Innocent Birds (18 page)

A
MONTH
after Mr. Solly’s journey to Weyminster the wild winds awakened in real earnest, and came upon Madder with the suddenness that the Norbury carrier was wont to expect of them. The gusts drove and shouted about Madder, they ran along the hills like eager wolves, they bent the tall elms and shook the boughs in their anger.

One small twig fell upon Mr. Chick as he walked under the elm trees, returning home from Mr. Barfoot’s stable. When he arrived at his cottage, he reported that the church tower was blown down, and that the flagstaff had struck him ‘near dead.’

‘Be thik all that ’ave fallen?’ inquired Pim, who evidently expected more wonderful
happenings
. ‘Be Polly Wimple real gone to Derby to find rich Fred, as folk say she be?’

‘Polly be gone, sure,’ said Mrs. Chick, replying for her husband, ‘and no doubt ’tis Derby she be gone to.’

‘Or else Spain,’ said Mr. Pim.

‘I did look into window of “Silent Woman,”’ observed Mr. Chick, ‘an’ thik black glove be
gone; some one ’ave taken glove off picture and put en on table.’

‘Were landlord in room wi’ thik glove? for maybe Mrs. Bugby be drowned,’ asked Pim.

‘No,’ said Chick, ‘landlord weren’t there, nor she neither, but Farmer Barfoot were holding up thik glove and looking at en.’

The wind howled round the cottage, and Chick looked sadly at the sacking bound round his legs.

‘They snowstorms be coming before strap leggings,’ he said ruefully.

‘No one weren’t serving farmer?’ inquired Mrs. Chick.

‘No,’ replied Chick, ‘there weren’t nor mug on table, and farmer did only rest Betty and look at thik black glove. But that weren’t all I did see.’

‘Don’t ’ee wait till Christmas to tell we, then,’ said Mrs. Chick.

‘When I were beside stile, setting woon leg over while t’ other still bided, I did hear a bird come by.’

‘Well, birds be birds,’ said Mrs. Chick.

‘Thik woon did pitch on inn thatch and spread out’s wings, and ’twere a large black bird.’

‘Did ’ee look again to see if farmer were drinking?’

‘Yes, t’ other leg that bided did draw I back to window, and I did peep in again, but no one weren’t serving farmer.’

Mrs. Chick opened the cottage door. She
looked at the upper windows of ‘The Silent Woman.’ The windows, for the evening was now darkened, had lights burning in them.

‘No one weren’t serving farmer,’ she said once again when she returned.

‘No,’ replied Chick.

‘Then Mrs. Bugby be a-dying.’

After taking their tea, which they ate silently, the family under the Chick thatch, with the exception of Maud, looked at one another.

‘Mrs. Bugby ’aven’t been looking well lately,’ remarked Pim.

‘What be it you do do when you do lay out a party?’ inquired Chick of his wife.

‘I do first look to see what furniture there be in room,’ replied the lady, ‘an’ then I do start to wash they dead bones.’

‘’Tis a mournful work,’ said Chick, moving a little farther from his wife.

The flames from the log fire leaped and hissed and the storm grew louder without. But even with the noise of the wind, Mrs. Chick had been able to hear a motor car drive up to the door of ‘The Silent Woman.’

‘’Tis the doctor,’ she exclaimed excitedly.

A knock came at the cottage door. The knocker was Farmer Barfoot.

‘You be wanted,’ he said to Mrs. Chick, and at once began the difficult task of guiding Betty down the path again. Mrs. Chick rose, smoothed down her apron, and followed.

Pim and Chick drew near to one another and looked at Maud. Maud was nursing the doll that Solly had given her. She pressed the doll against her. She leant over it, believing that she fed it with her milk. She rocked the doll. Maud smiled. She was happy. She began to sing softly ‘There’s a home for little children,’ as if she were getting the child to sleep.

‘I did use to wonder,’ said Mr. Pim, ‘how they children did come, and now I be wondering what use riches be?’

Chick looked from Maud to his legs.

