God's Sparrows

by Philip Child

  Maud’s eyes glistened with tears. “You’re so just , Pen. You have such true ideas for the children, and yet you always make me feel that you want my beliefs — though I dare say they are often only women’s ideas — to count, too. And I can’t tell you how much … I think almost everyday of my life how lucky the children are to have you to give them a broader view — to give them intellectual breadth, Pen.”

  Pen smiled a little ruefully. No one knew how to make him hug his fetters like Maud, he thought.… “You know, Maud, I often think I’ve spent my life ploughing the sky. What seems important to me — loyalty to reason — other people simply do not think about. It seems to me that a zealot who isn’t ruthless enough to stay a zealot is nature’s most abhorred vacuum.”

  “Pen?”

  “Yes, Maud?”

  She hesitated. “We have been fortunate — in each other, I mean.”

  Pen squeezed her hand and said: “You ought to know.”

  “My father used to say ‘the sweetest fruit comes after frost.’”

  “Well — perhaps. That is, if things only happened to one and not in one.… I shouldn’t care what happened if only Joanna —”

  But Maud, forcing herself to smile, shook her head at him.

  Chapter II

  I

  The christening was to be held on the afternoon of Murdo’s arrival.

  Summer stole into the gloomy drawing room, bringing to those inside the hum of insects and the fanning of a light breeze. An open French window framed a picture of ladies in muslin dresses “looking at the garden” and of the two boys skylarking on the lawn.

  The room in which three of the last children of the nineteenth century were to be made children of God embodied the dim gentility of the Victorian age. Here the more Victorian members of the family had by now assembled. The Burnets were contriving to be subtly at home to the Thatchers from New England, whom for the first time they beheld as a clan within a clan in their own territory. No one versed in the delicate antagonisms of “in-laws ” could have failed to observe that this was a family gathering.

  About the Thatchers there was a bred-in-the-bone stiffness; they were too much in earnest, too desirous to “do what’s right” to thread their way with finesse through the iridescent web of the social relations. To a Burnet — to Charles Burnet, for instance, who moved carelessly in flannels and blazer through a phalanx of formal cutaways — there was a locked-up look about the expressions of the Thatchers. The faces of the Thatcher women were all that women’s faces should be, gentle and solicitous; and yet always with a shade of obstinacy, of reserved opinion. Studiously affable, they mingled warily with the Burnets, evincing an interest, more than usually proprietary, in Pen’s children, as if subtly to underline the fact that the children were, after all, Thatchers. Their talk was of the family, the never stale epic of Thatcher births, marriages, and deaths.

  Several of them were clustered near the fireplace, drawing, perhaps unconsciously, a feeling of family solidarity from the photographs of Thatchers past and present who gazed uncompromisingly from the mantelpiece upon this Burnet room. There Pen was talking to his eldest brother Diodate who had come from Ohio for the christening. Diodate sat in silence, making his presence felt, though he uttered no word, by the decisive severity of his attention. In him the inherited puritan earnestness, informing a more robust nature than Pen’s, had settled solidly into an upright practicality. He began to speak in a deep voice that boomed sepulchrally upon an instantly attentive circle, patting his knee at each point made. “They have — too many — missionaries (pat) — seem to think — they can’t get along without more (pat) — so I don’t help them — when they come to me (decisive pat) — I say let them get together and fight the devil at home (pat) — if that’s what they really want to do” (hands folded, knees crossed: full stop). The ladies confronted with indubitable male logic, fluttered and hastened to agree.… Something very likeable about Diodate: ability, honesty, kindliness.

  His son Quentin, too shy to join his cousins on the lawn, stood near his father, swaying backward and forward on his heels and pretending that the Thatchers on the mantelpiece (especially the whiskered ones in the daguerreotypes) were a jury — no, better than that, were congress, whom he was swaying by a speech of great eloquence. There was a war — it was like the Civil War. The land was torn with strife and no one knew what to do. Then he, Quentin Thatcher.… Then after the war, the plaudits of his grateful countrymen surrounding him whenever he stirred abroad in his state carriage, preceded by a glittering escort of cavalry, brought tears to his eyes. It was tremendous.… Diodate exclaimed: “Quentin, stop mooning! … He’s a strange boy, Penuel. Half the time he does not seem to hear what you say.” The boy was like his mother, Diodate thought, lovable but not well-balanced . Emotional, not solid.… He had the Thatcher conscience, though.

