CHAPTER V
Andy sat in his study, endeavouring to prepare a Sunday-morning sermon that should justify the high opinion of his preaching which had led Mr. Stamford to present him to the living of Gaythorpe.
A light rain fell outside and a scent of the honeysuckle – it being now June – came through the open window; but Andy was not yet aware that every wayside flower preaches the finest sermon man can preach to man, and says, more convincingly than any parson ever could, ‘God so loved the world.’
The new Vicar, therefore, had taken in turn such topics as the Origin of Evil and the Reason for Free Will, handling them with a courage perfectly remarkable when you consider how the saints of all ages have hesitated afraid before them. This morning, however, having settled these questions, he cast about him for something else which should be at once striking and profound, and it was some time before he noticed a gradually increasing noise in the other part of the house.
Even when he did become aware of it he brushed it aside from his mind and went peacefully on, reconciling the doctrine of evolution with the second chapter of Genesis. At last, however, the study door was burst open in a manner that even a poet could not ignore, and Mrs. Jebb paused, inarticulate with some unknown emotion, upon the threshold.
“Not the boiler burst again?” exclaimed Andy, who had already learned some of the trials of a housekeeper.
Mrs. Jebb swallowed, blinked, and demanded —
“Did you give that – female – permission to clean my furniture?”
It was a long way from the dawn of the world to Mrs. Simpson’s sideboard, and for the moment Andy felt nonplussed; then he remembered.
“Oh, she’s turned up to polish it, poor woman, has she?” he said, with an air of relief. “I told her she could. It’s all right.”
Mrs. Jebb fluttered forward, wavering a little like a butterfly that has imbibed too much nectar, and she alighted with one trembling hand upon the writing-table edge.
“It is not all right,” she said. “It is all very, very wrong, Mr. Deane. Poor, I am, reduced to domestic service, I may be – but I will retire to the workhouse before I will allow a female from outside to polish furniture in this house while I remain your lady-cook-housekeeper.”
“Really, Mrs. Jebb – I’m sure I never – ” began Andy.
“What will the parish say?” went on Mrs. Jebb, growing still more agitated as she saw Andy’s concerned face. “What will the world say? Naturally that I’m not fit to be your housekeeper, if Mrs. Simpson has to come with dusters and furniture polish and an – an infant, to clean the Vicar’s dining-room sideboard.”
A dragging sound as of something being pulled reluctantly along, a bump, a yell, and Mrs. Simpson’s voice in the rear, shrill with motherly indignation.
“How dare you call this dear child names?” she cried, replying to the limitless opprobrium which lay behind the word ‘infant’ rather than to the term itself.
“Come, come,” said Andy, rising. “He is an infant all right, aren’t you, Jimmy? Not twenty-one yet, ha-ha! There is nothing unpleasant in the word ‘infant.’ ”
He smiled ingratiatingly from one angry face to the other, trying to carry it off easily, but in truth as frightened as a decent young man always is when he stands between two quarrelling women.
“There’s a way,” replied Mrs. Simpson slowly, glaring with her prominent light-blue eyes at Mrs. Jebb – “there’s a way of saying ‘woman’ that implies things I wouldn’t sully my lips by uttering. And yet ‘woman’ isn’t a bad word.”
“It all comes to this,” panted Mrs. Jebb. “Is Mrs. Simpson to walk in without a with-your-leave or a by-your-leave and start polishing your sideboard, or is she not?”
“It’s her sideboard,” said Andy weakly. “But I’m sure you’ll look after it all right, if Mrs. Simpson doesn’t mind.”
“Why should she mind? And if it’s hers, why doesn’t she take it away? Dozens of times I’ve said that the hideous thing completely ruins your dining-room, and I’m sure – ”
“Now,” interposed Mrs. Simpson, who grew, quiet as her opponent grew noisy, “now I shall say what I’d meant to keep to myself, because Mrs. Jebb has her living to earn, poor thing, and I wouldn’t do her an injury. That sideboard in its present state, Mr. Deane, is a disgrace. So is your beautiful table. So is all the furniture.”
“It only wants dusting. We’ve not had time this morning,” quavered Mrs. Jebb, retreating before this onslaught.
“It wants what you’ll never give it,” said Mrs. Simpson, hauling Jimmy away, and looking back for a last shot. “It wants elbow-grease.”
“Look here,” said Andy, pulling himself together. “I – er – really – discord in a clergyman’s house is what I greatly dislike. Mrs. Jebb, I told Mrs. Simpson she could come and clean her sideboard. Mrs. Simpson, you must put yourself in Mrs. Jebb’s place and consider if your feelings might not have been hurt under similar circumstances. This really won’t do.”
He threw his head back, settled his chin in his collar, and looked as nearly like the senior curate before a refractory Bible Class as nature permitted.
Mrs. Simpson paused.