‘We don’t pay nothing,’ pursued Mr. Pim, ‘when we do listen to farmer talking to ’is Betty; and poor Maud, that be happy now, don’t pay nothing to love ’er dolly.’

‘But me leggings,’ murmured Chick.

‘It don’t cost I nothing to mind Annie,’ said Pim.

‘But rich Fred be coming, bain’t ’e?’

Chick’s tone was sorrowful.

‘Polly Wimple be gone for ’im,’ replied Pim. ‘An’ so long as she do bring Fred back to Madder, I don’t trouble if ’e be as poor as thik tramp that did come to inn to warm ’isself.’

Mr. Pim looked at Maud.

‘’Tis a mother she be,’ he said. ‘An’ bain’t I a father too? But where be me boy Fred?’

Chick looked more and more despairingly at his own legs.

‘A father that ’ave a son who may come ’ome
to ’im poor, and whose mother be wi’ God in heaven, shouldn’t bide idle all these days.’

‘No,’ said Chick, a little more cheerfully. ‘There be food and lodging ’ee do owe for that mid buy they leggings.’

‘An’ ’tis best I go work for farmer to-morrow,’ said Mr. Pim.

Mrs. Chick had followed Farmer Barfoot to the garden stile. But there the good farmer paused, because Betty showed a distinct
unwillingness
to follow the other foot that had already climbed over.

‘Now, Betty,’ said the farmer, in the same cheerful tone he used to his brown pigs, ‘don’t ’ee bide there to be dog-bitten.’

Mr. Barfoot raised Betty carefully in the air and got her over. All safely over, the farmer remarked, ‘Thee best go home, Betty, long wi’ I, for though thee be so wise and knowing, ’ee don’t want to bide wi’ death at “Silent Woman.”’

The farmer moved slowly off, guiding Betty around the large stones in the road, and cursing the darkness.

Mrs. Chick remained by the stile for a moment and looked in an interested manner at the lights in the upper windows at the inn. One of these windows suddenly became darkened. The large bird that Mr. Chick had noticed upon the thatch perched upon the window-sill, and there it stretched out its great black wings ready for flight.

‘What be thik?’ said Mrs. Chick fearfully to the departing figure of the farmer; ‘’tain’t a cuckoo, be en?’

The farmer was gone too far off to hear her.

The bird stretched its neck as if it swallowed a little fish, left the window, flew low into the darkness and towards Madder hill.

‘I be glad thik nasty thing be gone,’ said Mrs. Chick.

The doctor met her at the inn doorway and nodded in his usual friendly way.

‘’Tweren’t from drowning, I do hope?’ Mrs. Chick inquired.

‘No, no,’ said the doctor, stepping into the car; ‘only a seizure, Mrs. Chick.’

‘From pulling up thik water from well?’

‘That’s very likely the reason,’ said the doctor complacently, and started the car.

Mrs. Chick entered the inn and began to climb the creaking stairs. Passing by the bar door, she looked in and saw the black glove upon the table.

Mrs. Chick began to talk to herself to ease her journey up those seven steps.

‘’Tis the fourth,’ she muttered, ‘that “Silent Woman” ’ave killed; but I be glad she didn’t go an’ spoil thik well water for we tothers.’

At the top of the stairs Mrs. Chick met Mrs. Bugby. Seeing this apparition, as she fancied, Mrs. Chick nearly descended the stairs again faster than she had climbed them.

‘What be doing dressed up?’ she asked, when she had got the better of her fear; ‘an’ who be gone an’ died if ’ee bain’t a-done en?’

Mrs. Bugby, without speaking, pointed to the bedroom door. Mrs. Chick went in.

After taking an inquisitive look round at the furniture, Mrs. Chick cautiously approached the bed.

Upon the bed lay Mr. Bugby. His mouth was twisted into an odd and awful grin, and his dead eyes stared in a horrible manner at the window. For a few moments Mrs. Chick gazed at him in astonishment and horror, then she said in a surprised whisper, ‘Somebody ’ave frightened Mr. Bugby,’ and then added in an easier tone, though a little contemptuously, ‘Chest of drawers she made so much of be only plain wood.’

