Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  ‘’Tis a hard trouble to be rich,’ said Pim, in a true rich man’s tone.

  ‘Do Betty allow it to be proper,’ he asked, ‘that a rich man may only mind they things that ’e ’ave tried to do, wi’out asking no more of they soft maidens?’

  ‘What ’ave ’ee tried to do?’ Betty do ask, said the farmer.

  ‘Though I be rich, I were poor an’ lowly wi’ Annie,’ replied Pim modestly; ‘an’ rich or poor, a wedded man bain’t always a knowing one.’

  The farmer lifted Betty from the table.

  ‘’Tis time for Pim’s song,’ he said.

  Mr. Pim raised his mug to his lips and drank. He felt the glory of his position with intense serenity. He was Pim, about whom all people talked and all honour was given, and to whom maidens would be driven in flocks if he but lifted his little finger.

  But no, even though he might have them all, he refused. He still saw Annie’s heaven as real and near, with that fine driver and all the heavenly shining of the carriage as wonderful and everlasting.

  Mr. Pim waved his hand, breaking a little the curling halo of smoke above his head.

  ‘Annie!’ he called, ‘Annie! I be singing, Annie. I be singing to thee, Annie.’

  Mr. Pim sang:

  ‘Oh, you shall drink wine

  So sweetly in the season, then you shall be mine.

  You shall have no pain; I will you maintain.

  My ship she’s a-loaded, just come in from Spain.’

  Some while before Pim sang his song a stranger had softly entered the inn door, and sat upon a lonely bench beside it, not apparently being one of those who like to intrude too near upon the happiness of others.

  This stranger was Fred Pim.

  Fred had not sat long listening to what was being said before he easily understood that it was he, and not another, who was expected to come to Madder this second time, to enter the glory of his father, with a fine load of riches from Spain.

  Fred watched his father lovingly; he wanted to go near to him and tell him all about Derby.

  No one knew him as Fred. It was not unusual for a tramp to creep into those doors to rest a little; for Mr. Bugby with his bottle in the parlour hardly noticed his customers; and this evening, for some reason, the landlord commanded his wife to draw the beer.

  ‘An’ then go drown thee’s bloody self,’ he had said kindly, ‘for Silent Woman’s sake.’

  But only when Fred had first come in he had fancied for one moment that he might make himself known. Very soon he saw that this was impossible. He loved his father too much to wish to disturb all the happiness of his honoured calling as the father of a rich son.

  After his father sang his song, Fred said to himself, ‘’Tis best for I to go right away to Spain.’ He saw himself going to Spain. He knew that it was possible to get to all kinds of strange places from the port of Weyminster. He supposed that he had only to go to Weyminster and then ship for Spain as a stoker.

  All journeys now seemed possible to Fred. And then to come home really loaded and to marry Polly—how easy that seemed. And Fred saw himself return riding, too, upon a high-stepping white horse, as a nobleman had once ridden into Derby to unveil a memorial set up to certain other dead and gone and quite forgotten—except for the small pensions and the fine prances of that horse—eternally disposed-of Freds.

  ‘But I would like to just touch my father.’ Fred’s heart spoke these words distinctly within him.

  He now moved amongst the happy ones, with the seeming intention of warming his hands by the fire. As he went by Mr. Pim, Fred allowed his hand to rest for a moment upon that much-honoured gentleman’s arm in an affectionate manner that no passing tramp should use towards the gentility of the land. Feeling the touch, Mr. Pim shook off his son’s hand with an indignant gesture of disapproval; and Farmer Barfoot rebuked the tramp for his familiar behaviour, informing him that Mr. Pim was the father of a very rich son who might that very evening be returning from Derby.

  The stranger, thrust from the fire, returned to the door again, and remained standing, but with a view, no doubt, of shortly going out into the night.

  Mr. Pim leant back in his chair, and spoke in the dreamy and contented manner of a rich and happy man.

  ‘’Tis a pleasant life that I do lead in Madder,’ said Pim. ‘A pleasant happy life in Madder thinking of me boy. An’ as I were a-singing’—Pim’s voice grew softer—‘sooty ceiling did break out, an’ Annie’s face did peep in from heaven. ’Twas changed, thik heaven were; ’twas gold-covered, and Annie did peep an’ wink at I same as she would do when we met in lane.’

