Innocent Birds

by T. F. Powys

  Chick hadn’t said two words before Wimple took him firmly by the arm.

  ‘Do ’ee come now,’ said Wimple, ‘and take a peep into grave; ’tis a deep woon.’

  Chick turned pale, and, freeing his arm, burst through the hedge and ran across the meadow towards the safety of his cottage.

  Although the day was so quiet it was dark and gloomy, for the sun could not but remember how he had once kissed, in a wanton and naughty manner, the nakedness of little Polly.

  According to his habitual custom, though he certainly never expected anything to come there that day, Mr. Solly watched Madder hill.

  As he watched, a cormorant flew out of the bush upon the summit, and went westwards in a direct line.

  ‘I hope that bird isn’t going to America,’ Solly said; ‘for the Americans have no history to save them now.’

  ‘I wonder who the two drowned ones are?’ Mr. Tucker asked Solly, who attended the funeral.

  ‘We’ll watch,’ said Solly.

  ‘And pray,’ said Mr. Tucker….

  ‘Where be Chick?’ asked Wimple when he had finished filling in the graves; ‘for I do want thik poor man to see they few bones I’ve a-turned out on grass.’

  ‘Mrs. Chick did tell I,’ said Mr. Pim, who was watching the sexton, ‘that she’s husband were so turned by what ’ee did say to ’im in lane that ’e be gone to bed wi’ ’is leggings on, and don’t talk of nothing but only worms.’

  ‘Chick bain’t no man, same as I be a man,’ remarked the sexton proudly, ‘that do fancy a good dug grave better than’s bed.’

  Although the burying of them was so little noticed in Madder, Mr. Solly couldn’t help thinking a great deal of the two drowned ones who lay in the Madder churchyard.

  He had buried his Americans, but though buried they still spoke to Solly, which is easy to believe when we consider that Captain John Brown was buried too.

  But what they told Solly from the corner of the garden he wasn’t sure of. Though one thing he knew beyond a doubt, and that was that Madder didn’t seem to be the same place to him now.

  Time went on, of course, and the usual events that time is delivered of. Chick and Pim worked in the fields, and Wimple always kept his pickaxe clean and his spade ready. Farmer Barfoot’s waggons rumbled down the Madder lanes, going to Stonebridge for cake or coal, as Betty advised.

  But even though Miss Pettifer now bought bacon at the Billys’ shop, which went a long way to show that all was like it used to be, yet Mr. Solly couldn’t help being sure that all was different.

  He couldn’t avoid noticing—perhaps with the help of a buried American—that something had happened. It might have been all his fancy, or had something wonderful really happened?

  Time went on, but with a difference—with a wonder in its heart.

  Time went on, a-growing and falling, a-sowing and harvesting; the breath of life given, and the breath of life taken away.

  All went on ‘as one views a picture,’ thought Solly, ‘a picture that can show a vaster and a grander one behind it.’

  Not that Solly’s interest or happiness in Madder life was in the least exhausted, for he felt now, as he always used to, the sorrow and the joy, the chirping in summer, and the shivering in winter, of the tom-tits and the sparrows.

  But now Pim was but Pim, and Solly couldn’t help noticing that though Mr. Pim never sang his song now, he often looked in a mild and loving manner at the skies, and would tell Mrs. Bugby, who sold bottled beer and gave away money to strange girls, about Annie’s heaven.

  That something had happened to Madder Solly was sure, because he never wished now to pray looking up at Madder hill.

  ‘But though I don’t wish to look up,’ thought Solly, ‘there is no reason why I shouldn’t look down to pray.’ And as if they were come on purpose to help him, he remembered just then certain quaint lines of poetry that his aunt had taught him when he was a child:

  ‘While Jesus on the lap of Mary lies,

  She can see Heav’n, and ne’er lift up her eyes.

  This new Guest to her eyes new laws hath giv’n,

  ’Twas once. Look up, now ’tis, Look down to Heav’n.’

  ‘You look a pretty one,’ said Solly one winter’s night, and took an oak log from the basket where he kept them ready for use. Mr. Solly laid the log upon the fire, and watched the flames curl up around it.

  The log burnt itself out.

  ‘I may have been dozing,’ thought Solly. ‘I had better go to bed.’

  Mr. Solly blew out one of the candles that were burning upon the table, and taking the other one in his hand he went up the first two steps on his way to bed. He had grown so accustomed to seeing a day or a time that he had spent with his aunt, near and very real, that he wasn’t in the least surprised when the stair carpet transformed itself into a little wood of beech trees, with beech nuts lying about under them that he and his aunt were picking up and eating, and a little brook that in that place was rather shallow and weedy, with forget-me-nots that had lingered into October growing beside it.

  ‘Yes, Aunt, I am pleased we came,’ Solly had said then.

  ‘I came here when I was a child,’ Aunt Crocker replied, ‘and I like beech nuts.’ …

  Solly awoke at midnight. He awoke out of a dream, and sat up in bed.

  The night was very still, and the stars shone clear, as they sometimes do in the winter when the weather hesitates between frost and rain, and allows the frost to come because it’s the nearest.

  Solly’s dream had been a conversation, and he continued it while awake. He found himself saying, ‘Yes, I do believe you, Aunt. I know it will be a gift worthy of the kingly giver.’

  ‘Then go and see what the gift is, dear Solly.’

  ‘I’m quite awake now,’ said Solly, and the dream and the conversation vanished.

  But Solly felt sure that the hour had come for him to see what the gift was.

  He dressed himself, but without lighting a candle.

  ‘I must not disturb the darkness,’ he said, ‘for it is the darkness that guides us to the light.’

