Conrad Aiken - Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

“Good-by, Kitty,” he said.

“Good-by, Tip. I think you’ve been swell.”

“No. I’m damned sorry. Good-by, Jim.”

“Don’t say good-by, kid. We’ll be seeing you in New York.”

“Not if I see him first, he won’t!”

“Okay, Karl, if that’s the way you feel about it—”

“That’s the way I feel about it.”

“All right. That suits me.”

“Forget it, kid. He’s just got a grouch on. And give my best to Enid. And shall I tell Lorna about it? For you, I mean, as she wasn’t here?”

“Sure. And give her my best, too.”

“All right. Good-by for the present.”

“Good-by for the present.”

Jim was standing by the fireplace, smiling — Karl lay unmoving on the couch, with his eyes now closed, as if he were endeavoring to imitate the death mask of a saint, but nevertheless looking more than ever like a dead hen — Kitty continued to scribble her Jesus Christs. The ceaseless piano, the intolerable piano, was the only sound as he let himself out, closed the door behind him, went down the steps into the light rain, and started up Baker Street. The Rhapsody in Blue—

Under the silver-gray signpost, in the rain, he hesitated for a moment, and then turned to the left, towards the sea. Impossible to go home — impossible — the mere thought was unbearable. Let her wait. It would do her good to wait! He would walk to the sea by the mile-long shore road, perhaps take the little footpath through the wet pine woods, where always, under the soft needles, the first Mayflowers were to be found, the first pipsissewa, the whitest Indian Pipes. And then the stone jetty, the skeletal iron light house, and the sea. The unpotable sea, the all-smiling sea, which was driving Kitty mad.

“So you wouldn’t wait for me, eh? And you had your supper without me, eh? And at the Murphys’, too, with doughnuts! And I have to give this lummox of a girl her bath, and go without supper, or eat a cold sad sardine, all because I’m a little late, and walk to the sea! Fie upon you, and out upon you, and fie. That’s all I can say. Now shut your eyes.”

“And did you walk all the way to the sea?”

“Yes, I walked all the way to the sea. And I stood on the breakwater and looked at it—”

“And what did you see, daddy?”

“I saw nothing. I saw lots and lots and lots of nothing.”

“Ho, how silly, as if you could see lots of nothing!”

“Well, that’s what it was like, see? There was a gray, cold, miserable rain, filling all the air as far as you could see, and falling on the water, and rustling on my slicker, and running in beads off my oilskin hat, and there wasn’t a single ship, nor a motorboat, not even so much as a dory. There was only the little red bell buoy, in the middle of the channel, bobbing up and down like a jack-in-the-box—”

“Not like a jack-in-the-box—!”

“Well, sort of. And ringing its little sad bell, cling-clang, clingity-clang, cling-clang, cling-clang , so dolefully and pitifully to itself, with not even a sea gull listening to it—”

“And then what?”

“Well, then, after looking at all that nothing, I came back. I came back by the pine wood path, the Indian Pipe path, and it was all wet and silent and juicy and dripping and solemn and mysterious—”

“A mystery, a mystery!”

“Exactly — a mystery.”

“Yes, and go on.”

“Well, I guess that’s about all. Now, out of that bath!”

“All right. But you must tell me about the starlings.”

“Foo! Why, you saw the starlings yourself!”

“Yes, I know, but I want you to tell me about them. You saw them first , daddy, you know you did!”

“Well, so I did. Now, out you come — heave, ho!”

“So what.”

“Well, first of all I heard a great chittering and chattering, and a squeaking and a squawking, and a dithering and a dathering—”

“Ho ho, what funny words!”

“Like a thousand mice all squealing and squeaking—”

“ Mice in a tree ?”

“Ha, but I didn’t say they were mice, did I? That was before I knew what they were. Of course, it would have been very funny if they had turned out to be mice, up in a tree — perhaps that would have been better! Shall we have it mice instead?”

“No, let’s have it starlings. Besides, daddy, they were starlings!”

“So they were. Anyway, that’s what I saw they were, when I looked up at the tree to find out what all that uproar was about. And there they were, a thousand starlings — or maybe a thousand and one—”

“You couldn’t count them, silly!”

“Approximately. Now give me that foot.”

“You’ve already dried that one!”

“Well, then, the other.”

“And now go on—”

“I saw them all in the big poplar tree at the corner by Mr. Murphy’s house, that’s where they were first, and they were all fluttering and flapping, as if they were quarreling. They would dart down into the middle of the tree and then up again, whistling and screeching and shrieking at the tops of their voices, as if they were dreadfully angry about something; and then it seemed to me that there was some sort of fight going on, right in the middle of the tree, where most of the flapping was—”

“And that was where the poor starling was.”

“That was where the poor starling was. Of course, he may have been very naughty—”

“Well, and then what.”

“Suddenly they all went scrambling, the whole thousand, to the tree across the street, by the Bank, in Mister Riley’s field, all still chittering and chattering, and I was just getting back from my walk to the sea, and I watched them, and then I saw that they were all fighting with that one poor starling, pecking and pecking at him—”

“Do you suppose they really meant to hurt him?”

“Well, perhaps not, Buzzer — perhaps they just meant to punish him a little , see?”

“Yes, if he’d been really naughty — and go on!”

“And that was when I saw you, and told you to come and look at them. And we rushed into the garden then, just in time to see the whole great black cloud of them fly straight into the Puringtons’ poplar tree, right over our beautiful new lilac hedge, screaming and flapping, and then suddenly—”

“Yes, suddenly!”

“—that poor starling fell like a stone; with hardly so much as a flutter of a wing; on the wet grass right at our feet. And at first we thought it was dead, didn’t we?—”

“Yes, and you clapped your hands at all the other starlings, and they flew away — you were very angry, weren’t you, daddy? Because it was mean of them to all fight against just one—”

“—and it didn’t move, and its eyes were closed, and it lay there on its back, with its claws in the air, and then I picked it up and held it in my hands, and it was quite still—”

“But it wasn’t dead? Ho ho! It wasn’t dead at all! Was it!”

“No, it wasn’t dead at all. For suddenly it opened its eyes, and looked at us, quite calmly, first at you and then at me—”

“ Did it, daddy?”