Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  Stella merely desisted from shrugging her shoulders. ‘My own opinion, Judy – judging, that is, from what Mr Tressider does say, is that it’s far better that he should never say what he thinks.’

  As if itself part and parcel of Stella’s normal taciturnity, this voice of hers, when it did condescend to make itself heard, was of a low rasping timbre, like the sound of a strip of silk being torn from its piece. And it usually just left off, came to an abrupt end – as if interrupted. She turned her head out of the candle-light, as though even moonshine might be a refuge from the mere bare facts of the case. There was a pause. Judy had snatched her glance, and was now busily fishing in her work-basket for her tiny scissors.

  ‘Well, that’s what I say,’ she said, staring close at the narrow hem of the ludicrously tiny shirt she was hemming. ‘You men love to hide your heads in the sands. Even Bill does – and you know what a body he leaves outside. You positively prefer not to know where you are. You invent ideals and goddesses and all that sort of thing; and yet you would sooner let things slide than – than break the ice. I mean – I mean, of course, the right ice. That can’t be helped, I suppose. But what I simply cannot understand is being satirical. Here we all are, we men and women, and we just have to put up with it. In heaven,’ and the tiny click, click, click of her needle had already begun again, ‘in heaven there will be neither marriage nor giving in marriage. And poor Bill will have to – have to darn his socks himself.’

  Her eyes lifted an instant, and glanced away so swiftly that it seemed to Tressider he caught no less fleeting a glimpse of their blue than that usually afforded of a kingfisher’s wing. ‘But what,’ she went on hastily, ‘what about the parrot – the agent provocateur? What about the parrot, Stella? Let’s make him tell us about the parrot.’

  ‘Yes,’ concurred Stella. ‘I should, of course, very much indeed enjoy hearing about the parrot. I just love natural history.’

  ‘You ought really, of course,’ said Tressider, ‘to have heard the story from a friend of my sister Kate’s – Minnie Sturgess. It was she who was responsible for the tragic – the absurd – finale. It was she who cut the tether, or rather the painter. The kind of woman that simply can’t take things easy. Intuitions, no end; but mostly of a raw hostile order. Anyhow, they weren’t of much use in the case of a man like – well, like my friend with the parrot.’

  ‘We will call him Bysshe,’ said Judy. ‘It has romantic associations. Go on, Mr Satirist.’

  ‘Bysshe, then,’ said Tressider. ‘Well, this Bysshe was a lanky, square-headed, black-eyed fellow. Something, I believe, in the ship-broking line, though with a little money of his own. A bit over thirty, and a bachelor from the thatch on his head to the inch-thick soles of his shoes. If his mother had lived – he was one of those “mother’s boys” which the novelists used to be so fond of – Minnie Sturgess might perhaps herself have survived into his life, to keep, and, I wouldn’t mind betting, even to prize the parrot. She would at any rate have learned the tact with which to dispose of it without undue friction. Minnie survived, in actual fact, to keep a small boarding-house at Ramsgate, though whether she is there now only the local directory could relate. As for Bysshe – well, I don’t know, as a matter of fact, how long he survived. In Kate’s view, the two of them were born to make each other unhappy. So Providence, to cut things short, supplied the parrot. But then Kate is something of a philosopher. And I have no views myself.’

  ‘Did you ever see the parrot?’ queried Judy, her left eye screwed up a little as she threaded an almost invisible needle. ‘I remember an old servant of my mother’s once had one, and it used to make love to her the very instant it supposed they were alone. But she, poor soul, wasn’t too bright in her wits.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tressider, ‘Bysshe was right enough in his wits. It was merely one of his many queer harmless habits – and he had plenty of spare time left over from his ship-broking – to moon about the city. He suffered from indigestion, or thought he did, and used to lunch on apples or nuts which, so far as he was concerned, did not require for their enjoyment a sitting posture. He was a genuine lover of London, though; knew as much about its churches and streets, taverns and relics as old Stowe or Pepys himself. Possibly, too, if his digestion had been a reasonable one, Minnie and he might have made each other’s lives miserable to the end of the chapter; since in that case, he would never have found himself loafing about one particular morning in Leadenhall Market; and so would never have set eyes on the parrot. Anyhow, that’s how it all began.

