A Bachelor's Comedy

She stood frowning, speaking more to herself than to her mother; her strong affection for her sister, of which neither ever spoke, making her uneasy and alert.

“Elizabeth has not a weak character,” said Mrs. Atterton.

“No – she’s strong – with a weak spot – that’s worse,” answered Norah, still more to herself than to her mother.

“You can’t move her when she has once made up her mind,” pursued Mrs. Atterton vaguely.

“That’s the worst of all,” said Norah. “However” – she shrugged her shoulders – “life is apt to get muddled whether you’re clever or not. Oh, here’s father with the Mayor and Mayoress of Marshaven and party. He’s happy, anyway. The Marshaven Corporation is his toy. How is it all men have to have a toy? Women don’t.”

“That’s why so many of them can’t get there,” said Mrs. Atterton, who knew perfectly well what she meant. But Norah, not unnaturally, thought her mother was talking nonsense again, sweet old dear, and asked if she should fetch her a cup of tea.

Andy meantime had deposited his aunt with Miss Banks, daughter of the Vicar of Millsby, while Dick Stamford after seeing that Elizabeth was not available had taken the Dixon girls to see the greenhouses.

“Dear boy – like a son to me – and my girls are devoted to him, though he is no blood relations,” purred Mrs. Dixon to Miss Banks as they watched the young Vicar of Gaythorpe stroll across the grass towards the tennis courts. “So delighted to find him in such a pleasant neighbourhood. We have just been lunching with the Stamfords. I was glad to have the opportunity of getting a few hints for the furnishing of a place that a friend of mine, Lady Jones, has taken. I made,” she creaked towards Miss Banks with confidential importance, “I don’t mind telling you that I made a tentative offer for the tapestries. Nothing settled, of course. But I know how most of these old county families are situated nowadays.”

“The tapestries at Gaythorpe?” gasped Miss Banks, in much the same tone as if Mrs. Dixon had proposed purchasing Westminster Abbey. “You made an offer for the Gaythorpe tapestries?”

“Not for myself,” said Mrs. Dixon, with proud humility, waving a tight white glove. “We are quite poor people. But to Lady Jones money is no object. And we are like sisters.”

“How nice!” murmured Miss Banks vaguely, quite out of her bearings. “Oh, here are the Miss Birketts coming across to speak to me.”

“And my nephew is joining Miss Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Dixon, putting up her eyeglasses. “Sweet girl! We met her at Marshaven. She was staying somewhere with an aunt.”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Banks, glancing at Mrs. Dixon’s tight fringe, and reflecting on the passing vision of Phyllis and Irene. They were all new to the county, and they wore and did the very things which had been repressed in her from the moment she left school lest she should be cast out from the charmed circle, and yet they were intimately in it.

Miss Banks accepted an ice and gave the puzzle up, just at the moment when Andy was shaking hands with Elizabeth in the green distance beneath the mulberry trees.

“I was sorry to miss you that day you called upon my aunt,” she said.

Andy’s heart began to thump. What had he not meant to say that morning? And yet here he stood – a stranger.

“It turned out very wet,” he answered, glancing at his boots.

“But you were driving – that was better than being on a bicycle.”

Then Andy knew she had taken the trouble to inquire how he came, and the blood rushed up into his forehead. It was awfully hard, but he had said he would play fair, and he would keep his promise.

“Were you out in the storm?” he said.

“No, we came back after it was over,” responded Elizabeth, whose manner began to change almost imperceptibly. “Well, I must go and help Norah with the other guests, I think,” she added in her soft, slow voice, and she began to move away.

But she had not been able quite to control that voice, which would catch on a deep note sometimes, just when she most wished to keep it even; and at the sound for which Andy’s heart unconsciously waited something rose up in him which belonged to the great powers of existence – strong to sweep a man off his feet, and down a current against which he strives with all his might. He had meant to keep his promise – he had done his best – but this was stronger than his will.

“Elizabeth – ”

But when we have wanted to do our best, it is a fact that something outside of us often does intervene to help us when we fail – though nobody could possibly recognise anything supernatural in the intervention. Anyway, nothing could be less like a divine messenger than Lady Jones in blue and gold, who came round the end of the mulberry avenue with Mr. Atterton and the Mayor and Mayoress of Marshaven.