“I came peacefully enough,” she said, “and I was going to tell Mrs. Jebb, only she went off at such a tangent, that I did ring five times. But I couldn’t make any one hear, so I walked into the hall. Then I saw the dining-room door open, and nobody there, so I went in there and started polishing. I’ll own it may have looked funny, but she shouldn’t have spoken as she did.”
“There! That makes all the difference. Doesn’t it, Mrs. Jebb?” said Andy eagerly, forgetting to be dignified. “I say, shake hands and make it up. Jimmy, shake hands with Mrs. Jebb to start with.”
“Won’t. Hate her. She’s got yeller teef like old Towzer.”
“Hush, hush,” said Mrs. Simpson, changing all in a minute from the fighting woman to the careful mother. “Jimmy mustn’t talk like that. Jimmy must beg the lady’s pardon.”
“Won’t,” said that gentleman truculently.
“Jimmy must do as he’s told,” said Mrs. Simpson, then, grasping the pudgy little hand firmly, she held it out to the housekeeper.
“I’m sure I’ve no wish – ” began Mrs. Jebb, with trembling stateliness, when Andy cast aside the mantle of the senior curate, grabbed Mrs. Jebb’s hand in his own, and pushed the bony fingers of his lady-cook-housekeeper towards Jimmy.
“I say,” he exclaimed boyishly, “you can’t refuse to shake hands with a little chap like that!”
Mrs. Jebb felt the touch of the firm, young fingers on her wrist, weakened, advanced a step, finally ‘eye-cornered’ Andy with a tremulous smile and waggled once the fat hand of Master Simpson.
“I’m sure,” she said, “I’ve no wish to be un-neighbourly, Mrs. Simpson. It was just seeing you there on your knees rubbing the sideboard front when I never expected to see anything but the cat or Mr. Deane. I ought to be able to enter into a widow’s feelings if anybody ever could. With Mr. Jebb I was not merely a wife, I was an obsession.”
“With all my wordly goods I thee endow, of course,” quoted Mrs. Simpson vaguely, in whose mind the words possession and obsession had somehow run together and produced a blurred impression of Mrs. Jebb’s meaning. But she saw Andy was anxious for peace, and gratitude for the sideboard gradually overcoming her anger, she wished to do her part.
“Two widows living near together should be on good terms,” said Mrs. Jebb, her annoyance also cooling, while prudence dictated a course obviously pleasing to Andy. “Will you step into my room and have a cup of tea? I am no breakfast-eater, and generally take one at eleven. And” – she concluded the amend generously, “Jimmy shall have a biscuit with pink sugar on the top.”
That settled it; for Jimmy was so fond of eating that he would have accompanied the sweep – his idea of the embodiment of evil – to search for biscuits with pink sugar on them.
So the baize door of the study banged in the rear of an amicable trio while Andy sat down and mopped his brow. It was difficult to catch evolution by the tail after that – he seemed to have gone so far from it. But he knitted his brow, shook his fountain-pen, and started on the quest.
One thought, however, would creep in and out of the books of reference and between the written words – it was not so easy as it looked, to live in a place where everybody was so inextricably mixed up with everybody else. And later in the day he was to have another striking proof of this queer inter-independence of which a townsman knows so little. For when he walked past the Petches’ cottage he beheld the Attertons’ landau, drawn by a sleek and fat pair of horses and driven by a sleek and fat coachman, standing in front of the little gate. Elizabeth Atterton and an ample lady in grey occupied the carriage, and they were inspecting a parrot in a cage, which Mrs. Petch rested on the step.
“I trust,” said Mrs. Atterton, “that William is in good health. He looks” – she paused – “he looks far from well, Emma.”
“Moulting, ’m,” said Mrs. Petch. “That’s all.”
“But this is not the season for moulting,” objected Elizabeth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Petch, with an easy smile, “but William always was different to other birds. Scores and hundreds of times I’ve heard my poor mistress say so.”
“Well, it was a remark my poor aunt often made,” said Mrs. Atterton, eyeing the dejected attitude and naked chest of the parrot doubtfully.
“I’m sure you give him every attention. You would, of course, when your annuity dies with him. My poor aunt no doubt felt that.” She paused again, and added in answer to Mrs. Petch’s look of wounded innocence, “Of course, you would in any case. I do not forget what a devoted maid you were to poor Aunt Arabella.”
“She trusted me with William,” said Mrs. Petch simply, applying the corner of her apron to her eye.
“I know. I was not reflecting on you in any way, of course, Emma,” said Mrs. Atterton kindly. “Only, I promised to see after William sometimes, and I like to do it. Poor William! Of course, one can’t expect him to live for ever.”
“Parrots sometimes live to be a hundred,” said Mrs. Petch quickly. “Sam read that in the paper only the other day, ’m.”
