Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  Certainly the cormorant needn’t have looked so greedily there, for even the Devil was likely to get short commons at Miss Pettifer’s, although that very afternoon she intended to send Polly to meet Mr. Balliboy, the Norbury carrier, in the main road under the hill, to fetch the bones. For threepence, with an extra twopence for the carrier, Miss Pettifer was able to provide, with a few potatoes, a dinner for Polly, if only she took enough trouble about cooking it, for six days out of the seven.

  Miss Pettifer held Polly so nailed to the kitchen table, as though it were a cross, that when Polly did find herself out of doors going for the bones, she could not avoid the pleasure of playing upon a bank near to the inn, with a tiny puppy that Susy’s nephew Tom led with a string.

  Polly played with the puppy as though it were a summer’s day instead of an autumn one, and as if she were ten years old instead of near twenty.

  Often it happens that a child is so happy playing that she doesn’t know when she is being watched. And if it so happens that a simple person, who thinks of himself but as a leaf in the wide tree—say a Mr. Solly—sees her, and notes the excitement of a girl’s pleasure as a bright shining star in a night’s blackness, and goes to his home comforted, though a man, then a girl’s joy has once more befriended a poor sinner. But, and if the watcher be of another kind, events may happen that show a game as a pretty chance for the Evil One.

  Mr. Bugby liked Mrs. Chick. He was standing near to her now and watching Polly.

  Nature had provided Mrs. Chick with a tongue as well as with a body that even now could please the men.

  ‘Chick be a fool,’ remarked the lady, ‘for ’e do want they strap leggings, same as thik Polly do hanker for Fred Pim, and same as silly Maud do want a baby.’

  ‘’Tis a world of wanting,’ replied philosophical Mr. Bugby, who remembered the brandy bottle that the Norbury carrier was to bring as far as the turning to Madder that very afternoon.

  ‘There bain’t no brandy in house now; ’tis finished,’ he said.

  ‘You be going to meet carrier, then?’

  Mr. Bugby nodded.

  The bird that had perched upon the church tower flew round the village and settled upon Madder hill.

  ‘Wants do come,’ said Mrs. Chick, ‘from what others do have, and I do tell silly Maud that if she wasn’t mad she’d be married.

  ‘There be thik merry maid too’—Mr. Bugby was watching Polly—‘that be so clean and tidy now, and ’twill all be extra washing for I wi’ she a-playing wi’ Tom’s puppy.

  ‘’Tis they Sunday ones,’ said Mrs. Chick crossly, who always showed a mother’s interest in underclothes when she was near a man, ‘’tain’t they week-day’s, for they bain’t frilled same as they Sunday’s be.’

  Mr. Bugby’s eyes followed Mrs. Chick’s looking.

  ‘She be going to fetch they bones and margarine,’ said Mrs. Chick.

  Mrs. Chick spoke truly. Mr. Balliboy was bringing a pound of margarine as well as the bones to Miss Pettifer.

  Polly kissed the puppy, fondled it lovingly for a moment, and handed it to Tom with a sigh. Having been playing so long with the puppy, there was now need for her to hurry. She ran past the inn, as she had once ran in the meadow when Mr. Bugby was watching.

  Mr. Bugby watched her now….

  As Mr. Balliboy handed Polly Miss Pettifer’s parcel under the hill, he said, in a tone of concern, looking beyond Polly and up the Madder lane, ‘There be wold Bugby coming, but where the hell be brandy bottle?’

  In order to fetch out the bottle, Mr. Balliboy climbed backwards into the car and felt amongst the legs of his customers.

  ‘Brandy bottle were under seat safe enough,’ he remarked to Polly, when his head and half his body appeared again, ‘but where be en now?’

  Mr. Balliboy sniffed and looked suspiciously at an old lady from Norbury, a Mrs. Morsay, under whose legs he had placed Mr. Bugby’s brandy an hour before. Mr. Balliboy put his head into the car and sniffed again. Inside the car there was an unmistakable vinous odour.

  ‘No one haven’t drank poor landlord’s bottle?’ he asked, bringing out his head again, and looking up at the dull sky as though he thought the thief lived there.