  ‘It was a sweltering day – clear black shadows, black as your hat, shafting clean across the narrow courts, and the air crammed with flavours characteristic of those parts – meat, poultry, sawdust, cats, straw, soot, and old bricks baking in the sun. He had meandered into one of the livestock alleys – mainly dogs, cats, poultry, with an occasional jackdaw, owl or raven. That kind of thing. And there, in a low entry, lounged the proprietor of one of its shops – a man with a face and head as hairless almost as a bladder of lard, and with eyes like a ferret.

  ‘He was two steps up from the pavement, had a straw in the corner of his mouth, and was looking at Bysshe. And Bysshe was looking at one of his protégés, the edge of its cage glinting in a sunbeam, and the bird – or whatever you like to call it – mum and dreaming inside. Bysshe had finished his lunch, and was in a reflective mood. He stared on at the parrot almost to the point of vacancy.

  ‘“Nice dawg there,” insinuated an insolent voice above his head.

  ‘He looked up, and for a moment absently surveyed the speaker. “Does it talk?” enquired Bysshe. The owner of the bird merely continued to chew his straw.

  ‘“How do you teach them?” Bysshe persisted. “You clip or snip their tongues, or something, don’t you?”

  ‘An intensely violent look came into the fellow’s eyes. “If you was to try to slit that bird’s tongue,’ he said, “you might as well order your corfin here and now.”

  ‘Bysshe’s glance returned to the cage. Apart from an occasional almost imperceptible obscuring of its scale-like, shuttered eyes, its inmate might just as well have been stuffed. It sat there stagnantly surveying Bysshe as if he were one of the less intelligent apes. To start with, Bysshe didn’t much like the look of the man. Naturally. Nor did he much like the look of the parrot. It was merely the following of an indolent habit that suggested his asking its price.

  ‘He once more turned his attention from wizard-like bird to beast-like man. “What’s the price of the thing?” he enquired; “and if I particularly wanted him to talk, could you make him?” The man rapidly shifted his straw from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  ‘“The feller,” he replied, “that says that he could make that bird do anything but give up the ghost, is a liar.”

  ‘Bysshe, when he told me about the deal, supplied the missing adjective. Still, such is life. The price was 25s. And as Bysshe had no more idea of the bird’s value than that of an Egyptian pyramid, he didn’t know whether he was getting a bargain or not. Nor did he attempt to beat the man down. He asked him a few questions about the proper food and treatment of the creature. Whereupon, squeezing one or two of his remaining lunch nuts between the bars, he picked up the cage by its ring, turned out of the shadowy coolness of the market into the burning glitter of Leadenhall Street, mounted on to the top of a bus, and bore his captive home.

  ‘He had rooms in Clifford’s Inn; and through the window the bird, if it so pleased, could feast its eyes on the greens and shadows of a magnificent plane-tree. The rooms were old – faded yellow panelling and a moulded cornice. It was quiet. Bysshe had few friends, and his pet therefore could have enjoyed – even if it wanted any – little company. Bysshe bought it a handsome new cage, with slight architectural advantages, and was as perfectly ready to enjoy its silent society as he expected the bird to be prepared to enjoy his.’

  Stella gently withdrew her dark eyes from the moonlit garden, and stole a longish look at Tressider’s fa
ce.

  ‘I agree, Stella,’ cried Judy breaking in. ‘He is being rather a long time coming to what I suppose will be the point.’

  ‘So are most little human tragedies,’ retorted Tressider. ‘But there’s one point I have left out. I said “silent” society; and that at first was all Bysshe got. But I gathered that though there had been the usual din in the market the day of the bargain, it was some odd nondescript slight sound or other that had first caught his attention. A kind of call-note which appeared to have come out of the cage. Without being quite conscious of it, it seems to have been this faint rumour, at least as much as anything else, that persuaded him to invest in the bird.

  ‘Well, anyhow, as he sat reading one evening – he had rather an odd and esoteric taste in books – there proceeded out of the cage one or two clear disjointed notes. Just a fragment of sound to which you could give no description or character except that it was unlike most of those which one expects from a similiar source. Bysshe had instantly relapsed from one stage of stillness to another. Compared with what came after, this was nothing – mere “recording” as the bird-fanciers say. But it set Bysshe on the qui vive. For a while he listened intently. There was no response. And he had again almost forgotten the presence of the parrot when, hours afterwards, from the gloom that had crept into its corner, there softly broke out of the cage, no mere snatch of an inarticulate bel canto, but a low, slow, steady gush of indescribable abuse.

