God's Sparrows

by Philip Child

  Dear Sir,

  We beg to acknowledge your petition for an adjustment of your taxes. We wish to inform you that your claim has been forwarded to the proper authorities and will be acted upon in due course.

  I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant,

  J

  (For the Division of Taxes & Income)

  If a man had hit Pen a blow in the face, he could not have been more affronted. Irony of ironies! This was the final insult delivered by the great impersonal machine whose official indifference could not even be ruffled into the anger of a personal reply. He realized for the first time that his true enemy was not men or their ideas but giant indifference.

  The Thatcher temper, which for years he had suppressed to the level of a chronic irritability, flared up at last. He was completely, furiously, chaotically angry. So angry that he tore the letter into fragments and cast them from him, as though the printed slip of paper were his majesty’s government and could be seized and torn and thrown in the gutter and stamped on!

  He went to his study and, snatching a pen, composed a letter to be sent to all the newspapers he could think of.

  Sir,

  I wish to make a public announcement through the columns of your journal of the fact that I have refused to pay any taxes whatsoever in support of a war, the waging of which I consider an unspeakable folly, a threat to civilization, and an affront to all the decent impulses painfully fostered through two thousand years of Christianity.

  Whatever may be the justice of our cause — and I firmly believe that the right is on our side — the resort to arms is unchristian and can lead to nothing but destruc­tion for all the combatants. Let men of good will, wherever they may be, take the only step in their power to end this war, by refusing to pay taxes until peace without victory or defeat has been honourably concluded.

  Yours faithfully,

  Penuel Thatcher

  It was the ill-considered letter of an angry man. “And now I must tell Maud before sending it,” he reflected. “It is only fair to her.” He knew she would disapprove with the whole force and direction of her nature, and she had such a gentle, inexorable power to get her way. He went to the door and called her.

  “Don’t send it,” she pleaded. “It would mean the end of our happy, quiet life here, and life’s hard enough for Joanna, dear.… It isn’t as if it would do any good. You’ve no idea of the blind, brute force you’ll be struggling against.”

  Pen stood with his back to her, staring out of the window.

  “And you’re not physically fit for such a struggle, Pen. It would kill you.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “And perhaps me, too.… Pen — I must say it — if you were yourself, if you were in good health, you wouldn’t want to do this.”

  She waited in vain for him to speak. Coming beside him she murmured: “Pen?” … For a long interval he still could not look at her, and he made a curious rhythmic hunching of his shoulders, as if his thoughts were physically scourging him. He straightened up at length and whispered in a parched voice: “I must.”

  And in that moment he felt that he had outraged some subtle, natural link between them, and that their relation could never again be quite the same.

  That night he mailed his letters and once more waited for the skies to fall. But the firmament remained disconcertingly stable for many days. All but one of the newspaper editors threw his letter into the “crank” basket. These editors had known and respected him for many years. “Thatcher must be losing his grip. Pity.… Of course, he’s getting on in years.” But one paper, a flap-filthy of the yellowest variety, read his letter with avidity, and filed it against some day in the future when there should be a drought of sensational news. Such days were not common in 1916.

  IV

  On Dominion Day, a holiday, the family lingered over breakfast. Alastair had leave for the weekend, so of course, he had slept late and had not yet come downstairs. Pen lowered his paper to remark: “Our neighbour, the little Elton girl, the eldest — what’s her name?”

  “Beatrice.”

  “Yes. I always liked her. She has more in her than Cynthia. Well, she seems to have lost her balance completely. She has been sending white feathers to young men —”

  Maud, with a quick sidelong glance at Dan, put down her cup. Dan asserted deliberately: “I don’t blame her, in a way. Her fiancé was killed at St. Julien. I’d go and see her if I didn’t think she might give me one.” He began to open his mail.

  Maud searched Pen’s expression, asking him a mute question he did not want to answer. Pen cleared his throat.