“Well, we’ll hope William may,” said Mrs. Atterton comfortably. “I never liked him, even in his best days, but I don’t want him to die.”
There was a reposeful kindness about Mrs. Atterton that seemed exactly like that of her daughter Elizabeth – and yet, in its essence it was altogether different.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Mrs. Petch, long before Andy reached the group. She greeted him with such alacrity, indeed, that an enemy might have thought she welcomed the interruption to the interview with William.
“Oh, mamma, here is Mr. Deane. Mr. Deane, you haven’t met my mother?” said Elizabeth, who was, for some foolish and obscure reason, a little nervous.
“No – er – I am very glad – that is – I am sorry – at least, I mean to say I am delighted to meet you now,” said Andy, who, for some equally foolish and obscure reason, was nervous too.
Mrs. Atterton beamed placidly on him.
“Sorry I did not see you when you called, Mr. Deane, but it was one of my bad days. My back – ” She paused, as if that explained all, and Andy filled in the blank with a sympathetic —
“Of course. I’m afraid you are a great sufferer.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Atterton pleasantly, “it is not that I have any great pain, but I collapse. Don’t I, Elizabeth?”
“Mamma is so patient,” said Elizabeth, with loving sincerity. “She hates to make us feel – ”
“Come, come, come! Bring that cup of tea! Bring that cup of tea!” interrupted William, croaking hideously.
“Poor Aunt Arabella! Couldn’t you fancy you heard her voice from the grave?” murmured Mrs. Atterton, shedding an easy tear.
“William belonged to my great-aunt, Mr. Deane,” explained Elizabeth.
Then it swept over Andy again with renewed force, how everybody here was connected in some way with everybody else. He had always known in a general way, of course, as we all do, that if you slip on a banana skin and use expressions better left unemployed you may influence some one for evil in central China – but he had never before come near enough to the principle to be able to see the working of it with the naked eye.
“I thought when I first came to Gaythorpe that William was a person,” said Andy, noticing the pink nails of Elizabeth’s ungloved hand upon the carriage door.
“Well, poor Aunt Arabella always did say he had an immortal soul – and you never know,” said Mrs. Atterton, willing to give everything created the benefit of the doubt.
Then the fat coachman, who was tired of waiting, made one of his fat charges stamp idly on the ground in a perfunctory manner, and Mrs. Atterton said the horses were growing restive and it was time to go.
“So glad we are to see you on Thursday evening,” she said, over her shoulder. “Good-bye, Mr. Deane. Good afternoon, Emma. Let me know how William is, please.”
The farewells of Andy and Elizabeth were somehow merged in the salutations of Mrs. Atterton, and the responses of Mrs. Petch, but they looked at each other just as the carriage went off with a direct glance which held more than either of them could yet understand of young hope and joy and question.
“What was it?” that look said. They didn’t know – they didn’t know – only something glorious!
Andy stood staring after the carriage until at last Mrs. Petch’s voice from behind penetrated his understanding.
“Cars are all very well,” she said, “but there is a something about a carriage and pair – however, they own motor-cars – it isn’t that.”
Andy understood that the wealth and standing of the Atterton family were being defended, and replied at once —
“Of course. All the same, I can’t understand when you have a Limousine – ”
“Mrs. Atterton’s back won’t stand motor-cars,” said Mrs. Petch gravely, but if so perfectly behaved a gardener’s wife could have ever winked, Andy would have said she winked then. However, he felt the light must have dazzled his eyes.
“Quite so,” he said. “It is a great affliction.”
“Yes, sir. It is, indeed,” responded Mrs. Petch at once. “Everything in life, as you may say, and yet a back to spoil it all.”
“There’s always – er – something,” said Andy, feeling he ought to improve the occasion.
“There is, indeed,” sighed Mrs. Petch, with a sort of serious cheerfulness. “No rose without a thorn in this world, sir, and we can’t expect any different. We should never want to go to another if we’d everything we wanted here.”
“Nice, right-thinking woman!” reflected Andy, as he went up the road.
He was on his way to visit a woman called old Mrs. Werrit, an obscure connection of the Werrit family who had drifted near them again in her extreme old age, and Andy had been told that day that she was dying. But he was ready enough to help any old person to die, just as he was ready to help any young one to live, and he went up some crooked stairs to the bedroom, full of confidence in himself and his office.
For some time the old woman said nothing in response to his remarks, and allowed a daughter of Mrs. Will Werrit’s to answer for her. Maggie Werrit felt rather glad that her aged relative was not in a talkative mood because she lacked that polish which the best boarding-school in Bardwell had imparted to the latest generation of the family, and the new Vicar would look down on them all if he heard one of them talk about ‘ankerchers.’
“I hope you don’t suffer much?” said Andy, sitting down beside the bed.
