Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 285
THE YELLOW BIRD
FIVE men had halted at the top of a hill overlooking a valley beautiful enough to be called a vision, but too neglected ever to have been vulgarised by being called a view. They were a sketching club on a walking tour; but when they had come to that place they did no more walking, and, strangely enough, very little sketching. It was as if they had come to some quiet end of the world; that corner of the earth seemed to have a curious effect on them, varying with their various personalities, but acting on all as something arresting and vaguely final. Yet the quality was as nameless as it was unique; there was nothing definably different from twenty other wooded valleys in those western shires upon the marches of Wales. Green slopes dived into a fringe of dark forests that looked black by comparison, but the grey columns of which were mirrored in the curving river like a long winding colonnade. Only a little way along, on one side of the river, the bank was cleared of timber, and formed a platform for old gardens and orchards, in the midst of which stood an old tall house, of a rich brown brick with blue shutters, and rather neglected creepers clinging to it, more like moss to a stone than like flowers to a flower-bed. The roof was flat, with a chimney near the centre of it, from which a thin thread of smoke was drawn up into the sky; the only sign that the house was not wholly deserted. Of the five men who looked down at the landscape, only one had any special reason for looking at the house.
The eldest of the artists, a dark, active, ambitious man in spectacles, destined to be famous afterwards under the name of Luke Walton, was affected by the place in a curious fashion. It seemed to tease him like a fly or something elusive; he could not please himself with a point of view, but was perpetually shifting his camp-stool from place to place, crossing and recrossing the theatre of these events amid the jeers of his companions. The second, a heavy, fair-haired man named Hutton, stared at the scene in a somewhat bovine fashion, made a few lines on a sketching block, and then announced in a loud voice that it was a good place for a picnic, and that he was going to have his lunch. The third painter agreed with him; but as he was said to be a poet as well as a painter, he was expected to show a certain fervour for any opportunities of avoiding work. Indeed, this particular artist, whose name was Gabriel Gale, did not seem disposed even to look at the landscape, far less to paint it; but after taking a bite out of a ham sandwich, and a swig at somebody else’s flask of claret, incontinently lay down on his back under a tree and stared up at the twilight of twinkling leaves; some believing him to be asleep, while others more generously supposed him to be composing poetry. The fourth, a smaller and more alert man named Garth, could only be regarded as an honorary member of the artistic group; for he was more interested in science than in art, and carried not a paint-box but a camera. Nevertheless, he was, not without an intelligent appreciation of scenery, and he was in the act of fixing up his photographic apparatus so that it covered the angle of the river where stood the neglected garden and the distant house. And at that moment the fifth man, who had not yet moved or spoken, made so abrupt and arresting a gesture that one might say that he struck up the camera, like a gun pointed to kill.
“Don’t,” he said; “it’s bad enough when they try to paint it.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Garth. “Don’t you like that house?”
“I like it too much,” said the other, “or rather, I love it too much to like it at all.”
The fifth man who spoke was the youngest of the party, but he had already at least some local success and celebrity; partly because he had devoted his talent to the landscape and legends of that countryside, and partly because he came of a family of small squires whose name was historic in those hills. He was tall, with dark-brown hair and a long brown face, with a high-bridged nose that looked rather distinguished than handsome; and there was a permanent cloud of consideration on his brow that made him seem much older than his years. He alone of all these men had made no gesture, either of labour or relaxation, on coming to the crest of the hill. While Walton went to and fro, and Hutton started cheerfully on his meal, and Gale flung himself on the couch of leaves to look up into the tree-tops, this man had stood like a statue looking across the valley to the house, and it was only when Garth pointed his camera that he had even lifted a hand.
Garth turned on him a humorous face, in spite of its hard angular features; for the little scientist was a man of admirable good temper.
“I suppose there’s a story about it,” he said; “you look as if you were in quite a confidential mood. If you like to tell me, I assure you I can keep a secret. I’m a medical man and have to keep secrets, especially those of the insane. That ought to encourage you.”
The younger man, whose name was John Mallow, continued to gaze moodily across the valley, but there was something about him that suggested that the other had guessed right, and he was about to speak.
“Don’t bother about the others,” said Garth, “they can’t hear; they’re too busy doing nothing. Hutton,” he called out in much more strident tones, “Gale, are you fellows listening?”
“Yes; I’m listening to the birds,” came the half-buried voice of Gale out of his leafy lair.
“Hutton’s asleep,” observed Garth with satisfaction. “No wonder, after all that lunch. Are you asleep, Gale?”
“Not asleep, but dreaming,” answered the other. “If you look up long enough, there isn’t any more up or down, but a sort of green, dizzy dream; with birds that might as well be fishes. They’re just odd shapes of different colours against the green, brown and grey, and one of them looks quite yellow.”
“A yellow-hammer, I suppose,” remarked Garth.
“It doesn’t look like a hammer,” said Gale, sleepily; “not such an odd shape as all that.”
“Ass!” said Garth briefly. “Did you expect it to look like an auctioneer’s hammer? You poets who are so strong about Nature are generally weak in natural history. Well, Mallow,” he added, turning to his companion, “you’ve nothing to fear from them, if you like to talk in an ordinary voice. What about this house of yours?”
