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.
Now I come to think of it, though, I have not heard the unnatural
offspring once since I sat down to write this. Can it have dawned at
last upon his parent that this is one of those little games where the
odds are a trifle too heavy in favour of the Table? Or can the son
have sickened of his own villainy and washed his claws of his shady
confederate? I don't know why, but I am almost beginning to hope....
No; through the open window comes the well-known cry, "There it _is_,
Fa-ther! There it _is_, Fa-ther! Be a bird! Be a _bird_!... No, '_e_'s
got it! No, '_e_'s got it! Cheer up! Cheer up!" They are at it again!