“My daughter Elizabeth – Lady Jones,” said Mr. Atterton, who was in high feather.

“Lady Jones came to open a bazaar for a former curate of the church she attends at home,” explained the Mayoress. “We took the liberty of asking for an invitation.”

“Very ’appy to be of any service to the town,” said Lady Jones with ineffable aplomb and condescension.

“Lady Jones bought most of the big things, including the screen your aunt sent, Miss Elizabeth,” said the Mayor effusively. He was a decent man, but you have to be effusive to millions.

“I hope you like the embroidery – my aunt spent months over it,” said Elizabeth.

“Which was it? Oh, the cockatoos? Very nice, I’m sure. But I just pass the things on, on mass, to another bazaar. I don’t buy what I want for the Towers at bazaars.”

“Of course not,” murmured the Mayoress. “Maple’s, more likely, or Christy’s – ”

“Lovely things at Christy’s,” agreed Mr. Atterton, who also saw, not a fat, rather vulgar woman, but a heap of money which had shed some of its particles to forward an object which he had at heart, and could shed more at will.

Then Andy came forward – it had taken him the few moments to recover his self-control – and the great lady shook hands with him.

“Glad to hear you’ve got a living,” she said. “But I always told your aunt it was a pity you would be a parson. Never a penny to bless themselves with – and begging all round.”

“I’m satisfied,” said Andy, with a grin.

Lady Jones smiled affably back.

“How can you be satisfied if you are poor?” she said. “Nobody could.”

“Poverty isn’t always a question of money,” said Elizabeth.

“Ha-ha!” laughed Lady Jones. “I see your daughter’s young yet, Mr. Atterton. She hasn’t learned that everything’s a question of money. You and me knows that.”

“We does,” agreed Mr. Atterton, involuntarily following the lady’s lead; then he recollected himself, gave a quick glance round, and added, in some haste, “Of course, money is a power.”

“My aunt is there, under those trees,” said Andy, covering the retreat.

“Mrs. Dixon!” exclaimed Lady Jones, for some vague reason rather annoyed to find that lady even with her here too. “How did she get invited? Oh, came with you, Mr. Deane, of course.” And suddenly the county society round Gaythorpe seemed less select in her eyes, as she walked up to the bench in the shade where her friend and Miss Banks were sitting.

“Well – ’ow are you, my dear?” she called across a space.

Mrs. Dixon jumped up, creaking in every whalebone, and, after a moment’s breathless pause, rustled forward with her most fashionable air of greeting —

“Charmed to meet you here, Lady Jones. How very fortunate – but how unforeseen!”

“Lady Jones has been kind enough to help us most generously with the bazaar for the new chancel,” explained Mr. Atterton.

“Came to us for the opening ceremony, and remained the night,” added the Mayor.

Mrs. Dixon’s prominent grey eyes glanced swiftly round the group, and returned to the face of her friend. It was all right then. But she might have known. You had only got to be rich enough. She went nearer, and slipped her hand through the blue and gold arm.

“How lovely to see you again. I was talking of you at luncheon.”

“Shall we go and have tea?” said Mr. Atterton.

So the whole group went into the house, Elizabeth and Andy being the last to cross the wide terrace before the open French windows; but just as they were about to enter, Elizabeth paused, and said to her companion in a careless voice —

“How hot and crowded it looks in there!”

Her face was turned towards the house, and rather away from Andy, so that he could not see the colour deepening in the creamy bloom of her cheeks, or how her golden eyes shone with changing lights, or how the tendrils of hair which the sun caught became pure gold to crown this golden girl; but his heart knew that she was giving the woman’s eternal invitation, and it was very hard – so hard, that his own face became aged and sharpened – to answer as he did —

“Oh, it’s a big room. I don’t suppose we shall feel the heat much.”

For a moment Elizabeth felt as if some one had struck her a sudden blow, because what lay under those words was the unspoken “No,” which is the most bitter thing the heart of a woman can ever hear. The spoken “No” can never bring quite such bitterness, because the woman who could force that would not feel so shamed by the refusal.

Then she brought all her girl’s pride to her aid, and looked him, laughing, in the face.

“You did not suppose I wanted to stay outside, and go without my tea, did you?”

