Innocent Birds

Title Page
Chapter i: MRS. CROCKER SEES A VISION
Chapter ii: ‘THE SILENT WOMAN’
Chapter iii: JOHN PIM
Chapter iv: SOLLY’S BOOK
Chapter v: ‘SUNSHINE DO BURN’
Chapter vi: THE SUN KISSES POLLY
Chapter vii: MOTHER MAUD
Chapter viii: MR. THOMAS TUCKER
Chapter ix: FRED
Chapter x: ‘BEWARE’
Chapter xi: MR. BUGBY FINDS A BLACK GLOVE
Chapter xii: MISS PETTIFER COMES TO MADDER
Chapter xiii: ‘GO TO BOSTON’
Chapter xiv: FRED’S QUEEN
Chapter xv: MR. BUGBY SEES A BLACK BIRD
Chapter xvi: MAUD CHICK BEHAVES QUEERLY
Chapter xvii: THE AMERICANS SEE A CROSS OF DOOM IN THE SKY
Chapter xviii: ‘’TIS RELIGION,’ SAID MR. BUGBY
Chapter xix: DERBY IN SPAIN
Chapter xx: MR. TUCKER IS ASTONISHED
Chapter xxi: DAISIES
Chapter xxii: MRS. BUGBY’S FRIEND
Chapter xxiii: MR. PIM KNOWS HIS GREATNESS
Chapter xxiv: MR. SOLLY CONSIDERS
Chapter xxv: ANOTHER BIRD FOR MR. BUGBY
Chapter xxvi: SCATTERED BONES
Chapter xxvii: FRED PIM COMES HOME TO MADDER
Chapter xxviii: MISTER PIM
Chapter xxix: THE FOOLISH GUILLEMOT
Chapter xxx: MR. MOODY FINDS SALVATION
Chapter xxxi: SOMEBODY FRIGHTENS MR. BUGBY
Chapter xxxii: THE PERFECT GIFT
About the Author
Copyright

INNOCENT BIRDS

A
VILLAGE
is like a stage that retains the same scenery throughout all the acts of the play. The actors come and go, and walk to and fro, with gestures that their passions fair or foul use them to.

Sometimes the human beings who occupy the stage, that is, the farms and village cottages, remain the same—or almost the same—for many years; sometimes they change more quickly.

A country village has a way now and again of clearing out all its inhabitants in one rush, as though it were grown tired of that particular combination of human destinies, and shakes itself free of them as a tree might do of
unwelcome
leaves.

This shake comes perhaps like the last trump, with a loud noise; as when Farmer Mew set afire his gunpowder, and so caused the people to go off in all directions: some far and some near, but all bent on going.

When the Gillets left and Farmer Mew died, others began to leave Madder too. Mr. and Mrs. Summerbee moved to a larger garden in
Wiltshire, that was walled in, and possessed a greenhouse where fine grapes were ripened, and where the strawberry beds were less weedy and more sheltered from prying eyes. The Squibbs went too, to work for Squire Pye, some miles away in a larger village, where the young ladies—for even Nellie had grown plump and
respectable
out at service—regarded themselves as good as the best, and insisted upon being called ‘Miss’ by the boys. And Nellie’s manners told these same boys plainly enough that she’d grown into something to be looked at and not to be touched.

When a village shakes itself free of the old order, it lets those who belong to it fall hard
sometimes
and break their heads. Thus, in giving place to the new, Mad Tom Button was a sufferer, being found drowned in the Dodderdown river, that he descended into because he wanted to be a tadpole.

But the person that was missed most of all by the Madder meadows was Minnie Cuddy, who married a stout gentleman that farmed in Norfolk and kept large oxen nearly as fat as himself. And so to Norfolk Minnie went with her husband.

When she was gone, Mr. Soper, who had loved her deeply, found living a hard matter, and more especially at breakfast time. For it was then that Mrs. Soper always spoke of Minnie, and called her names: harlot being the mildest of them. Soper, feeling that there was only one
way for him to go in order to escape from the breakfast table, decided that death by natural causes was better than bacon and bad names, and so died happy—thinking of Minnie.

