Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  Chapter xxi

  DAISIES

  ‘WE love a daisy,’ Mrs. Crocker once said when she was walking with Solly in the meadows near Weyminster, ‘because the daisy always grows in that same valley of humiliation where the shepherd boy sings his song.’

  ‘And where there are glow-worms,’ said Solly.

  ‘But if, as Christian did in that same valley we see an ugly thing, nephew, we mustn’t call it Miss Pettifer.’

  Solly took his aunt’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘We are all ugly things sometimes, dear Solly, but let us think of our earthly bed as a safe hiding-place from all our ugliness—blessed be His name.’

  Mrs. Crocker sat down upon the grass and looked at a daisy.

  ‘To an old woman, this mortal life—all that is left of it—is closing in upon every side; and we are forced to bow down nearer and ever nearer to the earth. But look at this daisy, Solly; it knows its times and seasons.’

  Mrs. Crocker looked up at a hedge where two children in white frocks were picking May blossom.

  ‘Who would wish to be called Mrs. Crocker, or even Deborah Crocker, for ever?’ she said, smiling. ‘And poor Crocker always felt his name such a burden.’

  Solly looked up to try and find a lark that was singing in the sky.

  ‘You know’—Mrs. Crocker sighed, but not unhappily—‘that good dear Crocker collected poor rates, and when one day he called for mine, and sat gratefully upon the chair I had given him, instead of giving me the receipt at once, he said shakily, “I must get this load off, or find some one to share it.”

  ‘“What load?” I asked.

  ‘“I mean my ugly name,” he said; “but if you would be kind enough to share it with me, we might soften it a little, so that all the rate receipts wouldn’t stare so.”

  ‘I had no answer ready at the moment.

  ‘“Do you forgive my having such a name?” he said, more timidly than ever.

  ‘“I will sign my own receipt with it,” I replied.’

  ‘Aunt,’ said Solly—the lark had stopped singing now—‘you like forgiveness; you even forgive Miss Pettifer.’

  ‘But I don’t like her,’ said Mrs. Crocker….

  Going out from church one Sunday afternoon in spring time, the next spring that came to Madder after Fred Pim had left the village, Mr. Solly, seeing that the daisies were about, bethought him of his aunt and her words about a daisy. He had passed by Miss Pettifer, who was waiting in the porch; and thinking more of Mrs. Crocker than of the Americans, Mr. Solly walked to Gift Cottage.

  With the service over, Mr. Tucker had tried all he could to take it seriously—that gentleman was now amusing himself by peering into the vestry looking-glass on purpose to see how very funny an old bald-headed man can make himself look with a surplice on. He was winking at himself for about the twelfth time, when Wimple, the Madder clerk and sexton, crept in on tiptoe, and whispered impressively into his master’s ear, ‘that “she” was waiting.’

  ‘Who is waiting?’ asked Mr. Tucker.

  ‘Miss Pettifer,’ replied Job.

  ‘And ’tis ’ee,’ Job put his heels down gently, ‘that she do want.’

  For such a long time now Miss Pettifer had disregarded the existence of Mr. Tucker, that he couldn’t prevent himself showing by his downcast looks his surprise to Mr. Wimple.

  Seeing this surprise as so depicted, Mr. Wimple whispered again: ‘’Tis to send Maud Chick to mad-house that she be come; for Maud do often go an’ cry up at vicarage, an’ do stop Polly working—so Miss Pettifer do say.’

  Instead of amusing himself any more with the glass, Mr. Tucker now looked longingly at the vestry window.

  ‘They small bees do fly in,’ said Wimple, in a helpful tone, noticing where his master’s eyes went.

  ‘I believe I could fly out,’ said Mr. Tucker.

  ‘Thee bain’t going to try, be ’ee?’ remarked Wimple, whose tone of voice expressed the horror he felt at his master’s suggestion. ‘Best to bide in cupboard till she be gone, for thee bain’t a small bee.’

  Mr. Tucker lifted the vestry table near to the window and climbed upon it. Forgetting, in the excitement of his escape, to take off his surplice, he, with his legs going first, squeezed through the window; the last view of him being a broad grin, to which grin Mr. Wimple touched his forehead with his forefinger, as became a good and faithful church servant. With this vision still in his head of his departing rector, Mr. Wimple silently finished his own duties in the vestry, and departed too, putting on his hat in the church so as to be able to take it off to Miss Pettifer in the porch.

