Innocent Birds (3 page)

M
R.
S
OLLY
, happy because he felt what a good man Roger must have been, opened gently—so that it shouldn't bang—the white gate of Gift Cottage and went out. He walked through the Madder lanes, now and again looking up at the hedges and green trees as if he thanked them for shading him. He took the lane that led to the meadow gate where, later on in the day, there would generally be standing two or three of the gentlemen whose names cut in the wood of the gate showed that they belonged there.

On his way Mr. Solly passed a new villa, a partly built one, that stood near to the Madder brook that was crossed by stepping-stones.

This house was named ‘Boston Villa‚' because the son of the late owner, Mr. Mellor, lived in Boston city, and Mr. Mellor, a retired grocer, could think of no better name for the new house than the city's name that his son John had gone to.

He had the name written above the door in large letters before the windows were put in. But the excitement of seeing it—for he loved his son—or else the weight of his seventy years, was too much for his heart, and Mr. Mellor fell down in a fit before Mr. Potten, the builder, could catch him,
and died of his injuries. The building of ‘Boston Villa' stopped when Mr. Mellor fell, but the house gave that spot a name, and also a shelter for any young people who wanted to be alone together, and out of the rain.

After looking at ‘Boston Villa
'
a little sadly, for he didn't like to think that poor Mr. Mellor should have died so suddenly, Mr. Solly
continued
his walk, and was surprised to find that the meadow gate, to which he meant to go, was inhabited. Two men leaned against the gate, looking as if they had come there for some very important reason, but had, as soon as they reached it, entirely forgotten what the reason was. These men were John Pim and George Chick. They were dressed in black. Mr. Chick had a sallow countenance, with large cheek bones, but sunken cheeks. He was wont to regard the ground near to his feet with a sad interest, as though it wasn't a kind act of his to walk upon it. Mr. Chick was a humble gentleman, with one want and one fear, who always looked at Job Wimple, the Madder sexton, when he met him, as if he felt that Job would make him one day do what he did not want to. Chick was afraid of a new dug grave, and if Job were ever employed about one, Mr. Chick would avoid the sight, if possible, by giving the churchyard a wide berth when on his way to work. He was, that afternoon however, destined to go there in the garments of a mourner, though a fearing one.

Even though Mr. Chick was so humble, he hoped one day to be an honoured man. He had unluckily missed being regarded by all Madder as an important one, as he had certainly hoped to be when one day he was tossed by Farmer Barfoot's bull; but as he lit upon some soft dung, and was not hurt, no distinction, save a contemptuous sniff from his little daughter Maud, came of it. Mr. Chick clung in friendship to Mr. Pim, rather than to Job Wimple, whom he regarded with awe and trembling; and Chick hoped, by the aid of a mysterious quality called intuition, that it would be through John Pim that one day he would get what he wanted.

Chick and Pim now waited, as if their Sunday clothes rather than themselves had come to the gate, and only to rub against it.

‘Sunshine do burn hot‚' said Chick, who appeared to discover then for the first time in his life that the sun could give warmth sometimes.

Pim shook his head. He was wondering at that moment whether a natural act that must have been done by some one could really have been done by him. He looked casually and disinterestedly towards the road that led down into Madder by way of the hills, as if it were just possible that a stray cow might be wandering there; while the truth was, that the expected really happened to be his wife. Mrs. Pim in her coffin, and her infant son who lived, and who
was to return to Madder in the care of Mrs. Chick, Annie Pim's sister. Standing beside the gate, Mr. Solly watched the churchyard. He expected to see the Rev. Thomas Tucker, who should have been by then in readiness to meet the funeral, and perhaps Wimple, who always took a master's pride in the graves he dug. Job Wimple was there, and Susy, who dusted the church and set traps for the mice, and who listened with more than a proper interest when Mr. Tucker mentioned God in his sermons. Susy, a large black figure, stood in the church porch and held up a broom, as if she meant to sweep the heavens clean.

But Mr. Tucker was not
at present visible.

‘'Tis well that they school children bain't about,' remarked Mr. Chick, who hated silence. ‘For if they children were out to play, parson mid be late for funeral.'

‘But there bain't nothing come yet,' said Pim, a little disappointedly.

‘Poor parson be afeard,' said Chick, who liked to get any sort of matter safely out of his head when he once started it coming, ‘of they playing children.'

