Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  Feeling a little tired, Solly sat down upon a root of one of the largest of the Madder elms, and waited a little nervously to see what would happen next….

  In the servant’s bedroom at Madder rectory, Maud Chick was trying to pack her box. For some reason or other nothing would fit in. The hat that she had saved up so many shillings to buy, having fancied it as just the very thing for her to be churched in, while Mother Chick, sitting in the front pew, would hold the baby with all the care that Maud’s many warnings had given her; she tried to fit the hat in beside her Sunday frock, thinking that these two at least should be friends. Maud took up the hat. She looked at it in an odd frightened way, and tried to fold it. As the hat wasn’t her holiday blouse, it resisted this new idea of Maud’s. Was the hat become a boot? No, she supposed it couldn’t be, and yet she was trying to tuck the end in as it were the higher part of a boot. Maud now began to take all her clothes, that she had already placed neatly in the box, out again. She had forgotten her workbox, that should have been placed at the very bottom. But before she reached the bottom, she had begun putting everything back again in a great hurry, as though she had seen something queer amongst her things that frightened her.

  Although Maud was properly dressed now, her hair was fallen down again, the pins having been put in too loosely by her trembling hands. She tried to get her hair into order again, though not very successfully.

  Maud dared not go to look in the glass now; she had looked once that morning, and had seen the face of a man looking at her in a horrid manner.

  Maud shut her box. It was, she supposed, her own hand that had locked it. She held up her hand and looked at it a little nearer. Yes, it was a girl’s hand undoubtedly, and it was hers. Maud sat upon her bed for a moment and looked at her box as though she wondered why it was there. Why had she dragged it out from its usual corner? Oh, nothing had happened to the box. It was only Maud Chick’s!

  Maud’s little longing had always been so simple and straightforward. She had learnt all the best Madder tradition about the babies when she was little more than a baby herself, because she always felt that she was born to be a mother. She had kept herself so carefully, too, feeling sure that the father would come, and she wasn’t at all particular as to who he would be; for all that part would just mean ‘the baby’ to her.

  There was no Madder custom regarding an infant’s or a growing child’s welfare that Maud didn’t know about. Maud was all ready for her baby. Every little bit of housekeeping knowledge was a twig for her nest. And what a proper nest it was that Maud meant to provide, so artfully made, so cautiously prepared, so intact.

  But why was the box there? and some one must have packed it, too.

  A bell rang sharply below stairs. That bell meant that Maud must go out somewhere—home, perhaps?

  The bird that Mr. Solly had been watching had flown seawards, and Solly was upon the point of going home to Gift Cottage when he saw Maud Chick coming, in a hesitating way, down the lane.

  Maud was one of the Madder young women that Mr. Solly would sometimes give a summer flower to, or else an autumn one. He would lean over the white gate as though he were only there by chance, and say, though not looking at Maud but up at Madder hill: ‘I hope you won’t think me rude, Maud, if I offer you these; Mr. Tucker always says that my flowers smell like Lebanon.’

  And here was Maud coming, and Mr. Solly hadn’t any flowers to hold out to her. He wished he had stooped down and gathered some of the forget-me-nots that he had seen in the brook; he knew he would have enjoyed doing that, going down upon the narrow bridge and leaning over the water to reach the flowers.

  Mr. Solly watched Maud coming.

  She walked very slowly, hurried for a few steps, and then stopped as though the hedge had frightened her. She came along in this manner, moving and stopping, and sometimes she put her hands over her eyes as though to shut out a sight that she didn’t wish to see.

  As she came nearer, Mr. Solly grew anxious, and wondered what ever could be the matter with Maud. He wished more than ever now that he had picked those forget-me-nots.

  Maud didn’t notice Solly until she came quite near to him. But when she did, she gave such a scream of terror, that he nearly fell into the nettles that surrounded the root he had chosen to rest upon. And Maud, hiding her eyes, fled past him.

  Solly watched her; her dreadful scream had filled him with shame and terror.

  ‘I oughtn’t to have sat so quiet,’ Solly said aloud, as though trying to explain Maud’s fear. ‘I ought to have called out, “Never mind me, Maud, I’m only Mr. Solly; I’m Mrs. Crocker’s nephew—I’m nothing.”’