The new element, that now came into Madder to live, altered the village taste so much that the older residents, who still remained, drooped and hung down their heads. Even though Mr. Billy’s nieces, Eva and May, had come to help to sell the sugar, Mr. Billy grew more and more mournful, and Andrew Corbin was often heard to say that ‘life wasn’t what it used to be.’ To be sure, these gentlemen couldn’t help finding it hard to get used to the new faces that brought new ways with them.

‘I wish Job Wimple wouldn’t look at me so much in church,’ Mr. Billy was overheard to say one day to his wife.

‘New Sexton do like to look at an old man that don’t stop ’is cough,’ replied Mrs. Billy, who was the sort of woman that Death in His travels passes by.

Love Cottage, where Minnie Cuddy used to live and keep her white hens, was now occupied by Mr. Solly, who changed the name to ‘Gift Cottage,’ not unsuitably, because a gift should always follow love.

But the name ‘Gift Cottage’ came in a more strange way than from the mere sequence of events that follow a proper cause; for Solly’s aunt, Deborah Crocker, told him a strange tale
about Madder hill, that he, being a good nephew to his aunt, entirely believed.

‘Aunt‚’ Solly had inquired, ‘what have you seen at Madder?’

‘I have seen God,’ replied Mrs. Crocker.

And she went on to tell her nephew how she had been to Madder to look at Love Cottage, hoping to buy it as a surprise for him, and
wishing,
too, to live there for a while herself; though later she found that she could not do so, owing to the ever increasing weakness that came with the illness from which she died. The day chosen by Deborah Crocker for her visit to Madder proved a sunny one, though upon Madder hill there rested a yellow cloud.

Now Aunt Crocker liked clouds; because upon sunny days they made pleasant shadows, and upon windy ones they ran with a merry glee across the sky from one end to the other, like happy children. But as the cloud upon Madder hill neither ran in the sky nor yet shaded the meadows, but merely rested, as though Madder hill were its footstool, Aunt Crocker had a mind to go and see what it was. Leaving her hired trap in the village, she slowly climbed the hill, saying to herself in her most matter-of-fact way ‘that she hoped the cloud didn’t mean rain.’

A certain phrase, ‘pure in heart,’ though thought meaningless by some—and certainly Deborah never used it herself—became Solly’s aunt more than any other that we know of.

When Aunt Crocker arrived at the top of the hill a little heated with her climb, she knew the cloud to be no rain-cloud, and therefore there was no likelihood of her catching a cold from it. ‘Anything is better than rain‚’ Mrs. Crocker said, watching a thorn-bush that the golden cloud appeared to have set a match to.

Aunt Crocker knew her company, and when a Presence stood clothed in burning gold upon the hill, she knew that she saw a vision.

She sighed, not from nervousness, but merely because she was glad it didn’t rain. Her sigh was a contented one, and she waited to see what the vision would do.

The Presence looked lovingly at Madder, and spread itself out over the valley as though it had grown fond of the very mice and moles in the meadows.

Only after the cloud had risen heavenwards, as an eagle rises when it courts the sun, did Mrs. Crocker know what it had said to her.

But her first thought, when the vision went, was about the thorn-bush, that she expected to see burnt to a cinder. But the flames had been too golden to burn, so the bush was saved. Whether the words the vision had spoken came from the burning bush or no, Aunt Crocker was not sure. But anyhow, she had got them clear enough—that the Presence had promised a gift to Madder with its love, and that the gift would be given as a solace to some one. Aunt
Crocker thought this a little vague, but she
supposed
that she hadn’t listened as carefully as she should have done, and had thought more about the fate of a sparrow that had unluckily been perched upon the bush when it flared up.

Deborah was a gentle lady of simple manners, who wore little hats; but she had wide opinions. She had never seen a vision before. And as the cloud had called her to it, and had not disappointed her when she climbed the hill by merely
containing
nasty raindrops, she supposed that it meant her to follow its ways, and to discover what kind of present it had to give, and to whom it would be given. Not being able, owing to
illness
, to do so herself, she handed on the quest to Mr. Solly, to whom she told the story.

