And with the happiness there came to him also a new sense of creative power. The fact that he had been able to do what he had done, to love so deeply and yet to relinquish his love, had increased his faith in himself. He looked back with shame to that mood of defeatism at the Hard, when he had thought that the days that are past are better than these days. That was all nonsense. Life was what one made it. As those who had lived before him in this place had built finely, so would he. He remembered a verse in Ecclesiasticus that Lucilla had often quoted to him. “And say not thou that former years were better than those of the present time; for that is the talk of a foolish person.”
Suddenly from oak-tree to lilac bush there was a brilliant flash of blue. Not a kingfisher, as Tommy had said; a paler and more ethereal blue than that. In two strides David was at the lilac bush and had taken in his hands old Mary’s blue budgerigar. Incredibly, by some miracle, it had survived rain and storm and the hatred of other birds. Perhaps it had been caught by someone and escaped again. . . . Perhaps, he smiled to himself, it was a fairy bird and could not die. . . . Holding the soft fluttering feathers in his cupped hands David thought that he must return her bird to old Mary; but then he remembered that Hilary had said in a letter that he had given Mary a new budgerigar, a green one, and that she was comforted. He would let the creature go. Undoubtedly it was a fairy bird, or it could not have survived.
He lifted his hands and opened them. The bird spread its wings and flew up and up above the treetops into the golden sky. David watched as long as he could but suddenly the light dazzled him and he shut his eyes. When he opened them again the bird had gone; earthbound, with eyes that could not stand the glory of light, he had lost sight of it; yet through the little incident the conviction that he had longed for suddenly came to him. “It’s true,” he thought. “The spirit of man has wings.”
The Bird in the Tree Page 29