  Dan, hunched over the table with a white face, stared incredulously at the slit envelope in his hand. Shielding it from the others with his body, he spread the sides with his fingers and looked inside again.

  Maud was saying: “One ought to make allowances for Beatrice, I think.… It is not surprising that the girl should be unbalanced. Fanny told me confidentially that, since the war, Mr. Elton has sometimes brought his women to the house.” Maud touched the word with delicate disdain. Pen made a noncommittal sound. “Those girls haven’t had a decent chance. The brother, Eustace, is a cad like his father. Why doesn’t she give him a white feather?”

  Pen looked at his wife in surprise; it was not like her to condemn people. And why was she angry? “Elton,” he remarked judicially, “is the sort of man who thinks he can live like Punch without anyone minding as long as he takes care to be a ‘good fellow.’ Blessed are the cynics, Maud, for they shall believe that no one is any better than themselves.”

  Dan held up a white feather, clipped by scissors along its edges, for his parents to see. “What do I do with this?” he asked grimly. “Am I supposed to wear it in my hatband?”

  Before anyone could answer, Alastair sauntered in. Instantly, Dan hid the feather. “Hullo, everyone. What’s in the communiqué this morning? May I, for a moment, Father? Usual tripe, I see. ‘All quiet in the West except for artillery duels.’ And Hilaire Belloc swears the war can’t last a year longer. German reserves all used up by the war of attrition. Trouble is, the fellow has been swearing that ever since November 1914, and here we still are.”

  “So damned sure of himself!” thought Dan. He stood up.

  “I’m going to see Cynthia. That is, if you can spare me a morning with her, Alastair?”

  “Of course, Granny. Is she still your girl, then? I rather thought you’d lost interest.… She thinks you have.”

  Boiling with rage, Dan stalked to the Eltons. He meant to find out whether Cynthia had had a hand in sending that feather. Had she? But that would be unlike her.

  He decided to ask for Beatrice and have it out with her.

  He rang the doorbell so violently that the maid peered through the glass to see whether the police had at last come about Mr. Elton’s “goings-on .”

  “Will you kindly tell Miss Beatrice that a former friend would like to see her?”

  “What name shall I say, sir?”

  “Never mind the name. Just give her the message.”

  Beatrice came into the room, saw Dan, and recoiled.

  “Yes,” said Dan, “it’s your former friend Daniel Thatcher. I’ve come to thank you for the white feather. Very considerate of you to send it, Beatrice. You did send it, didn’t you?”

  She looked at him defiantly. “Supposing I did. I’m not ashamed of sending it.”

  “Then why didn’t you sign your name? Didn’t you want me to know?”

  She did not answer.

  “I just wanted to tell you, Beatrice, that you’re a true friend. You stick to a person through thick and thin!”

  Beatrice wilted suddenly. She sank into a chair and began to weep. “I know it was beastly. I knew it when I sent it. I’m not myself. I don’t know what I am anymore. S
ometimes I think I’m nothing — just empty except for the ache. I want to hurt people, Dan. What right have other people to be safe when Matthew —” She broke down.

  “All right, Beatrice. I understand. I’m touchy as all get-out , too.… Did Cynthia know about the feather?”

  Beatrice flared up again. “What do you care! You’ve made her so unhappy. I can’t forgive you for that, Dan Thatcher.”

  Then she probably did know, thought Dan, gloomily, or Beatrice would have denied it. Shall I ask Cynthia point blank? He said in a surly voice: “Well, Cynthia promised to go for a walk.”

  “She is ready, Dan. Be nice to her. She isn’t very happy these days.… I’m sorry I did — what I did.”

  Presently, Cynthia came out, and they climbed up the Wellington escarpment to the path along the crest, where you could look down through the tops of trees and catch glimpses of city roofs and the blue lake beyond.