“N-no,” said Andy. The ages have not taught men to hide as they have taught women.

“I’m ravenous,” said Elizabeth, speaking more quickly than usual; then, with a bright colour in her cheeks and a fire in her eyes, she ran into the room where Dick Stamford was administering tea to the Misses Webster. He glanced at her, casually at first, and afterwards with roused attention.

“I say, Elizabeth,” he took occasion to whisper, “you do look stunning in that lilac gown. You make all the other women look – look tough.”

“Oh, well, I’m tough enough,” said poor Elizabeth ruefully. “Girls have got to be.” But the remark acted as a sort of safety-valve to her seething anger and shamed resentment, so that she was able to keep back her tears, and laugh and joke, with eyes only the more brilliant for them, amongst the group of young people who gathered round her.

The Webster girls being thus left without a cavalier, Andy sat down beside them, and tried to respond to a stream of conversation while he watched Elizabeth and wondered miserably if he had been a conceited ass to think she meant anything. He came to the conclusion that he must have made a mistake as he saw her take a large cake with cream inside and chocolate out, for his own soul loathed even bread and butter at this moment, though he had felt hungry half an hour earlier, and he was very fond of cakes with cream in them.

“Lovely day,” he said, trying to rouse himself with an effort that would have been obvious to the Webster girls if their minds had been sufficiently composed to notice his manner. But they were so engaged in glancing self-consciously about them, and wondering what people thought of them, that they also made perfunctory remarks with no particular connection between one and the other.

At last Mrs. Dixon rustled up, looking to Andy’s loyal eyes extremely smart still, in spite of the fact that her nose was no longer so calmly, palely blue as when she arrived. And when she parted from her nephew over the side of the hired motor vehicle which was to take her and her daughters back to Marshaven, he felt no less than she did that her final remark, “We’re so glad, Andy, to be able to come among your friends and give you a little help socially,” was as just as it was generous.

“It’s awfully good of you. I knew you and the girls were certain to get on with the people about here,” he said gratefully.

A moisture almost appeared in Mrs. Dixon’s prominent eyes, and her nose-end flushed unmistakably; she had taken a liqueur before leaving, and was more emotional than usual.

“Brilliantine your hair and always wear a good hat,” she said earnestly, “and you may end by being a bishop.”

Then the car went off, and the embryo bishop trudged home through the afternoon sun, trying to piece his thoughts together, and conscious of a burning, stinging spot in the back of his mind that he was afraid to touch.

But it drew – as the aching spot always does – and he got to it at last.

If Lady Jones had not appeared when she did he would have broken his promise to Dick Stamford. Instead of helping a weak man, he would have proved himself to be a weaker.

With bent head and dragging feet he trudged up the churchyard path. Here – he felt it in the bottom of his soul – here, but for the grace of God, went a breaker of promises – a sneak – a man who couldn’t play fair.

He would have to keep away from Elizabeth, because he could no longer trust himself.

He mechanically glanced at the church clock, and saw there was still a quarter of an hour before the time for evensong, and he suddenly realised that he was dog-tired. So he sat down, more from force of habit than anything else, upon the convenient edge of the tombstone beneath which Brother Gulielmus’ body lay resting.

And after a while a little comfort crept into poor Andy’s soul from somewhere, and he began to lose that impression of loneliness which to some natures is so intensely real and desolate. He began to have a sense of brotherhood with all those who have tried and nearly failed and not quite failed through no goodness of their own.

And so he felt a brother to all men – for every one of us must pass that way.

Finally, he got up from the tombstone and walked towards the church, and round the corner of the porch he heard the voices of two women near a grave.

“Churchyard grass wants cutting,” said one.

“Oh, the parson’ll see to it,” said the other. “He does look after the bit there is to do, does Parson Andy.”

And the poor lad went in, comforted still further by the warm, motherly note in the woman’s voice as she said ‘Parson Andy.’ He had come down low enough – or gone up high enough – to be grateful that the people of Gaythorpe called him ‘Parson Andy.’

About the same time Elizabeth and Norah Atterton went across the lawn towards the house in order to dress for dinner. Some of the guests had stayed, so there was not much time, but Norah had something to say, and when she had something to say she said it.

“The Deane females were quaint,” she remarked.

