Innocent Birds (4 page)

A
FTER
a funeral is over, most people return to their homes fully conscious that they have not, as the brother or sister has done, passed out of the door never to return. And even Pim, though he had seen such grandeur, and felt how high he was, was grateful to the Power that rules above Madder that he had been left to stand with his boots on, and to receive a welcome at the Chick household doorway by Miss Maud.

Whatever high hat it was that ruled above, Maud ruled the Chicks. She was aged seven; but as each of those seven years had told Maud what life was about, she had come to be, even at this age, far wiser than her mother.

As Maud had not gone to the funeral, she had plenty of time left upon her hands to prepare for her baby. It would be hers of course, for, as all Madder knew, every baby that came was as good as Maud’s.

One day Maud intended to be a mother herself, and she wisely thought that the best preparation for that was to see as much of other people’s babies as she could.

If Maud had been at Minna Wimple’s that same morning, the sun would never have
had such a chance to kiss Polly in a naughty way.

‘When bad Poll do cry, ’tis Maud Chick she do want, ’tain’t I,’ Mrs. Wimple would say. And she would add in an astonished tone, as though Maud was a kind of lady whose tastes were hard to understand, ‘If she do nurse one of they, though they be sicking or screaming, she be happy.’ And so Maud was become one of the wonders of Madder because she liked a baby, and wanted to be a mother. When she reached her own cottage, Mrs. Chick handed the living bundle she carried to Maud, sighed as a good Catholic who hands a month of sinning to a kindly priest to take care of, and sat herself heavily in a chair.

Mrs. Chick was a lady of easy manners and a soft womanly presence. Every part of Mrs. Chick had mild likes and milder dislikes. Her hands, in a non-resistant manner, disliked work. Her hair, always untidy, had a modest
objection
to pins. Her breasts, and Nature had given her womanly ones, had, even when she was fourteen, made her wonder, and blush too.

Walking home with Mrs. Chick under the elms, that didn’t seem in the least to him like real Madder trees, Mr. Pim felt interested in life; because he had stepped into a new world that day and had seen a new heaven too. His fancies rose before him so large and wonderful, that he hardly heard her when Maud told him
to go in by the back door with her daddy; because of the steps that she had whitened during the moments when the sun was kissing Polly, and the bearers were wondering whether poor Annie would be heavier than Mr. Soper, the last burial.

‘This bain’t your door‚’ Maud cried out to Mr. Pim. ‘’Tis back ways that be for fathers.’ Though Maud’s plain talk should have brought Pim to earth again, it didn’t do so. For even then he couldn’t see Madder as in the past: as merely a place you stood upon with hobs in your boots, to hoe or to haymake as the season
commanded
. For it was now become to him a place of passages and stairways and openings, even in its thickest mass, and all leading to heaven.

It never occurred to Mr. Pim to think that such an abode of bliss could stay in the mould to be tarnished. Those brass handles were much too valuable for that. And so, when Mr. Pim went into the cottage room of the Chicks, and sat down beside Mr. Chick in order to see what would happen next, he was quite unprepared for an old doubt, that had troubled him more than once in his life, to torment his mind again.

Maud had placed Mr. Pim’s son upon Mrs. Chick’s knees, where it was to remain while the new mother prepared some hot water in a basin. Mr. Pim thought his son wonderful, indeed a miracle. But he didn’t wish him to stay miraculous, he wished to account for him, and
that was why his mind went back now, as at the funeral, to those childish days with Minna, and to other days too, and his troublesome doubt. Minna had certainly, in a most praiseworthy manner, tried to explain, while Annie, wedded and bedded, had but squeezed and liked him. But all that had helped so little to make Pim believe.