Pim nodded.

‘Farmer Barfoot do say that if so be 'e were to stop one little foot a-kicking, even though 'tis naughtiness they be at, 'e 'd drown 'isself.'

Pim nodded.

‘Poor parson would go round by way of stars
and moon sooner than stop one small girl from doing what she shouldn't.'

‘“'Tis thik story book,” Susy do say, that 'e do always carry in 'is pocket, that do tell 'e to let happy folk bide happy,' said Pim to Solly, by way of explaining the clergyman's odd behaviour as narrated by Mr. Chick.

Solly now looked at the church again, and saw the short figure of a man, whose gait expressed itself in little runs and quick steps, hurry into the churchyard.

This was Mr. Thomas Tucker, who carried his hat in his hand, and whose head—for he had but one or two streaks of grey hair to be proud of—glistened in the sun.

Mr. Tucker at first hastened to the new grave, tripping over an old one in the journey. But hearing the laughing voices of children playing in the lane near by, he appeared to change his mind when he stood upon his legs again, and retired quickly into the church.

‘Poor man,' said Chick feelingly, ‘'tis a pity 'e don't know why they children do laugh, for if 'e did 'is poor heart would be comforted.'

‘Parson be come,' remarked Mr. Pim, ‘before they tothers be come.'

The summer sun does not only stand still in the Book of Joshua. It likes to rest in these days for a little while over Madder. Upon that other occasion it stopped going, out of pure
astonishment
and fear, at seeing so many flashing spears‚
and thought no doubt that it had set the sand on fire. In Madder the sun sometimes stays still in the sky for a few moments, in order to see how the little girls and the sparrows are behaving.

All things, of course, interest the sun, and here in Madder is a new grave to peep into. After peeping into the grave the sun waited, in a rather wicked mood, for Miss Polly Wimple to come.

Upon the hills, where the hot summer mist stayed very still, something wonderful now arrived in view. And whatever this wonderful thing was, it caught the interest of Mr. Pim in a remarkable way. He watched it, as though he hoped very much that his eyes were not lying to him. The new thing shone brilliantly; it shone like a star, and remained stationary upon the hill for a moment, as though it waited there on purpose to be admired.

Meanwhile, another party had come to the gate. This was Job Wimple who, having
satisfied
himself that the grave was as ready as he could make it, wished to show a little of the knowledge he was so proud of to those who waited in the lane. His arrival caused Chick, who noticed the charnel chalkiness of Wimple's boots, to hide behind Pim.

Solly nodded to Wimple, and Wimple looked at the hills. For Mr. Wimple to have remarked truthfully what he thought the shining thing he saw really was, would have raised Pim's glory.
And so, forgetting for the moment that a sort of afterglow from those plumes would do honour to his own gravedigging, Mr. Wimple consulted his memory, so that he might be thought wise. He remembered Mr. Tucker's last Sunday's sermon.

‘'Tis God's holy ark that be coming over hill,' he said, ‘that thik Dagon did pinch from poor David.'

‘Wimple do know a lot‚' Chick murmured to a little daisy beside his boot.

‘'Tain't God's ark or Noah's ark; 'tis a hearse,' said Pim breathlessly.

Whether or no the sun, besides waiting for little Polly, had employed its idleness in putting a rather odd fancy into Mr. Pim's head, we
cannot
say. But Pim undoubtedly saw Death at that moment as a very pretty thing. Death had
certainly
never shone so bright before in Mr. Pim's remembrance, and had never come into Madder before carrying a looking-glass in His hand to admire Himself on His path to the grave.

Feeling how wonderful it all was under that shining sun‚ Pim looked about Madder in order to see if any one else was watching.

He saw Farmer Barfoot leaning over the churchyard wall, while a small group of Madder folk were waiting in the lane near to the church, and Susy, still in the porch, was excitedly waving her broom at the hills. At the bottom of Mr. Pim's heart there was a deep fount of pride, as well as
his own unbelief. He saw himself now as the one to be looked at, and talked about, by old Death, the gossip, who had broken up the usual tediousness of a hot afternoon by taking the breath of life from Mistress Annie Pim in the Weyminster hospital.