O
FTEN
the sea waves, although they christen them in the certainty of an everlasting reformation from all the old Adam, forget to name the dead that they give up.

And so when two unknown bodies too far gone in corruption to be recognised, male and female, as created and destroyed by a dread omnipotence, were washed up by the great storm upon the nearest beach to Madder, no more than a little local notice was taken of the event.

Miss Pettifer had been informed by the police—to whom she had applied for help because she missed a crested spoon; ‘our crest is a chair,’ Miss Pettifer had said—that a young person answering to the description she gave of Polly had been found playing—so Mr. Tucker would have said—in one of the Derby open spaces, and was now safe lodged in prison, and was to be charged with corrupting the gentility of the third son of the virtuous nobleman who had ridden, when Fred Pim was there, so nicely upon a white horse into the town.

One of the largest Madder trees lay blown down beside the road, and looked, thought
Solly, who stood by the white gate of Gift Cottage, ‘like a great whale brought ashore.’

Solly was sad. He had opened his book of the
History
of
America
in real earnest when Annie Pim was brought so grandly home to be buried; and now he missed it more than ever upon this day of another funeral.

Hearing that Polly had followed Fred to Derby, Solly, though he couldn’t doubt Aunt Crocker’s vision, nor yet the promise of the dread being who had vouchsafed it, felt
despairingly
that he might die before the gift was given.

When one day the winds of heaven have done a mischief and uprooted a fine tree or two, they usually settle down the next day in order to see what has happened.

The day after the storm was very still, so that even Wimple’s spade could be heard trimming the sides of the grave that he had dug to contain—for they were to be buried in one grave—the drowned bodies.

On his way to the churchyard to complete his task, Wimple had encountered Mr. Chick. Chick was full of the exciting news that Mr. Pim had begun that morning to work for Farmer Barfoot, and had been overheard to say that Fred was his son, and that all he wished for in the world now was to see him ‘counting of farmer’s sheep.’

Chick hadn’t said two words before Wimple took him firmly by the arm.

‘Do ’ee come now,’ said Wimple, ‘and take a peep into grave; ’tis a deep woon.’

Chick turned pale, and, freeing his arm, burst through the hedge and ran across the meadow towards the safety of his cottage.

Although the day was so quiet it was dark and gloomy, for the sun could not but remember how he had once kissed, in a wanton and naughty manner, the nakedness of little Polly.

According to his habitual custom, though he certainly never expected anything to come there that day, Mr. Solly watched Madder hill.

As he watched, a cormorant flew out of the bush upon the summit, and went westwards in a direct line.

‘I hope that bird isn’t going to America,’ Solly said; ‘for the Americans have no history to save them now.’

‘I wonder who the two drowned ones are?’ Mr. Tucker asked Solly, who attended the funeral.

‘We’ll watch,’ said Solly.

‘And pray,’ said Mr. Tucker….

‘Where be Chick?’ asked Wimple when he had finished filling in the graves; ‘for I do want thik poor man to see they few bones I’ve a-turned out on grass.’

‘Mrs. Chick did tell I,’ said Mr. Pim, who was watching the sexton, ‘that she’s husband were so turned by what ’ee did say to ’im in lane that ’e be gone to bed wi’ ’is leggings on, and don’t talk of nothing but only worms.’

‘Chick bain’t no
man, same as I be a man,’ remarked the sexton proudly, ‘that do fancy a good dug grave better than’s bed.’

Although the burying of them was so little noticed in Madder, Mr. Solly couldn’t help thinking a great deal of the two drowned ones who lay in the Madder churchyard.

He had buried his Americans, but though buried they still spoke to Solly, which is easy to believe when we consider that Captain John Brown was buried too.

But what they told Solly from the corner of the garden he wasn’t sure of. Though one thing he knew beyond a doubt, and that was that Madder didn’t seem to be the same place to him now.

Time went on, of course, and the usual events that time is delivered of. Chick and Pim worked in the fields, and Wimple always kept his
pickaxe
clean and his spade ready. Farmer Barfoot’s waggons rumbled down the Madder lanes, going to Stonebridge for cake or coal, as Betty advised.

