Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  But alas for human endeavour! that seeks a penance of its own without seeking first the helpful grace from above.

  For this looking at old maids, and even hearing what a married woman, who was faded and thin, had to say, had a contrary effect to the hopes and wishes of Mr. Moody. For if ever he chanced to speak to Susy—a large being like a barrel hung with clothes, with a white face at the top—and got her safe in his eye, he would only turn with more zeal than ever to Eva Billy, and watch her climb the bank after a flower: Miss Eva knowing all the time what his eyes were doing, and how lovingly he watched her. Annie Pim, aged twenty-nine in earthly years, had dwelt but three weeks in her heaven when Mr. Moody delivered a letter at the Chick cottage for Mr. Pim.

  The letter, Mr. Moody regarded, as he brushed and scattered the grass seeds in the meadow path with his postman’s boots, to be an important one.

  He had spoken of it on his way through Madder as something better than the others, calling it ‘the letter.’

  He had informed Mr. Solly, who was standing in his garden looking up at Madder hill as if he were praying—and there is no reason why we should say that he wasn’t—‘that Pim had a fortune left him from ’is cousin the horse-dealer.’

  ‘Who lives in America,’ said Solly simply. Mr. Moody closed the gate.

  When Mr. Pim returned from carting Farmer Barfoot’s hay, he received his letter from Maud Chick.

  ‘Now don’t ’ee go losing the letter, our baby’s daddy,’ said Maud sternly.

  Mr. Pim took the letter in his hand, and replied ‘No,’ with a sad shake of the head that evidently referred to the last word Maud had used. After looking at the letter for a moment or two, as became its importance, though with the writing upside down, Pim put it deep into his trouser pocket for safety, ate his tea in thoughtful bites, took up his hat as though he wondered what it was, and went out to the meadow gate, where he hoped to find some one who could read.

  While Mr. Pim was moving his legs slowly towards the meadow gate, Solly was watering his flowers at Gift Cottage. He used the large garden water-can that his aunt had left to him, that sprayed the water all about in a pretty stream of living pearls.

  When Solly watered his columbines he thought about God. He was thankful to his aunt for giving him a mission in life: to watch for God’s gift. Solly was a kind one; he was also a very babe in the world’s doings. His moustache looked dreamy and his eyes grey and wondering. Only once had Solly turned from the sheltering wings of his aunt to wander, but he returned soon again with that tormenting illusion called Love broken for ever.

  The Weyminster dogs had barked loudly that day, so that even Aunt Crocker had looked out of her window and told her nephew, who was weeding the garden path, that she thought the gipsies were about.

  Solly, foolishly, without knowing the danger he was in, looked out of the gate to see what time it was by the clock in the town gardens.

  The clock struck four. The dogs barked louder than ever. A young gipsy girl, clad in a red cloak, came swaying along the road kicking up her feet.

  As soon as she came to Mrs. Crocker’s villa, she danced to Solly, who was still gazing at the town clock as though he hadn’t even heard it strike four.

  Solly turned from the clock to the girl. Her feet went higher. Her red cloak was blowing, her other garments were but scanty, and she was plump though lightsome.

  The town dogs barked.

  The girl came near to Solly and smiled. Solly asked her in a trembling voice whether she was married.

  The girl shook her head, laughed, and showed her fine white teeth.

  ‘May I go with you?’ Solly asked. The girl nodded, and Solly kissed her, never noticing that Miss Pettifer passed by at the moment holding a scented handkerchief to her nose, as though all gipsies had the plague.

  Mr. Solly walked by the girl’s side and away from the town.

  The first real thing that he noticed when they reached Wiscoomb Common, where the gipsies camped, was a drop of rain. The drop of rain fell upon his forehead, and more followed.

  Mrs. Crocker had taught Solly to fear two important things in this world. God was one of them, damp clothes was the other.

  Beside the gipsy van Solly kissed the girl again.

  She laughed, and taking up a dead rabbit she began to skin it.

  Solly looked at her hands.

  He looked at other things too.