  ‘“There be room for you too here,” Annie did say. And I nodded to she, an’ I bain’t no woon to doubt now, for now Fred be rich, ’e be mine.’

  The stranger at this feast now opened the door and went out into the night.

  Chapter xxix

  THE FOOLISH GUILLEMOT

  THE night was grown dull and misty again, but now and then a star would peep through the mist, as if to promise a clear sky later, when Fred Pim knocked at the back door of the Madder rectory.

  After he knocked, Fred stepped back a little, so as not to give Polly the shock of seeing him so altered, before he could tell her how untidy he was with all his walking.

  Fred waited for a moment or two, in joyful expectation watching the door. But as no one opened he went forward, again knocked, and again retreated into the shadow.

  And then the door opened; but it was not Polly who opened it, it was Miss Pettifer.

  Miss Pettifer held a candle in her hand and peered out into the night. She had, by the look of her, been trying, in a lady-like way, to cook her own supper. But the butter, or at least some of it, that she had tried to get into the frying-pan to fry the sole with, had become attached to her hair, as Lily Parsons had once threatened.

  Fred looked at Miss Pettifer and thought that Teddy the pedlar must be a bold man to say that she loved him. He remained hidden, and Miss Pettifer, getting no answer to her angry question as to who was there, shut the door, bolted and locked it, and returned to her cooking.

  ‘But where was Polly?’ Fred wondered.

  He opened and shut the heavy rectory gate as silently as he used to do when he visited Polly there, and stood in the lane under the great elm trees. He looked up at the servant’s window, but there was no light in it: and he now remembered Wimple had remarked at the inn ‘that Miss Pettifer had sent down to inquire whether Polly was there.’ But Fred hadn’t taken much notice of that, because he knew Miss Pettifer was always thinking that something else would happen after what had happened to Maud. Of course Polly would be at the rectory when he reached it.

  But he was there now, and Miss Pettifer, with her front hair buttered, was a sure sign that Polly wasn’t in the kitchen, or indeed anywhere else in the house.

  Fred Pim looked up at the bare elm boughs, as if to ask the trees where Polly was gone: but the great trees were hard of hearing, like old folks are who can only know of their own woes and only listen to their own moaning. Only a sad sound came from them, sad, like the weary moaning of a dying god.

  Fred whistled softly. From where he was standing he could see the bright light of the inn lamp. The door was open now, for evidently the guests were leaving. But outside the inn, and shown clear in the stream of light that flowed from the door, there were the forms of men grouped close, as if they feared to separate and to enter the outer darkness. From this group there came the sound of a song—Mr. Pim’s. And presently, when that was silent, Fred heard the sound of Farmer Barfoot’s voice evidently trying to persuade Betty to start for home, and begging her in all kindness to him ‘to mind they great stones.’

  Fred whistled again.

  There was a bark—a sharp, quick, happy bark—and Tim, the sheep-dog, bounded upon Fred, with the joy that only a dog can show to an old comrade who has returned home.

  ‘Where be Polly?’ asked Fred, who at last had found a living thing to answer his question. ‘Wher
e be me maiden that I do love?’

  Fred walked to the rectory gate. But Tim didn’t follow. Fred began to go a little way down the lane to where the Wimples lived. Tim whined, but wouldn’t stir.

  Fred came back and patted him, fondling his shaggy head.

  ‘Won’t ’ee tell poor Fred that’s been to Derby where Polly do bide?’

  Tim crouched down and howled dismally.

  ‘Where be she?’ asked Fred again, who knew that Tim never howled for nothing.

  Tim started down the lane that led to the downs. Fred followed. Now and again the dog would turn to see if Fred was coming too; seeing him following, he went on again.

  Upon the downs, at the place where Polly had sent the dog home, Tim howled again. But encouraged by Fred, he continued along the sheep-track, though more slowly now, that led, passing above Dodderdown, to the sea. Once Tim stopped. He stopped by the dead body of a sheep, that had evidently been caught in a gorse bush, and, unable to free itself, had died there.

