ said Wimple, whose imagination ran high in Pim’s service.

Pim looked at Betty and slowly shook his head.

‘But be poor Annie real gone?’ he inquired in a soft voice of the farmer’s deformed foot; ‘for Mr. Thomas Tucker do sometimes name a place called “heaven” in ’s sermon, and maybe ’tis there that me Annie do bide and wait for I.’

‘No, ’tis in ground she do bide,’ said Wimple,
who didn’t like the idea of his mystery being encroached upon by any heavenly vision.

But Mr. Pim’s unbelief in nature’s affairs overcame Wimple’s earth-born argument.

‘Annie bain’t gone for always,’ he said sternly.

‘But a rich man must do same as t’ others,’ remarked Chick, who had a secret fear that the piety of Pim’s last remark might lead him to forget the promised gift.

‘’Tis a hard trouble to be rich,’ said Pim, in a true rich man’s tone.

‘Do Betty allow it to
be proper,’ he asked, ‘that a rich man may only mind they things that ’e ’ave tried to do, wi’out asking no more of they soft maidens?’

‘What ’ave ’ee tried to do?’ Betty do ask, said the farmer.

‘Though I be rich, I were poor an’ lowly wi’ Annie,’ replied Pim modestly; ‘an’ rich or poor, a wedded man bain’t always a knowing one.’

The farmer lifted Betty from the table.

‘’Tis time for Pim’s song,’ he said.

Mr. Pim raised his mug to his lips and drank. He felt the glory of his position with intense serenity. He was Pim, about whom all people talked and all honour was given, and to whom maidens would be driven in flocks if he but lifted his little finger.

But no, even though he might have them all, he refused. He still saw Annie’s heaven as real and near, with that fine driver and all the
heavenly shining of the carriage as wonderful and everlasting.

Mr. Pim waved his hand, breaking a little the curling halo of smoke above his head.

‘Annie!’ he called, ‘Annie! I be singing, Annie. I be singing to thee, Annie.’

Mr. Pim sang:

Some while before Pim sang his song a stranger had softly entered the inn door, and sat upon a lonely bench beside it, not apparently being one of those who like to intrude too near upon the happiness of others.

This stranger was Fred Pim.

Fred had not sat long listening to what was being said before he easily understood that it was he, and not another, who was expected to come to Madder this second time, to enter the glory of his father, with a fine load of riches from Spain.

Fred watched his father lovingly; he wanted to go near to him and tell him all about Derby.

No one knew him as Fred. It was not unusual
for a tramp to creep into those doors to rest a little; for Mr. Bugby with his bottle in the parlour hardly noticed his customers; and this evening, for some reason, the landlord
commanded
his wife to draw the beer.

‘An’ then go drown thee’s bloody self,’ he had said kindly, ‘for Silent Woman’s sake.’

But only when Fred had first come in he had fancied for one moment that he might make himself known. Very soon he saw that this was impossible. He loved his father too much to wish to disturb all the happiness of his honoured calling as the father of a rich son.

After his father sang his song, Fred said to himself, ‘’Tis best for I to go right away to Spain.’ He saw himself going to Spain. He knew that it was possible to get to all kinds of strange places from the port of Weyminster. He supposed that he had only to go to
Weyminster
and then ship for Spain as a stoker.

All journeys now seemed possible to Fred. And then to come home really loaded and to marry Polly—how easy that seemed. And Fred saw himself return riding, too, upon a
high-stepping
white horse, as a nobleman had once ridden into Derby to unveil a memorial set up to certain other dead and gone and quite
forgotten
—except for the small pensions and the fine prances of that horse—eternally disposed-of Freds.

‘But I would like to just touch my father.’
Fred’s heart spoke these words distinctly within him.

He now moved amongst the happy ones, with the seeming intention of warming his hands by the fire. As he went by Mr. Pim, Fred allowed his hand to
rest for a moment upon that
much-honoured
gentleman’s arm in an affectionate manner that no passing tramp should use towards the gentility of the land. Feeling the touch, Mr. Pim shook off his son’s hand with an
indignant
gesture of disapproval; and Farmer Barfoot rebuked the tramp for his familiar behaviour, informing him that Mr. Pim was the father of a very rich son who might that very evening be returning from Derby.