Annie had been first taken there when she was frightened. She was frightened by something Mr. Bugby, the innkeeper, who lived at the sign of the Unicorn, had said or done. Annie, who was expecting in a month or two, had only gone to Mr. Bugby's to deliver a parcel, out of kindness to carrier Balliboy, he being wont to save himself many a trouble in this world by handing them on to others.

At the Unicorn, Annie was conducted politely into the bar parlour, that happened to be empty at the time, by Mr. Bugby himself, who, after paying the carriage for the parcel, frightened her.

How he did it no one knew, for all she could be got to say about her fright was, ‘That she had never seen a man behave like that before.' After the baby came, Annie fainted, and however much the doctors tried to save her, Death proved Himself more clever than they, and she died.

She died a little too soon for even her sister, Mrs. Chick, to hear what it was that had happened. For when Mrs. Chick arrived hot and hurried, and all anxiety to hear, she found that Annie had spoken her last word in this world; and that wasn't about Mr. Bugby, being merely, ‘Tell
sister that John's shirt front be only rough dried, 'tain't ironed for Sunday.' …

The wonderful thing that had shone so excitedly upon the hills now began to move down into the shadow of the lane. It approached the meadow gate slowly, not from respect for the dead, but only because the driver—a silent gentleman in a tall silk hat—was anxious to finish smoking the pipe that he had stopped to light upon the hill before reaching Madder. As the carriage approached, Mr. Pim regarded the driver with a fixed stare, as though he were no ordinary
person
, but had dropped down into his seat, pipe, hat, and all, from on high. Mr. Pim, as well as Wimple—who had to because of his trade—was a good Churchman, and used to listen upon a Sunday afternoon to Mr. Tucker's preaching.

Sometimes Mr. Tucker would name in his sermons—we must own a little distrustfully—the third person of the Holy Trinity. And there grew up correspondingly in Mr. Pim's mind, who liked a mystery, the form of a figure that he considered would resemble the one named by Mr. Tucker. And this figure exactly resembled the driver of the hearse.

The hearse stopped when it reached the gate where the three men were standing, and the driver gently knocked out the ashes of his pipe against the black wood upon which one of the plumes hung. After doing so he inquired of Solly, in a careless tone, the way to the church.

Mr. Solly stepped into the road—he was always anxious to help any one—and explained to the driver that he had nothing else to do but to drive right on, for the place he wished to go to was straight in front of him.

The driver, celestial as Pim saw him, was a little deaf, and leant down towards Solly with his hand to his ear, so that Solly was forced to speak louder and clearer. Making use of his own eyes, after Solly had spoken, he saw the church tower, and clicked twice in order to make the horse—that had been looking at the grass by the wayside as a child might at a shop window with iced cakes in it—go on. The mourners followed, while Solly kept pace with them, though walking by the lane side. He was interested, as he knew his aunt would have been, in the occupants of the plumed carriage.

M
R.
P
IM
had never seen the glory of a town funeral before, though he had often wished to; so the appearance that had come shining over the hill, bearing his wife to him, was as superior to the waggon that he had expected, as the driver—as Pim saw him—was from an ordinary man. Mr. Chick felt gratified too, though more humbly so; because Mrs. Chick was sitting beside her sister’s coffin, shaded from the vulgar by that wonderful carriage, and holding Pim’s infant son in her arms. By the church gates the hearse stopped, as though it had merely come all the way from Weyminster to be admired; and nothing happened for some minutes except this
admiration
from all the eyes present. While the bearers were getting ready for their burden and waiting for the clergyman to come, the horse, with a total want of respect to the occasion, began to crop the grass, pulling the hearse a little nearer to the hedge in order to get the best bites. And now the sun began to move again: for it is only in the heat of the Madder day that it loiters, and this day, alas, with no very good intentions. For, beguiled with the wanton thoughts that so often come to such idlers, it had made up its mind to
kiss, and that in no very proper manner, baby Polly Wimple. With the sun’s movement, the rush and tumble of the stars, and other little heavenly white mice, began again. And in order, no doubt, to illustrate this falling condition of all matter, Polly Wimple, aged two, fell off the bed, while her mother, the same Minna who had shown her legs so prettily to little John, was dressing for the funeral.

‘They children bain’t got no brains‚’ remarked Mrs. Wimple, when she picked Polly up. ‘An’ as ’ee be screaming, ’tain’t no time to dress ’ee proper, an’ ’tis summer weather.’