Then Mrs. Werrit opened her eyes, and he was surprised to find how full of life they were in that sunken, dull old face.
“I did suffer,” she said, “but that’s over now,” and she shut her eyes again.
Andy took out his little book and prepared to read, when Mrs. Werrit looked at him once more.
“The others are all gone first,” she said. “Every one of us six but me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Andy, very gently.
“You needn’t be,” said old Mrs. Werrit. “It doesn’t matter now.” She paused, and added after a moment, “You’ll find out – all that matters at the very end – is how near you’ve gotten to God in your life.”
Then she closed her eyes again, and Andy shut his little book and put it in his pocket without a word, and crept reverently down the crooked stairs as if he were leaving the presence of some one very great.
When he was far down the village street, and too far from the little house to go back again, he realised that, for the first time in his professional career, he had failed in his ministration to the aged poor. He fingered his little book, feeling inclined to go back again, and all the way home something within him smarted and burned underneath his wandering thoughts.
Youth knows nothing more unpleasant than those secret growing pains of the soul of which it does not understand the meaning.
Perhaps it was these – or it might have been the dull evening after a day of clouds and storms – anyway, Andy felt driven forth after supper to tramp restlessly up and down the garden path by the churchyard hedge. Had he chosen the right life? Was he fitted for a country parson?
New and perplexing doubts of himself began to assail him for the first time as he tramped up and down, casting a glance at Brother Gulielmus every now and then over the churchyard hedge.
Had he tramped up and down here too? For the garden dated back to that time, though the house was modern. Had he wondered and felt restless too?
But gradually the regular motion quieted Andy’s nerves, and he began to notice how the crimson rambler had grown, and to feel the freshness of the dew-laden air.
Then, quite suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered with wonderful vividness how Elizabeth’s hand had looked upon the door of the carriage. His mental picture of her face was indistinct, but her hand seemed painted on the summer darkness, and he felt an intense longing to take it in his own.
That was all he wanted – so exquisite a thing is the first beginning of young love.
“Mr. Deane! Mr. Deane! Will you have eggs and bacon for breakfast, or the rest of the cold ham?” shrilled Mrs. Jebb from the doorstep.
“Oh, just as you like. I’ve told you so before,” said Andy.
“But I like to consult your tastes,” said Mrs. Jebb pathetically.
“Eggs and bacon, then,” said Andy.
“It’s damp under foot,” said Mrs. Jebb. Then something in the woman’s voice and look as she tried to keep him there for company struck home to Andy’s perceptions, and he suddenly realised that she might be dull and lonely too.
“I say – it’s awfully good of you to bother about my tastes like that. You mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it,” he said eagerly. “Those gooseberry dumplings we’ve been having are fine.”
“Now Mr. Jebb couldn’t assimilate boiled paste at any price,” began Mrs. Jebb, delighted.
So Andy listened to her for quarter of an hour and then went back to the path by the churchyard hedge and that dream which Mrs. Jebb had interrupted.
Or perhaps it was scarcely a dream as yet – only the indescribably delicate stuff of which dreams are made.
Gradually, however, the quietness of all about Andy seemed to fit in with his misty memories of Elizabeth. Tenderness. Sweetness. Repose. Why – those meant Elizabeth – they were but other names for her.
Words gathered in his mind, singing of themselves about her sweetness. The nightingale in a little wood half a mile away was no more singing to his mate than Andy there, beneath the churchyard hedge.
Only, the nightingale’s song was lovely for every one, and Andy’s could never be lovely for any one but Elizabeth.
He pictured them, hand in hand, there in the garden together, watching the village as it went to sleep.
“Let us watch the quiet village
Till each little casement glows
For there’s something in the sight, Love,
That is like a heart’s repose.
Let us watch the starlight glimmer
Through the windless evening air,
For there’s something in your eyes, Love,
That is like a star at prayer.
Let us watch – ”
“Beg pardon, sir. Didn’t see you. Churchyard’s chortesh way home for me,” said Sam Petch, blundering through the gate in the hedge. “Beautiful night, sir.”
Sam was not uproariously drunk, but he was affably so, and took no notice of Andy’s frigid —
“I will speak with you in the morning, Petch. Go home at once.”
“Sho I will, sir. Sho I will,” said Sam heartily. “An’thing to oblige. Good-night, sir.” He paused, then looked back and said pleasantly, “Had a bit o’ bad luck on my way home, sir. Wife sent me for sixpennoth o’ brandy for her spasms, and I’ve broke the bottle. I suppose you haven’t a drop you could – ”
“No,” said Andy sternly. “Go home.”
“Of course, sir. Of course. No offence taken and none meant,” said Sam, moving off. He paused again and added solemnly, “It’s a great relief to me, after the way our poor late Vicar went on, to find you don’t keep no spirits in the house, sir. A great relief it is. Good-night.”