When the baby was washed, Mrs. Chick looked at it crossly, which was rather ungrateful of her considering how well it had behaved all the time that Maud had been washing and powdering. But Mrs. Chick had her own reason for disliking Baby Pim at that moment: for had it not been all because of him that she had been forced to ride inside, instead of outside, the fine carriage? Miss Pettifer, who with two other town ladies had seen the start, had pushed her in there—‘because of the baby’—in almost the same forceful manner as the undertaker’s men had pushed in poor Annie. The drive was a long one, and Mrs. Chick was no friend to the coffined silence, to which she was then so near a neighbour. Not that she found fault with Death’s doings, for her drive, whether inside or out, was to his credit; but she objected merely because he had dropped a curtain over Annie, and so prevented a friendly gossip all about how she had been frightened.

A few faded flowers, too, that lay upon the floor of the hearse began to preach a sermon to Mrs.
Chick about the end of all pretty things; that only made the fact that she wasn’t next to the driver—who might have looked at her in the way she liked, when he wasn’t whipping the horse—the harder to bear. The driver being out of it, there remained only the baby and her poor sister Annie to be talked to, and therefore the
conversation
could not help being a little one-sided. How much a dead one could hear, even with that dropped curtain, Mrs. Chick did not know; so she thought it best to begin with a little flattery, as any wise lady would do whose sister, last heard of in Canada, might at any moment have crept sneakingly home, and be behind the door.

‘’Tis a fine thing,’ Mrs. Chick had remarked during the drive, ‘for they horses and cows to see we go by, and there be a wold man that do wave ’is hat in lane; I do believe ’tis Mr.
Matterface
. Maybe ’e do think ’tis a pity ’e bain’t died of fright to be so carried. Poor Annie’—Mrs. Chick had lowered her tone into a whisper—‘poor Annie, to be so frightened.’

‘’Tis said in town’—the rattle of the carriage made Mrs. Chick talkative—‘that Landlord Bugby—and even though no one don’t hear, ’tis best to say it—though ’is face be so white and simple, do act funny sometimes. ’E do talk of it wi’ ’is own wife, who be sorrowful. “’Tis how I be,” Mr. Bugby do say, “that do fright they maids.” “’E can’t help what ’e do do,” Mrs. Bugby do tell folk. “He do go out and
do fright they, not meaning to be wicked; but ’e will end by killing I, and ’e do wish I dead,” Mrs. Bugby do say.’

As they went along, Mrs. Chick had noticed a large bare tree in a field, that had been struck by lightning the summer before, and while the tree was still in view the baby began to cry.

‘I bain’t Maud‚’ said Mrs. Chick crossly, ‘an’ thik tree bain’t Mr. Bugby.’

The baby still cried.

Mrs. Chick had bent her head and whispered into the shawl, as though afraid some one might hear her. ‘Bide still, will ’ee, or go into box where Mother do stay so quiet.’

Happening at that moment in the drive to remember the bottle of milk the town ladies had given to her, Mrs. Chick fed little Pim. The horse had settled itself into a steady trot, and the summer fields and the cool green hedges went slowly by. Mrs. Chick slept contentedly, until she was awakened by the wheels of the hearse going over the rougher stones of the Madder lanes.

She waked then a little wonderingly, and looked at the coffin. Arriving at the village itself, she was fully aware of the awe and glory that her situation would inspire in the minds of the onlookers, and so she put her hat straight and pulled her blouse a little differently, in case the grave-digger might chance to look at her….

And now the baby was being fed again, and was certainly worth looking at, and Pim looked at it with much curiosity and wonder. Though now and again, as though to try a comparison in family matters, he would regard the baby in the one grand picture possessed by the Chicks—the Holy Child and its parents, surrounded by brown leaves. There was a baby too, and a fine one, and Pim all but asked the father of Jesus a question, because his long beard looked so wise, when the milk came to an end.

When that was over, Pim had certainly
compelled
himself to believe that the baby upon Mrs. Chick’s lap was a baby; though still he was utterly undecided as to what part he had played to get it there.

