More Tales of the Birds

by W. Warde Fowler

I cannot tell you whether those linnets were his own friends and relations; but I think that, thanks to the Ornithologist’s true instinct, he was not far from his old home. And as the summer was all before him, and the hearts of linnets are kind, and Nature in sweet air repairs all damage quickly, I cannot doubt that his sky soon cleared, and that the heavy London thundercloud rolled far away out of his horizon.

DOCTOR AND MRS. JACKSON

Doctor and Mrs. Jackson were, for all we knew, the oldest pair in the parish: their heads were very grey, and they had an old-world look about them, and an air of wisdom and experience in life, that gave them a place of importance in our society and claimed the respect of us all. Yet I cannot remember that any of us noticed them until they became the intimate friends of the old Scholar. Then we all came to know them, and to feel as though we had known them all our lives.

Doctor and Mrs. Jackson.

Their heads were grey, and their dress was black, and as they lived in the old grey tower of the church they seemed to have something ancient and ecclesiastical about them; no one inquired into their history or descent; we took it all for granted, as we did the Established Church itself. They were there as the church was there, looking out over meadows and ploughed fields as it had looked out since good souls built it in the reign of Henry III., and over these same fields Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked out with knowing eyes as they sat on their gurgoyles of a sunshiny morning. The water that collected on the tower roof was discharged by large projecting gurgoyles ending in the semblance of two fierce animal heads, one a griffin, and the other a wolf; and on these the Doctor and his wife loved to sit and talk, full in view of the old Scholar’s study room.

The church was not only old, but mouldy and ill cared for. It had escaped the ruthless hand of the restorer, the ivy clung around it, the lights and shadows still made its quaint stone fretwork restful to the eye, but I fear it cannot be denied that it needed the kindly hand of a skilful architect to keep it from decay. Half of a stringcourse below the gurgoyles had fallen and never been replaced: and below that again the effigy of the patron saint looked as if it had been damaged by stone-throwing. The churchyard was overgrown and untidy, and the porch unswept, and the old oaken doors were crazy on their hinges. Inside you saw ancient and beautiful woodwork crumbling away, old tiles cracking under the wear and tear of iron-heeled boots and old dames’ pattens, and cobwebs and spiders descending from the groined roof upon your prayer-book. If you went up the spiral staircase into the ringers’ chamber, you would see names written on the wall, two or three empty bottles, and traces of banquets enjoyed after the clock had struck and the peal ceased,—banquets of which the Doctor and his wife occasionally partook, coming in through that unglazed lancet window when all was still.

The church indeed was mouldy enough, and the air within it was close and sleep-giving: and as the old parson murmured his sermon twice a Sunday from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually dropped into a tranquil doze or a pleasant day-dream,—all except the old Scholar, who sat just below, holding his hand to his ear, and eagerly looking for one of those subtle allusions, those reminiscences of old reading, or even now and then three words of Latin from Virgil or the “Imitatio,” with which his lifelong friend would strain a point to please him. They had been at school together, and at college together, and now they were spending their last years together, for the old Scholar had come, none of us knew whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the churchyard, hard by the Rectory of his old companion. And so they walked together through the still and shady avenues of life’s evening, wishing for no change, reading much and talking little, lovers of old times and old books, seeking the truth, not indeed in the world around them, but in the choice words of the wise man of old: “Pia et humilis inquisitio veritatis, per sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare.”

And Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked down on them from their gurgoyles, and approved. I suppose that old grey-headed bird did not know that he had been honoured with a doctorate, though he looked wise enough to be doctor of divinity, law and medicine, all in one; it had been conferred upon him by the old Scholar one day as he walked up and down his garden path, glancing now and then at the friendly pair on the tower. And in one way or another we had all come to know of it; and even visitors to the village soon made acquaintance with the Doctor and his wife.

No one, as I said, unless it were his old friend the Vicar, knew whence or why the old Scholar had come to take up his abode among us. We thought he must have had some great sorrow in his life which was still a burden to him: but if it was the old old story, he never told his love. Yet the burden he carried, if there were one, did not make him a less cheerful neighbour to the folk around him. He knew all the old people in the village, if not all the young ones: he would sit chatting in their cottages on a wet day, and on a fine one he would stroll around with some old fellow past his work, and glean old words and sayings, and pick up odds and ends of treasure for the history of the parish which he was going to write some day.