  They were not at ease with each other, and he felt that Cynthia was holding him at arm’s length with chatter about trivialities. She was amiable, as impersonally amiable as one is to a friend with whom one has been out of touch for a long time. Did she know about the feather? He was too proud to ask her. Had she really become indifferent to him, or was she trying to make him jealous? He decided to start a quarrel in order to find out where he stood. “Decided” was too calm a word: he started a quarrel because he could not help himself.

  “Cynthia, what about Alastair?”

  “Why, Dan! What about him?” She added resentfully: “I like him. He’s gay and good fun; and he’s considerate, too. He’s never sulky, and he likes me well enough to want to see me often. That’s more than you do, Dan!”

  “Not want to see you! Can’t you understand why I haven’t seen you much? That’s why I want to talk seriously to you. Sometimes I think you’ll drive me crazy! And you don’t care a rap how you make a man feel. You are so beautiful.… All you think of is ‘enjoying life.’ You insist on talking about trivial things. You won’t talk about us!”

  She wondered fleetingly why men always wanted to say over and over again, “You’re so beautiful,” (though she liked being told). She did not want to make them suffer — or did she? She wanted to make Dan suffer! She thought of the wretched trouble about her father. Was that why Dan avoided her?

  “It seems to me that you haven’t made much effort to talk to me.”

  “I — you — we —” stammered Dan.… “Cynthia, I think you know very well why I haven’t seen you.”

  “Well, why? If you liked me, you’d want to see me.

  “Perhaps I’ve been a bit cowardly. Yes! I have been. I’ve been considering too much what people think of me. That was cowardly; I see that now. It’s a sore spot — the whole wretched business.… I ought to be sturdier and not care what people think … but I’m not.… I simply can’t talk about it. Can’t you understand how a man feels about a thing like this?”

  She looked at him with grave eyes. “Then there is something else the matter? It isn’t just about Alastair?”

  “You know there is! I have been furious with you — and myself, about Alastair. I could kick myself. I’ve been such a fool! … And being angry with you hasn’t done me a bit of good. I’m in love with you, Cynthia.”

  This declaration both thrilled and troubled her.

  “Alastair —” she began.

  “Damn Alastair! Look here, has he been making love to you? Because if he has, I’ll break his neck.”

  “Why shouldn’t he make love to me? Perhaps he has. He does it simply to prove to himself how good he is at it … and he is good at it,” she added spitefully. “You know, Dan, I wouldn’t marry a man unless I knew that the thought of losing me made him desperate.”

  “It does me. That’s why I am asking you to marry me. Will you, Cynthia?”

  She would not meet his look. “I don’t know, Dan. Why should I? Do you realize that this is the first time you have spoken to me like a human being since —”

  “Since the war.” Dan finished the sentence. The fatal curtain of misunderstanding dropped between them again. Dan thought she was ashamed of him and despised him for a slacker. Cynthia thought that Dan was ashamed of her father’s ways but could not tell her so. She was abnormally sensitive about her father, and every misunderstanding she had with people she put down to their contempt for Mr. Elton, whom she knew they privately called “Punch.” “It is about father,” she thought miserably. “If only he would talk about it. How can I ? … How beastly it all is.”

  She was angry with Dan for not loving her well enough to forget about her father, but she loved him and she made a desperate attempt to rise above anger.

  She swallowed her pride and plunged in, speaking breathlessly: “I think I know what is troubling you, though you can’t talk about it. I — I oughtn’t to say this, but I must tell you — it’s so important! — that I, too, like people to be, oh, normal and honest and dependable and to do the usual things other people do —”

  He stiffened. “So I see,” he said in a voice of cold rage.

  His surprising fury bewildered her. Why should he be angry? Why? It was not anything she had done or could help. She, too, gave way to her anger. Who was Dan Thatcher to criticize her father? — after all, if Dan were like other men, like Alastair, for instance, he’d be — “No. I won’t think that,” she vowed; and she banished the unhappy thought, as she had had to banish so many other painful thoughts lately. For several minutes, though they both wanted to speak, neither of them could. They walked side by side without looking at each other, and tension coiled and uncoiled and coiled again between them. Then, at the same instant, by a common impulse they turned to each other, each speaking the other’s name.