  But as no answer came to Mr. Balliboy’s question, either from the sky or from the car, he sat down in his seat and said to Polly as the car moved away, ‘I best be a-going, for thik Bugby be the woon to frighten poor ’omen, an’ Mrs. Morsay be timid.’

  When Mr. Bugby reached the road he saw Mr. Balliboy’s car turn the corner and go out of sight.

  But though the brandy bottle was gone, Polly Wimple was still there. The reason why she wasn’t half-way up the Madder downs by this time was a simple one. The string that had tied Miss Pettifer’s parcel of bones together was loosened, and one bone—that perhaps wished for burial—had fallen by the roadside. Polly wasn’t the kind of girl to leave anything behind her, and so she found the bone and fastened the parcel again, tying to it as well the pound of margarine.

  Owing to the escape of this bone, Mr. Bugby came up to Polly when the parcel was safely tied again. The two walked together, but without speaking to one another.

  There are other ways of thinking about a young girl who walks by one’s side in the country than the poet Wordsworth’s. Mr. Bugby thought by a law of custom. That is to say, he always pursued the same road of thought before he reached to the consummation of his desires. He regarded each new girl that he went with as a mysterious circle of wonders, to be unwrapped, frightened into docility, and at last utterly rent and discovered.

  Above the great road that leads elsewhere, and near to the top of the long Madder down over which Mrs. Pim was carried, there is a pretty copse. The trees in this little copse are covered with ivy, that gives a dark pleasant shade or shelter to any wayfarer who wishes to rest there. This little copse is far enough away from Madder village to prevent any one who wishes to read Wood and Stone or Marius the Epicurean from being disturbed there. It is also a suitable spot for young lovers to retire to upon a happy Sunday.

  Upon each side of the lane outside the copse there are steep banks; and these banks have often provided the Madder children, who wander sometimes quite a long distance in fine weather, with a chance to roll.

  Darkness, and even twilight that is deepening into darkness, produces sometimes dim forms that appear human, and yet they may be but tree stumps or hedgerow shadows.

  Near to these high banks, and in the growing and shadowy darkness, the landlord of ‘The Silent Woman’ touched Polly. Polly screamed, ran up the bank, but was caught by the foot.

  She struggled, escaped again, for she was young and strong. She ran a few yards up the road and then stopped. Polly stopped because there was a large black bird in the road—a bird whose proper situation in nature is the sea, where it is credited by certain writers with an abnormal will to devour.

  Upon such a darkening evening the bird appeared to be larger than its usual size, as it is seen in its natural home; and its being there at that hour was not the sort of sight to cheer a girl’s feelings who is trying to escape a ravisher.

  The bird stretched out its neck, spread its wings, as this species will often do upon a rock at sea, and Polly was caught from behind….

  Near to the high banks, and in the copse by the roadside, a large spider lived in a hollow tree. This spider had by nature and inheritance an interest in another form of natural life—the flies. The place of his retreat being so well chosen, and this interest of his so often and so easily consummated, he—for happy spiders even can be troubled by idleness—was sometimes dissatisfied with life.

  Ever since this spider had seen Farmer Mew carrying a lamed sheep upon his back down the Madder fields—for he used to live that side of the hill—the wise spider had decided that man was but a larger creation of his own kind, though of course more greedy, for the spider considered himself, as is usual with well-fed people, as but a moderate eater.

  The spider looked out of his web—his eyes
were like tiny beads of fire—in order to see what Mr. Bugby did with the struggling fly he had carried into the copse….

  The spider watched until Mr. Bugby left the girl, who lay as still now as any fly that he had laid out in his nest; and then he left the shelter of his web to see what had happened.

  When the spider left his web, the footsteps of Mr. Bugby could be heard going jauntily down the Madder hill towards the village.

  Mr. Bugby was whistling.

  Chapter xxvi

  SCATTERED BONES

  THE spider, who noticed how disordered Polly’s clothes were, and how quiet she seemed to be, let himself drop out of his web so that he might see what had happened. He crawled along Polly’s body until he came to her face. He waited for a moment upon her neck, and then slowly pursued his way of discovery upon her cheek.

