Frank Baker by The Birds (epub)

Author:The Birds (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Blow up the fire, light the candles. This dark afternoon assaults my spirit. To-morrow I will take this youth of ours, this romantic metaphysician back to London.

III

THE COLLAPSE

On my return to London, all those thoughts which had so refreshed me on the mountain were swept away. On Cader it had been possible to forget the distressed condition of the world; in London it was not.

In a fortnight it seemed to me that people’s faces had grown haggard, their eyes thin with suspicion and fear. The City was foul with the stench of dried ordure, for the shortage of water was now so serious that the streets could not be washed at night. A lurking stillness had settled over everything; the pavements were like shallow lids made tender by a furnace that raged beneath. Trees were dead, flowers withered long before their time.

Newsboys vied with each other shouting such phrases as “France leaves the League!” “Villagers dying of thirst!” and—perhaps the smallest voice—“Birds interrupt Welfare Society!” I snatched a paper and read angrily, not wanting to learn anything of the confusion which was beginning to shake mankind, yet knowing I could not avoid it. The usual “features” in the evening paper were absent, crowded out by a spate of sensational reports which poured over the pages.

But the affairs of the world are outside the scope of my story, and I do not intend to deal with them. It will be your business to augment from my personal history, so that you have some picture of what, so far as I know, happened to the entire machinery of civilization. Certain dreadful things I witnessed; certain terrors I, in common with millions, endured. But of what went on in other parts of the world I can tell you no more than what I gathered from a study of the newspapers, from listening to wireless reports, or from hurrying to and from Lloyd’s, where a chain of casualties and the anxiety of merchants and shipowners to insure their properties against perils of war, and “Pests of the Air,” kept my colleagues and myself in a fever of excite­ment.

“Pests of the Air.” This was now the official designation of the birds. People spoke of them contemptuously and declared that the Government was soon to take the matter in hand. Exactly how they were to take it in hand was not known. But while there was still a Government and a King, how could any loyal Englishman worry himself about such trifles as “Pests of the Air”?

The prestige of the Royal House, at all times well maintained, was strengthened by the calm and semi-humorous behaviour of King Edward, who was one day followed by a bird of particularly extravagant plumage. The King was driving to an exhibition of Empire products in which he always took great interest. As he alighted from his car a large bird swooped down from above and followed him into the hall where the exhibits were being shown. Its brilliant feathers and

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