A Bachelor's Comedy

“Think so?” said Dick, as perfectly at his ease as if this were the ordinary drawing-room of commerce and not the shrine of a sacred lady. “Well, I thought myself it was chilly. Had to get a whisky before I came to warm me up a bit. Funny thing,” he added, with unusual animation, “but when I am cold whisky warms me, and when I am warm it cools me. I think I must have a peculiar constitution.”

“I don’t know. I’ve met chaps like that before,” said Andy, with a grin.

“Oh, so have I, of course. But it’s a rum thing, all the same,” said Dick, looking at Elizabeth.

“Now, Mr. Deane,” said Mrs. Atterton, “this is a family party, so we will just go in to dinner informally. But as you are the only one who does not know the way, you must come with me.” Then when they were all settled she added pleasantly, choosing a topic for Andy, “You’ll be sorry to hear that we are anxious about William. He is very ill. Elizabeth” – she spoke across the table – “do remember to go and see how he is to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Elizabeth dutifully, from the midst of a laughing conversation with Dick Stamford.

“It will be a misfortune for the Petches if he does die,” said Andy.

“Elizabeth is the one who really ought to go to inquire,” said Mrs. Atterton vaguely; she was watching to see how the new footman handed the soup. “My poor Aunt Arabella was her godmother, and left her a small fortune.”

“I hear,” said Mr. Atterton from the other end of the table, “that the Gaythorpe Dancing Class is to be held in our ballroom to-night. What next, Norah?”

“I want to make quite sure that those girls know how to dance before I ask a lot of people down to the Garden Fête for the Children’s Hospital,” said Norah. “As I’m getting the thing up, I intend to see that it is properly done.”

“My daughter Norah,” said Mrs. Atterton, leaning confidentially towards Andy, “has a genius for organisation. Now, Elizabeth possesses no particular talent that way.”

Andy swallowed a piece of chicken hastily, choked, turned very red, and blurted forth —

“She always seems to be doing something.”

But that was, of course, not at all what he really meant to say. What he tried to bring out from the chaotic ideas which surrounded Elizabeth in his mind like the storm-clouds about a pictured saint, was the fact that she did a great deal more than exercise a talent – she created an atmosphere.

Mrs. Atterton glanced at his red face and said, in her comfortable way —

“That’s a tough chicken, I’m afraid, Mr. Deane. We always do have tough fowls, because my husband will grow our own poultry, and we put off killing them. You would be surprised how attached they become to us all.”

“I’m not surprised in the least,” said Andy, with a very pleasant look, half bold, half shy.

And Mrs. Atterton, who had her feelings, though she did measure thirty-four inches round the waist, smiled very kindly on her young guest.

“Well, I hope you’ll like us, too, when you get to know us,” she said. Then she turned to her eldest daughter. “What time are we to join the revels, Norah? I shall not be able to stay long as my back is troubling me a little.”

Andy felt very sorry to hear that, because Mrs. Atterton had so enjoyed everything but the chicken that he hoped her back was in abeyance; but Norah’s reply showed rather a want of sympathy.

“Will your back last out for half an hour?” she said. “Because, if so, we will do the country dances from half-past nine to ten.”

“That will do excellently. Then Martin can bring me my cocoa to my room at ten. By the way, Elizabeth, have you seen about the refreshments for the Dancing Class?”

For it was Mrs. Atterton’s second daughter who attended to the domestic arrangements of the establishment.

“Yes, mamma. Mrs. Smith knows all about it,” said Elizabeth.

“I hope you are giving them something decent, Elizabeth,” said Norah. “I hold socialistic principles, Mr. Deane, and I hate the bun-and-mug system of entertaining so-called social inferiors.”

“That’s all right,” said Elizabeth.

“But what are you giving them?” insisted Norah, thinking she perceived a reluctance in her sister’s reply.

“Oh, the usual thing – sandwiches, creams, fruit, hock-cup, iced coffee, strawberry ices – ”

“What?” said Norah. “Ices? Quite unnecessary!”

“I know all the girls,” said Elizabeth, defending herself. “I’ve played with Rose Werrit at every school-treat since I could toddle. I wanted them to have things they would like.”

“You’re so sentimental, Elizabeth,” said Norah lightly. “I can’t stand sentiment. Can you, Mr. Deane?”

“There are as many kinds of sentiment as there are of” – Andy paused for a simile, and concluded somewhat lamely – “of sauce.”