  ‘I wish to speak to Mr. Tucker,’ said Miss Pettifer. ‘How much longer am I to wait for him?’

  ‘’E be a-reading of ’is book,’ Wimple replied innocently, ‘an’ ’ave a-got to page forty-nine, chapter six.’

  Even though Polly had tried in every possible way to procrastinate, in order to keep the cabbage from being burnt, when Miss Pettifer did at last arrive at the table, in no very amiable frame of mind, there was no hiding the fact, after so much warming up, that the dinner was spoilt.

  When she had done with it, Miss Pettifer rang the bell in two sharp angry pulls.

  ‘I am not at home,’ she said, when Polly came, ‘to any callers; but you must be.’ Polly usually went out on Sundays. ‘I intend to write a letter to the bishop about the wicked book that Mr. Tucker reads all day long in the vestry.’

  If a gentleman, who happens to escape from a lady who has something nasty to say to him, is wearing a surplice as he scrambles through the hedges of good Farmer Barfoot, it is most likely that he will be greeted with laughter by any one who sees him.

  Mr. Tucker liked laughter. But the day being Sunday, and having been rammed into the decorum as well as into the doctrine of the church, he modestly chose the deserted upland meadows instead of the lower lanes in his walk home to Dodderdown. Descending into a narrow green valley, somewhere between the two villages, that was dotted with daisies that reminded Mr. Tucker of shining hailstones, he could not avoid giving a skip or two of pleasure: a mere modest caper, during which he held up his surplice to prevent himself from treading upon it. But, and Mr. Tucker stopped himself in a meditated skip over a gorse bush, he was not alone. In the bottom of the valley, sitting amongst the shining daisies, there was some one crying. Mr. Tucker put his hand to his pocket to see if his story-book was there. Maud’s tears reminded him of some one in his story who once wept. Mr. Tucker’s happy excitement now changed its manners. Mr. Tucker looked at Maud and wept too….

  Mr. Tucker liked to see children playing but not crying, so after crying a little himself—as the character that he loved best in his book had done—he went a little nearer to Maud, sat down upon the grass, and looked at the daisies. Mr. Tucker knew more about the troubles of a human mind than most of us do; his book was full of those troubles as well as, according to the Miss Pettifers of the world, of obscenities.

  Mr. Tucker wisely thought that in order to quiet Maud’s tears he must needs begin by stilling his own.

  He looked at the daisies. He had once wanted—he remembered this now—to make a daisy-chain. And here were the daisies.

  Mr. Tucker put his hat upon the grass; he picked two daisies and knotted the stalks together. He held these up and looked at them, wondering how best he could tie another one on; for those two alone wouldn’t go very far round a lady’s hair. Mr. Tucker picked another, and tried to bind that one with a piece of grass to the other two. This third daisy fell off at once.

  But Maud Chick had been watching him; her tears were quieted now, and she stood beside Mr. Tucker and saw his trouble. Maud smiled.

  Mr. Tucker began to pick the daisies. He gave them to Maud.

  Maud, in a manner that is only told to children by the fairies, soon made a long chain of the daisies.

  Mr. Tucker placed the chain round her hair. Maud’s hair was white.

  Soon after her walk to Dodderdown, the afternoon when Miss Petti
fer’s clock went faster than Maud, Maud’s hair had begun to grow grey. It was now white. With the daisy-chain around her hair, Maud allowed herself to be led by the hand.

  Mr. Tucker led her through the village of Dodderdown towards the vicarage garden…. Whether or no it was the effect of the story-book that Mr. Tucker carried in his pocket, or whether innocent madness is itself something that frightens a certain kind of man out of its path, we cannot say: but two men, Mr. Bugby and James Andrews, who were standing near the farmyard gate, and talking of the price of straw — for Mr. Bugby wanted some — now moved, when they saw Mr. Tucker and Maud Chick coming, into the stable.

  ‘They clergy bain’t religious,’ Mr. Bugby remarked, peeping through the stable window.

  Farmer Andrews laughed….

  In the vicarage garden, tender and shining new-born leaves gave Maud and her daisy-chain a welcome. And Mr. Tucker, who had his own idea about her madness, hoped that his garden pond might, on such a warm day, give him a chance to cure her, because little boys bathed in it. He led her there, hoping for the best.

