The image of the lost soul

by **rein_force** Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:31 pm

There were a number of carved stone figures placed at
intervals along the parapets of the old Cathedral; some of them represented
angels, others kings and bishops, and nearly all were in attitudes of pious
exaltation and composure. But one figure, low down on the cold north side of
the building, had neither crown, mitre, not nimbus, and its face was hard and
bitter and downcast; it must be a demon, declared the fat blue pigeons that
roosted and sunned themselves all day on the ledges of the parapet; but the old
belfry jackdaw, who was an authority on ecclesiastical architecture, said it
was a lost soul. And there the matter rested.

One autumn day there fluttered on to the Cathedral
roof a slender, sweet-voiced bird that had wandered away from the bare fields
and thinning hedgerows in search of a winter roosting-place. It tried to rest
its tired feet under the shade of a great angel-wing or to nestle in the
sculptured folds of a kingly robe, but the fat pigeons hustled it away from
wherever it settled and the noisy sparrow-folk drove it off the ledges. No
respectable bird sang with so much feeling, they cheeped one to another, and
the wanderer had to move on.

Only the effigy of the Lost Soul offered a place of
refuge. The pigeons did not consider it safe to perch on a projection that
leaned so much out of the perpendicular, and was, besides, too much in the
shadow. The figure did not cross its hands in the pious attitude of the other
graven dignitaries, but its arms were folded as in defiance and their angle
made a snug resting-place for the little bird. Every evening it crept
trustfully into its corner against the stone breast of the image, and the
darkling eyes seemed to keep watch over its slumbers. The lonely bird grew to
love its lonely protector, and during the day it would sit from time to time on
some rain shoot or other abutment and trill forth its sweetest music in
grateful thanks for its nightly shelter. And, it may have been the work of wind
and weather, or some other influence, but the wild drawn face seemed gradually
to lose some of its hardness and unhappiness. Every day, through the long
monotonous hours, the song of his little guest would come up in snatches to the
lonely watcher, and at evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great
grey bats slid out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed
bird would return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that
were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the great
bell of the Cathedral rang out daily its mocking message, "After joy . . .
sorrow."

The folk in the verger's lodge noticed a little brown bird flitting about the
Cathedral precincts, and admired its beautiful singing. "But it is a
pity," said they, "that all that warbling should be lost and wasted
far out of hearing up on the parapet." They were poor, but they understood
the principles of political economy. So they caught the bird and put it in a
little wicker cage outside the lodge door.
That night the little songster was missing from its
accustomed haunt, and the Dark Image knew more than ever the bitterness of
loneliness. Perhaps his little friend had been killed by a prowling cat or hurt
by a stone. Perhaps . . . perhaps he had flown elsewhere. But when morning came
there floated up to him, through the noise and bustle of the Cathedral world, a
faint heart-aching message from the prisoner in the wicker cage far below. And
every day, at high noon, when the fat pigeons were stupefied into silence after
their midday meal and the sparrows were washing themselves in the
street-puddles, the song of the little bird came up to the parapets -- a song
of hunger and longing and hopelessness, a cry that could never be answered. The
pigeons remarked, between mealtimes, that the figure leaned forward more than
ever out of the perpendicular.

One day no song came up from the little wicker cage.
It was the coldest day of the winter, and the pigeons and sparrows on the
Cathedral roof looked anxiously on all sides for the scraps of food which they
were dependent on in hard weather.
"Have the lodge-folk thrown out anything on to
the dust-heap?" inquired one pigeon of another which was peering over the
edge of the north parapet.
"Only a little dead bird," was the answer.
There was a crackling sound in the night on the
Cathedral roof and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the
frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must
have been so. In the morning it was seen that the Figure of the Lost Soul had
toppled from its cornice and lay now in a broken mass on the dust heap outside
the verger's lodge.
"It is just as well," cooed the fat pigeons,
after they had peered at the matter for some minutes; "now we shall have a
nice angel put up there. Certainly they will put an angel there."
"After joy . . . sorrow," rang out the great
bell.