  A man, a tall gipsy, had come near, and was exchanging pretty words, every one of them oaths, with the foulest looking old woman that Solly had ever seen in his life, who sat in the van. Once you notice things, there is no end to it. Near to the van there was a tent made of sacking, tied upon upright sticks. When Solly inquired of the tall man where he could sleep for the night, the man pointed to this tent. It looked very damp.

  The company sat over the rabbit—half cooked in a pot that had never really boiled—and ate it.

  The old woman in the van threw out the rabbit’s leg that had been given her, because she couldn’t bite the flesh off it. The leg fell in Solly’s lap. After supper the girl climbed into the van, showing her legs to Solly, though he never looked at them.

  As he crawled under the sacking, he heard her cursing the old woman, and reminding the world in general that if the old woman had been a man something better might have been happening.

  Solly slept for a little under the sacks, and dreamt that he was being married to Nancy, the pretty gipsy, in a thunderstorm, with bats flying about, and that he was eating unripe blackberries for the wedding breakfast.

  After this dream, that only troubled him, Solly woke up and lay thinking. The sacking dripped. The gipsy who lay beside Solly grunted in his dreams like a boar pig; sometimes he swore and threw his arms about. A wet piece of sacking blew loose and flapped in Solly’s face.

  Mr. Solly crept out from under the sacks. He decided that besides fearing God and the damp, he would also fear love. He always intended to love sweet Nancy in future, but at a safer distance.

  For some while Solly had wandered about the common in the darkness and rain; but at last he found the road to Weyminster.

  When he reached the town the dogs began to bark again.

  He knocked softly at his aunt’s door, and waited patiently for her to open it to him.

  While he waited, the clock in the gardens struck four.

  The next day Solly asked his aunt why she hadn’t added love to her list of things to be feared.

  ‘Because love is related to death,’ replied Mrs. Crocker….

  After watering his flowers at Madder, Solly now thought of his text for the day—

  ‘The war came to an end, as wars even then required to do.’

  Solly was glad to hear that it did end, for if the cannon and the soldiers had come as far as Madder, they might have disturbed the peace of his columbines; or if the season was autumn, and he was picking the dried pods, saved for seed, of his runner beans, it would be unpleasant to hear the ships—‘grim, silent, ominously near’—letting off their guns. ‘Even supposing they were doing it in play‚’ thought Mr. Solly, ‘the noise might bring down the rainstorms, and with such a melody in the air God could never be expected to descend upon Madder hill.’ In a friendly mood Mr. Solly walked out and came to the meadow gate; Pim at once handed him his letter unopened, because he feared that if he broke the envelope he might damage the contents, whatever they happened to be. Mr. Chick, who had come to the gate as fate directed him, looked gloomily at a little white stone upon the ground that distantly reminded him of a bantam’s egg that Maud had once given him for his tea. Chick’s gloom had come upon him because Job had remarked that one day he intended to teach him the art of grave-digging, ‘in case I be ever lamed or hurt, for folk do all want to be buried when they be dead.’

  Chick, in order to protect himself from even the thought of such a contingency, moved further from Wimple, who stood there too, and nearer to Mr. Solly.

  The letter was from Miss Pettifer, and between it
s leaves, folded as nicely as a wedding-dress, was the undertaker’s bill for £23, 2s. 5d.

  To do honour to herself and to certain other town ladies who had taken an interest in the fright and death of poor Annie, Miss Pettifer had arranged that the conveyance to carry the body should be no common waggon. She had even promised Mr. Barking to obtain the money from Pim—she had heard of his honesty from Annie—and to pay the bill herself in instalments.

  ‘I expect you will be so good as to pay me back‚’ was how the letter ended.

  While a listless summer wind was blowing, Solly explained to Pim that Miss Pettifer expected him to pay to her, taking so much a week out of his wages, the bill for his wife’s funeral.

  Mr. Pim’s other doubts being set aside at the moment by the interested way Job Wimple and Chick were looking at him, as though £23, 2s. 5d. were hanging from his whiskers, he easily decided that instead of handing to Mrs. Chick one pound a week for his board, he would give her ten shillings and hand the rest to Miss Pettifer, but without asking her his usual question.

  The Madder meadows were now coloured by the soft green light of evening. Outside the Chick cottage Mother Maud was nursing little Pim. Polly Wimple was playing at lying on the grass, holding her hands behind her and stretching out her legs to see what a big girl she was getting. The baby upon Maud’s lap held out his hands and crowed to Polly.