  The star that had promised a clearer night had spoken truthfully. And as it sometimes happens in dull or rainy weather, when the mist clears the stars shine with unusual brightness, so that the light they give is nearly as bright as moonshine.

  The sheep lay dead in a little hollow through which the path went, and Fred, feeling himself a shepherd again, pulled the body out from the bush and examined it. Fred knew the sheep; it was the same sheep that had so often led the others to escape from the Madder fold. But this time it had strayed too far, and the bush had caught it.

  Fred resolved to bury the sheep when he returned from Spain, but that wouldn’t be for some while, he feared.

  He followed Tim sadly, thinking of the sheep. ‘Why had it come to die there?’

  Fred knew the hollow well enough; he had walked to it with Polly one Sunday before he left Madder.

  ‘Now, don’t ’ee be naughty, Fred,’ Polly had said upon that occasion, ‘for there bain’t no wedding-ring on me finger; and if pin ’ave a-pricked ’ee, ’tis no more than ’ee deserve. But kiss I, Fred, woon more little one.’

  Polly had shaken herself free of him and was tidying her hair.

  ‘They small birds do sing pretty,’ she had said then, trying to draw Fred’s attention away from herself and towards the happy singing of the little birds….

  ‘Yes, that be death,’ said Fred, as Tim howled dolefully beside the dead sheep.

  The dog led him on. Dodderdown lay in a little cup in the downs, the church and even a white tombstone was visible. It was down there, so snugly laid, that Mark Only was buried. Fred remembered how Wimple used to tell in his usual merry manner, and he always liked a burial at the end of a tale, the story of Mark Only, telling how afraid Mark used to be of Death’s dogs, but later how he had fancied them as his friends and even looked for them.

  ‘Was he really going to Spain,’ Fred wondered, ‘or was Spain only the first word of a long sentence that led on and on until all words became one?’ For even meek Madder folk can sometimes see to the great end. His Spain was there, perhaps.

  Upon the high uplands, and near to a part of the cliff from whence the beach could be climbed down to, Fred stopped and called to Tim, who came back whining to him.

  Fred trembled; he was but, he knew, a mere Madder boy; and a strange force was drawing him, and the dog too—for he had never known Tim act in this manner—on and on to where those waves were breaking.

  Fred was still walking—he hadn’t finished his long walk yet—and he had passed through Madder. He had passed Madder, as he had passed all those other little villages, those other towns, those bare, blank, withered spaces, for ever moving upon endless tarred roads. Endless, too, was the whirl of the motors upon those roads; endless the human beings, all moving somewhere, all moving; but all, perhaps, as he had come to do, passing by their homes.

  Couldn’t he have stayed in Madder? Why had that lady wanted so much to send him off to where riches are, though as far in Derby from his possessing them as in any other wealth-ridden city in the world? Why couldn’t he have always lived in Madder, and Derby have remained safe in Spain, and nestled down into the Madder life that he knew and loved with Polly near to him?

  Spain! Why had he thought of going there? It was when he knew that his father had set so much store upon his returning rich that the thought of the real Spain had come. But why should he go on to count those Spanish windows? Tim would never have howled like that had not something terrible happened, or was going to happen. And where was Polly? Perhaps Tim had only led him to find the dead sheep, and then had gone on to the cliff edge after the rabbits. But Tim never howled for nothing. Fred knew that.

  He now tried to drive the dog away; he had no wish for Tim to follow him down there where the waves were breaking. If Tim went there he would follow him into the sea too, if that happened to be, as Fred knew it was now, the right road to Spain.

  He succeeded at last in driving Tim away by throwing stones at him and shouting him off with angry gestures, so that the dog moved sullenly upon the homeward path, and disappeared like a forlorn shadow upon the downs.

  When he was half-way down the cliff Fred heard the dog howl again.

  ‘Tim do bide by dead sheep,’ Fred said aloud, and waited for a moment, almost hoping that the dog might come back to him again. But no dog came.

  Fred found Polly down on the beach, down by those waves, for she had been taken there by their guiding sound. She crouched upon the sands, trembling in her last fear.