“Elizabeth’s is the sweet kind, then, flavoured with vanilla,” said Norah, with her little upward curve of the lips.

“I expect yours is that tart kind like they have with fried sole, Norah,” laughed Dick Stamford, who had been on intimate terms with them all since he was in petticoats.

“Haven’t got any,” said Norah. “Nor you, either, Mrs. Stamford; have you?”

“Not a scrap,” said Mrs. Stamford, thinking she was speaking the truth. “Still – it’s nice in Elizabeth,” and she patted the girl’s round arm.

“I am not at all sentimental,” said Elizabeth with indignation. “Sentiment is so squashy!”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Atterton, quite unexpectedly. “I’ve a sort of idea that – well, that sentiment is the thing that makes it all seem worth while, you know.”

“Oh, if father begins to get sentimental, I’ve done,” said Norah, laughing. “Come on, Elizabeth.”

So the two young ladies followed Mrs. Atterton and Mrs. Stamford through the open door, and after a very brief interval the whole party went into the ballroom.

The usual pianist provided for the class had been supplemented by a violin, and the Lancers were being danced in rather a frozen manner when Mrs. Atterton entered.

“Delighted to see you,” she said to the village schoolmaster, who also acted as dancing-master and choir-master, teacher of singing and mender of broken clocks – a person of such extraordinary energy that no wonder he seemed to be made of wire and India rubber, instead of the ordinary materials, and had never found time to get married.

“The pleasure is mutual,” said Mr. Willie Kirke, bowing; he always prided himself on having the right word ready. “I trust your – er – back is fairly well?”

“You’re very kind. It is troubling me a little this evening, owing to the sudden change of temperature,” said Mrs. Atterton, who was always gratified by any reference to the institution, and would have talked about it with pleasure to a crossing-sweeper.

Mrs. Jebb and Miss Fanny Kirke and Mrs. Will Werrit sat in a corner and looked at Andy as he came in with the Atterton girls.

“I believe he has his eye on Miss Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Jebb. “Of course this is in strict confidence.”

“No! What makes you think so?” said the other women eagerly.

“I don’t know. I’ve a sort of second sight in these matters,” replied Mrs. Jebb modestly, forbearing to mention that she had held his blotter to the looking-glass that morning. “Mr. Jebb always used to say, ‘Emma detects an incipient love-affair as a – as a – ’ ”

“A weasel does a rat,” supplied Mrs. Will Werrit obligingly. “Well, he seems a nice young fellow enough, but the Attertons won’t want Miss Elizabeth to marry a country parson, with all their money.”

“I don’t know but what it isn’t nicer having the class in the schoolroom,” said Miss Fanny Kirke, who was thin, like her brother, and bright-eyed. “They’re going through the grand-chain now as if it were a funeral. And look at those young men from Millsby, hunched in a corner together like a lot of fowls with the pip.”

And Norah Atterton, at the other end of the room, whispered in substance the same thing to her sister.

“This is awful!” she said. “I feel I made a mistake in getting them to have the class here. We shall have to make Dick Stamford and Bill join in and start the country dances at once. Now for it!”

She flew about in her gold and black gown like some new sort of human wasp, and planted a little sting here and there until she had the whole company on the alert. Elizabeth talked first to one girl and then another, her slow drawl with the deep notes in it contrasting oddly with her sister’s quick, clear accents. But there still hung about the occasion that leaden dullness which can be felt, but never described, and it was Mr. Atterton, coming in breezily unconscious from an after-dinner stroll, who saved the situation.

“Now then, Mr. Kirke,” he said, “I hear you and my daughter are reviving the old country dances for the ball on the lawn next week after the bazaar. Excellent! Excellent! Rubbish trying to waltz on a lawn. And I shouldn’t wonder if your great-grandfather and mine stood up at a dance on the green together a hundred years ago. They were both neighbours here, anyway. Really an excellent idea!”

It truly did seem a grand idea to him now that he had adopted it, for that was his way. Everything was splendid when it all belonged to him – even an idea.

“Everybody must join in – everybody,” he said. “Now, Mrs. Werrit, now Miss Kirke – no skulking in corners. Mr. Thorpe, you stand up with my daughter Elizabeth. My dear,” to his wife, “you take Mr. Deane.”

“I never dance,” said Andy with dignified decision.