  Solly walked slowly home to Gift Cottage, His hands trembled when he opened the white gate. In his parlour the History of America was still open upon the table. Solly looked at the book mournfully. He felt sure that both he and the Americans had seen a portent of coming doom in the sky.

  Chapter xviii

  ‘’TIS RELIGION,’ SAID

  MR. BUGBY

  SOMETIMES we wonder, when those who live in fear and torment, those who are tainted with a sad and lasting distemper of the mind, are not removed from their sorrows and dreads, by the hand that is supposed to rule the world, more quickly than the usual slow-moving cruelty of life allows.

  But wonder though we may, the bitter things that are written against some trembling ones have to be lived through to the end, be that end near or far, or ever the great day of liberation comes. And even this liberation, that some look forward to so kindly, may for aught we know be but a change of scene: the mere rounding of a point in the sea of time, where the memory of the old woes will beget again new torments, to be remembered again, and new-begotten again, through all eternity. But though we may wonder sometimes about it all, Mr. Solly was much too wise to do so, because his aunt was Mrs. Crocker, and because he as well as his aunt believed that God has a good gift to give.

  Even though the cross of doom had shown itself in the Madder sky, Solly believed that in the end God would pour out the whole wonder of His gift, not only upon Madder, but upon all the world. ‘But first,’ thought Solly, who preferred to contemplate local matters rather than universal, and who also liked concrete reality, ‘but first, I should like to know what the gift will be?’

  While Mr. Solly was thinking about God’s gift, and considering that it must be a good gift, or else He would never have promised to give it with Mrs. Crocker so near, Maud Chick had shut herself up in the tiny cottage bedroom that used to be her own before she went to Madder rectory.

  She was not much happier there than she had been anywhere else since she had taken that walk to Dodderdown. Mrs. Chick had heard of Maud’s screams; Eva Billy, who had always been a little jealous of Maud, was one of the first to report about them.

  Mrs. Chick liked to be amused, and a scream from Maud, if she could get her to give one, would certainly be an entertainment worth the getting. And so, when Maud was got to her room, Maud’s mother knelt down and peeped under the bed, as much as to hint ‘that a man might have been there as well as in the fields.’

  Maud did scream; she also crouched in a corner, and tried to hide her body with her hair, as though she fancied that she was naked.

  Mrs. Chick left her, and busied herself in tidying up in preparation for the doctor, for whom Fred had been sent.

  The doctor being come and gone again, Mrs. Chick opened the stairway door and called out to Maud: ‘There bain’t nothing—only they wold shadows in thee’s room.’

  Screams more terror-stricken than ever now came from Maud, though even these became quiet after a while, for Maud covered her head with the bedclothes so that ‘they wold shadows’ that her mother had so kindly noted couldn’t get to her.

  With those screams in her ears, and all the excitement caused by them, Mrs. Chick felt that she herself would like to be looked at for a few moments by a man. She showed so well as a large woman with her blood merry, and hoped that she hadn’t grown out of being a sufficient
reason for a man’s desires to come out of his eyes and cover her.

  Mrs. Chick went out into her garden and stood near to the stile that led to the inn. Noticing her there, and being drawn perhaps by the electrical waves that went out from her, Mr. Bugby, who was walking in his garden, came near to the stile too.

  Being satisfied by her own feelings that Mr. Bugby’s looks—and she hoped his hidden thoughts too—were where she wanted them to be, Mrs. Chick opened upon the subject of Maud, a subject that all Madder was talking of.

  ‘’Tis they men she be afeard on,’ she said. ‘An’ though ’er dad bain’t much of a man, she do scream at ’e too.’

  Mr. Bugby lowered his eyes a little.

  ‘She do fancy that they bedroom shadows be after her.’

  Mr. Bugby’s look closed with Mrs. Chick’s desires; her blood danced like a girl’s.

  ‘Maud’s notions be queer,’ said Mrs. Chick, who wished to explain the matter in detail to Mr. Bugby, now that his eyes had let her go again. ‘She do fancy that she did meet a funny man in they wide fields. An’ she do scream out that thik funny man were a-doing something to she.’

  Mrs. Chick’s blood was quieted; Mr. Bugby hardly looked at her now.

  ‘Doctor do say,’ remarked Mrs. Chick, ‘that she’s nerves be broke. “’Tain’t nothing, only they nerve breakings,” ’e told I. An’ Fred be now gone down to doctor’s for something to stop she a-screaming at they shadows.’

