Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  Although Mr. Moody found salvation that morning, Solly awoke sad. He had buried the History of America in the barren corner of his garden, and he missed it very much. He also fancied that Mrs. Crocker had told him in a dream that he must give Maud Chick what she asked of all the men—a baby. Mr. Solly was a little surprised that Aunt Crocker should have said that. He felt very sorry for Maud, but at the same time utterly unable to meet his aunt’s wishes in the matter.

  This morning Mr. Solly ate his bread and milk in a doleful manner, and he was thinking so much about Maud that he put into the basin a spoonful of salt instead of sugar. But he didn’t think of what he ate, because he was praying to God to show him by a sign what Mrs. Crocker really intended him to do.

  A good man’s prayer is often answered at the very moment that his lips breathe the words. God’s silent presence led Solly, who was ready enough to leave the bread and milk, out to the white gate of Gift Cottage. Solly leant over the gate and waited. Nancy Billy came proudly by.

  Nancy was three years old, and really shouldn’t have come by at all. She would never have been there, in the Madder world, if the church pews had been cleaner, so that May Billy could have knelt safely there instead of lying out under the green bushes with young Tom Tolly.

  But now Nancy, born because the church wasn’t swept—for though Mr. Tucker tried his best, he would so often fall to reading his naughty stories instead of sweeping—came by Gift Cottage nursing a doll.

  ‘Me pretty baby,’ exclaimed Nancy, swaying her own pretty body as she went by. ‘Me pretty baby, that don’t never cry.’ …

  Mr. Balliboy, the Norbury carrier, liked as he drove his car to have a suitable companion to sit beside him, to whom he could call attention to the curious fact that if you placed a foot firmly upon a piece of iron that projected from the floor the car would sometimes stop. When Mr. Balliboy would leave the car to itself half-way down a hill, in order perhaps to carry a packet of bull’s-eyes to a child who had cried for them all one Sunday, he would usually turn to the passenger who sat with him and say, ‘If car do start running back, jam down ’ee’s foot on brake.’

  Sometimes upon a market day Farmer Barfoot would visit Weyminster, riding beside Mr. Balliboy in the carrier’s van. Upon these occasions, Mr. Balliboy would always look suspiciously at Betty, and pass more than one remark concerning her, that would be very naturally resented by the farmer.

  ‘Were thee’s mother like she, farmer?’ Mr. Balliboy would inquire. And then he would shake his head slowly and say, ‘’Tis a mortal pity poor Betty were born so plain-looking.’

  Whenever Mr. Balliboy saw some one coming down the lane that joined the main road, he always used to hope that it wasn’t Farmer Barfoot, because he would never trust that deformed foot with the brake. He now saw some one coming that proved, to the carrier’s great contentment, to be Mr. Solly, who mounted in a friendly manner beside Mr. Balliboy.

  Solly had a proper reverence for Mr. Balliboy’s car, and was the sort of companion that Mr. Balliboy liked, because he could always be depended upon to foot the brake without upsetting the basket of eggs that was often near by. Solly would set his foot firmly down with a serious and attentive look, as if he knew well enough that all the lives of the travellers depended upon him.

  ‘She be good-tempered to-day,’ said Mr. Balliboy, as soon as Mr. Solly had settled in his seat and the car was started. ‘An’ I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Solly, that she do run best when there bain’t none of they wild winds blowing.’

  Mr. Balliboy made this remark in a whisper, being secretly afraid that if ‘they wild winds’ heard what he said about them, they might rush out suddenly from behind a lonely tree and stop the car.

  ‘’Tis best,’ said the carrier, with the air of one who has made an important discovery, ‘to let this young thing of a car ’ave she’s own way; for though I did buy she second-hand when t’ other were stole and broke up, she bain’t so very wold.’

  ‘’Tis best,’ said Mr. Balliboy a little louder, so that the car could hear him, ‘to let she go when she be minded, and stop when she be minded; but,’ Mr. Balliboy whispered, ‘sometimes she be minded to go backwards.’

  ‘I hope,’ said Solly, putting his foot upon the brake, ‘that she won’t wish to do that to-day.’

  ‘She may or she mightn’t,’ replied the carrier. ‘But once I did know she take fright at one of they blue beauties, and run backwards up hill faster than ever she came down en.’

  Half-way up a long hill Mr. Balliboy stopped the car, dismounted, and ran across a field, waving his hat in order to call the attention of a gentleman—Mr. Matterface—to the fact that he was waiting for him.