  A few Dodderdown boys were happy splashing one another in the pond: merry because their clothes were off, and happy because they were chasing the frogs.

  ‘See how they splash,’ said Mr. Tucker, and left Maud to watch them, while he went to ring his bell, so that he might advise one of his maid-servants to lead Maud home to Madder again.

  Maud watched the boys; she wasn’t frightened, but she looked at them curiously. Soon she caught a frog for them and threw it into the pond. The boys splashed and laughed, and Maud Chick laughed too. Her fear had left her, as Mr. Tucker—who had learnt a little about madness from his book—hoped it would; but alas, only to change the tenor of her madness.

  Maud smiled kindly at the boys. The eldest of them came near to her, laughing. He gave her a little water-beetle to look at.

  Maud looked curiously at the beetle. She threw it away.

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I don’t want a beetle, but please give me a baby.’

  The boys looked at Maud. They stopped splashing the water, and went away behind the trees to where their clothes were left.

  Chapter xxii

  MRS. BUGBY’S FRIEND

  ONE afternoon Mrs. Bugby came out to her garden well in order to draw some water. She lifted the well cover, and before she let go the bucket she looked down.

  At the bottom of the well, at a depth that seemed very far from the upper world, there appeared a dim small circle of black water. This inky circle had been for a long while now Mrs. Bugby’s companion in life—her friend.

  Whenever Mrs. Bugby thought of her friend she stopped crying. Often she saw her friend at midnight, when brandy-sodden Mr. Bugby would be both lamenting the fact that he was born to frighten the maidens, and explaining how he did it. Mrs. Bugby’s friend had one disadvantage attached to the excellence of his serene disposition. He lived so deep that in order to reach his kind blackness, and embrace him, as she longed to do, for ever, there would have to be that long narrow fall first.

  Mrs. Bugby had often tried to fancy herself sliding down there: and yet it wouldn’t be a slide, but a dreadful drop, though at the bottom there was always Mrs. Bugby’s friend, if only she dared.

  In the bar parlour of ‘The Silent Woman,’ whenever Mrs. Bugby served Chick, Pim, or Wimple with their drink (Mr. Billy had been carried off as a joke one Christmas day to join hands—for they were buried next to each other—with Mr. Soper, and on a Lady day the bell had tolled for Corbin too), Mrs. Bugby would remember that silent friend of hers in the garden, and would think how cool and still that presence was, and so different from Mr. Bugby.

  Mr. Bugby was kind in one way; he certainly tried his best to overcome his wife’s dislike to that narrow deep fall. He would strike her—merely, as he kindly informed her, ‘to keep himself in training for the next’—and suggest ‘that they well worms be good company to a dead ’oman.’

  Mrs. Bugby now let down the bucket, though it seemed to her to be a little hard upon the water to draw it out from its deep silence into the light of noisy day.

  With the bucket upon the grass again, Mrs. Bugby looked down once more. She was still looking, when Mrs. Chick’s voice came from over the stile—a pleasing opening in the summer hedge—and brought to the scene the pleasantness of a cheerful person’s interest in the misery of another.

  ‘Don’t ’ee look so long down there,’ said Mrs, Chick, ‘or something mid happen to ’ee.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Bugby, as though she spoke to some one that Mrs. Chick couldn’t see; ‘I can’t do it yet, I can’t do it. I would be broken on those hard bricks. I dare not try to fall, I dare not try to fall….’

  ‘You be all shaking,’ remarked Mrs. Chick, when Mrs. Bugby carried the pail of water near to the stile and rested. Both the women now looked into the meadow and watched Maud Chick, who hurried to and fro there with that uneasy gait that betokens a troubled mind.

  ‘Bain’t Maud no better?’ asked Mrs. Bugby.

  ‘’Twas a pity,’ said Mrs. Chick, watching her daughter’s restless motions, as though Maud were a natural curiosity brought there on purpose to amuse every one—‘’Twas a pity that Maud did know so little, though she did use to wash an’ dress Fred when ’e were a biggish boy.’

  Mrs. Bugby still looked at Maud, who had now stopped her rambling walk and was eagerly watching the postman, Mr. Moody, who was conversing with May Billy upon the Madder green, before starting to deliver his afternoon letters.