  Mr. Bugby leaned restfully against the stile and looked up at one of two little bedroom windows of the Chick cottage. He smiled, and hoped that Maud might chance to look out, and so notice how concerned her neighbour was about her illness. Seeing no one at the window, nor yet hearing the scream that he had hoped might be the result of his gazing, Mr. Bugby, shaking his head slowly, said in a mournful tone, as though the sad circumstances allowed of no other: ‘’Tis religion. ’Tis religion that did take hold of maiden, an’ thik man that did find she in field mid ’ave been Thomas Tucker.’

  Mrs. Chick at once took this bait of scandal in true country fashion. She spread herself out nearer to Mr. Bugby and smiled.

  Mr. Bugby deepened the plot.

  ‘’Twere to visit Farmer Andrews that I walked across to Dodderdown,’ said Mr. Bugby, ‘for to pay ’e for a bit of straw for stable. I did go along by vicarage mead hedge, and so to farm. ’Twas behind hedge that I heard some one say, “It really isn’t quite proper for me to go on reading about these ‘sweet flowers.’ They remind me far too much of Solly’s pinks and columbines——”’

  ‘’Twere Mr. Tucker,’ said Mrs. Chick, ‘that thee did hear talking over hedge; an’ ’e were telling about thik book of wickedness that ’e do read. Them shouldn’t be printed, them sinful books.’

  ‘As I walked home,’ said Mr. Bugby, ‘I did see Parson Tucker hurry across dead-man’s field, after something that did shine white an’ flutter in blowing wind.’

  ‘’Twas Maud’s white scarf ’ee did see,’ said Mrs. Chick excitedly.

  Mr. Bugby looked away from Mrs. Chick.

  Polly Wimple was hurrying along the footpath to the Chick cottage.

  Mr. Bugby looked at Polly with that indrawing look that a snake is said to use when it wishes to devour a little bird.

  ‘Fred Pim ’ave called she out to see Maud,’ remarked Mrs. Chick.

  Polly now began to run; she wished to get quickly to Maud. Her girl’s body, now rendered more than usually warm and tremulous by Maud’s troubles, moved like a young doe’s whose gentle sister had been hurt in the forest. She ran willingly, because Fred had asked her.

  ‘’Tis religion,’ said Mr. Bugby, looking at Polly’s young strong legs, ‘that do hurt they maidens.’

  Mrs. Chick went to her door to greet Polly, to show her upstairs, and to see what would happen then.

  Mr. Bugby walked slowly to the well in his garden.

  His wife was leaning over the well drawing water. To throw her in at that moment would have been easy to so strong a man as Mr. Bugby. But he merely looked at her in a sad manner, as though he felt more than ever at that moment the weight of the world’s wickedness.

  ‘When I do see,’ remarked Mr. Bugby mournfully, ‘a maid that do run and show she self, I be put in remembrance of a man that do sometimes frighten a maiden. A running maid, that be a maid, do ask for Mr. Bugby.’

  Mrs. Bugby crouched beside the well and shivered.

  ‘They skipping legs, that were lifted so pretty and showed more than maiden did know of, did ask a question. They did ask what a man be like.’

  Mr. Bugby looked down at his wife’s head. ‘Grey,’ he said, ‘be the colour of an old one, an old one who be neither in grave nor rotted. But I were talking,’ said Mr. Bugby, ‘of a maiden—of a maiden who do walk out wi’ Fred Pim.’

  Mrs. Bugby took her bucket and hurried with it weeping to the inn. The meagre lines of her body, cut and beaten into by every-day toil, leaned jaggedly towards the pail.

  ‘Don’t ’ee, now,’ said Mr. Bugby soothingly, ‘go an’ strain thee’s pretty self wi’ bucket-carrying, for when night-time do come there won’t be nothing to warm I wi’.’

  Mr. Bugby thinking—and no doubt wisely—that even at night-time there wasn’t likely to be much warmth in that jaded outline of a woman, decided that at the moment, and in order to give rein to thoughts—that were none of the cleanest—a half-pint of brandy would aid his happiness in life.

  Mr. Bugby followed his wife indoors.

  Chapter xix

  DERBY IN SPAIN

  MISS PETTIFER had had a fine run of lady-like house-keeping with Maud Chick as her servant. No house in England, of the upper middle sort, to match the church-like doorway of Madder rectory and the red blinds, could, Miss Pettifer felt sure, have been better managed than hers.

