Innocent Birds (6 page)

‘If they bain’t talking of women‚’ he would say, looking down at his foot, ‘it may be pigs or radishes they be telling of.’

‘’Tis about Pim we be speaking,’ said Chick, when the farmer drew near.

‘Yes,’ said Wimple. ‘An’ Pim do carry pounds, shillings, and pence in ’is pocket, and ’ave give a name to thik little toad Maud Chick do look to.’

‘Though ’e be come funny, ’e bain’t no toad,’ said Pim, a little haughtily.

‘No,’ said Wimple, thinking of the church service, ‘’e ’ave rose up into Fred.’

T
EN
years of Madder life passed smoothly. Quickly gone these years were, though the days and hours went slow enough. This is often a peculiarity of country time, these slow-moving days and swift-hurrying years. The
phenomenon
has been referred to by Crabbe the poet, who could write better tales than sermons, as his parishioners evidently thought when they pealed the church bells in fine holiday fashion on the day he left their village.

The seasons had passed by in Madder very much as Thomson tells us they do, with very little variation in their behaviour: the summers always going away like beautiful white birds with soft downy breasts, while two of the ten winters provided an interest—created on purpose for Mr. Chick—in the form and substance of ice four inches thick on Farmer Barfoot's
horsepond
. Mr. Chick broke the ice with a long pole that he kept on purpose for this use in a corner of the stable. Even with all the
experience
that he had gained during these years past and gone, when Mr. Pim first saw his son Fred run after Polly Wimple in the lane he opened his eyes very wide indeed; though at the moment he
felt that no new light was thrown upon the mystery—and science calls it so too—of
generation
. Yet Polly resembled the Minna of earlier days so truly by the way she kicked up her heels so that her frock was tossed about, and then even more unforgettably when she threw herself upon the grassy bank and hid her laughing eyes with her hair.

And there was Fred standing beside her, who looked the very same sort of being that Pim had once seen, when he was a boy, reflected in the still river pool near to the stepping-stones when he looked for minnows.

‘I bain't a-walking backwards, be I, in these Madder grounds?' Mr. Pim inquired of Maud Chick when he reached home one day.

‘'Tis most like thee will be,' Maud replied, ‘if thee's forgot they sticks 'ee promised.'

Although so strange a doubt came upon Pim as to whether he was walking into the past or the future, his son Fred, by growing into such a big boy, with a round face, a head of curls, and fine blue eyes, proved that he at least was going forward in life's journey. Even before the ten years had passed, Fred had shown a happy interest in Polly. There was something mysterious about Polly, something that Fred wished to know a little more of.

Besides Polly and the mystery that ran about with her, showing itself in white dashes
sometimes
, there was, and all to amuse little Fred, the
interesting art of simple addition and the
excitement
of throwing his cap into the air, both to see how high they would go—the cap and the counting—and whether the cap could be caught when it fell. Before he began going to school Maud had taught Fred how to count up to a hundred; and so she handed him, a round plump little boy with cheeks like ripe apples, to Polly Wimple to take with her, Polly having already trod the educational road for two years. ‘Thee'll lose thik cap in they high hedges a-throwing of en, and I bain't a-going to no church wi' a bare-headed boy to be married‚' Polly remarked to Fred one day when they went to school together.

During play-time that same morning, Fred, for reasons of his own, first visited Gift Cottage, and then played truant in the churchyard until school was over. Finding him out at last after hunting all round the village, and even
looking
under Susy's wide skirts, where children had been known to hide, Polly said ‘she wouldn't love him no more if he went away losing himself.'

‘But I haven't lost myself,' Fred replied; ‘I've been a-counting.'

‘Counting,' sniffed Polly contemptuously. ‘I thought thee 'd a been a-flinging 'ee's cap up.'

‘I've been an' counted,' said Fred very gravely, ‘they trees of Mr. Solly's and wold God's
grave-stones
. Mr. Solly's trees be ten, and there be
thirty stones, not a-counting they ten little crosses where cats be buried.'

‘They crosses be for babies‚' said Polly.

‘Ten of they, then‚' said Fred, ‘an' thirty great stones, counting by ones.' …

The morning after little Fred had been found counting the grave-stones, Mr. Solly sat down in a thoughtful frame of mind to eat his bread and milk. He was sure, as he cautiously sipped the milk to
see how hot it was, that something important must have happened in the night. He knew that he had closed the book that was all about the Americans when he went to bed; but it now lay open upon the table at page 146. Who had opened it? Although Solly wasn't the only person in the world, he was the only person in Gift Cottage.