  Polly sat up and shook the spider away from her, who hurried to his web again, deciding meanwhile that Mr. Bugby was a worse workman than he; or—and there always was this doubt—could the victim sting?

  Polly wondered vaguely why she wasn’t crying. Why couldn’t she cry? She had cried at other times; she had cried when Fred went away, and he had even counted her tears. But no tears came now to be counted.

  When all is broken and rent in a moment, thoughts will sometimes come from the past, of joyful hours, that do but heighten the present misery of the wronged one.

  Fred, where was Fred? And she had kept all of herself so safe for him!

  There was the time upon the grassy bank, when the honeysuckle scented the shy Madder lane, and when a cow’s mooing even could sound soft and warm. She had drunk of Fred’s lips then as from a deep spring, so that even the shaggy great head of Farmer Barfoot’s bull Frederick—for every bull of his was called by that name—that peeped over the hedge looked on with awe and reverence when she promised to give all of herself one day to Fred.

  ‘I will never speak to any one else,’ she had said, ‘and no one has ever kissed me but you, Fred.’

  And once, too, but that was in the meadow and under the very trees that Mr. Moody had so set his heart upon visiting, she knew that she had nearly been killed by a kiss. It was a kiss that awakened all the hopes of her body into singing, and carried her suddenly into the magic circle of being called Love and Death, that are the two realities of life. But these realities, that Mrs. Crocker had always bid Solly think kindly of, couldn’t hold a girl for more than a moment or two; for a country girl must work, and so Polly had to go to Miss Pettifer.

  Miss Pettifer; the bones; a careful mistress. A careful mistress, who had inherited a nice income from a gentleman who sat all day upon his chairs. Of course she would want to know what had happened to those bones; and she wouldn’t be likely even to forget about the margarine, the sight of which had so much reminded Mrs. Morsay of the Great War that she was compelled reluctantly to make the discovery that Mr. Bugby’s bottle was a screw-topped one.

  Polly Wimple now looked at these bones in a dull manner. She had held the parcel all the time that Mr. Bugby was after her, her loyalty to her mistress forbade her to let that go. They all now lay about under the trees, and one or two had a little red flesh that still stuck to them.

  ‘You get quite a lot of meat for your threepence,’ Miss Pettifer used to tell her servant.

  Polly wondered curiously what her own bones would look like if they were so carelessly scattered. She remembered how her father had once brought home a bone that he informed his little girl at the tea-table ‘to be a funny woon.’

  ‘’Twere farmer’s grandmother’s,’ he explained, ‘who did have a foot like farmer’s: only in they back-times farmer’s family weren’t grave-stone folk same as they be now, wi’ their money.’

  Why no, a young girl’s bones would never look in the least like a cow’s; and Fred had once said, when they lay together under those shady trees, that she hadn’t got any. ‘You bain’t got no bones,’ said Fred. ‘You be all nice.’

  Polly felt her arm; it wasn’t a large arm, but it was plump and firm as a girl’s should be. She touched it with her lips; but was it her own arm that she touched? She wondered if it was. She felt her hair, that had fallen down, and tried to fasten it. But the hairpins were all fallen out, so she platted her hair instead, as she used to do before the servant’s looking-glass when she went to bed. She was going to bed. There was so much to do that day, so much housework to do for Miss Pettifer. Why, of course, she had been scrubbing the bedrooms, so that was why she felt so tired.

  Had the evening come, and would she soon be going out to meet him? Perhaps Fred was come home from Derby? It was a little hard of Miss Pettifer to send him there, but it would be so nice if he came home very rich.

  Oh, she had buttered the toast for Miss Pettifer’s tea with margarine; that was a silly mistake to make, and all because she was thinking how much she loved Fred.

  Why was all so silent? There should be the kettle singing, and Miss Pettifer’s bell might ring at any moment.

  Oh, that bell! It would ring so sharply, and always break into the middle of some of her prettiest thoughts about Fred.

  Oh, how she had wanted Fred, and how foolishly Mrs. Chick would talk about marriage. And yet even those words of hers had made sun-kissed Polly want Fred the more.

