There were a number of carved stone figures placed at intervals along the
parapets of the old Cathedral; some of them represented angels, others
kings and bishops, and nearly all were in attitudes of pious exaltation
and composure. But one figure, low down on the cold north side of the
building, had neither crown, mitre, not nimbus, and its face was hard and
bitter and downcast; it must be a demon, declared the fat blue pigeons
that roosted and sunned themselves all day on the ledges of the parapet;
but the old belfry jackdaw, who was an authority on ecclesiastical
architecture, said it was a lost soul. And there the matter rested.
One autumn day there fluttered on to the Cathedral roof a slender,
sweet-voiced bird that had wandered away from the bare fields and
thinning hedgerows in search of a winter roosting-place. It tried to
rest its tired feet under the shade of a great angel-wing or to nestle in
the sculptured folds of a kingly robe, but the fat pigeons hustled it
away from wherever it settled, and the noisy sparrow-folk drove it off
the ledges. No respectable bird sang with so much feeling, they cheeped
one to another, and the wanderer had to move on.
Only the effigy of the Lost Soul offered a place of refuge. The pigeons
did not consider it safe to perch on a projection that leaned so much out
of the perpendicular, and was, besides, too much in the shadow. The
figure did not cross its hands in the pious attitude of the other graven
dignitaries, but its arms were folded as in defiance and their angle made
a snug resting-place for the little bird. Every evening it crept
trustfully into its corner against the stone breast of the image, and the
darkling eyes seemed to keep watch over its slumbers. The lonely bird
grew to love its lonely protector, and during the day it would sit from
time to time on some rainshoot or other abutment and trill forth its
sweetest music in grateful thanks for its nightly shelter. And, it may
have been the work of wind and weather, or some other influence, but the
wild drawn face seemed gradually to lose some of its hardness and
unhappiness. Every day, through the long monotonous hours, the song of
his little guest would come up in snatches to the lonely watcher, and at
evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great grey bats slid
out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed bird would
return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were
waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the
great bell of the Cathedral rang out daily its mocking message, “After
joy . . . sorrow.”
The folk in the verger’s lodge noticed a little brown bird flitting about
the Cathedral precincts, and admired its beautiful singing. “But it is a
pity,” said they, “that all that warbling should be lost and wasted far
out of hearing up on the parapet.” They were poor, but they understood
the principles of political economy. So they caught the bird and put it
in a little wicker cage outside the lodge door.
That night the little songster was missing from its accustomed haunt, and
the Dark Image knew more than ever the bitterness of loneliness. Perhaps
his little friend had been killed by a prowling cat or hurt by a stone.
Perhaps . . . perhaps he had flown elsewhere. But when morning came
there floated up to him, through the noise and bustle of the Cathedral
world, a faint heart-aching message from the prisoner in the wicker cage
far below. And every day, at high noon, when the fat pigeons were
stupefied into silence after their midday meal and the sparrows were
washing themselves in the street-puddles, the song of the little bird
came up to the parapets—a song of hunger and longing and hopelessness, a
cry that could never be answered. The pigeons remarked, between
mealtimes, that the figure leaned forward more than ever out of the
perpendicular.
One day no song came up from the little wicker cage. It was the coldest
day of the winter, and the pigeons and sparrows on the Cathedral roof
looked anxiously on all sides for the scraps of food which they were
dependent on in hard weather.
“Have the lodge-folk thrown out anything on to the dust-heap?” inquired
one pigeon of another which was peering over the edge of the north
parapet.
“Only a little dead bird,” was the answer.
There was a crackling sound in the night on the Cathedral roof and a
noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the frost was
affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have
been so. In the morning it was seen that the Figure of the Lost Soul had
toppled from its cornice and lay now in a broken mass on the dust-heap
outside the verger’s lodge.
“It is just as well,” cooed the fat pigeons, after they had peered at the
matter for some minutes; “now we shall have a nice angel put up there.
Certainly they will put an angel there.”
“After joy . . . sorrow,” rang out the great bell.