Mr. Solly was pleased with Gift Cottage. He liked the garden. He liked flowers nearly as much as Susan Summerbee had liked hens. His favourite flowers were white pinks and
columbines
, and his favourite vegetable runner beans. Mr. Solly dug his garden with a spade that cut deep and easily, and he left only one little corner unplanted. He left this corner because he could never make up his mind what to sow there. He thought of a pumpkin—but no, that would not suit. Horse radish?—they would spread
everywhere.
An apple tree?—it might die. Nothing would do, and so Solly let the corner remain barren, though he hoped that one day he would think of something proper to plant there. When
at Weyminster, Solly, whose age might have been anything between thirty and fifty, was never known by any other name than Mrs. Crocker’s nephew. If anything exciting happened in Grove Road, Weyminster, where Deborah Crocker used to live, the neighbours would say: ‘Call for Mrs. Crocker’s nephew, he understands gardening.’ And so Solly would be invited to catch and hold a burglar, who had climbed into the pantry window at Number 7, until the police came. Miss Pettifer, who always enjoyed her early morning walks to the St. Luke’s communion service because she could quietly hate her neighbours in the road—and Mrs. Crocker the most—if she heard, as she sometimes did, the sound of a hoe in Deborah’s back garden, would sniff the morning air as though she smelt brimstone, and thank the good God for creating a pretty place called Hell, and a pretty person called the Devil, for wicked nephews to go to who worked on Sundays.

No one could have had a higher opinion of a nephew than Aunt Crocker had of hers. ‘If this country understood his value as I do,’ she would say, ‘he would be made Prime Minister.’

‘He has a title above that,’ Mr. Tucker replied, who was Deborah’s friend as well as Miss Pettifer’s,—‘he is your nephew.’

But, alas, we must own here that the world had no very high opinion of Mr. Solly; for with his nervous look and sorrowful moustache to
match, he made no great figure in the
marketplace
when he bought spring cabbage plants. And Solly, seeing himself in this market manner, and not as his aunt did, thought his presence in the world by no means important.

Once settled at Madder, his greatest pleasure was to remember and to tell himself again what his aunt had said. He would remember little pieces of her conversation, put them together when he wanted to, say them over to himself, and then put them back into his mind again.

‘And above all,’ Aunt Crocker had said, ‘live quietly at Madder, Nephew Solly, and watch, for I am anxious to know what God’s gift to Madder will be, and to whom it will be given.’

It is always pleasant to think of anything that is to be given away as a free gift from a kind giver. Mr. Solly was well fitted for the supreme task of watching. Though he knew it was not exactly his business, except that Aunt Crocker had asked him to do it, he felt he could not do any harm in the matter. Besides, with his columbines cooing at Gift Cottage, and his runner beans growing as high as a great hedge, there was no reason why he should not walk out sometimes in the Madder lanes to see what would happen next, as we all like to do.

M
R.
S
OLLY
entered Madder in a quiet fashion. He walked behind the waggon that carried his furniture, like a poor man, exchanging a word or two about the weather with those he met. He trod softly in the village lanes as though he were stepping upon holy ground.

He liked the place as soon as ever he got the first view of it, where the road crosses the hills. There was a puritan freshness about Madder that took away Solly's timidity and bade him welcome. In Madder he had his occupation—one of the choicest—a gardener's. Besides that, he had his aunt's orders ‘to watch.'

He never went out of his door of a morning, dull or shining, without looking up in an
expectant
way at Madder hill, upon the top of which he hoped one day to see the golden cloud settle again like a great yellow butterfly.
Sometimes
when the large rich ivy leaves that grew about his door were wet, he would do more than look at the hill. He would climb it. For if mist hid the top, might there not be the golden cloud hid within it? And so Solly would go up and stand beside the thorn-bush and watch the little birds, that would twitter and peep
at him in a naughty mocking manner. And curiously enough—though whether it was the cool air upon the hill that caused the feeling we cannot say—when Solly came home again after making this journey, he returned with a kind of peace in his heart that it was pleasant to have. And when he picked a flower and smelt it after going to the hill, the scent of the flower would contain more than its usual fragrance.