  Of course, by heinously bringing in the kitchen margarine for her mistress’ tea, Maud had thrown all her earlier hard work and careful management to the four winds of heaven; and the only excuse she could give was, that she had been frightened by something she had seen in Dead Man’s Meadow.

  The result, madness and terror, proved to Miss Pettifer that God’s justice—though it was at the moment a considerable inconvenience to herself—had been righteously expended. For to be drove mad by fright, Miss Pettifer decided, was exactly how every careless servant girl should be treated if they wilfully allowed the clock to run on past tea-time while they stayed out with the men.

  A rumour had reached Madder rectory, coming by way of the shop, and clinging to a packet of stamped envelopes that Miss Pettifer bought there, that Mr. Tucker had been taken, or rather witnessed, toying wantonly with Maud in the meadow, and that Farmer Andrews had heard the girl screaming for help.

  ‘Mr. Tucker do read thik book,’ Mrs. Billy had said, while Miss Pettifer carefully counted the envelopes to see that all the eleven were there, ‘and that do set ’im off for to read they maids.’

  Carrying the envelopes home in her gloved hand, with all the stickiness of scandal about them, Miss Pettifer thought—and not for the first time either—that one of her most praiseworthy wishes would always be, and one of her chief hopes too, to get that story-book of Mr. Tucker’s into her own hands, so that she might forward it to the bishop, with an explanatory letter enclosed about his servants and those swings.

  With that book and letter posted, Miss Pettifer felt sure, her own presence in Madder would be more than justified by exposing a priest whose wicked reading had led him to do all kinds of things—Miss Pettifer gasped—with this Chick. And also, no doubt, told him how to tell all those dreadful lies about his never seeing his own waiting maids.

  ‘He sees all of them,’ said Miss Pettifer aloud, as she locked the envelopes with a safe click in her writing-table drawer, ‘in their night clothes.’

  No lady knew better than Miss Pettifer did the advantages of being a mistress. She had never been so foolish as to think that a lady who dressed the hours, as she dressed herself, in measured costu
mes, could fit these settled movements of the day without the aid of a Parsons or a Chick. No lady could do proper justice to the lord of those chairs—Mr. Hall wept when the auctioneer explained that they were but chairs, and not coffins—unless she kept up a correspondence with her friends, and so occupy her mornings in nice contemplation of her own handwriting upon half a score of letters.

  The coffined one—and Mr. Hall would have been right about this last seat—would have expected no less than that his daughter, who had allowed him Oxford marmalade on Sundays, should receive in exchange for all her letter-writing, two or three hesitating ones; and these, not all from country gentry, by the morning and afternoon post. These, and such-like signs and wonders, with the Mayor of Weyminster’s automobile crunching her gravel as if it liked it, were enough and more to prove to the village, even without the baker’s remarks, that real money had come to her with the help of those chairs.

  How to get a country girl to work was one of those questions that Miss Pettifer had found a complete answer for. She had merely to find out what the girl loved most in life, and to play upon her feelings there, in order to win the game.

  There had been Maud Chick’s love of a baby, that Maud had so often talked about, that gave such a chance to Miss Pettifer.

  ‘You will never be able to dress and feed it, Chick, if you cannot finish the housework here by two o’clock, and be ready to answer the callers with your clothes changed.’

  And now here was Polly Wimple in Miss Pettifer’s service, and all Madder knew well enough who and what it was that Polly liked most in the world. Polly was more skittish than Maud had ever been, but all her skittishness went one way—to Fred Pim. Polly’s hair had gold in it, and a sweetness as of Solly’s pinks, and Polly’s white arms were like fine summer Sundays.

  For a week Miss Pettifer watched Polly working. When Sunday came, and Miss Pettifer bit at the bacon and Mr. Tucker, she decided that she couldn’t allow this Polly Wimple to marry young Shepherd Pim. If that were to happen, all her hopes of a Madder servant would fade again. She might even be left with the chance of her own hair being buttered, as that wicked girl Parsons had hoped it would be. But Parsons had always been a liar and a deceiver. She had told a naked lie to poor demented Mr. Hall, the preacher, by staying so still—‘And, of course, that was what she wanted,’ thought Miss Pettifer. ‘But this Fred,’ she decided, ‘must be got away from Wimple.’