“Nonsense! Nonsense! My wife hasn’t danced for years – Mr. Thorpe hasn’t either – they both came as spectators.”

“And I shall not begin again now, my dear,” laughed Mrs. Atterton.

“Mamma’s back!” said Elizabeth. “How can you, father!”

Then the unexpected happened, as it always does – Mrs. Atterton glanced at Andy, and the spirit of mischief within her, which years and fat had sent to sleep, flickered up for a moment.

“Very well,” she chuckled; “if Mr. Deane will dance, I will!”

“Now!” said Mr. Atterton.

“Of course,” Andy was obliged to respond.

So the company were placed in two long lines by the omniscient Mr. Kirke, and the leaden dullness was lifting – lifting. With the first beginning of the tune an old spirit of merry-making that had been hiding in the bushes round Millsby Common for fifty years or more crept forth, heard the scraping of the fiddle, began to lose the stiffness in his joints before he reached the open windows, and was all a-caper, jocund, jovial, glorious, by the time Mrs. Atterton had tripped down the middle with the queer, surprising lightness of fat people, crossed hands with Mr. Thorpe, and returned panting and laughing to her place.

Andy was the next to go – clerical coat-tails flying, curls rising in spite of half a bottle of brilliantine, the Spirit of Ancient Revelry skipping behind him, pricking his cheeks, whispering in his ear, making him forget everything but that life was most jolly, and he was off across a shining space to clasp hands with Elizabeth.

Mr. Atterton chuckled, stamped to keep time with the rest, perceived Mrs. Jebb drooping in a corner, and led her triumphantly forth. It was a sight that remained long in the memory of Millsby parish, to see Mr. Atterton’s trim little figure bobbing up and down gaily in his place, while his grey hair hung in damp strands over his forehead, and he responded to the “eye-cornering” of Mrs. Jebb with reckless gallantry.

Dick Stamford had a tendency to put his arm round any pretty girl that came his way, pleading ignorance of the proper person and moment in a country dance, and Mrs. Stamford jogged enduringly forward to meet wiry little Mr. Will Werrit, making the best of it because she was above all things anxious to conciliate Mr. Atterton. She would have jogged toward a charge of light cavalry with the same stoic calmness if she could have saved her son from any danger by so doing. But the Spirit of Ancient Revelry never came near her. He knew quite well that she thought him an absolute and incomprehensible fool.

The schoolmaster hovered round, pulling, pushing, commanding, advising – miraculously at the bottom when he had been at the top a second before – and at last he flung up his arms distractedly – “Ladies! Ladies! You don’t want to waddle, you want to willow!”

The musicians stopped; with the last wail of the fiddle the Spirit of Ancient Revelry fled through the window and, creeping ever more slowly, lay down to sleep again in the bushes at the edge of the green; people remembered that they were enlightened products of the twentieth century, with a superior education and a purpose in life, and a chance to be as good as anybody if they didn’t give themselves away.

“To willow – that’s a new verb! How clever of Mr. Kirke, and how appropriate to the present style of dress,” said Mrs. Atterton artificially, putting up her eyeglass.

She had to do something to obliterate the fact that her toupee was over one eye, and that she had, for a quarter of an hour, totally forgotten that she possessed a back.

“This kind of thing suits neither you nor me, Mr. Deane,” said the churchwarden to Andy behind his hand; “but, of course, we didn’t like to disoblige Mr. Atterton.”

Thus was the dignity of the Church restored.

“Silly sort of dance, I think,” remarked Rose Werrit to Dick Stamford; “but, of course, they had primitive ideas in those days.”

“Well, I liked it,” said Dick, who was more lined about the mouth and heavier about the eyes than a young man ought to be. “No stiffness about it.”

“We’re not dancing now, Mr. Stamford,” giggled Rose, moving her arm.

“Oh, I thought we were. I forget what I’m doing when I’m with such a pretty girl as you,” responded Dick, whose mode of compliment had been learned in circles where, in such matters, you dot your i’s and cross your t’s.

Rose frowned, but only as an offering to propriety, and accompanied Dick in high feather to a buffet where supper was already in progress.

Mrs. Will Werrit, Mrs. Thorpe, and Mrs. Jebb again foregathered round a little table and criticised the refreshments.

“Never was a cook yet who could make bread,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “The inside of these sandwiches is all right – but the bread – ”

“There’s a tang about the butter too,” said Mrs. Will Werrit.