We can think of no place in the world that is more pleasant to watch in than Madder. It is a place of pasture-land and sheep-folds, green meadows, and trees that in the summer are like the open fans of pretty ladies, and in the winter like harps for the winds to dance to.

Madder hill has the same roundness as the trees, though more mass. The further downs have line, a virtue that painters of old were wont to praise and moderns still envy.

These downs were high enough to keep out the vulgar, and near enough so that any one coming down the white road could be seen easily. There is no harshness in Madder; there are the strong lines and the more gentle: the high male outline above, and the yielding and softer female below, that follows the little brook and is joined in wedlock to Shelton.

Solly was companionable. Madder had greeted him in a friendly manner, though a little
inquisitively
, and he returned the favour so far as to stand or lean, when he was out watching, beside
a meadow gate, a pretty place for conversation; upon the posts of which were carved the names of three gentlemen: John Pim, George Chick, Job Wimple. Upon the gate was writ in broad letters, as though in mockery, ‘Mr. Barfoot wi' 'is Betty.' Beside this last word was drawn a foot like an elephant's. The explanation of this picture being, that Farmer Barfoot possessed a club foot, that always interested him so greatly that he would talk to it, ask it questions, and call it ‘Betty.'

The meadow gate, an important one in our tale, stood about a hundred yards from ‘The Silent Woman,' the closed inn of Madder. The inn owned an unfortunate history, the result of which was that no gentleman that had a wife who could fry onions tastily in fat, would care to
consider
even for a moment the possibility of taking over ‘The Silent Woman.' The truth of the matter being, that within a short while, as time is reckoned in Madder, three wives of three landlords had died in the house.

There was nothing in the outward appearance of Madder inn to warrant this tendency in the matter of wife-killing. It had not the bare
uninviting
look of Madder Rectory; and although the windows were boarded up, in case any little boy might want to discover what happened to glass when a pebble hit it, the inn looked as though an elbow could be lifted as gratefully there as in any other country tavern. When the
weather was rather misty, when the sun was dimmed, or the little clouds running fast, the Madder inn, though closed, showed more signs than upon sunny days, of malicious doings; and having no landlady to deal with, got to tormenting strangers.

It once whispered by means of a little bird to a poor gentleman of Norbury, in whose cottage home the cat had carried off the stuffed supper rabbit—leaving Mrs. Potten's tongue behind, which the good man, a carpenter and undertaker, could have spared far better than his supper—that at Madder there still existed a generous release from worldly cares—an inn.

Mr. Potten, remarking that he was merely going to see how ‘Wold Corbin was‚' in the hope of gaining a little trade later on, walked to Madder, with the step of a man who meant to get there, having a half-crown in his pocket, but no certain knowledge of the closed condition of ‘The Silent Woman.' Mr. Potten's memory had set a trap for Mr. Potten, by showing a pretty picture of himself in the bar of this same ‘Silent Woman' where a certain Mrs. Told, a former landlady, had allowed him—during the heat of a conversation about apple grafting—to stroke and fondle her hand, although she knew him to be a good
undertaker
and a married man. Mr. Potten had
himself
buried that lady, but he always hoped that another pretty one would take her place whose hand he might stroke. And in this hope he
walked—beckoned on by the spirit of the silent woman—holding the half-crown in his hand, and his hand in his trouser pocket, which gave a sort of double chance to the money to get to the Madder inn.

On the road Mr. Potten saw a vision of
happiness
: the happiness that lives inside a curtained bar window, where even the flies have a drunken way of walking, and can be watched and smiled at—as friends. But not Mr. Potten alone—who might have had a compact with ‘The Silent Woman' to help him at his trade—but others, and more thirsty ones even than him, had wandered over those hills to be disappointed. And no very happy matter was it to arrive at Madder with money to spend, and to find the door locked and the wet wind the only quencher of one's thirst.

But all this beguiling of the wayfarer was but mere play to ‘The Silent Woman,' whose real importance lay in its habit of putting to silence for ever the wives of the landlords, and laying eastward their women's feet, that had trod so many steps—even the very youngest of them—fetching and carrying for the men.