  “Cynthia, it’s miserable to have it end like this —”

  She interrupted him gently. “Dan, dear, let’s not talk of it anymore. It’s all so puzzling and wretched, and there seems no way out. I don’t want to quarrel with you. Why do we make each other so unhappy? Let’s not think of it anymore, let’s just enjoy today and not think of the future at all.… We haven’t been together for nearly a month, let’s be happy today.” She put her hand in his and felt him relax.

  With the strange power women seem to have of putting trouble aside for a time, she began to chatter and laugh gaily. All at once, though there was no real reason for his change of mood, everything seemed to Dan bright and hopeful again.

  They had come down from the woods and had reached the first houses of Wellington, the town lay before them, waiting to absorb them and steal them from each other. They looked at each other bleakly. It seemed impossible that they should be saying goodbye to each other. It seemed unnatural and impossible, but that was what it had come to.

  She gave him her hand, and before they knew what had happened, she was in his arms. He kissed her again and again, murmuring how beautiful she was. She gasped and threw back her head. He kissed her throat. She felt strange and excited and afraid — afraid because she had meant him to kiss her, though she did not know why she had meant him to. She thought chaotically of a number of things all at once. That she loved Dan. That he did not love her enough. That he was ashamed of her father. That she was afraid of marriage and having babies and of love, that terrible force that made a man cruel and beastly. “My father …” she thought. She stiffened in his arms and Dan let her go.

  “You see, Cynthia, you and I love each other so much that nothing else matters.”

  “Doesn’t it, Dan?” breathed Cynthia. “Are you sure? Do you love me enough to — to — oh, it’s so hard to say it and you won’t help me. Our families.…”

  Dan dropped his eyes from hers and thrust forth his chin doggedly.

  “Can’t you understand how I feel about that?” he murmured, “I want to marry you and I mean to marry you whatever you may say.… But there are some thi
ngs I can’t forget. A man can’t always do what he wants to — just the way he wants to. Why can’t you simply believe in me?” Why couldn’t she understand about Joanna?

  Cynthia turned away from him. “Then it’s goodbye.… Goodbye, Dan.”

  “It isn’t goodbye. We’re both so upset that we can’t think clearly now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to Toronto to a wedding, Dan. After I come back, we’d better not see each other. It only makes us unhappy.”

  “I shall see you when you come back,” said Dan, confidently.

  “You must forget about me,” murmured Cynthia, “and Dan, I want you to have a happy life. You’ll meet someone you will really fall in love with, then you won’t be bothered by any of these fears that trouble you.”

  That evening, when Dan got back to Ardentinny, he found the family much upset. Pen had received a letter and a telegram from Beulah, Connecticut, where Great-Aunt Joanna Thatcher lived.

  My dear nephew Penuel,

  I don’t know that I agree with you about this terrible war. It must have been sent by God to punish men for their sins in forgetting him. I thank him daily that your boys are too young to bear such burdens. If your dear father was alive he would say this better than a useless old woman like me. He was a good man, Penuel, and he died for his belief. It seems strange and sad that I should see all this twice in my lifetime.

  I go on about’s usual and I am ashamed to be so comfortable and easy in my mind when there is so much misery in the world. Not but that I have my petty afflictions. Some boys of the village go in swimming in the river in front of my piazza without clothes. I’ve gone to Judge Perkins about it, but he don’t know if he can do much.

  Your affectionate aunt,

  Joanna Thatcher

  The telegram was from Mrs. Gustavson, the Swedish woman who lived next door to Great-Aunt Joanna Thatcher and “tidied” for her. Coming in one morning, she had found the old lady sitting in her chair by the window; she had fallen into a doze and died in her sleep.