“It’s not mine,” said Mallow. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to an old friend of my mother’s, a Mrs. Verney, a widow. The place has very much run to seed now, as you see, for the Verneys have got poorer and poorer, and don’t know what to do next, which is the beginning of the trouble. But I have passed happier times there than I shall probably ever have again.”
“Was Mrs. Verney so enchanting a character?” asked his friend softly; “or may I take the liberty of supposing there was a rising generation?”
“Unfortunately for me, it is a very rising generation,” replied Mallow. “It rises in a sort of small revolution; and it rises rather above my head.” Then, after a silence, he said somewhat abruptly, “Do you believe in lady doctors?”
“I don’t believe in any doctors,” answered Garth. “I’m one myself.”
“Well, it isn’t exactly lady doctors, I believe, but it’s something of that sort,” went on Mallow; “study of psychological science, and so on. Laura has got it very badly, and is helping some Russian psychologist or other.”
“Your narrative style is a little sketchy,” remarked Dr. Garth, “but I suppose I may infer that Laura is a daughter of Mrs. Verney, and also that Laura has some logical connexion with the happy days that will not return.”
“Suppose it all, and have done with it,” replied the young man. “You know what I mean; but the real point is this. Laura has all the new ideas, and has persuaded her mother to come down off the high horse of genteel poverty in all sorts of ways. I don’t say she’s not right in that; but as it works out there are some curious complications. For one thing, Laura not only earns her own living but earns it in the laboratory of this mysterious Muscovite; and for another, she has bounced her mother into taking a paying guest. And the paying guest is the mysterious Muscovite again, who wants a quiet rest in the country.”
“And I suppose, I may take it,” said the doctor, “that you feel there is a little too much of the Muscovite in your young life?”
“As a matter of fact, he moved into the house late last night,” continued Mallow, “and I suppose that’s really why I drifted in this direction this morning, trailing you all at my heels. I said it was a beautiful place, and so it is; but I don’t want to paint it, and I don’t even want to visit it; but all the same, I had a vague sort of feeling I should like to be somewhere near.”
“And, as you couldn’t get rid of us, you brought us along,” said Garth with a smile. “Well, I think I can understand all that. Do you know anything about this Russian professor?”
“I know nothing whatever against him,” answered the other. “He is a very famous man both in science and politics. He escaped from a Siberian prison in the old days, by blowing up the wall with a bomb of his own construction; it’s quite an exciting story, and he must at least be a man of courage. He has written a great book called The Psychology of Liberty, I believe; and Laura is very keen on his views. It’s rather an indescribable thing altogether; she and I are very fond of each other, and I don’t think she mistakes me for a fool, and I don’t think I am a fool. But whenever we have met lately it has been literally like a meeting on a high road, when two people are going opposite ways. And I think I know what it is; she is always going outwards, and I am always going inwards. The more I see of the world, and the more men I meet or books I read or questions I answer, the more I come back with increased conviction to those places where I was born or played as a boy, narrowing my circles like a bird going back to a nest. That seems to me the end of all travel, and especially of the widest travel… to get home. But she has another idea in her mind. It’s not only that she says that old brown brick house is like a prison, or that the hills are like walls shutting her in; I dare say things do get pretty dull in such a place. There’s a theory in it, too, which I suppose she’s got from her psychological friend. She says that even in her own valley, and in her own garden, the trees only grow because they radiate outwards, which is only the Latin for branching. She says the very word ‘radiant’ shows it is the secret of happiness. There is something in it, I suppose; but I radiate inwards, so to speak; that is why I paint all my pictures of this little corner of the world. If I could only paint this valley, I might go on to paint that garden; and, if only I could paint that garden, I might be worthy to paint the creeper under her window.”
The sleeping Hutton awoke with an uproarious yawn, and lifting himself from his bed of leaves, wandered away to where the more industrious Walton had at last settled down to work on the other side of the hill. But the poet Gale still lay gazing at his topsy-turvydom of tree-tops. And the only reply he would make to a further challenge from Garth was to say heavily. “They’ve driven the yellow one away.”
“Who have driven what away?” demanded Mallow, rather irritably.
“The other birds attacked the yellow one and drove it away,” said the poet.
“Regarded it as an undesirable alien, no doubt,” said Garth.
“The Yellow Peril,” said Gale, and relapsed into his dreams.
Mallow had already resumed his monologue:
“The name of this psychologist is Ivanhov, and he’s said to be writing another great book in his country retreat; I believe she is acting as his secretary. It is to embody some mathematical theory about the elimination of limits and…”
“Hullo!” cried Garth. “This moated grange of yours is actually coming to life. Somebody is actually beginning to open a window.”
“You haven’t been looking at it as I have,” answered Mallow quietly. “Just round the angle on the left there’s a little window that’s been open all the time. That belongs to the little sitting-room out of the spare bedroom. It used to be Laura’s room, and still has a lot of her things in it; but I think they give it now to their guests.”
“Including, doubtless, their paying guest,” observed Garth.