“They are called Dixon and Webster,” replied Elizabeth – but it must be owned that a great deal more was said than the words indicated.

“Has Lady Jones a daughter? If so, Mr. Deane really ought – ”

“How vulgar you can be,” said Elizabeth. “You talk as if Mr. Deane were a mere fortune-hunter – ”

“Of course he is,” said Norah calmly. “All clergymen are. They have to be.”

Elizabeth said nothing for a few steps, then she remarked rather abruptly —

“Well, he is not what you’d call an eager hunter, exactly.”

Norah stopped dead.

“You don’t mean to tell me he hasn’t proposed to you? We were all sure he had done, and that you were now behaving to him like a sister.” She broke off, and looked at her sister with her odd, mocking little smile. “That would be so exactly like you, Elizabeth.”

“He has not proposed to me – if that is what you want to know.”

“How odd!” said Norah.

“Why odd?” said Elizabeth, with some pardonable asperity. “I don’t expect every young man I meet to propose to me.”

“Of course not,” said Norah. “And now he has these girls within reach, I expect he will not be always making excuses to come over here. I dare say he was dull, and no wonder. And after all, you are not so unused to admiration that you would feel the loss of one young man, would you? Even if he did prove faithless?”

“I think I can exist without Mr. Deane, if that is what you mean,” said Elizabeth, marching on with her head in the air.

CHAPTER XVI

Andy still went up to Gaythorpe Manor fairly often to play billiards with Dick Stamford; but the two young men no longer sat chatting after their game, and their talk became rather strained, as it always must be between two people who are constantly reminded by each other’s presence of a subject about which they cannot speak.

The fact is that the air becomes, under those circumstances, so full of interesting and unspoken conversations that you cannot hear the dull words which do pass, and when Andy said, “Rotten weather for the time of year,” he really was indicating the unpleasantness of life in the present trying conditions.

So when Dick Stamford replied, “Yes, beastly,” he meant that Andy was not the only one who suffered.

But a young clergyman who dashes about the country in a shining green cart picked out with red drawn by a very active piebald pony does not excite pity in the casual observer, and people round Gaythorpe, and in all the villages between there and Marshaven, where Mrs. Dixon and the Webster girls still lingered, said to each other that Parson Andy had the times of it.

In this way Elizabeth was able to see very plainly that he did not wear the willow; and Norah, who was greatly relieved to find that her sister would not be thrown away on an impecunious country clergyman, lost no opportunity of accentuating this obvious fact.

And as the summer days passed on into autumn, Elizabeth was obliged to own to herself that she had given the most exquisite thing a girl has to give – first love, with all the bloom and glory on it – to a man who had looked at it quite near and not found it worth taking.

She did not mope or grow thin, but she looked sometimes as if she had not slept, and her mother made her take some kind of beef juice. Beef juice invariably is administered by those in authority for disappointed love, though they may know nothing about the love, and Elizabeth took it because she did not want to talk about her symptoms.

But she had some silent hours which left a mark on her life before she finally made up her mind that Andy did not want her; and she quite haunted the doorstep of the Miss Birketts, who were very dull, and lived in a little house in Millsby, and always had dry cakes, and wanted her very much indeed. She clung at this time with a sort of still passion to those who wanted her enough. Outwardly, however, she was just the same. Her slow voice, and her manner, which was like that of a young mother and yet all girlish, did not change at all. The peculiar, elusive tenderness of it only deepened; there was a sort of strength in sweetness about Elizabeth now which you may often notice in those who love so much that they will be bound to sacrifice – the sort of thing which lies at the bottom of all the folly and all the glory of life.

One morning she came down to breakfast when a rather celebrated amateur ornithologist was staying with her parents, and, Mrs. Atterton for once being present at that meal, the conversation fell on parrots.

And that’s the worst of love – there are such ordinary topics which it endows with the power to sting – even poll-parrots, for instance. Elizabeth thought of that moment in Sam Petch’s kitchen when the gates of the Enchanted Muddle shone near and splendid before her happy eyes, and felt she could not bear it. Yet she also felt that she loved the deceiving bird about whose obstinately silent head shone the glory of that time when she and Andy had laughed together. She could not have it branded as an impostor and turned out into the cold world of cheap bird-fanciers’ windows. And that was what seemed about to happen.