  But the very pith of the Thatchers was the old lady who sat on a horsehair sofa beside the pianola. There might be fewer Thatchers than Burnets present, but at no assemblage attended by Great-Aunt Joanna could the family be held inadequately represented. The repository of Thatcher lore, no baptism, marriage, or funeral could have taken place without her cognizance. She sat stiffly with her hands folded like talons over her ear trumpet, which she was holding in the lap of a formless dress of some black stuff that made little Joanna, who could not take her eyes from her godmother-to-be , think of “my Jewish gaberdine.” It was because of little Joanna that she had stirred from the old Thatcher house on the Connecticut river where, the last of her generation, she passed her days alone, utterly determined to die as she had lived without being “looked after” by a companion or even a servant.

  Euphemia Burnet, thinking that the old lady, because of her tranquil attitude, would be a suitable subject for her own histrionics, set sail for the pianola and dropped anchor with the air of having at last reached port after a long voyage. Composing her features to an air of mysticism, she addressed Great-Aunt Joanna in the brassy voice of one summoning spirits from the vasty deep or addressing the very deaf.

  “I am so glad to speak with one of the same generation as my dear father, Sir Rae Burnet,” she announced, carefully articulating each syllable. “I am strongly of the opinion, dear Miss Thatcher,” she went on, “that we do not have time really to live nowadays. No time to ‘loaf and invite the soul’ as your great poet Walt Whitman puts it. I think that is so important. Do you not agree? Now baptism, for example. I have vainly urged my brother-in-law to hold the service in the open air where the great words of the ritual could come to one reinforced by the beauty of nature and where one could linger over those magnificent phrases and savour them. Children’s little minds are so open to nature’s beauty, don’t you think?” With a studied wave of her hand Euphemia indicated Dan and Alastair who were lingering on the lawn till the last possible moment because of a conviction that the Thatcher aunts and uncles were hearty kissers.

  No longer hearing a buzzing in her ear, Great-Aunt Joanna perceived that she had been asked a question and smiled blandly. Sensitive of her deafness, she had a disconcerting habit of not using her ear trumpet when she thought the conversation would not interest her.

  But a smile was all Euphemia needed and she plunged into her latest religiosity (she was always titillating her imagination with new cults). The children, she said, ought to be christened amid nature’s foison and under heaven’s sun — an influence so favourable to young and impressionable spirits. Within an old house like this, haunted by who knew what malign effluences of people who formerly dwelt there.

  “Whutt?” asked the old lady. “Whutt did you say?”

  “Malign effluences ,” shouted Euphemia. “I am referring, Miss Thatcher, to the malign animal magnetism of an old house! In an old house who knows what malign effluences —”

  Great-Aunt Joanna had caught the single word “animal,” and fixing Euphemia with a look of un
comprehending benevolence, she began to tell of an experience she had had downtown in Wellington. For several moments both spoke together, but the old lady had the placid self-sufficiency of a natural phenomenon, of a river or a waterfall, whereas Euphemia, an artist, needed an audience. Charles and Murdo Burnet, attracted by Euphemia’s struggle to be heard, came up in time to witness her discomfiture. One of those horseless wagons — those contraptions ! said the old lady, had spattered her with mud. She had marched out into the traffic and seized a policeman by the sleeve and made him blow his whistle.

  Charles seized the ear trumpet, and putting it to Aunt Joanna’s ear, shouted: “What did you tell him, Miss Thatcher?”

  “Whutt? I said to him, ‘Young man, in my country we respect old folks!’”

  “Good for you!” said Charles.

  “Don’t shout!” rebuked Aunt Joanna, “the trumpet isn’t deaf.”

