THE TREACHEROUS SON.
I certainly hoped when I took up my quarters in this quiet village that there would be no jarring note to disturb the idyllic peace of my surroundings. And yet I had not been long in this pleasant sitting-room, with its outlook on blossom-laden fruit-trees, creamy-spired chestnuts and wooded down, before I became aware that a pitiful and rather sordid little domestic drama was in progress within fifty yards from my open windows. I discovered a son in the act of encouraging his aged and apparently imbecile parent to gamble with a professional swindler! Not that I have actually seen them thus engaged. As a matter of fact I have merely heard a few short remarks—and those were all spoken by the son. But, as everyone knows, even a single sentence accidentally overheard by an observant stranger may give him a clearer insight into the unknown, and possibly unseen, speaker's character than could be gained from countless chapters of a modern analytical novel.
So these four sentences were quite enough for me. Perhaps I should mention here that the three personages in this drama are birds—which makes it all the more painful.
Like many of our British birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops into English, or I should never have understood what was going on. He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all their remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and I should have believed him—once. Hardly now, after he has so airily exposed his title as an authority; but even as it is I should not dream of questioning his statement that "the egg of course is rather more speckled," because I can well believe that the egg this bird—whatever he is—came from was very badly speckled indeed.
It seems that, some time ago—I can't say when exactly, but it was before I came down here—this unnatural son introduced to the parental abode (which I think is either No. 5 or No. 6 in a row of young chestnuts abutting on the high road) a rook of more than dubious reputation, whom he persuaded his unsuspecting sire to put up for the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am unable to give the precise date on which he first led the conversation to the good old English game of "rigging the thimble"—that also was before I came. All I can state with certainty is that he interested his host in it so effectually that now the infatuated old fool is playing it all day long.
This is evident from his son's conversation; during the pause which invariably precedes it I should undoubtedly hear the father-bird (if he would only speak up—which he doesn't) quavering, "I'm not sure, my boy, I'm not sure, but I've a notion that, this time, he's left the pea under the middle thimble—eh?"
On which the young scoundrel, knowing well that it is elsewhere, pipes out, "There it is, Fa-ther, there it is, Fa-ther!" with an unctuous humility shading into impatient contempt that is simply indescribable, being indeed too revolting for words.
Then, as the father still wavers, his son makes some observations which I cannot quite follow, but take to be on the fairness of the game as played with a sportsbird, and the certainty that the luck must turn sooner or later. After which he exhorts him—this time in plain English—to "be a bird." Whereupon the doting old parent decides that he will be a bird and back the middle thimble, and the next moment I hear the son exclaim, evidently referring to the rook, "No, 'e's got it; no, 'e's got it. Cheer up! Cheer up!" with a perfunctory concern that is but a poor disguise for indecent exultation. I am not suggesting, by the way, that birds are in the habit of dropping their "h's"—but this one does. There are times when he is so elated by his parent's defeat that he cannot repress an outburst of inarticulate devilry. And so the game goes on, minute after minute, hour after hour, every day from dawn to dusk. The amount of grains or grubs or whatever the stakes may be (and it is not likely that any rook would play for love), that that old idiot must have lost even since I have been here, is beyond all calculation. He has never once been allowed to spot the right thimble, but he will go on. As to the son's motive in permitting it, any bird of the world would tell you that, if you possess a senile parent who is bound to be rooked by somebody, it had better be by a person with whom you can come to a previous arrangement.