But seeing that it was hidden in the shawl again, Mr. Pim began to
note, this time with a sure personal interest, the doings of little Mother Maud, hoping that she had made preparations for him as well as for the baby.

For although John Pim had his own cottage to go to—next to a little railed paddock, where Farmer Barfoot’s prize bull, Frederick, used to be put to bellow and to meet the cows—yet he had given Maud to understand that he wasn’t going there again, ‘to bide lonely,’ but intended, addressing a daisy in the meadow, ‘to stay where thik babe do go to.’

When tea was laid, Mr. Pim counted the cups upon his fingers. He did this because he could
never get any sum right in his head. When he found by going over them twice that the fourth cup was really there, he nodded in a friendly way at the table, as though to say, ‘Thik pretty cup be set out for thee, John Pim.’

M
R.
T
UCKER
had, in his younger days, been rammed into the Church by his father, Dr. Tucker, in the same sort of way that a charge of powder might have been rammed into a new sporting gun by Coke of Norfolk when he went out to shoot the sparrows. Once safely rammed down into what was more like a watchman’s blunderbuss than an ordinary gun, Mr. Thomas Tucker commenced to look through the wide bell-shaped muzzle at a very strange show indeed—the inhabited world. The more he looked, the more he wished to understand what he saw; but this, from the rammed position he was in, was near impossible. And so all he could do was to try not to show too much astonishment at all that happened, and to keep very tight and sure the one opinion that he arrived at, after watching all the muddle, which was ‘that children should never be interrupted when they were playing.’

In appearance Mr. Tucker was well rounded, and his look was that of a man who is astonished and interested at the same moment. His bald head was good-tempered, and he nearly always carried his hat in his hand, as he did when he entered the churchyard for Mrs. Pim’s funeral.
Indeed, Solly had always believed a story that Mrs. Crocker had once told him, that one day in Dodderdown certain small children had lost the ball they were playing with by throwing it into the ivy that covered an old barn, and Mr. Tucker coming by, and being sorry for their sad looks, gave them his own head to roll down the street.

Once in times past, so people said who knew Weyminster, Mr. Tucker had made advances to Miss Pettifer, even though that lady was no friend to his friend, Mrs. Crocker. But those days were far off
now, and Mr. Tucker had grown to love Solly’s pinks better than the lady, and he would kneel and drink in their flavour in a more abandoned manner than Solly himself.

Besides the sweetness of the pinks, Mr. Tucker, inquisitive, as all honest folks are, would always want to know, when he called at Gift Cottage, what text for the day Mr. Solly had taken from the Americans.

He was nearly as interested about them as Solly was himself, though he had no very clear idea as to how the Americans behaved themselves, except that in olden times they planted their gardens with maize corn and burnt the witches, and that now a certain day comes in June when they take off their felt hats and put on straw ones.

Mr. Tucker was pleased with Solly’s peaceful garden ways; and when Solly told him what he
had really come to Madder to look out for, Mr. Tucker nodded his head knowingly and said ‘he hoped the gift would be a nice one.’ But if Solly had his secret, Mr. Thomas Tucker had his too, and every one wanted to know what that was. True, it was but a book, with a home-made cover, the original cover having been worn off by its owner’s constant handling in private places. Mr. Tucker would only read his book in the quiet of the fields or, with the door safely locked, in his study at Dodderdown. And the more secret he was in his readings, the more the two parishes that were under his guardianship wished to know what the book contained. More than one
resident
attempted a guess, helped by the odd
exclamation
, overheard by some loiterer in the summer fields, when Mr. Tucker was reading under a shady hedge and thought himself alone.

‘There be woon of they maidens in en,’ Job Wimple had remarked to Minna, having
overheard
Mr. Tucker say with a gasp of
astonishment
as he put the book into his pocket again after reading in it, ‘Well, I never did; who would have thought it, poor dear Mary!’