  “My sister Euphemia,” said Charles mischievously, “thinks christenings should be held out of doors. That’s how the Druids did it. Euphemia is a piercer of the veil. It’s her latest religion. What do you think, Miss Thatcher?”

  “Hold your tongue, Charles!” exclaimed Euphemia. But Murdo interposed irritably:

  “Euphemia, you’ve been talking nonsense. Charles, you’re a scatterbrain.”

  “On the contrary,” said Charles, “I think Euphemia has hit on a charming idea — really, Euphemia, I must look into the Druids. I say I like beauty, Miss Thatcher. Yes — beauty. Beauty in nature, you know. Fauns and satyrs and so on. Pan ready to twitch the nymph’s last garment off, you know. I quote from Browning, of course, Miss Thatcher.… Don’t you?”

  “Whutt? You’re a mischievous young man! And you’re trying to tease an old lady. But you can’t. I understand young folks. Like ’em, too!”

  “I bet you do!” said Charles enthusiastically.

  “Nobody,” asserted Murdo crisply, “pays the slightest attention to Charles. He is a rattle.”

  “Charming to have you home again, my dear Murdo,” said Charles.

  Murdo turned his back on Charles and stumped away. Piercers of the veil. Bosh! Nymphs and satyrs. Rubbish! That made him think of the children. Little pagans! he thought. Bound to be.… “I suppose I’d better see them.”

  He spoke to Maud and she called the children into the room.

  Joanna came first and curtsyed to him. Murdo humphed — “Sort of thing Maud would teach a child!” — but he was pleased; the girl was graceful, a Burnet.

  “Well, goddaughter?” he said. He did not smile, but the grimness melted from his face.

  Alastair marched up with a confident grin, his hand outstretched, looking the image of Charles; he was followed by Dan, hanging back unwillingly. “This is the mischievous one,” said Maud smiling at Alastair, “very annoying sometimes, and very lovable.” The high spirits shining in the boy’s face moved her so that she could not help hugging him. Who could resist Alastair when he smiled at you? She turned to Daniel who was standing awkwardly, waiting to be noticed: he did not go out to people like Alastair. Maud put her arm about him, too, and gave him a special hug because she had noticed Alastair first. “My two dear boys!” she said. Dan was undemonstrative and often he gave her such a queer feeling: as if she were a stranger to her own son. Even now he was stiff and resisting beneath her arm. “Dan is the silent one,” she said, “he runs deep. Alastair is like his mother, Dan like his father.”

  Murdo looked at Dan. The boy was hostile to him. “Are you afraid of me, my boy?” he said.

  “No, sir!” said Dan promptly.

  “I see. Well, sullen he may be, hangdog he is not!” Nothing ever prevented Murdo from saying what he thought; he believed that character, like water, should find its own level, especially within a family. He addressed Maud over Dan.

  “Is this the one who —” But Maud stopped him with a warning glance and whispered: “Prends garde! We don’t speak of it. It’s to be forgotten.”

  Murdo muttered thoughtfully. “It may be a mistake to ignore it with the boy. Um, yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if he thinks of it more than you imagine. He’s sullen, that boy.”

  Pen’s other brother, Daniel Thatcher, was peering nearsightedly across the room at his young wife. Tessa was a butterfly. She flitted about the room chattering to anybody and everybody about anything or nothing; though, once she came lightly to rest beside her husband, putting her hand on his sleeve and smiling up at him confidentially without saying anything. He was still a little afraid of her, wondering what a sober old stick such as he should say to a young girl who happened to be his wife; and he watched her coming into her careless youth not without a pang.

  Daniel was not the only one who watched Tessa Thatcher. Like Maud, she was really a Burnet, the children’s second cousin. Two months before on her eighteenth birthday, she had been married to Daniel (“a birthday present that won’t wear out, my dear Tessa,” said the irrepressible Charles), and she epitomized in her small self Burnet fire and Burnet recklessness. Secretly, the Burnets wondered how the marriage would turn out. “Such a charming, high-spirited girl,” said Fanny to Maud. “It would be a pity if — Do you think it will do, Maud? Daniel’s a splendid man. Tessa needs ballast.”