  As soon as Mr. Balliboy left the car it began to run backwards. Solly pressed his foot upon the brake. The car stopped.

  Starting again, with Mr. Matterface in a corner seat looking up at the sky as if he watched the playful angels dancing, Mr. Balliboy noticed that Solly didn’t speak one word between two milestones.

  ‘You bain’t talking,’ said the carrier.

  ‘No,’ said Solly, with a deep sigh; ‘I’m thinking about poor Maud.’

  ‘You do mean Maud Chick who be foolish?’

  ‘I want,’ said Mr. Solly, ‘to buy her a gift, and perhaps you can tell me how much a baby costs?’

  ‘Nothing,’ answered Mr. Balliboy, ‘unless you be one of they doubters same as rich Pim of Madder.’ …

  At Weyminster, Mr. Solly walked up the street in a thoughtful manner. He prayed that the spirit of Deborah Crocker might tell him what to do.

  About half-way up one of the two streets of the town, Mr. Solly stopped and looked into the window of a large toy-shop. A large doll lay in a cradle in the window, looking exactly like a sleeping babe with its eyes closed and a smile upon its lips.

  ‘If poor Maud had that baby,’ said Solly, ‘she would be happy.’

  Inside the shop the doll appeared to be more wonderful than ever. Mr. Solly and the young lady who served—Miss Pity—stood near together and looked at it with admiration. Miss Pity, who never grew tired of looking at this fine doll, explained its wonders to Solly.

  ‘It can do everything except cry,’ she said.

  Mr. Solly, who had never known of a baby who did anything but cry, looked from the doll to Miss Pity. He looked at Miss Pity as though he more than half believed that she was its mother.

  Miss Pity, who had always wanted to own a baby herself, blushed.

  ‘Is it a little girl?’ asked Solly simply.

  ‘It’s got all the clothes that a little girl should have when she’s dressed nice,’ answered Miss Pity.

  Solly, whose name, had he appeared in the Pilgrim’s Progress, would have been Mr. Modesty, changed the subject.

  ‘Do you suppose,’ he inquired, ‘that a young lady who isn’t quite what she should be in her mind, would think of her as a real baby?’

  ‘Even I find it a little hard sometimes not to think so,’ replied Miss Pity, looking out of the window.

  ‘Has she a name?’ asked Solly softly.

  ‘I call her Mary,’ said Miss Pity, still looking into the street.

  ‘Mary is a pretty name for a baby that never cries,’ Solly murmured.

  Upon the return journey Mr. Solly sat with his foot near to the brake and nursed Maud’s baby. Instead of watching the happy angels, Mr. Matterface now watched the doll.

  ‘I bain’t woon to find fault wi’ nature,’ remarked Mr. Matterface, ‘but ’tis a pity they bain’t all same as thik.’

  Mr. Balliboy nodded sadly.

  Chapter xxxi

  SOMEBODY FRIGHTENS

  MR. BUGBY

  A MONTH after Mr. Solly’s journey to Weyminster the wild winds awakened in real earnest, and came upon Madder with the suddenness that the Norbury carrier was wont to expect of them. The gusts drove and shouted about Madder, they ran along the hills like eager wolves, they bent the tall elms and shook the boughs in their anger.

  One small tw
ig fell upon Mr. Chick as he walked under the elm trees, returning home from Mr. Barfoot’s stable. When he arrived at his cottage, he reported that the church tower was blown down, and that the flagstaff had struck him ‘near dead.’

  ‘Be thik all that ’ave fallen?’ inquired Pim, who evidently expected more wonderful happenings. ‘Be Polly Wimple real gone to Derby to find rich Fred, as folk say she be?’

  ‘Polly be gone, sure,’ said Mrs. Chick, replying for her husband, ‘and no doubt ’tis Derby she be gone to.’

  ‘Or else Spain,’ said Mr. Pim.

  ‘I did look into window of “Silent Woman,”’ observed Mr. Chick, ‘an’ thik black glove be gone; some one ’ave taken glove off picture and put en on table.’

  ‘Were landlord in room wi’ thik glove? for maybe Mrs. Bugby be drowned,’ asked Pim.

  ‘No,’ said Chick, ‘landlord weren’t there, nor she neither, but Farmer Barfoot were holding up thik glove and looking at en.’

  The wind howled round the cottage, and Chick looked sadly at the sacking bound round his legs.