Solly considered the matter. There was but one conclusion he could arrive at—that his aunt, Mrs. Crocker, had come down from heaven on purpose to tell him, by means of the
Americans
, of something that was going to happen. He moved his finger down the page as carefully as he had touched the hot milk with his tongue. His finger stopped of its own accord at these words: ‘From his mast-head Captain Broke watched anxiously the movement of the hostile ship.' Mr. Solly thanked his aunt for her warning, and went out into his garden.

The time of year was the fall, though Solly, with the doings of the Americans so alive in his
mind, had forgotten it. He expected to see his pinks in full bloom, but alas! they were all faded and dead.

That was a sad sight for Solly, but it could not be helped.

He prayed; that is to say he looked up at the hill, for that was his prayer. He hoped to see the Being whose life is everlasting, and who had promised Aunt Crocker to give a gift to Madder.

The hill was wrapped in a garment of mist. Was God there? Perhaps He was. Or was the hill become the mast-head for Solly to climb in order to see the hostile ship he had read about, perhaps? Solly trembled; though he had climbed the hill a number of times before and had never seen anything there, he believed firmly in his aunt's vision, and was also well aware that God chooses His own time to pay His visits. Solly left his garden and walked through the mud of the Madder lanes. Three little children out to play were looking up at a boy's cap in the hedge. Near to them there was another child—a boy—who was walking along by the hedge and counting out aloud.

Mr. Solly took down the cap with his stick, and asked whose it was.

‘'Tis Fred Pim's,' replied Polly Wimple, to whom Solly had spoken; ‘'e did fling en there, and now 'e be a-counting all the little birds in hedge.' Solly gave the cap to Polly and passed on.

He crossed the little bridge over the brook, in which forget-me-nots and water-cress grow in summer and rushes in winter. A pert moor-hen crept out of the rushes and looked inquisitively at Mr. Solly. When he was fairly on his way up the hill, his moustache drooped the more because the way was steeper.

Solly penetrated the mist cautiously and looked with hope and awe at the thorn-bush that his aunt had told him of. A large bird flew out of it, that wasn't a rook. Solly started. Where God was expected he knew the Devil might appear too; for where God goes the Devil goes.

Solly waited uneasily beside the bush. There was no wind. The mist hung like the shroud of a dead Madder shepherd pinned up badly by Mother Chick.

Solly listened; he was upon the Madder mast-head, and though he couldn't see any hostile ship coming, he could listen for one. From below, in the village, Mrs. Chick's voice came to him strangely clear. He heard her say: ‘They did tell I in town that Landlord Bugby, who did fright poor Annie to death wi' 'is funny ways, be a-going to come to “Silent Woman.”'

Solly next heard the sound of a plough being driven and horses being spoken to by Carter Chick in Farmer Barfoot's fields. The plough creaked, and then all was still again. Chick had stopped the horses.

But still Solly listened.

From the Weyminster direction, where the main road clung to the valleys, he distinctly heard the trotting of a horse. This sound was unusual except upon market-day. There was something odd about it. The horse appeared to be saying a word with its feet.

Solly thought that the word was ‘Beware.' Mr. Solly came down slowly from Madder hill. In the lanes he hoped to meet Fred Pim, but was disappointed. He hoped to see Fred, because he very much wished to know how many little birds there were in the hedge.

Near to Gift Cottage he was aware that some one was sitting upon the doorstep. Solly was naturally a little excited that morning; and
considering
whom he had expected to see on Madder hill, one isn't surprised. He looked anxiously at the person upon his doorstep, and was relieved to see that it was only Mr. Tucker. Mr. Tucker was reading his book with his eyes close to it and his head bent forward, for he was near-sighted. His hat lay beside him, and his bald head shone in the cloud of mist that had followed Solly down the hill.

When Solly opened the gate, Mr. Tucker put the book into his pocket, and inquired of Solly whether he had seen old Susy anywhere.

‘I want to give her this,' he said. Mr. Tucker held up a large white new duster as big as a hand towel. ‘Mrs. Billy says the church is dirtier than a dog's kennel, where the fleas hop about. I've
looked everywhere in the village, but I can't find Susy.'

‘Perhaps she's in the church,' suggested Solly.

‘No,' said Mr. Tucker, ‘Susy can't be there, because as the church is never cleaned, she can't be in there cleaning it.'

What with the odd tales in his book and Susy's conduct, Mr. Tucker walked rather sadly down Solly's path, putting the large duster round his neck as though it were a muffler.