  ‘The courtyard was as still as the garden of Eden. That less – that more – than human voice pressed steadily on – a low, minute, gushing fountain of vituperation. Bysshe was no chicken. He was pretty familiar with the various London lingoes – from Billingsgate to Soho. None the less the actual terms of this harangue, he afterwards told me, all but froze the blood in his veins. The voice ceased; and turning his head, Bysshe took a long and steady stare at the inmate of the cage. It sat there in its grey and cardinal; its curved beak closed, its glassy yellow eye motionless, and yet, it seemed, filled to its shallow brim with an inexhaustible contempt.

  ‘There was nothing whatever wrong with its surroundings. Bysshe made quite certain of that. Its nuts were ripe and sound, its water fresh, its sand wholesome. As I say, at the first onset of this experience Bysshe had been profoundly shocked. But that night, as he stood in his pyjamas looking in at the bird for the last time – and he had omitted to throw over its cage its customary pall – the memory of it suddenly touched his sense of humour. And he began to laugh; an oddish laugh to laugh alone. The parrot lifted one clawed foot and gently readjusted it on its perch. It leaned its head sidelong; its beak opened. And then in frozen silence it turned its back on the interrupter.

  ‘For days together after that the parrot was as mute as a fish – at least so long as Bysshe lay in wait for it. That it had been less taciturn in his absence he gathered one morning from the expression of his charwoman’s face – an amiable old body with a fairly wide knowledge of “the world”. She had thought it best, she explained, to shut the windows. “You never know, sir, what them might think who couldn’t tell a canary from a bullfinch. I’ve kept birds myself. But I must say, sir, I wouldn’t have chose to be brought up where he was.” Something to that effect.

  ‘And Bysshe noticed that though she had not refrained from putting some little emphasis on the “he”, she had carefully omitted any indication to whom the pronoun referred.

  ‘“He swore, did he, Mrs Giles?”

  ‘“He didn’t so much swear, sir, as extravastate. Never in all my life could I have credited there was such shocking things to say.”

  ‘Bysshe rather queerly returned the old lady’s gaze. “I have heard rumours of it myself,” he replied. “It looks to me, Mrs Giles, as if we should have to get the bird another home.”

  ‘The interview was a little disconcerting, but had it not been for this independent evidence, Bysshe, I feel sure (judging from my own reactions, as they call them) might easily have persuaded himself to believe that his experience had been nothing but the refuse of a dream.

  ‘Minnie Sturgess’s first appearance on the scene preceded mine by a few days. The two of them, so far as I could gather, were not exactly “engaged”. They merely, as the little irony goes, understood one another; or rather Minnie seemed so far to understand Bysshe that we all knew perfectly well they would at last drift into matrimony as inevitably as a derelict boat, I gather, having found its way out of Lake Erie will drift over the Niagara Falls.’

  ‘A very pretty metaphor,’ remarked Judy. ‘Then come the rapids, and then – but I’m not quite sure what happens then.’

  ‘Don’t forget, though,’ cried Stella softly out of her moonshine, ‘don’t forget that meanwhile the best electric light has been supplied for miles around!’

  ‘Ssh! Stella,’ breathed Judy, thimbled finger on lip, ‘we are merely playing into his hands. Let him just blunder on.’ She turned with a mockinnocent smile towards Tressider. ‘And did the parrot swear at Miss Sturgess?’ she enquired.

  ‘No. Miss Sturgess came; she contemplated; she admired; she was tactful to the last degree. But the bird paid her no more polite attention than if she had been a waxwork in the basement at Madame Tussaud’s. It sat perfectly still on its perch, its eight neat claws arranged four on either side of it, and out of its whitish countenance it softly surveyed the lady.

  ‘Naturally, she was a little nettled. She remonstrated. Hadn’t Bysshe assured her that the creature talked, and wasn’t it a horrid cheat to have a parrot sold to one for all that money, if it didn’t? And Bysshe, relieved beyond words, that his pet had not even so much as deigned to chuckle, prevaricated. He said that a parrot that talked in season and out of season was nothing but a nuisance. Did she like its livery, and wasn’t it a handsome cage?