But even though Miss Pettifer now bought bacon at the Billys’ shop, which went a long way to show that all was like it used to be, yet Mr. Solly couldn’t help being sure that all was different.

He couldn’t avoid noticing—perhaps with the help of a buried American—that something had happened. It might have been all his fancy, or had something wonderful really happened?

Time went on, but with a difference—with a wonder in its heart.

Time went on, a-growing and falling, a-sowing and harvesting; the breath of life given, and the breath of life taken away.

All went on ‘as one views a picture,’ thought Solly, ‘a picture that can show a vaster and a grander one behind it.’

Not that Solly’s interest or happiness in Madder life was in the least exhausted, for he felt now, as he always used to, the sorrow and the joy, the chirping in summer, and the shivering in winter, of the tom-tits and the sparrows.

But now Pim was but Pim, and Solly couldn’t help noticing that though Mr. Pim never sang his song now, he often looked in a mild and loving manner at the skies, and would tell Mrs. Bugby, who sold bottled beer and gave away money to strange girls, about Annie’s heaven.

That something had happened to Madder Solly was sure, because he never wished now to pray looking up at Madder hill.

‘But though I don’t wish to look up,’ thought Solly, ‘there is no reason why I shouldn’t look down to pray.’ And as if they were come on purpose to help him, he remembered just then certain quaint lines of poetry that his aunt had taught him when he was a child:

‘You look a pretty one,’ said Solly one winter’s night, and took an oak log from the basket where he kept them ready for use. Mr. Solly laid the log upon the fire, and watched the flames curl up around it.

The log burnt itself out.

‘I may have been dozing,’ thought Solly. ‘I had better go to bed.’

Mr. Solly blew out one of the candles that were burning upon the table, and taking the other one in his hand he went up the first two steps on his way to bed. He had grown so accustomed to seeing a day or a time that he had spent with his aunt, near and very real, that he wasn’t in the least surprised when the stair carpet transformed itself into a little wood of beech trees, with beech nuts lying about under them that he and his aunt were picking up and eating, and a little brook that in that place was rather shallow and weedy, with forget-me-nots that had lingered into October growing beside it.

‘Yes, Aunt, I am pleased we came,’ Solly had said then.

‘I came here when I was a child,’ Aunt Crocker replied, ‘and I like beech nuts.’ …

Solly awoke at midnight. He awoke out of a dream, and sat up in bed.

The night was very still, and the stars shone clear, as they sometimes do in the winter when the weather hesitates between frost and rain, and allows the frost to come because it’s the nearest.

Solly’s dream had been a conversation, and he continued it while awake. He found himself saying, ‘Yes, I do believe you, Aunt. I know it will be a gift worthy of the kingly giver.’

‘Then go and see what the gift is, dear Solly.’

‘I’m quite awake now,’ said Solly, and the dream and the conversation vanished.

But Solly felt sure that the hour had come for him to see what the gift was.

He dressed himself, but without lighting a candle.

‘I must not disturb the darkness,’ he said, ‘for it is the darkness that guides us to the light.’

Mr. Solly opened the window of Gift Cottage and looked out. The stars were pearl beads sewn in God’s garment.

Solly looked towards the churchyard.
Something
shone there; not a bright light by any means, but rather a dim one, a light that Solly thought could only be a simple lantern. While he watched the light Solly heard a sheep’s-bell ring.

‘That’s Mr. Tucker,’ said Solly.

Solly took his overcoat from its peg, and
putting
a shawl of Mrs. Crocker’s round him, he buttoned the overcoat over that, and went out into his garden.

Softly closing the gate of Gift Cottage, he found himself in the lane that led to Madder church. The darkness pointed out to him where the light was. He stayed for a moment beside Mr. Soper’s tombstone.

Yes, there was Mr. Tucker kneeling beside the grave under which lay the two drowned ones who had been washed up by the waves of the sea.