“Talking of butter,” said Mrs. Jebb, rather left out and anxious to make herself conversationally felt, “it’s a queer thing – I’m telling you in strictest confidence – that Mr. Deane never touches it now.”

“Doesn’t he?” said Mrs. Thorpe, astonished. She paused, then added tentatively, “I suppose he eats pretty well otherwise?”

“He’s not what I call a hearty eater,” said Mrs. Jebb. “Now my poor husband – ”

“Eats no butter?” interjected Mrs. Will Werrit with a side-glance at Andy as he stood by the buffet. “You may depend on it he’s ruined his digestion with eating too much.”

“Well,” agreed Mrs. Thorpe, “I should never have hinted at such a thing if it hadn’t leaked out somehow without my knowledge, but of course no stomach could stand the strain for any great length of time.”

Their combined gaze, fixed on Andy’s slack waistcoat, somehow drew his attention towards the group, and he came forward, saying in his most cheery, parochial manner —

“Well, Mrs. Thorpe, can I get you anything more?”

“Not for us, thank you,” said Mrs. Thorpe.

“Perhaps you are like me, not great supper-eaters,” said Andy, anxious to be agreeable.

Glances passed round. Of course he could not eat any supper. No doubt inordinate eating had made him into a confirmed dyspeptic. No young man in ordinary health would give up eating butter.

But at that moment a servant came quietly through the crowd and spoke first to Mrs. Werrit and then to Andy. Old Mrs. Werrit had been taken suddenly worse and wished to see him.

Mrs. Will Werrit rose at once.

“Can we give you a lift, Mr. Deane? We were going in a few minutes, so it makes no matter. Rose can come home with her cousins. My sister-in-law, Mrs. Tom, has gone to the old lady already. No one can say that it won’t be a happy release.”

It seemed so strange – after the noise and bustle and laughter – to sit in the back seat of the Werrits’ cart and see the house and garden gradually receding in the starlight. Every pulse was thrilling still to the remembered touch of his arm about Elizabeth – to the fragrance of her as she rested for a second so near him – to the sweetness of her eyes as she had glanced up at him.

For Andy was in love, after the fashion which is supposed to be dying out. However, so far, the young lover still sees his lady infinitely fair: and when that changes —

Well – it is a pleasant thought – we shall be somewhere else.

It was so late that the June dawn was breaking as Andy stood by the side of the old woman’s bed in his dress clothes, his round face kind and grave beneath his ruffled hair, his young voice most clear and solemn in the still morning.

“Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit thee. The Lord bless thee and keep thee.”

The familiar word seemed to spread round the old dying woman a precious atmosphere of love and peace – to speed her forth on the long journey with a certainty of joy and welcome at the journey’s end.

“Margaret,” cried the old woman suddenly, in quite a loud voice, “get up. It’s wash morning!”

Then she died.

“Great-aunt Margaret’s been dead fifty years,” wept Mrs. Will Werrit.

So death led Mrs. Werrit most tenderly – as he does the very old – through the land of youth to the land of Unknown Peace.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Tom Werrit, bidding Andy good-bye, “that I’d made her a plum-cake yesterday. I knew she couldn’t eat it if I did, but she seemed to want one such as they used to have at Gaythorpe Feast when she was young. I wish I’d made it!”

“You were very good to her,” was all Andy found to say.

For he had often heard already, and had felt once in his own heart, that terrible, hopeless cry of the bereaved – “Come back and let us be kind.”

He walked home very gravely through the early freshness of the morning, and the great things of life – love, birth, death, and faith in God – began to take their right places in his soul.

He had been going to preach on the next Sunday morning upon the Evidences of Immortality, but he changed his mind upon that homeward walk. He actually felt the subject was too big for him.

CHAPTER VII

Andy did not feel inclined to go to bed when he got home, and so had a bath and went to work in the garden. He was not what you would call a sentimental gardener, and only weeded the herbaceous border because it was full of weeds, and he had invited the Attertons and the Stamfords to luncheon on the following day – so, of course, he wished everything to be perfect before it greeted the eyes of the Perfect Lady.

But after a while the windless freshness of the early morning began to have its effect on his preoccupied thoughts, and he felt a sort of cool spaciousness in the little hot chambers of his mind, as if all the doors had been thrown open.