  ‘Maud were a maid,’ said Mrs. Chick, ‘that were always thinking about they babies. She never thought on nor know’d, no, not even when she were like a woman be, what ’tis they married men to do. Chick do say that Mr. Bugby—’tain’t nothing that I do mean to say against ’im—do tell at “Silent Woman” as ’ow ’e did frighten she thik day. ’Twas in meadow footpath’—Mrs. Chick nodded towards Dodderdown—‘that landlord did meet she. An’ ’e did tell she of a little maid ’e ’d heard a-screaming in they chalk pits across meadow grounds. ’Twas a funny tale, for when Maud an’ ’e did go as far as pits there weren’t nor child at all.’

  Mrs. Chick looked as though she were astonished too, that there ‘weren’t nor child.’

  ‘A wanting man that do mean to ’ave ’is way wi’ a maid be funny to look at.’ Mrs. Chick looked at the inn door and nodded amiably at Mr. Bugby, who was sitting in the porch. ‘And she wanting a baby so bad too; and that were a manner of asking for a peep at nature, and when so much be done, ’tis usual that nothing don’t happen.’

  Mrs. Bugby raised her pail and moved slowly away, with the weary gait of a woman who has looked too long into a deep place, and at her only friend a little too lovingly.

  Mrs. Chick pitied her happily, and turned away because she had seen Mr. Moody, the postman, enter the lower end of the field, in order, so Mrs. Chick hoped, to bring her a letter.

  Mr. Moody, the Madder postman, had long ago discovered the fact, a very trying one indeed for most simple-minded gentlemen, that young ladies were everywhere in the world.

  ‘When I do try,’ he informed Mrs, Moody, ‘to think that they bain’t about in all times and in all places, they do come around I like Christmas cards that bain’t proper addressed.’

  Mrs. Moody placed the large Bible, that she always carried to chapel and carried home again, upon the front-room table, and rested near it for a moment so that any passing neighbour might see that she gave the Bible a little of her company sometimes.

  ‘’Tain’t nor use,’ said Mr. Moody, sitting down too, according to custom, ‘me keeping Susy in me eye, nor yet Mrs. Corbin, an’ I do try to look at they round white pillars in chapel.’

  ‘You should have looked at the preacher; ’e were telling of bodies that do rot in grave same whiles as souls do burn in hell.’

  ‘I don’t fancy they remarks,’ said Mr. Moody.

  ‘Then you should look at me.’

  ‘You be me wife,’ replied Mrs.
Moody’s husband mildly.

  But this morning Mr. Moody had come to Madder with a virtuous resolve, though not a new one. He wished to try whether or no a long look at Mrs. Billy, who was grown extremely ill-favoured, could prevent for a while at least his eyes from wandering to younger and more pretty women.

  It was unfortunate for Mr. Moody that as soon as ever he had taken this new cure, a good long stare at Mrs. Billy till her cross look was safe lodged in his mind, he should go out directly with his letters, from Mrs. Billy and the post-office, to encounter May Billy upon the village green.

  Mr. Moody stopped at once when he met May, and looked at her. He knew how May liked being a girl, and he knew, for her frock and herself told him this plainly enough, that she was a pretty one.

  Mr. Moody let the idea of Mrs. Billy fall out of his mind, and took in May instead, who was ready enough to be admired.

  May watched Mr. Moody, and toyed with his wishes as a kitten would do with a piece of straw: handling those wishes with her eyes, exciting them, following them, and drawing them to her. But alas! when the postman felt himself to be gone as far with May as any public and open-air conversation can decorously go, she laughed loudly.

  When once Mr. Moody let his helps to virtue go—which they always did very readily indeed—life became very serious to him, and every movement or expression of the girl he looked at, or talked to, portended such and such a willingness, and all intended for him.

  He had just reached a very simple interpretation of May’s words and movements when she burst out laughing at him.

  That she should laugh at all, at so serious a state of a man’s feelings, appeared to Mr. Moody to be a betrayal of all his most interesting secrets. If she had meant to laugh so—and only because he had invited her to go a little way down the lane, why hadn’t she left him at the first, alone, and good, with Mrs. Billy to look at?

  Mr. Moody looked at his letters. ‘Those letters,’ he thought, ‘may be as important to some people as May’s frock and gestures had been a moment ago to him.’