  ‘’Tain’t nothing to hurt a maiden, marriage bain’t,’ Mrs. Chick would say, laughing loudly.

  But why couldn’t she cry now?

  No, she couldn’t cry; she couldn’t think any more of Fred, though, because something had happened to her; she was no longer a nice girl for Fred to touch; she was different now. She couldn’t cry; her tears were done with and gone; she was like these scattered bones that had a little flesh still sticking to them.

  Sounds now came by, and Polly listened dully to them. Some one was walking in the lane going to Madder.

  She trembled, and the steps went by. She couldn’t have called out even though the steps were Fred’s; and they did seem to sound a little like his.

  Those steps were gone, and something snapped in Polly, as if a thin golden cord that bound her being together—with Fred’s, of course—had stretched and broken.

  The evening was grown still, but with the ominous stillness that tells of a storm that is coming. Polly heard another sound that fell into stillness, but came again more and more insistently. She listened, and the sound grew louder, more weighted with heaviness, and more clamorous in its call for the victim of the night.

  Polly had heard the sea waves before when a storm was either coming or else dying down in Madder.

  She crawled slowly out of the wood. The mist had cleared for the moment, and the stars were shining. Polly had twisted her ankle during her Struggle with the landlord of ‘The Silent Woman,’ and she now discovered how much it pained her.

  But she couldn’t see Fred any more, and those waves called to her.

  Something came near that licked her face. She had swooned again, she supposed. Polly raised herself from the ground, feeling better. Tim, the sheep-dog, bounded about her.

  ‘Go, Tim, go,’ she said; ‘go to Fred.’

  The dog bounded away.

  Chapter xxvii

  FRED PIM COMES HOME

  TO MADDER

  ALTHOUGH Fred tried his best to feel grateful to Miss Pettifer for getting him to Derby, he couldn’t help wishing from the very moment he set foot in that city that he was back again in Madder.

  Even though he had the pleasure, and Fred was a good boy, of counting all the windows in the Derby workhouse—and we hope for the credit of the Madder national school that he counted them correctly—yet, strange though it may sound to those who have a liking for simple arithmetic, Fred was not happy. Besides Polly—and his heart was hers—he missed a sheep. This sheep was a naughty one; it would place its front feet upon the hurdles, and would try to eat upon that day’s forbidden ground whatever there was it could reach to. Fred would drive it away from the hurdles by throwing his cap at it, but the sheep, that liked a game a
s well as Fred, only tried elsewhere to break out.

  ‘’Tis a badly brought-up sheep,’ Fred would tell Farmer Barfoot, when, by the means of this one, all the sheep were in the mangels. ‘And I’ve threatened to forget to count en one of these days.’

  ‘If thik sheep were left on bare downs and never brought into fold, ’twould teach ’e manners, Betty do say,’ the farmer replied.

  Whenever Fred thought of this sheep he counted the windows of Derby faster than ever.

  In a fine town like Derby, where there are a great many windows, there are also a great many young ladies who sometimes, though not often, look out of the windows.

  ‘When I’ve finished the windows,’ thought Fred, ‘I’ll begin to count the girls.’

  After living some months in Derby, Fred succeeded at last in earning two shillings. These two shillings were presented to Fred by a business gentleman whose purse, stuffed with bank-notes to the value of some hundreds of pounds, Fred had found and returned to him. Showing this florin where he lodged, Fred was ordered out into the street.

  It was a cold evening, for late autumn was come, and Fred wandered about the town carrying his cap in his hand—the new one that he had bought when he first came to Derby, but had never felt his own heart high enough to throw up.

  Under a railway bridge, where he hoped to get a little shelter from the rain, he encountered a young lady huddled up in a corner. There just happened to be the faintest look of Polly about the young lady’s hair that made Fred decide to leave Derby the very next day.

  He decided to walk to Madder and count the milestones he passed. When one is young and going on foot by road, happy thoughts run on before and scatter the way with flowers. Even though a youth may be tired with walking along the great highway that leads from the heart of England towards the western coast, such happy thoughts can go before him and make the way seem easy.