Susy, the church cleaner, once surprised Mr. Tucker reading his book before the service began, and heard him exclaiming, ‘No, no, no, I can’t believe that—I really can’t; poor children, and they were only playing.’

‘’Tis a naughty story ’e do look at,’ Susy told Mrs. Chick.

Mr. Tucker, with the mysterious book in his pocket, now stood in the garden of Gift Cottage. Gnats played in the air, and the afternoon sun made Solly’s red bean flowers very haughty, so that they despised the white ones. The little wind that was blowing made the aspen leaves in the Madder lanes whisper about Farmer Barfoot, who had been overheard to say that he would cut them all down in the fall. Mr. Tucker had come to Madder that afternoon to carry a new broom to Susy, because Mrs. Billy had complained that May, her niece, had got her frock dirty when she knelt in the back pew. There was no need for Susy to have a new broom, the hairs in the old one being still quite respectable; but Mr. Tucker hoped that the sight and possession of a new broom would inspire her with a new desire to sweep. And so he gave the broom to Susy to admire, which, he learned later, was all she ever did with it.

Mr. Tucker always wished he had the wider experience of Mrs. Crocker when he looked at the world, and he wanted to be as good as she. He always felt, alas! as every good man does, his own wickedness in a marked degree; and even now, in such a peaceful place, and with Solly’s moustache looking so restful, he was reminded of his sins. Sitting down upon the grass like a tailor, and bending his bald head so that he might touch the pinks with his nose, and delight himself wantonly with their sweetness, he
inquired of Solly what the Americans had to say for themselves.

Mr. Solly replied very reverently that one of them had said—he had got the words from the book that very morning—that ‘he would allow no man of immoral character in his camp.’

Mr. Tucker, checking an immediate tendency to overbalance backwards, rose up hurriedly, and put on his hat to hide his confusion. Certainly those pinks had smelt more lovely than anything in this wicked world should do. The American had pulled him up just in time. But even then, saved as he was for the moment, the pinks appeared to be reminding him of the intention he had of going, after giving Susy the broom, into the Madder fields to read his book.

Leaving Gift Cottage, Mr. Tucker chose a place to read in, in the fields, a few yards from an old roller, that was fixed in the ground as though it grew there, pointing with its shafts at the blue sky. He sat down upon a bank dotted with small yellow flowers, with an ash bough above that shaded his head from the sun.

In such surroundings, where the summer loveliness curtsies like a pretty lady, even the most sinful book—and all Madder and
Dodderdown
believed Mr. Tucker’s to be a bad one—should be good reading. But no one would in the least have expected Mr. Tucker to do what he did do; and that was, after reading a little, to close his book with a sigh and to say sadly,
‘Poor young lady, she must have had a scare, when he came to her like that so suddenly.’ Mr. Tucker sighed again, put the book into his pocket, and shook his head and nodded at the small yellow flowers and at a large black-and-red
bumble-bee
.

The time was now come for the workmen in the fields to leave off their tasks. And Mr. Pim, who had been employed near, began to approach the roller, talking to himself; and behind him there came, though more slowly owing to his lame foot, Mr. Barfoot himself. As Pim walked he repeated to himself a word of useful meaning denoting a father, as though he doubted it, but wished he could persuade himself to believe it. When Mr. Pim reached the roller, he said wearily, ‘’Tain’t no good for I to be called Daddy when I bain’t woon.’ Without noticing Mr. Tucker, Pim rested upon the roller. Following with his eyes the upward pointing of the shafts, Pim addressed a question to the blue skies. ‘Be it only doing thik,’ he inquired, ‘that do bring a fine boy into world? Bain’t there nothing more that a poor man should ’ave done to she?’

A soft summer wind that had sprung up at the moment caused the chain that connected the roller shafts to sigh deeply, as though a rusty and aged voice replied, ‘Oh, foolish and unbelieving Pim, if only you knew what troubles were caused all over the world by just doing thik, you would
go about like another St. Paul and preach continence.’