“I shall be so grateful if you will drive over with me and look at a valued parrot which belonged to my poor aunt,” said Mrs. Atterton. “I feel I have neglected my duty – but my back – ”

“Of course,” bowed the celebrated ornithologist, paying the deference due. “No one could expect – ”

“Especially,” said Mrs. Atterton, “one who now understands everything. There were times on earth when she did not quite appreciate, poor dear, how I suffered. But,” she added, “that makes me all the more anxious to look after the parrot, if you understand? And the poor bird has changed so. Lost its voice and its – its wonderful assertiveness.”

“Ha-ha! that’s what you call it, do you?” laughed Mr. Atterton. “Most ill-tempered, ugly old bird! Those poor Petches must have been more than thankful when it lost its voice. Enough to drive you into a lunatic asylum.”

Elizabeth felt profoundly thankful that Norah was away and had never been moved to investigate the parrot problem, for she recognised that danger was in the air.

“I am sure Mr. Parrish gets enough birds at home. Besides, he only goes in for stuffed ones,” she interposed hastily.

“They were all alive once, my dear young lady,” said Mr. Parrish, smiling on Elizabeth, whom he liked because she did not seem very clever. He was of those who prefer to hold all the cards in their own hand.

“Oh, of course; how silly of me,” said Elizabeth, with a meek little laugh. The best of women will understand how, though they may not own it. “I had been thinking of asking you to walk through the woods with me – I know hardly anything about birds, and there are so many in Millsby woods – but, of course, you would prefer to drive with mamma.”

The eminent ornithologist was also a man, and he was torn between an intense desire to walk through the woods instructing this sweet and teachable young lady, and politeness to his hostess. Happily Mrs. Atterton herself solved the difficulty by saying, with a sigh of relief —

“Now that’s delightful! I really did not feel quite equal to the drive, but I was anxious for you to see poor William.”

It was owing to this conversation that, two hours later, Andy encountered the couple in the wood, or rather followed them for a brief distance down one of the cross-roads; and he could not help being struck – no one could – by the efforts Elizabeth was making to please her companion. He had still hoped in the very depths of his mind that she might be pining for him, as he was for her; but now he saw that she could be engrossed in another fellow without even feeling that he was only fifty yards away from her. He decided that if she had ever loved him she must have felt that he was near.

So he turned dejectedly down the next opening without making his presence known, and could not know that Elizabeth was fascinating against time, which is, really, no such pleasing occupation, though an engrossing one.

At last, however, the habits of a lifetime asserted themselves and the ornithologist looked at his watch.

“My dear Miss Elizabeth” – that shows how far he had got – “do you know it is nearly one?”

“Never!” said the deceitful Elizabeth.

“I fear,” said the gentleman, very much worried, “that I shall now not have time to see the parrot. My train leaves at two-fifteen.”

“Does it really?” said Elizabeth.

“I would have stayed on, but I have an important meeting to-night,” he continued, pushing his hat up from his forehead. “But” – he relaxed into an affectionate smile – “I shall hope to come again soon – very soon. I shall explain that to Mrs. Atterton.”

“We shall have to hurry frightfully if we are to be back in time,” said Elizabeth, suiting the action to the word.

“I trust – I may hope – for a welcome – from you,” panted Mr. Parrish, who was not in such good walking form as Elizabeth.

But she pretended not to hear, and finally landed a very tired and perspiring ornithologist at the family luncheon table only three minutes late.

“And what did you think of William?” asked Mrs. Atterton earnestly.

“We never saw him. We lost our way in the wood,” said Elizabeth.

“Lost your way in Millsby wood!” began Bill, when a beseeching glance from his sister checked him, and he added good-naturedly: “Well, there are a lot of – er – rum turnings.”

Only about five minutes afterwards the bottled-in chuckle suddenly exploded.

“Bill,” said his mother – his father was away – “Bill, what are you laughing at?”

“Elizabeth’s bump of locality,” responded that youth.

“There is nothing amusing in that,” said Mrs. Atterton coldly.

“No, mother,” said Bill, with unusual meekness, and Mrs. Atterton could not think why her daughter turned so red. She hoped there was nothing going on between Elizabeth and the ornithologist, because he lived nearly all the year abroad, and she did want this home-girl of hers to remain near home.