He stopped silent beside the dead pinks; he was trying to remember some lines of poetry that the sight of them should bring to his mind: then he said, putting his hands behind him and leaning forward a little:

Looking up from the dead pinks, Mr. Tucker turned to Solly and asked him what the Americans were doing. Solly told him of his text for the day, and also how he had climbed up Madder hill into the mist, and had seen a large bird fly out of a bush that was once a burning one.

When Solly finished telling his story, both he and Mr. Tucker stood still and listened. The
mist hid all the village except the near trees, that looked like mountains.

A sound came to them from the lane that led down the hill into Madder. It was the trotting of a horse.

N
O
horse can trot along a road with a trap behind it without some reason or other for its being there.

The reason why this horse sounded so clear, that its trotting even reached to Madder hill, was, besides the stillness of the day, Mr. Bugby’s apparent desire to find a new residence out of town, that he hoped would be the Madder inn.

‘’Tis nice to be looked at by the women‚’ Mr. Bugby said to his wife that same morning after breakfast.

‘But it bain’t always so nice to be too much talked about.’

‘They girls‚’ said Mr. Bugby, seeing two pass the inn windows, as though to remind him of their presence in the world—‘They girls bain’t like they used to be in this little town.’

‘I can mind the time,’ continued Mr. Bugby, ‘when I could follow a maid into they shelters and do what I were minded, wi’ nothing said; but now, ’tis only pleasure they women do think of.’

Whether or no Mrs. Bugby felt herself to
be one of those who preferred her own pleasure to Mr. Bugby’s manners, we cannot say, but at least she took the blame to mean her—and wept.

‘I be a man‚’ said Mr. Bugby, seeing her tears, and being rendered more talkative by them, ‘that do frighten they women, for I be free an’ easy wi’ me happy manners when I be out.’

Mr. Bugby, as though to illustrate his habits, pursued a fly upon the window and crushed it with his thumb.

‘I like a maid‚’ said Mr. Bugby, ‘who be simple—“Innocent birds.” I did see they writ down as in a book Squire Kennard did leave behind under parlour table. I do like they “Innocent birds.”’

Mr. Bugby looked at his wife, and being a natural philosopher, he opened upon a new subject.

‘The grave,’ said Mr. Bugby, killing another fly, ‘be a good kind second husband to a married ’oman. An’ a deep garden well mid do instead of parson at thik wedding.’

Mr. Bugby stood for a moment with his hand upon the handle of the door that he had opened.

‘Brandy,’ he said, ‘be a nice comforting drink for a poor man wi’ a wold hag ’oman tied to ’im. And a maiden wi’ crimpy hair, and wi’ a little lace to they clothes that do tear easy, be a pretty drink
too. Why, I do believe me wife be a-crying,’ said Mr. Bugby, raising his eyes to the ceiling in utter astonishment; ‘an’ bain’t I going to find she a deep well in a Madder garden, and yet she be a-crying!’

Mr. Bugby softly closed the door, as if he did not wish to interrupt by a loud bang the sobs of his wife.

‘I be what I be,’ said Mr. Bugby, smiling to himself as he harnessed the horse in the inn yard. ‘An’ a man’s nature be as the Lord made it, whether ’e be young or old.’

Driving along past the town clock, Mr. Bugby returned the friendly nod of a policeman with a gesture that made the policeman smile—a smile that would have been a laugh had not the officer noticed the Mayor of the town walking at a little distance. Walking, too, a little way behind the Mayor was a girl, whose shoes were trodden down at the heels. She hurried, rather as though trying to hide herself from the eyes of other women. Mr. Bugby smiled at this girl, who hid her face in her hand and crouched down in a doctor’s doorway until Mr. Bugby went by.

Mr. Bugby liked misty weather, and he drove through the mist smiling. On the road he thought first of his wife and then of other women. He thought of his wife as being already in a Madder grave, and of the other women in more lively situations.

Mr, Bugby’s face, that was large and heavy,
though not ill-looking, and ornamented with a moustache proper to the kind of man that he was, grew somewhat pale with these and other
reflections
. And his eyes, the expression of which a magnified spider upon a pin might have been proud of, blinked wickedly. Though not a very healthy man, Mr. Bugby always left a reserve of energy in the background ready for use when required. To any ordinary person that he met, or served drink to, he appeared as simple and commonplace as any other innkeeper who prefers a pretty barmaid to a plain one.

Mr. Bugby’s horse was a young mare, though a very quiet one. And when she turned into the Madder lane and suddenly stopped dead, Mr. Bugby naturally wished to know the reason. The reason was an ash tree, now bare of leaves, that grew in the bank just inside the Madder lane. This tree had bare arms, with twigs on the ends like claws. These arms reached out over the road in a nasty way, as though they wanted to catch hold of some one.