  ‘The flowers at Gift Cottage have names,’ said Mr. Solly, who watched the children lovingly. ‘And the Americans have names too. There are pinks and columbines and beans in the garden; and Stonewall Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, and Mrs. Greene in America. Aunt Crocker taught me to call the great Creator of all the worlds by name too. Even when I was quite a little boy she told me His name. Good Mr. Tucker names our Saviour in church, and I have even heard Mr. Pim called “Daddy.”’

  There is Maud—a mother to all babies—and there is Polly Wimple, plump as a pert robin, but what name can I give to the baby?’

  Mr. Solly asked this question of Pim, who remained very thoughtful and silent for some moments.

  Even though he doubted what he had done, here was this child at Mrs. Chick’s. Pim saw Maud carry it in, and decided that it should be named. Everything in the world had a name; as Mr. Solly had said, you couldn’t go on calling a baby ‘thik toad’ all its life; and even ‘toad’ was a name.

  Mr. Pim wished to find a name for his son. If he could be a boy again with Minna under that pink May bush in the fields, she might have told him one. And there was his wedding night: something ought to come up in his mind from that night time, some name to call his son.

  Annie hadn’t been flurried or excited; she had just laid herself down, soft and sleepy and glad to be there….

  When a midnight star, who only believed in the existence of one cowman and a shepherd in all Madder, was high in the heavens, Mr. Pim left all the warmth of fair Annie, and opened the window and looked out. He looked out because he wanted advice; he wanted to see Minna, who might tell him something.

  The moon was in the sky, as well as the midnight star, though low down, and cast a pale and deathly whiteness over the meadows. The line of Madder downs, as well as the moon, stared at Pim, who stared back uneasily at the downs; because there was something about those downs that was so utterly different, seen as he was seeing them, from the soft living bed of feathers that seemed all Annie. Pim looked at the hills and at the meadows too, as though they mocked him in a cold manner. They appeared unfriendly to him, as well as to his question, with the moon making queer shadows; so that Pim couldn’t help thinking that the night should keep its chilling secrets a little more to itself.

  He was glad to turn from nature and to look down into Farmer Barfoot’s yard.

  A cow was standing up in the yard—a large quiet creature—amiable and gentle. The bull was lying down. The cow licked the bull’s flanks and pushed it gently with its horns. The bull did not move.

  ‘What be looking at, out of window?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Farmer’s bull Frederick bain’t a-knowing more than I,’ replied Pim, creeping back to her so as to avoid a moonbeam.

  . . .

  ‘Fred be a boy’s name, bain’t en?’ Pim asked Mr. Solly, remembering the bull.

  ‘Yes, ’tis,’ said Job Wimple, before Mr. Solly could reply. ‘For thik wold skull I did throw out of grave where Mrs. Pim were to go were Fred Barker’s, so Susy did say.’

  Pim nodded his appreciation of Wimple’s concrete knowledge and looked into the fields. Maud had appeared again, and was leading Polly home by the hand, telling her as they went along, while Miss Polly ate of the flowers, that no little maid should lie out like she had done, so naughtily, in grassy meadows. When the children were gone, Farmer Barfoot took their place, as something to be seen that moved, giving the interest that any human being or beast of the fields always gives to idle watchers, only by moving from one visible point to another in country places.

  Farmer Barfoot came slowly across the meadow. He rested Betty twice on the journey. He intended—and so did Betty—to hear what was being said by the gate before the company departed. When two or three were gathered together, here or elsewhere, Farmer Barfoot liked to be there too; for he was one of those who, having brought an oddity into the world, his Betty, liked to have her talked about.

  ‘If they bain’t talking of women‚’ he would say, looking down at his foot, ‘it may be pigs or radishes they be telling of.’

  ‘’Tis about Pim we be speaking,’ said Chick, when the farmer drew near.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wimple. ‘An’ Pim do carry pounds, shillings, and pence in ’is pocket, and ’ave give a name to thik little toad Maud Chick do look to.’

  ‘Though ’e be come funny, ’e bain’t no toad,’ said Pim, a little haughtily.