  Fred saw her and went near to her, but Polly stepped back nearer to the sea, and the white foam of a wave, cruel by the eternal habit of a vast unconsciousness, crept around her….

  Near to Polly, upon the wet sands, a foolish guillemot was resting. During the stormy weather the bird had decided that it had a careless mother who made the children’s bed badly, so that there had been nothing to rest upon of late but nasty hills and valleys that jolted a simple bird most unpleasantly. The guillemot—who should be called wise and not foolish—thought that if it left the bed for a little while the mother of the home would make it better and pat down the feathers.

  Polly Wimple had nearly trodden upon the guillemot, who had looked up at her with mild surprise.

  When Fred found Polly, the bird flapped its wings, stood upon its feet, fell sideways with surprise, and then stood up again to watch what would happen next.

  Fred held Polly, who told him what had happened. He released her, and walked with her into the sea.

  The first wave they met drove them to shore again, but the return of it carried them out to meet another.

  This other wave was raised up above its fellows a great distance from the land. It was a proud wave, mountainous and black. It wasn’t the kind of wave to run on in mere foam; it rolled heavy, it moved, a wall of dark waters. It was one of those huge waves that are only met with at night time on the high seas. It came out of the night and gathered the two drowning ones into its black womb. It broke upon them, and drew them by its undercurrent farther out to sea….

  The sea grew calmer, the guillemot fluttered and struggled and drew nearer to the waves. It dived, rose again, and floated; the bed was now more comfortable.

  From the land a dog, who waited beside a dead sheep, howled.

  Chapter xxx

  MR. MOODY FINDS

  SALVATION

  THE morning after Fred’s return to Madder Mr. Moody arrived upon his bicycle, to deliver his letters and parcels, in a good humour. The day before he had gone, by special invitation, with Mrs. Moody to the wedding of Mr. Hall, the lay chapel preacher.

  Although Mr. Hall had spent some little time of late in a place very well suited to gruesome conjecture, the county gaol, yet no sooner was he out again than he went at once to Mrs. Parsons and invited Lily, who had indeed always blamed herself as much as the preacher for what had happened, to marry him.

  ‘I never meant no harm to you, Lily,’ Mr. Hall kindly explained; ‘but I thought you felt so cold.�
��

  ‘It’s certainly time now,’ said Lily, who had learned a little about the world from old gentlemen, ‘for I to be saved from hell fire.’

  After the wedding Mr. Moody shook Mr. Hall’s hand earnestly, and as earnestly kissed Mrs. Hall.

  ‘And I want to be saved too,’ said Mr. Moody, ‘from my wickedness.’

  ‘You shall,’ replied Mr. Hall, in a low and sombre tone, as if he were addressing a corpse. ‘For God is merciful to we poor sinners.’

  As luck would have it, Mr. Moody met May Billy upon the Madder green, and May smiled. But Mr. Moody hurried on with his duties and prayed—for Mr. Hall always recommended prayer at any time of the day—to see something ugly so that he might get salvation.

  With this praiseworthy desire in his mind, though with May’s skirt and pretty shape in his eye, Mr. Moody now knocked at the rectory door to deliver a parcel.

  No one answered his knock.

  Mr. Moody was by nature inquisitive, and now he peeped into Miss Pettifer’s dining-room window.

  Miss Pettifer wore a faded dressing-gown of a faded grey colour, and her hair—at least all that was hers—looked sticky. Miss Pettifer was kneeling before the fire and blowing into it, evidently hoping that the damp paper and the damper sticks would catch alight. Miss Pettifer’s feet, clad in slippers of the same colour as her dressing-gown, strayed out behind her most despairingly.

  Mr. Moody took a long breath and a longer look; he was getting Miss Pettifer into him. May Billy fled from his mind’s eye, flying to that place where all wise men drive the pretty girls out to; and Miss Pettifer came in to rule for ever as a deterrent to Mr. Moody’s wanton pleasures. Mr. Moody found salvation….

  ‘’Tis well,’ said Mr. Moody, as he softly placed the parcel upon the upper step of Miss Pettifer’s door, ‘’tis well that I be here, for now that all maids be same as she, ’twill be heaven for Moody.’