Mr. Bugby viewed the horse’s behaviour with displeasure, and the trees with interest. That something else beside himself was able to bring the terror of the unseen even into a horse’s mind, interested him.

Lily had crouched upon the pavement, just like his mare, when she had seen him drive by. Had he been walking he would have taken away her hands and made her look at him, if only for
the pleasure of reminding himself how she had looked once in the bar parlour.

‘Pain‚’ thought Mr. Bugby, following the reasoning culled from that adventure, ‘conquers fear.’ Were he that ash tree and the horse a maid, if he could lay hold of her and hurt her, she would soon begin to move a little though she were crying. Mr. Bugby nodded in a friendly way at the tree, as though to encourage it in the kindly act of driving away the fear of the horse by giving it pain. As the tree did nothing, and the mare still refused to move, Mr. Bugby felt the inevitable necessity of acting the man in the tree.

In order to do so, in a manner he thought the most proper, he got down from the cart, and picked up a strong stump of ash that had been blown from the tree.

With this weapon—for his whip he had
considered
too slender, and besides, he wished the tree to do it—he began to beat the horse about the head and eyes.

If the fear had been great, Mr. Bugby wisely decided that in order to defeat it the pain must be greater.

Having reached to blood, and bethinking
himself
that all policemen were not as friendly as that smiling one, and that a country officer might, having more knowledge of animals, be less able to believe Mr. Bugby’s excuse that the horse had been standing upon its head and so had got scratched, he stopped his blows.

Stepping into the trap again, Mr. Bugby drove on as though no tree was there; for the horse passed it as if its eyes, so blinded by blows, were quite incapable of seeing anything at all, which was indeed true.

Mr. Bugby trotted his horse pleasantly down the Madder lane and turned into the inn yard.

All was silent there, as became the inn’s name, except the sign-board; and that creaked
mournfully
to and fro, blown by the autumn wind, as though it called the attention of any passer-by to the deserted state of the bar parlour, and the sad emptiness of the pewter mugs, hung in a row and covered with cobwebs. The garden was sad and deserted too, but covered with weeds instead of cobwebs, over which a hawk hovered, waiting for the little birds, in the same amiable manner as the spiders waited in their webs for the little flies.

In the backyard of ‘The Silent Woman’ there were scattered about broken bottles and old tins, that said, as plainly as any rubbish could, that the place had had no human attention for a long while. Mr. Bugby tied his mare to a post, on which was an iron ring intended for this purpose. He then looked into the garden, hoping to notice something there that he wished to see. But the bindweed covering all so effectually, Mr. Bugby turned back into the yard, and the hawk flew away, evidently regarding the innkeeper, though quite wrongfully, as an enemy.

In the yard Mr. Bugby kicked a jam-pot to pieces, because he thought that it got in his way on
purpose, and then looked about for the person that the agent had told him had charge of the key.

Over her own garden hedge, he saw Mrs. Chick as the person he had been referred to, who was spreading out her arms like a swan’s wings and hanging underclothes upon a line, with Maud standing near and telling her how to hang them properly.

Those ten years that we have already mentioned had been kind to Mother Maud in a way she liked them to
be, each year having given her a present of a little more maidenly well-being; and together they had made her very ready for what she wanted more than anything else in the whole world—a baby of her own. Maud knew very well, and she liked the knowledge of it, that she was ready. Her dreams had told her so, and when she undressed and dressed she knew the dreams told her the truth.

But though Maud was ready, she wasn’t in the least impatient; for everything that she learned to do in ordinary household ways, or in tending children, made her feel the more safe and sure that ‘it’ would be well nursed and looked after when it came.

Even the whitening of the steps and the brushing of Mr. Pim’s Sunday coat had to do with ‘it,’ because everything in the way of tidiness or cleanliness was to Mother Maud a
preparation for the child’s arrival. She hardly thought at all of the man, for as a rule a country girl, when she is willing, gets married easily enough.

When Mr. Bugby asked Mrs. Chick for the key, Mrs. Chick looked at him with interest, because he had frightened poor Annie to death; and she secretly hoped, at no very far distant time, to discover how he did it, if only by the simple means of his doing it again more openly to another lady.