Mr. Tucker was wrapped in a large rug; he had placed his hat upon a flat tombstone near by; his lantern was upon the grave. The candle in the lantern burnt clear because the night was still and friendly.

Mr. Tucker didn’t seem in the least surprised to see Solly when he came near to him.

‘I came out here for a little air,’ he said. ‘I have been sitting up with Susy to-night, but she’s fallen asleep now.’

‘“I’ll go and dust the church very soon, won’t I, Mr. Tucker?” Susy said. I told her she would soon go there.

‘“Church bain’t so very dirty, be en?” she said then. “’Tain’t we praying folk that do mind they hopping fleas.”’

Mr. Tucker looked up at Solly; he appeared to be holding something in his hand under his rug.

‘You’ve been reading your book?’ said Solly.

‘I have been reading,’ replied Mr. Tucker joyfully. ‘I have been reading the last chapter in my book, in which a candle is mentioned.’

Solly looked at the lantern.

‘I believe,’ said Solly, ‘that God’s gift is given.’

Solly looked at the grave.

‘Who are they?’ asked Mr. Tucker.

‘Polly Wimple and Fred Pim,’ said Solly.

There was a light burning in Susy’s cottage, and Mr. Tucker now watched it.

‘The Americans,’ said Solly, ‘told me before I buried them to whom the gift was to be given, and now I wonder whether the last chapter of your story-book happened to mention what the gift was.’

‘You have never read anywhere, have you,’ asked Mr. Tucker, who evidently wished to carry the conversation away from his book of stories, ‘that the grave is a gate?’

‘I believe some one has called it a golden one,’ replied Solly.

Mr. Tucker blushed, but only the stars noticed it.

‘But the gift,’ said Solly. ‘What is the gift?’

The light in Susy’s cottage went out.

But the light in the churchyard still shone.

Mr. Tucker now took up his lantern and moved about, looking an odd figure indeed amongst the tombstones, that Fred Pim, as a boy, counted so carefully. Mr. Solly watched, and wondered what stone it was Mr. Tucker wanted to find. The light from the lantern showed up each stone that Mr. Tucker went near and its shadow. The light moved like a large glow-worm.

Mr. Tucker stopped. He held the lantern close to a stone that was very old.

Solly went to him.

‘Read,’ said Mr. Tucker. ‘The secret is out, the gift is given. Read.’

Mr. Solly read slowly:

All was silent when Mr. Solly finished his reading. In the silence Time came by. The seasons came too: spring, with its chill
snow-flakes
, hail, and meek primroses; summer, with its haymaking, and harvest, that follows so soon after the hay is gathered; and then autumn, with Chick and Pim throwing muddy mangels into farm carts, when the Madder leaves are yellow and the rain drips; and last of all, winter came. The four seasons passed, coloured by all human pains, human passions and desires, and by good and evil.

Sorrow and joy passed too; while man born of a woman sat at the feast of life, each one waiting in his place until God’s gift be given to him….

Whether or not it was Susy’s death that made Mr. Tucker a little more careless of his personal property than usual, we cannot say, but in leaving Susy’s cottage, after praying with Solly ‘that all men and women might find their end as happily as Susy had found hers,’ Mr. Tucker let fall his story-book in the road beside Miss Pettifer’s gate.

In the morning, when Miss Pettifer went to see if Mr. Moody had dropped one of her letters as he opened the gate—a mischance that the lady always expected to happen—she saw Mr. Tucker’s book.

Miss Pettifer pounced upon it like a cat, and hurriedly carried her prize into her dining-room, where a good fire was burning, owing to Mrs. Billy having advised paraffin as a help to a lonely lady, and placed the book upon the table, where she had so often bitten Mrs. Crocker and Mr. Tucker with her bacon.

Miss Pettifer opened the book eagerly,
intending
to enjoy herself at least for that morning, and then to forward the book to the bishop to show him what wicked stories his clergy read.

Miss Pettifer opened the book at the last page, and before she could stop herself doing so, she read these words:

Miss Pettifer rose hastily and threw Mr. Tucker’s story-book into the fire.