“He’s a queer sort of guest. I only hope he’s a paying one,” returned the other. “That big window where they just opened the shutters is at the end of the long library; all these windows belong to it. I expect they’ll stick the philosopher in there if he wants to philosophise.”
“The philosopher seems to be philosophical about draughts,” observed Dr. Garth; “he or somebody else has opened three more windows, and seems to be struggling with another.”
Even as he spoke the fifth window burst open, and even from where they stood they could see a creeper that had strayed across it snap and drop with the gesture. It had the look of the snapping of some green chain securing the house like a prison. It had almost the look of the breaking of the seal of a tomb.
For Mallow, against all his prejudices, felt the presence and pressure of that revolutionary ideal which he recognized as his rival. All along the shattered façade of the old brown house the windows were opening one after another like the eyes of an Argus waking from his giant sleep. He was forced to admit to himself that he had never seen the place thus coming to life from within, as a plant unfolds itself. The last three windows were now open to the morning; the long room must already be full of light, to say nothing of air. Garth had spoken of a philosopher enduring draughts; but it seemed more as if a pagan priest had been turned into a temple of the winds. But there was more in that morning vision than the mere accident of a row of windows open when they were commonly closed. The same fancy about unfolding life seemed to fill the whole scene like a new atmosphere. It was as if a fresh air had streamed out of the windows instead of into them. The sun was already fairly high, but it came out of the morning mists above the house with something of the silent explosion of daybreak. The very shapes of the forest trees, spreading themselves like fans, seemed to repeat the original word “radiant”, which he had thought of almost as a Latin pun. Sailing over his head, as if sent flying by a sort of centrifugal force, the clouds still carried into the height of noon the colours of sunrise. He felt all the fresh things that he feared coming at him by an irrepressible expansion. Everything seemed to enlarge itself. Even when his eye fell on a stunted gate-post standing alone in the old garden, he could fancy that it swelled as he stared at it.
A sharp exclamation from his friend woke him from his unnatural day-dream, which might rather be called, by a contradiction, a white nightmare of light.
“By blazes! he’s found another window,” cried the doctor; “a window in the roof.”
There was, indeed, the gleam of a skylight which caught the sun at an angle as it was forced upwards, and out of the opening emerged the moving figure of a man. Little could be seen of him at that distance, except that he was tall and slim and had yellow hair which looked like gold in the strong sun. He was dressed in some long, light-coloured garment, probably a dressing-gown, and he stretched his long limbs as if with the sleepy exultation of one arisen from sleep.
“Look here!” said Mallow suddenly, an indescribable expression flashing across his face and vanishing; “I’m going to pay a call.”
“I rather thought you might,” answered Garth. “Do you want to go alone?”
As he spoke he looked round for the rest of the company, but Walton and Hutton were still chatting some distance away on the other side of the hill, and only Gale still lay in the shadow of the thick trees staring up at the birds, as if he had never stirred. Garth called to him by name, but it was only after a silence that Gale spoke. What he said was:
“Were you ever an isosceles triangle?
“Very seldom,” replied Garth with restraint. “May I ask what the devil you are talking about?”
“Only something I was thinking about,” answered the poet, lifting himself on to one elbow. “I wondered whether it would be a cramping sort of thing to be surrounded by straight lines, and whether being in a circle would be any better. Did anybody ever live in a round prison?”
“Where do you get these cracked notions?” inquired the doctor.
“A little bird told me,” Gale said gravely. “Oh, it’s quite true.”
He had risen to his feet by this time, and came slowly forward to the brow of the hill, looking across at the house by the river. As he looked his dreamy blue eyes seemed to wake up, like the windows opening in the house he gazed at.
“Another bird,” he said softly, “like a sparrow on the house-tops. And that fits in with it exactly.”
There was some suggestion of truth in the phrase, for the strange figure was standing on the very edge of the roof, with space below him and his hands spread out almost as if he wished to fly. But the last sentence, and still more the strange manner in which it was spoken, puzzled the doctor completely.
“Fits in with what?” he asked, rather sharply.
“He’s like that yellow bird,” said Gale vaguely. “In fact, he is a yellow bird, with that hair and the sun on him. What did you say you thought it was… a yellow-hammer?”
“Yellow-hammer yourself,” retorted Garth; “you’re quite as yellow as he is. In fact, with your long legs and straw-coloured hair, you’re really rather like him.”
Mallow, in his more mystical mood, looked strangely from one to the other, for indeed there was a certain vague similarity between the two tall, fair-haired figures, the one on the house and the other on the hill.
“Perhaps I am rather like him,” said Gale quietly. “Perhaps I’m just sufficiently like him to learn not to be like him, so to speak. We may both be birds of a feather, the yellow feather; but we don’t flock together, because he likes to flock by himself. And as to being a hammer, yellow or otherwise, well, that also is an allegory.”
“I decline to make head or tail of your allegories,” said Dr. Garth shortly.
“I used to want a hammer to smash things with,” continued Gale; “but I’ve learnt to do something else with a hammer, which is what a hammer is meant for; and every now and then I manage to do it.”
“What do you mean by that?” inquired the doctor.
“I can hit the right nail on the head,” answered the poet.