‘Thee be new landlord, bain’t ’ee?’ remarked Mrs. Chick, handing Mr. Bugby the key that Maud had brought to her from the cottage. Mrs. Chick nodded in a friendly way to the creaking sign-board. She folded her arms, so that her bosoms became more prominent; and she hoped that the sight of them might beguile Mr. Bugby into trying to frighten her too. But Mr. Bugby’s eyes were elsewhere; he had seen Maud—such a young girl—go into the house and return with the key. Mr. Bugby liked the look of Maud, and his eyes kept pace with her until she disappeared again into the cottage. Miss Maud had turned his way long enough for him to see and to desire a nearer view of that rounded and girlish body that, with pretty Maud, waited so quietly for what she wanted.

But business was business with Mr. Bugby, and he hoped to see himself soon as a more
pleasant fellow—without his wife. What but his fate had brought him so nicely there to Madder; for was he not the one to frighten the maidens, and to hire a pretty house with an evil history for his wife to live in?

That house should play his game as well as Maud, whom the Almighty had placed so near and given the liveliness of a young mouse to, on purpose that he, Mr. Bugby, should amuse
himself
with her. He had to go along his life’s journey—so Mr. Bugby was wont to tell Mrs. Bugby when she reproached him for his conduct with many tears—‘same as I be made.’ ‘And‚’ Mr. Bugby would add, looking up at the bar parlour ceiling, ‘’tain’t for a poor man to find fault wi’ ’is Maker.’

On the same day that Lily had been told by Mr. Bugby ‘to go to workhouse’—that was but a day before he made his Madder journey—Mr. Bugby expressed himself in certain other wise and serious sentiments. ‘A maiden‚’ he said, ‘that be plimmed an’ proper should be frightened by a nice man—’tis a beginning. For bain’t they always a-tempting of we wi’ their pretty looks and what they do show.’

Mr. Bugby continued the subject with a new inspiration. ‘’Twas God, weren’t en, that did fright sun above into shining? ’E did but show ’Isself, an’ sun did catch a-fire. An’ so ’tis right for we men to fright a maid into tother matters. Though I be a poor landlord, I be
Bugby wi’ a liking, and I be made a man that do frighten—’twas a good home that Lily did come to.’

This last remark of Mr. Bugby’s was made to confirm the truth of the advertisement that had brought Lily Parsons, whom Miss Pettifer had turned off without a character, to the Unicorn Inn.

And now, at Madder, kind fate had shown Mr. Bugby, Maud Chick, who was plimmed and proper too….

As so interesting a person, who enjoyed so much local fame as the proud possessor of a mystery that frightened the women, stood
talking
to her, Mrs. Chick smiled pleasantly. She hoped that Mr. Bugby would hire the inn, but at the same time she was forced to tell the history of the house, even though it might send him away again, for she did not know how much he knew of it already.

‘’Twere a good house once,’ said Mrs. Chick amiably, because Mr. Bugby now looked at her instead of at the doorway, where Maud had gone in. ‘Folk did come by riding on horses, and did drop in those days, and motors did stop by twos and by threes—but all same, ’twas they wives that did suffer.’

Mr. Bugby lowered his eyes a little.

Mrs. Chick blushed.

Although she wasn’t the kind of lady that his modest fancy liked the best, yet Mr. Bugby saw her as helping in a kind and motherly way—like
the ‘One who set the sun a-burning’—to get him what he wanted. He let her talk, knowing that she wished to. ‘There was poor Mrs. Poole that were took first,’ continued Mrs. Chick, ‘she that did use to carry a big red prayer book to church. Mr. Pink did come to Madder after t’ other were gone, wi’ a maid ’e did call ’is wife, an’ she did wear a ring to prove what ’e did say were right. ’Twas woon of they colds that did carry she off. Mr. Told came next, brother to ’e that do live at Norbury. ’E did take inn for the sound of drink a-running. ’Twas a man that liked thik sound, were Mr. Told. ’E would set all they barrels a-dripping into quart cups, and would lie down in passage to hear they drops a-singing. ’Twas for to amuse ’isself that ’e did come to Madder. Mrs. Told were the woon for open-works. An’ Chick did say to I at bedtime, “’Tain’t I that be the woon to look at what they ladies do show; ’tis to drink beer that I do climb stile in hedge—’tain’t to admire.” But for all ’e did say, ’e know’d they stockings well enough. ’Twas well bucket that did rick she to grave. ’Twere a pity to bury she in they very stockings that Chick did admire.’

Mr. Bugby smiled. He was glad to hear that there was a well in the garden.

Mrs. Chick looked across the fields at Madder churchyard. She sighed. She felt sorry that Mrs. Told was dead, because she missed very
much the merry tales that Mr. Chick used to bring to her from the inn.