Short Stories 1895-1926 (55 page)

‘Lord, Millie!' Mr Thripp interrupted, smoothing her cheek with his squat forefinger, ‘you'd beat twenty of them Westcliffs, with a cast in both eyes and your hands behind your back. Don't you grieve no more, my dear; he'll come back safe and sound, or he's less of a – of a nice young feller than I take him for.'

For a moment Mr Thripp caught a glimpse of the detestable creature with the goggling eyes and the suede shoes, but he dismissed him sternly from view.

‘There now,' he said, ‘give your poor old dad a kiss. What's disappointments, Millie; they soon pass away. And now, just take a sip or two of this extra-strong Bohay! I was hoping I shouldn't have to put up with a lonely cup and not a soul to keep me company. But mind, my precious, not a word to your ma.'

So there they sat, father and daughter, comforter and comforted, while Mr Thripp worked miracles for two out of a tea-pot for one. And while Millie, with heart comforted, was musing of that other young fellow she had noticed boldly watching her while she was waiting for her Arthur, Mr Thripp was wondering when it would be safe and discreet to disturb her solacing daydream so that he might be busying himself over the supper.

It's one dam neck-and-neck worry and trouble after another, his voice was assuring him. But meanwhile, his plain square face was serene and gentle as a nestful of halcyons, as he sat sipping his hot water and patting his pensive Millie's hand.

Pretty Poll

Pretty Poll
1

In her odd impulsive fashion – her piece of sewing pressed tight to her small bosom, her two small feet as close to one another on the floor – Judy had laughed out: and the sound of it had a faint far-away resemblance to bells – bells muffled, in the sea. ‘You never, never, never speak of marriage,' she charged Tressider, ‘without being satirical. You just love to make nonsense of us all. Now I say you have no right to. You haven't earned the privilege. Wait till you've jilted Cleopatra, or left your second-best bed to – to Catherine Parr – if she
was
the last. Don't you agree, Stella?'

The slight lifting at the corners of dark handsome Stella's mouth could hardly have been described as a smile. ‘I always agree,' she assented. ‘And surely, Mr Tressider, isn't marriage an “institution”? Mightn't you just as well attack a police-station? No one gets any good out of it. It only hurts.'

‘That's just it, Stella, it only hurts. It's water, after all, that has the best chance of wearing away stones – not horrid sledge-hammers like that.'

From his low chair, his cleft clean-shaven chin resting on his hands, Tressider for a moment or two continued to look up and across the room at Judy, now absorbedly busy again over her needlework. Time, too, wears like water; but little of its influence was perceptible there. The curtains at the French windows had been left undrawn; a moon was over the garden. It was Judy's choice – this mingling of the two lights – natural and artificial. Hers, too, the fire, this late summer evening. She stooped forward, thrusting out a slightly trembling hand towards its flames.

‘No, it isn't fair,' she said, ‘there are many married people who are at least, well, endurably happy: Bill and me, for example. The real marvel is that any two ignorant, chance young things who happen to be of opposite sex should ever just go on getting older and older, more and more used to one another, and all that – and yet not want a change – not really for a single instant. I know dozens – apart from the others.'

‘Oh, I never meant to suggest that “whited” are the only kind of sepulchres,' said Tressider. ‘I agree, too, it's the substantial that wears longest. Second-best beds; rather than Wardour Street divans. But there are excesses – just human ones, I mean. It's this horrible curse of asking too much. Up there they seem to have supposed that the best ratio for a human being was one quart of feeling to every pint pot. I knew a man once, for example, who, quite apart from such little Eurekas as the Dunmow flitch, never even made the attempt to become endurably happy, as you call it. Simply because of a parrot. It repeated things. It was an eavesdropper: an
agent provocateur
.'

‘What
do
you mean?' said Judy. ‘Oh, how you amuse me! You haven't said a single thing this evening that was not ironical. You just love to masquerade. Did you ever know a woman who talked in parables? It's simply because, I suppose, men have such stupidly self-conscious hearts – I mean such absurdly rational minds. Isn't it, Stella? Don't be so reserved, you dark taciturn angel. Wouldn't he be even nicer than he is if he would only say what he thinks? A parrot!'

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 face.

‘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.