  ‘Miss Sturgess took courage. She bent her veiled head and whispered a seductive “Pretty Poll”; and then having failed to arouse any response by tapping its bars with the button of her glove, she insinuated a naked fore-finger between them as if to stroke the creature’s wing or to scratch its poll. And, without an instant’s hesitation the parrot nipped it to the bone. She might have read that much in its air: intuition, you know. But she was a plucky creature, and didn’t even whimper. And no doubt for the moment this summary punishment may seem to have drawn these two blundering humans a little closer together.

  ‘It was a few days after this that Bysshe and I lunched together at a restaurant in Fleet Street. And, naturally – in his reticent fashion – he told me of his prize. About three, we climbed the shallow wooden stairs up to his rooms, to see the bird. For discretion’s sake – in case, that is, of chance visitors, he had shut it up in his bedroom, and rather foolishly, as I thought, had locked the door.

  ‘No creature of any intelligence can much enjoy existence in a cage, and to immure that cage in a kind of cell is merely to add insult to injury. Besides, even eighteenth-century door panels are not sound-proof. We stole across on tiptoe and stood for a moment listening outside the bedroom.

  ‘Possibly the bird had heard our muffled footsteps; or, maybe, to while solitude away, it was merely indulging in an audible reverie. I can’t say. But hardly had we inclined our ears to listen, when, as if out of some vast hollow, dark and subterranean, a tongue within – unfalteringly, dispassionately – broke into speech. I have heard politicians, pill-venders and demagogues, but nothing even remotely to compare with that appalling eloquence – the ease, the abundance, the sustained unpremeditated verve! Nor was it an exhibition of mere vernacular. There were interludes, as I guessed, of a corrupt Spanish. There may have been even an Oriental leaven; even traces of the Zulu’s “click” – the trend was exotic enough. But the words, the mere language were as nothing compared with the tone.

  ‘Curates habituated to their duties tend to read the prayers in much the same way. The inmost sense, I mean, comes out the better because the speaker is not taking any notice of it. So it was with the parrot. I can’t describe the evil of the eff
ect. One stopped thinking. One lost for the moment even the power of being shocked. A torrent of outer darkness seemed to sweep over, dowse, submerge the mind, and you just floated like a straw on its calm even flood.’

  ‘What was it swearing about? asked a cold voice.

  Tressider seemed to be examining the Persian mat at his feet as if in search of inspiration. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘it was cursing the day of creation, with all the complexities involved in it. It was a voice out of nowhere, anathematizing with loathing a very definite somewhere. We most of us “bear up” in this world as much as possible. Not so the original owner of that unhurried speech. He had stated with perfect calm exactly what he thought about things. And I should guess that his name was Iago. But let’s get back to Bysshe.

  ‘At the moment he was holding his square, rather ugly face sidelong, in what looked like a constrained position. Then his eyes slid round and met mine.

  ‘“Twenty-five shillings!” he said. “Any offers?” But there wasn’t anything facetious in his look.

  The voice had ceased. And with it had vanished all else but the remembrance of the execrable tone of its speech. And as if all Nature, including its topmost artifice, London, had paused to listen, there followed an intense hush. Then, uncertainly, as if tentatively, there broke out another voice from behind the shut door, uttering just three or four low single notes – as of somebody singing. Then these ceased too.

  ‘We had both of us been more or less prepared for the captive’s first effort, but not I for this. This extraordinary scrap of singing – but I’ll come back to it. Bysshe gently unlocked and pushed open his bedroom door and we looked in. But we knew perfectly well what we should find. The room was undisturbed, and, except for its solitary inmate, vacant. There stood Bysshe’s truckle bed, his old tallboy, his empty boots, his looking-glass. And there sat the bird, motionless, unabashed, clasping its perch with its lizard-skinned claws. Apart from a slight trembling of its breast-plumage, there was no symptom whatever of anything in the least unwonted. It sidled the fraction of an inch towards its master, its beak ajar showing the small clumsy tongue, its bead-like eye firmly settled on mine; and with a peculiar aversion I stared back.