Polly was heavy, and in order to enjoy herself at her leisure without her daughter pulling her ears, Mrs. Wimple carried her into the
churchyard
, set her down upon a grassy grave, and told her to stop crying and play ‘wi’ they green grasses,’ while she herself went to look at the fun.

The fun went slowly, which was the better for every one, because it lasted the longer. Here was pleasure for all. Here was some one that Minna Wimple had talked to only a week ago about the way to make a pancake, and the exact time a sitting hen could leave its nest without the eggs being gone cold: here was this friendly gossip, a woman, who had blouses that buttoned in front because of something she expected to come, and who had even stooped down to pull up her stocking while she talked, now going to
be put into a nice hole in the ground. And wasn’t it a triumph to be able to get put in there so sweetly and cleanly, thereby giving joy to others, while the little birds fly in the sky?

Great events came apace upon Mr. Pim. He stood back a little, but his eyes opened wider than ever when Mrs. Chick was helped down. Mrs. Chick held close to her, pressed against her ripe bosoms, that were as large as pumpkins, something that was wrapped in a white woollen shawl. And all he had done about it was so little. But could Annie really be in there, hid by so much costly varnish, and with brass handles even, screwed on so properly? Mr. Pim looked at the Madder fields as though he despised them, and for a reason.

The high hat of the driver had carried his earlier thoughts to the church and to the persons and places named by Mr. Tucker. There was one place Mr. Tucker called ‘heaven.’

Mr. Pim looked at the coffin that the town undertaker had provided for his wife, and saw it as ‘heaven.’

He remembered how Annie looked when she cut the wedding-cake, on the day that was the supreme mystery of Mr. Pim’s life. On that occasion, as he sat looking on with his mouth a little open—as though agape for any kind of
information
about marriage customs—Pim had tried to recall all that Minna had said when they were children together. ‘Minna knew all about it,’
Pim thought enviously, ‘and all because her
grandfather
was so knowing a man.’ Annie, even out of her heaven, had never been so communicative as Minna, who, besides listening so carefully to the amusing explanations of her grandfather, had gone out, wetting her little shoes in the garden grass before a thunder-storm, to watch the slugs.

If only he could get back to those days again, and get Minna to explain things a little better.

Pim had sighed. He knew no further
information
could be got from her, for she was become Mrs. Wimple—a woman of grown manners, who boiled black-currant puddings—and not that person with the legs, and a mind a good deal more inquisitive about life than a robin’s.

And now here was Annie in her heaven, and Pim could only wonder the more about it all.

Everything outside the church gates—and even the horse had its share—had been admired, but still Mr. Tucker delayed his coming to meet the coffin. He had appeared in his surplice once or twice at the church door, where Susy was still standing in an absent-minded manner, with her broom in her hand; but, on looking out and seeing Polly Wimple seated where her mother had put her, he had hurried into the vestry again.

Polly, having seen Mr. Tucker’s round face appear and disappear, not unwisely came to the conclusion that the face was playing peep-bo with her, and so she snatched up her petticoats, with
hands like red plums, and hid her eyes. And the sun got what it wanted.

Polly’s toes, her fat legs, and all her naughty roundness, was shown in the sight of the sun, and all because of the hurry her mother had been in. Polly curled up her toes and knees, and the sun kissed her. She peeped out, hid her face, and the sun kissed her again.

The sun might have gone on kissing Polly all the afternoon, had not Sexton Wimple
remembered
where his daughter was; and considering it highly probable—for he knew her ways at home—that she might crawl into the new grave, he looked to see where she was, and beheld her in the very act of holding up her clothes most shamelessly.

‘’Tis best ’ee take up thik maid,’ called the sexton to Mrs. Wimple. ‘For poor parson will never come out of they doors while she be
a-playing
.’

In front of Miss Polly there was a tombstone, with a cherub’s face cut in it. And the face in the church porch not appearing again, Polly fancied it had got into the stone, and so she played peep-bo with it until her mother caught her up, remarking, ‘Blessed if they maids bain’t worser at two than at twenty.’ And as she gave Polly a smack to cure her naughtiness, she said: ‘How do ’ee think poor Annie can get put under dirt, wi’ ’ee a-showing all theeself to they nasty tombstones!’