  “Perhaps. But a Burnet and a New England puritan?”

  “I married one.”

  “Yes, but you two are of an age. And besides, you have poise.… Well, we’ll see.” Fanny, who was forty and unmarried, was sceptical of most marriages.

  Tessa was pretty and vivacious, therefore Charles came to talk to her. He liked to pronounce her name; it made him think of a peal of bells or of curls flung upward from a nymph’s forehead.

  Eyes dancing, Tessa seized his arm and swung him round to face her. “Good afternoon Uncle Charles. I hear you don’t like me!”

  Charles’s age was near enough to hers to make the “uncle” piquant. Joyously, he adjusted his mind to a skirmish. “Now who could have told you that! I only said it in the family.”

  “Then it is true? You did say it.… Charles, what did you say, really?”

  Charles liked to say outrageous things with a charming smile. “I told your mother,” said he, “that you were a graceful brat; ‘unspanked but graceful’ was the phrase I used. I was annoyed because you were flirting with green youths — with my junior at the bank, if you want to know. It interferes with his bookkeeping and makes a lot of trouble for me.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “You have all the stability of a kitten. You can’t help it: champagne bubbles and you flirt.… Like you? You’re my dearest enemy.… Heard anything else about me, Mrs. Thatcher?”

  “Yes,” said Tessa spitefully, “I heard you lost a lot of money buying stocks on margin — do they call it?”

  “And claws, too,” murmured Charles. “Oh, that ? Unlucky in money — you know the rest of it, Tessa.”

  “Are you lucky in love, Charles?”

  “It is a family characteristic, Tessa,” said Charles bowing with mock gallantry.

  The children, according to their different natures, considered this thing that was presently to be done to them. Dan was rebellious. Alastair, always willing to take a new experience in his stride, felt rather important. But Joanna was so excited that she could not wait another minute for the ceremony to begin. She stood beside her mother, who was talking to Fanny, and tugged at her sleeve.

  “In a minute, dear,” said her mother and went on talking. Joanna was an imaginative and believing little girl, and she wondered what it would feel like when you were made into a Christian. Would it be like a miracle? Like the devils coming out of the sick man and going into the herd of swine? She felt queer and tickly in the pit of her stomach.

  “When will it start, Mother? Mother, when will it start?” she whispered urgently, and sidling up to her mother, she took her arm an
d put it round her own shoulders.

  “Presently, dear. Now, Joanna, I want you to talk to your Great-Aunt Joanna. She’s your godmother. Remember to curtsy and to speak into her trumpet. And if she asks you questions, dear, answer her truthfully and politely.”

  Great-Aunt Joanna, perhaps dozing a little, perhaps fallen into a reverie, did not at first notice her great-niece , so Joanna took the ear trumpet and breathed into it the word “godmother.” She thought her great-aunt looked fearfully like the picture of the witch in Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

  The old lady turned her head as quickly as a bird, and saw that the child was frightened. “You need not curtsy to me, little Joanna,” she said kindly. “I like little girls. When I was young, people used to frighten me, too, but you must not be afraid of me. Come here, goddaughter.” She made Joanna sit on a leather hassock and smiled down at her.… “She is a beautiful child,” the old lady thought, “but such an odd, elfin, little face.”

  She said to Joanna:

  “Do you know, Joanna, that I was once a little girl rather like you?”

  “Yes,” said Joanna, but it was a child’s answer, for she had no real sense of time passing and of herself growing old like Great-Aunt Joanna.

  “Joanna, bring me that small photograph from the mantelpiece.”

  Joanna brought her a daguerreotype of a child in a velvet crinoline. She had to tilt it to just the right angle to make the small, stiff figure appear from the background.

  “Do you see that she has brown curls to her shoulders just like you?”

  “Oh, Great-Aunt Joanna, is that really you?”

  “It was, Joanna.… Now let me see what sort of a child my goddaughter is. Do you love your brothers?”

  “Oh, yes! ’Specially Dan. I love him awfully.” She went on with a rush of confidence: “Sometimes when I don’t feel very well I am cross.”