  Mr. Solly opened the window of Gift Cottage and looked out. The stars were pearl beads sewn in God’s garment.

  Solly looked towards the churchyard. Something shone there; not a bright light by any means, but rather a dim one, a light that Solly thought could only be a simple lantern. While he watched the light Solly heard a sheep’s-bell ring.

  ‘That’s Mr. Tucker,’ said Solly.

  Solly took his overcoat from its peg, and putting a shawl of Mrs. Crocker’s round him, he buttoned the overcoat over that, and went out into his garden.

  Softly closing the gate of Gift Cottage, he found himself in the lane that led to Madder church. The darkness pointed out to him where the light was. He stayed for a moment beside Mr. Soper’s tombstone.

  Yes, there was Mr. Tucker kneeling beside the grave under which lay the two drowned ones who had been washed up by the waves of the sea.

  Mr. Tucker was wrapped in a large rug; he had placed his hat upon a flat tombstone near by; his lantern was upon the grave. The candle in the lantern burnt clear because the night was still and friendly.

  Mr. Tucker didn’t seem in the least surprised to see Solly when he came near to him.

  ‘I came out here for a little air,’ he said. ‘I have been sitting up with Susy to-night, but she’s fallen asleep now.’

  ‘“I’ll go and dust the church very soon, won’t I, Mr. Tucker?” Susy said. I told her she would soon go there.

  ‘“Church bain’t so very dirty, be en?” she said then. “’Tain’t we praying folk that do mind they hopping fleas.”’

  Mr. Tucker looked up at Solly; he appeared to be holding something in his hand under his rug.

  ‘You’ve been reading your book?’ said Solly.

  ‘I have been reading,’ replied Mr. Tucker joyfully. ‘I have been reading the last chapter in my book, in which a candle is mentioned.’

  Solly lo
oked at the lantern.

  ‘I believe,’ said Solly, ‘that God’s gift is given.’

  Solly looked at the grave.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Mr. Tucker.

  ‘Polly Wimple and Fred Pim,’ said Solly.

  There was a light burning in Susy’s cottage, and Mr. Tucker now watched it.

  ‘The Americans,’ said Solly, ‘told me before I buried them to whom the gift was to be given, and now I wonder whether the last chapter of your story-book happened to mention what the gift was.’

  ‘You have never read anywhere, have you,’ asked Mr. Tucker, who evidently wished to carry the conversation away from his book of stories, ‘that the grave is a gate?’

  ‘I believe some one has called it a golden one,’ replied Solly.

  Mr. Tucker blushed, but only the stars noticed it.

  ‘But the gift,’ said Solly. ‘What is the gift?’

  The light in Susy’s cottage went out.

  But the light in the churchyard still shone.

  Mr. Tucker now took up his lantern and moved about, looking an odd figure indeed amongst the tombstones, that Fred Pim, as a boy, counted so carefully. Mr. Solly watched, and wondered what stone it was Mr. Tucker wanted to find. The light from the lantern showed up each stone that Mr. Tucker went near and its shadow. The light moved like a large glow-worm.

  Mr. Tucker stopped. He held the lantern close to a stone that was very old.

  Solly went to him.

  ‘Read,’ said Mr. Tucker. ‘The secret is out, the gift is given. Read.’

  Mr. Solly read slowly:

  ‘How strangely fond of Life poor mortals be.

  How few ho see my bead would change with me.

  Then serious reader tell me which is best,

  The toilsome journey or the travelers rest.’

  All was silent when Mr. Solly finished his reading. In the silence Time came by. The seasons came too: spring, with its chill snow-flakes, hail, and meek primroses; summer, with its haymaking, and harvest, that follows so soon after the hay is gathered; and then autumn, with Chick and Pim throwing muddy mangels into farm carts, when the Madder leaves are yellow and the rain drips; and last of all, winter came. The four seasons passed, coloured by all human pains, human passions and desires, and by good and evil.

  Sorrow and joy passed too; while man born of a woman sat at the feast of life, each one waiting in his place until God’s gift be given to him….

  Whether or not it was Susy’s death that made Mr. Tucker a little more careless of his personal property than usual, we cannot say, but in leaving Susy’s cottage, after praying with Solly ‘that all men and women might find their end as happily as Susy had found hers,’ Mr. Tucker let fall his story-book in the road beside Miss Pettifer’s gate.

  In the morning, when Miss Pettifer went to see if Mr. Moody had dropped one of her letters as he opened the gate—a mischance that the lady always expected to happen—she saw Mr. Tucker’s book.

  Miss Pettifer pounced upon it like a cat, and hurriedly carried her prize into her dining-room, where a good fire was burning, owing to Mrs. Billy having advised paraffin as a help to a lonely lady, and placed the book upon the table, where she had so often bitten Mrs. Crocker and Mr. Tucker with her bacon.

  Miss Pettifer opened the book eagerly, intending to enjoy herself at least for that morning, and then to forward the book to the bishop to show him what wicked stories his clergy read.

  Miss Pettifer opened the book at the last page, and before she could stop herself doing so, she read these words:

  ‘And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.’

  Miss Pettifer rose hastily and threw Mr. Tucker’s story-book into the fire.

  About the Author

  T. F. Powys (1875–1953), novelist and short-story writer, belonged to one of the most remarkable literary families. Among his brothers were John Cowper Powys (also in Faber Finds) and Llewelyn Powys. His most famous novel is Mr Weston’s Good Wine, but he was a prolific author and Faber Finds are proud to be reissuing the following six works: Mr Tasker’s Gods, Mark Only, Mockery Gap, Innocent Birds, Fables and God’s Eyes A-Twinkle.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © T. F. Powys, 1926

  The right of T. F. Powys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–27904–3