  ‘They snowstorms be coming before strap leggings,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘No one weren’t serving farmer?’ inquired Mrs. Chick.

  ‘No,’ replied Chick, ‘there weren’t nor mug on table, and farmer did only rest Betty and look at thik black glove. But that weren’t all I did see.’

  ‘Don’t ’ee wait till Christmas to tell we, then,’ said Mrs. Chick.

  ‘When I were beside stile, setting woon leg over while t’ other still bided, I did hear a bird come by.’

  ‘Well, birds be birds,’ said Mrs. Chick.

  ‘Thik woon did pitch on inn thatch and spread out’s wings, and ’twere a large black bird.’

  ‘Did ’ee look again to see if farmer were drinking?’

  ‘Yes, t’ other leg that bided did draw I back to window, and I did peep in again, but no one weren’t serving farmer.’

  Mrs. Chick opened the cottage door. She looked at the upper windows of ‘The Silent Woman.’ The windows, for the evening was now darkened, had lights burning in them.

  ‘No one weren’t serving farmer,’ she said once again when she returned.

  ‘No,’ replied Chick.

  ‘Then Mrs. Bugby be a-dying.’

  After taking their tea, which they ate silently, the family under the Chick thatch, with the exception of Maud, looked at one another.

  ‘Mrs. Bugby ’aven’t been looking well lately,’ remarked Pim.

  ‘What be it you do do when you do lay out a party?’ inquired Chick of his wife.

  ‘I do first look to see what furniture there be in room,’ replied the lady, ‘an’ then I do start to wash they dead bones.’

  ‘’Tis a mournful work,’ said Chick, moving a little farther from his wife.

  The flames from the log fire leaped and hissed and the storm grew louder without. But even with the noise of the wind, Mrs. Chick had been able to hear a motor car drive up to the door of ‘The Silent Woman.’

  ‘’Tis the doctor,’ she exclaimed excitedly.

  A knock came at the cottage door. The knocker was Farmer Barfoot.

  ‘You be wanted,’ he said to Mrs. Chick, and at once began the difficult task of guiding Betty down the path again. Mrs. Chick rose, smoothed down her apron, and followed.

  Pim and Chick drew near to one another and looked at Maud. Maud was nursing the doll that Solly had given her. She pressed the doll against her. She leant over it, believing that she fed it with her milk. She rocked the doll. Maud smiled. She was happy. She began to sing softly ‘There’s a home for little children,’ as if she were getting the child to sleep.

  ‘I did use to wonder,’ said Mr. Pim, ‘how they children did come, and now I be wondering what use riches be?’

  Chick looked from Maud to his legs.

  ‘We don’t pay nothing,’ pursued Mr. Pim, ‘when we do listen to farmer talking to ’is Betty; and poor Maud, that be happy now, don’t pay nothing to love ’er dolly.’

  ‘But me leggings,’ murmured Chick.

  ‘It don’t cost I nothing to mind Annie,’ said Pim.

  ‘But rich Fred be coming, bain’t ’e?’

  Chick’s tone was sorrowful.

  ‘Polly Wimple be gone for ’im,’ replied Pim. ‘An’ so long as she do bring Fred back to Madder, I don’t trouble if ’e be as poor as thik tramp that did come to inn to warm ’isself.’

  Mr. Pim looked at Maud.

  ‘’Tis a mother she be,’ he said. ‘An’ bain’t I a father too? But where be me boy Fred?’

  Chick looked more and more despairingly at his own legs.

  ‘A father that ’ave a son who may come ’ome to ’im poor, and whose mother be wi’ God in heaven, shouldn’t bide idle all these days.’

  ‘No,’ said Chick, a little more cheerfully. ‘There be food and lodging ’ee do owe for that mid buy they leggings.’

  ‘An’ ’tis best I go work for farmer to-morrow,’ said Mr. Pim.

  Mrs. Chick had followed Farmer Barfoot to the garden stile. But there the good farmer paused, because Betty showed a distinct unwillingness to follow the other foot that had already climbed over.

  ‘Now, Betty,’ said the farmer, in the same cheerful tone he used to his brown pigs, ‘don’t ’ee bide there to be dog-bitten.’

  Mr. Barfoot raised Betty carefully in the air and got her over. All safely over, the farmer remarked, ‘Thee best go home, Betty, long wi’ I, for though thee be so wise and knowing, ’ee don’t want to bide wi’ death at “Silent Woman.”’