The farmer and his club foot—the same oddity that was drawn upon the gate of many meetings and possessed a name—now reached Pim, who, having received no very certain answer from the sky to his question, wished to inquire of his master, or rather to continue a conversation upon the same subject that they had touched upon in the stony turnip field earlier in the day; although now Pim tried to draw out the wisdom of the farmer in lawyer-like manner.

‘Do thik foot that be named Betty‚’ asked Pim, ‘ever tread on a stone?’

‘Sometimes it do‚’ replied the farmer, ‘when I forget about she.’

‘Do she ever come down upon a soft worm or a snake in grass?’

‘No doubt she do,’ said the farmer.

‘Would Betty answer I if so be I did ask she something?’ inquired Mr. Pim.

‘If it bain’t nothing very bad‚’ replied Mr. Barfoot, ‘thee may ask.’

The bumble-bee buzzed by the roller, with honey-bag full, on its way to its nest the other end of the field, and Pim, looking down at the farmer’s lame foot, asked his question. ‘If it bain’t all thik kissing and going, ’tis they tother doings, bain’t en?’ he inquired.

‘’Tis they tother doings‚’ said the farmer, moving away and carefully guiding Betty round
a large flat stone. There is one character in French history—Panurge the Great—who used to ask questions, and who does a little, upon this warm summer evening, when the coming night creeps slyly about as though ashamed of himself, remind us of Mr. Pim, who found it so hard to believe that he had performed a husband’s proper duties to poor Annie.

After watching the farmer for a little way guiding Betty over the stones, Pim turned and saw Mr. Tucker. Besides listening to his sermons in church, Mr. Pim had heard many reports about the wicked book that Mr. Tucker always carried about with him, and sometimes was caught reading.

‘’Tis most like,’ said Pim, in the same sort of tone that he had spoken the word ‘daddy’ before the farmer joined him—‘’Tis most like that the clergy be the knowing ones about they bedtime doings, for bain’t they always a-reading, an’ all sorts be set down in they books. ’Tis most like that thik good clergyman, who do pay two servant maidens their wages at Dodderdown, do know more than poor Pim.’

Seeing that Mr. Tucker had opened a way himself for a little conversation by the simple process—for every little act in the country gives a chance for talk—of breaking off a large
dock-leaf
from the hedge to fan himself with, Mr. Pim approached the green bank and remarked gravely, ‘They great leaves do grow easy; ’tain’t no
trouble to no woon to get a dock planted. Down in Chick’s cottage‚’ said Mr. Pim,
touching
his hat to Mr. Tucker, and leaning restfully upon his hoe, ‘they do call I Daddy sometimes, leastways Maud do, an’ ’tis she that be master. But I don’t never mind having done nothing that could get I a Daddy for a name. But farmer do say that ’tis they doings, and nothing more, that do make a married maiden to be a bearer.’

‘I have never been married‚ Pim,’ said Mr. Tucker.

‘Bain’t you never …!’

‘No,’ replied Mr. Tucker in a sad tone, because he couldn’t help thinking of Solly’s pinks, ‘I have never experienced it, Pim. I once thought that Miss Pettifer … but she refused me, Pim, because she said that she would never marry a man who liked to see children playing. Miss Pettifer has fine ideas about work, Pim, though Mrs. Crocker, who has left this world, could never agree with her. No, Pim, I fear I cannot understand any more than you can how matters happen from which one is called “a Daddy.” For this sort of information perhaps it might be necessary to go to the beasts of the fields; Bacon would certainly have done so. If you watch Frederick, the farmer’s bull, he may help you to believe. Or else Mr. Solly might be asked to consult the Americans, who know a great deal.’

Mr. Pim looked doubtful; he could not believe that even an American, if he had held an Annie in his arms, and had known all her plump loveliness, would have, during those moments, with any certainty of observation, understood more about it all than he.