Every one knows how. The hot throbbing of a thousand anxious thoughts, the gradual subsidence, the sense of freshness and peace – but only one person has been able to put it into words, and that one is Thomas à Kempis: he no doubt felt it one early morning, after having striven all night long for cool light amid a hot darkness full of fears.

“Quietness of heart and pleasant joy.”

That’s it.

But Andy’s only conscious thought was that he felt fresher now, and that he would take a few vegetables up the lane to Mrs. Simpson. She had nothing more than a little flower-garden before her cottage, and would no doubt be glad of them.

So he ate his breakfast with an appetite which almost justified his early reputation in Gaythorpe, and went off with a basket of green things, all wet with dew, to his neighbour’s door.

“You’re very kind,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I never touch greens myself, but the children will like them. It takes a green stomach to tackle greens, I always think.”

She glanced placidly from Andy to the two children by the door, so evidently including him among the green things of the earth that he felt bound to assert himself.

“It is extremely bad for the health to take no vegetables,” he remarked, with a flavour in his voice compounded of the senior curate and the lady lay helper.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Simpson, moving her calm gaze from the distant fields, where it had strayed, “well, my great-grandmother lived to be ninety-six, and she never touched greens.”

Andy frowned. That was the way things happened in real life – so different from a well-ordered parish – no method anywhere.

“I’m glad you’ve made friends with Mrs. Jebb,” he said, begging the question until he thought of a good reply. “It’s rather lonely for her, and I shall be grateful if you would look her up sometimes – without your furniture polish,” he added, with a laugh.

“You know Miss Elizabeth bid for the sideboard to give me as well?” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Yes,” said Andy eagerly, so delighted to speak of Elizabeth that he quite forgot to address any further admonition on the subject of ‘greens.’ “Yes, it was a queer thing we should both think of the same thing, wasn’t it?”

How lovely the ‘we’ sounded! Andy thrilled to the exquisite, fresh music of it.

But Mrs. Simpson stroked Sally’s hair and said calmly —

“I don’t know that there was anything so strange about it. All my life I’ve had things happen like that. When I was a little girl like Sally here I lost my best gloves – new ones they were – and I went up into the china-cupboard by myself and prayed hard to find them, and I did find them under my bed – a place nobody would think of finding new gloves in, would they?”

“N-no,” said Andy.

“And it was the same thing,” continued Mrs. Simpson, “with the cupboard. I prayed hard about that sideboard, and I said if anything could cheer me up a bit, it would, and I got it. I expect Them that overlooks all thought I had had as much as I could stand.” She paused, then added, just in the same tone, “Sally, if that boy swallows that carrot he’ll choke himself.”

Sally’s responsible little face sharpened, and she ran out to rescue her charge from an untimely end.

“Naughty boy,” she said, taking the carrot from his fat hand to substitute her own ripe gooseberry, and she did it without any ill-feeling; he was behaving, of course, as well as you could expect boys to behave.

But as Andy tramped off with his empty basket, an almost incredible idea crossed his mind. Could Mrs. Simpson have reached a place beyond him?

Ridiculous! Her idea of the Deity as a sort of Lost Property Office was an altogether wrong and hideously material one.

And yet —

A thought forced itself from somewhere outside upon Andy’s mental vision. Had she not perhaps grasped with the fingers of superstition a corner of that gigantic truth which is above all creeds – all theories – the truth that there is no limit whatever to the power of faith?

Andy sat down to his study-table and wrote his article for a paper to which he contributed at those times – very rare times – when the editor would accept his contributions. And after he had been writing five minutes he felt perfectly certain, of course, that he knew more about everything in the world than Mrs. Simpson could ever possibly do.

Still – there had been a moment —

About eleven o’clock he began to get restless and to wonder at what hour a young lady would be likely to visit the invalid parrot of a deceased great-aunt.

Not so very early, because, after all, William was not a lovable person in himself.

And not so very late, because of the great-aunt deceased.

Andy washed his hands, put on a clean collar, which is all a young person can do, be he never so much in love, and strolled carelessly through the garden to the back lane which led past the Petches’ cottage.

He pretended not to see Sam Petch as he went by the asparagus bed, and hummed abstractedly when he went out of the little corner gate. It was as if he said to himself, “Ah, here is a gate – I may as well go through it.”

And he walked a step or two up the lane, then viewed the garden hedge with an intent air, as if he were laying deep plans about it. He even pulled a leaf or two, critically, and so managed to reach the holly bush at the end where there was a stile deep in shadow.