  The farmer moved slowly off, guiding Betty around the large stones in the road, and cursing the darkness.

  Mrs. Chick remained by the stile for a moment and looked in an interested manner at the lights in the upper windows at the inn. One of these windows suddenly became darkened. The large bird that Mr. Chick had noticed upon the thatch perched upon the window-sill, and there it stretched out its great black wings ready for flight.

  ‘What be thik?’ said Mrs. Chick fearfully to the departing figure of the farmer; ‘’tain’t a cuckoo, be en?’

  The farmer was gone too far off to hear her.

  The bird stretched its neck as if it swallowed a little fish, left the window, flew low into the darkness and towards Madder hill.

  ‘I be glad thik nasty thing be gone,’ said Mrs. Chick.

  The doctor met her at the inn doorway and nodded in his usual friendly way.

  ‘’Tweren’t from drowning, I do hope?’ Mrs. Chick inquired.

  ‘No, no,’ said the doctor, stepping into the car; ‘only a seizure, Mrs. Chick.’

  ‘From pulling up thik water from well?’

  ‘That’s very likely the reason,’ said the doctor complacently, and started the car.

  Mrs. Chick entered the inn and began to climb the creaking stairs. Passing by the bar door, she looked in and saw the black glove upon the table.

  Mrs. Chick began to talk to herself to ease her journey up those seven steps.

  ‘’Tis the fourth,’ she muttered, ‘that “Silent Woman” ’ave killed; but I be glad she didn’t go an’ spoil thik well water for we tothers.’

  At the top of the stairs Mrs. Chick met Mrs. Bugby. Seeing this apparition, as she fancied, Mrs. Chick nearly descended the stairs again faster than she had climbed them.

  ‘What be doing dressed up?’ she asked, when she had got the better of her fear; ‘an’ who be gone an’ died if ’ee bain’t a-done en?’

  Mrs. Bugby, without speaking, pointed to the bedroom door. Mrs. Chick went in.

  After taking an inquisitive look round at the furniture, Mrs. Chick cautiously approached the bed.

  Upon the bed lay Mr. Bugby. His mouth was twisted into an odd and awful grin, and his dead eyes stared in a horrible manner at the window. For a few moments Mrs. Chick gazed at him in astonishment and horror, then she said in a surprised whisper, ‘Somebody ’ave frightened Mr. Bugby,’ and then added in an easier tone, though a little contem
ptuously, ‘Chest of drawers she made so much of be only plain wood.’

  Chapter xxxii

  THE PERFECT GIFT

  OFTEN the sea waves, although they christen them in the certainty of an everlasting reformation from all the old Adam, forget to name the dead that they give up.

  And so when two unknown bodies too far gone in corruption to be recognised, male and female, as created and destroyed by a dread omnipotence, were washed up by the great storm upon the nearest beach to Madder, no more than a little local notice was taken of the event.

  Miss Pettifer had been informed by the police—to whom she had applied for help because she missed a crested spoon; ‘our crest is a chair,’ Miss Pettifer had said—that a young person answering to the description she gave of Polly had been found playing—so Mr. Tucker would have said—in one of the Derby open spaces, and was now safe lodged in prison, and was to be charged with corrupting the gentility of the third son of the virtuous nobleman who had ridden, when Fred Pim was there, so nicely upon a white horse into the town.

  One of the largest Madder trees lay blown down beside the road, and looked, thought Solly, who stood by the white gate of Gift Cottage, ‘like a great whale brought ashore.’

  Solly was sad. He had opened his book of the History of America in real earnest when Annie Pim was brought so grandly home to be buried; and now he missed it more than ever upon this day of another funeral.

  Hearing that Polly had followed Fred to Derby, Solly, though he couldn’t doubt Aunt Crocker’s vision, nor yet the promise of the dread being who had vouchsafed it, felt despairingly that he might die before the gift was given.

  When one day the winds of heaven have done a mischief and uprooted a fine tree or two, they usually settle down the next day in order to see what has happened.

  The day after the storm was very still, so that even Wimple’s spade could be heard trimming the sides of the grave that he had dug to contain—for they were to be buried in one grave—the drowned bodies.

  On his way to the churchyard to complete his task, Wimple had encountered Mr. Chick. Chick was full of the exciting news that Mr. Pim had begun that morning to work for Farmer Barfoot, and had been overheard to say that Fred was his son, and that all he wished for in the world now was to see him ‘counting of farmer’s sheep.’