  ‘No,’ said Wimple, thinking of the church service, ‘’e ’ave rose up into Fred.’

  Chapter x

  ‘BEWARE’

  TEN years of Madder life passed smoothly. Quickly gone these years were, though the days and hours went slow enough. This is often a peculiarity of country time, these slow-moving days and swift-hurrying years. The phenomenon has been referred to by Crabbe the poet, who could write better tales than sermons, as his parishioners evidently thought when they pealed the church bells in fine holiday fashion on the day he left their village.

  The seasons had passed by in Madder very much as Thomson tells us they do, with very little variation in their behaviour: the summers always going away like beautiful white birds with soft downy breasts, while two of the ten winters provided an interest—created on purpose for Mr. Chick—in the form and substance of ice four inches thick on Farmer Barfoot’s horsepond. Mr. Chick broke the ice with a long pole that he kept on purpose for this use in a corner of the stable. Even with all the experience that he had gained during these years past and gone, when Mr. Pim first saw his son Fred run after Polly Wimple in the lane he opened his eyes very wide indeed; though at the moment he felt that no new light was thrown upon the mystery—and science calls it so too—of generation. Yet Polly resembled the Minna of earlier days so truly by the way she kicked up her heels so that her frock was tossed about, and then even more unforgettably when she threw herself upon the grassy bank and hid her laughing eyes with her hair.

  And there was Fred standing beside her, who looked the very same sort of being that Pim had once seen, when he was a boy, reflected in the still river pool near to the stepping-stones when he looked for minnows.

  ‘I bain’t a-walking backwards, be I, in these Madder grounds?’ Mr. Pim inquired of Maud Chick when he reached home one day.

  ‘’Tis most like thee will be,’ Maud replied, ‘if thee’s forgot they sticks ’ee promised.’

  Although so strange a doubt came upon Pim as to whether he was walking into the past or the future, his son Fred, by growing into such a big boy, with a round face, a head of curls, and fine blue eyes, proved that he at least was going forward in life’s journey. Even before the te
n years had passed, Fred had shown a happy interest in Polly. There was something mysterious about Polly, something that Fred wished to know a little more of.

  Besides Polly and the mystery that ran about with her, showing itself in white dashes sometimes, there was, and all to amuse little Fred, the interesting art of simple addition and the excitement of throwing his cap into the air, both to see how high they would go—the cap and the counting—and whether the cap could be caught when it fell. Before he began going to school Maud had taught Fred how to count up to a hundred; and so she handed him, a round plump little boy with cheeks like ripe apples, to Polly Wimple to take with her, Polly having already trod the educational road for two years. ‘Thee’ll lose thik cap in they high hedges a-throwing of en, and I bain’t a-going to no church wi’ a bare-headed boy to be married‚’ Polly remarked to Fred one day when they went to school together.

  During play-time that same morning, Fred, for reasons of his own, first visited Gift Cottage, and then played truant in the churchyard until school was over. Finding him out at last after hunting all round the village, and even looking under Susy’s wide skirts, where children had been known to hide, Polly said ‘she wouldn’t love him no more if he went away losing himself.’

  ‘But I haven’t lost myself,’ Fred replied; ‘I’ve been a-counting.’

  ‘Counting,’ sniffed Polly contemptuously. ‘I thought thee ’d a been a-flinging ’ee’s cap up.’

  ‘I’ve been an’ counted,’ said Fred very gravely, ‘they trees of Mr. Solly’s and wold God’s grave-stones. Mr. Solly’s trees be ten, and there be thirty stones, not a-counting they ten little crosses where cats be buried.’

  ‘They crosses be for babies‚’ said Polly.

  ‘Ten of they, then‚’ said Fred, ‘an’ thirty great stones, counting by ones.’ …

  The morning after little Fred had been found counting the grave-stones, Mr. Solly sat down in a thoughtful frame of mind to eat his bread and milk. He was sure, as he cautiously sipped the milk to see how hot it was, that something important must have happened in the night. He knew that he had closed the book that was all about the Americans when he went to bed; but it now lay open upon the table at page 146. Who had opened it? Although Solly wasn’t the only person in the world, he was the only person in Gift Cottage.