CHAPTER VI
When Andy went into the garden next morning he buckled on tight the mantle of the senior curate and advanced across the grass to where Sam Petch was bending over a flower-bed with an air of decent contrition. No skulking behind bushes for him – he prodded dismally for all the world to see.
Andy, in spite of himself, felt slightly mollified, but he had made up his mind to say a certain thing, and he said it.
“This state of things cannot continue. You bring discredit on my profession, my parish, and myself.”
There – that was it – just as the senior curate would have put it; Andy took hold of his coat lapel, coughed, and waited – just as the senior curate would have done.
It is one of those facts about human nature which cannot be explained, that while Andy disliked the senior curate exceedingly, and had groaned under his oppressive rule, he strove to imitate that gentleman. Perhaps he unconsciously wanted people to be as much impressed by him as he had been by the senior curate.
Anyway, Sam Petch appeared to be greatly impressed by the dignified rebuke.
“I own I’d had a drop too much,” he said repentantly. “But Bill Shaw drank five times what I did and never turned a hair. It shows how unfair things is, sir.”
“If a little makes you drunk you must refrain from that little,” said Andy, severely.
“I know,” acknowledged Sam. “But it is hard when a man can’t take his mug o’ beer with the rest without getting what you might call jolly; isn’t it, sir?”
“After all – what is a mug of beer?” argued Andy. “I’m not a total abstainer myself, but I will become one if you will.”
Sam’s potations of the previous night still hung about him sufficiently to make him very irritable, and he suddenly lost control of his temper.
“It’s all very well talking like that,” he said. “You, who don’t care whether you ever have another drink or not – what do you know about it? Give up the thing you like best and then I’ll do the same.”
Andy looked at the man, and the mantle of the senior curate was blown away in the blast of truth that swept across him. He even forgot to notice the disrespectfulness of Sam’s manner as that wind burst open a closed chamber in his mind and he saw farther than he had ever done before.
“All right,” he said simply. “I like” – he sought for his preference – “I like butter best of anything – always did, as a little kid – I’ll give up that.”
“I’ll give up beer, then,” agreed Sam Petch; but he made certain mental reservations of which Andy, naturally, could know nothing. Every man had a right to beer on a Saturday night, of course; that was the privilege of a British working-man which was above and beyond all other agreements.
Then Andy went back into the house with a complete sense of failure dogging his footsteps. It was a ridiculous and undignified thing to do, to make a compact of that nature with a drunken gardener. He ought to have insisted in a dignified manner upon instant reform or instant dismissal.
“Mrs. Jebb,” he said, looking in at the kitchen door, “please do not send butter into the room with my meals. I shall not be taking any for some time.”
“What? No butter?” said Mrs. Jebb. “Are you bilious? Well, I know towards the last Mr. Jebb never could – ”
“And I am dining out to-night,” continued Andy, who was particularly disinclined, just then, for Mr. Jebb.
“How convenient! I mean, how strange!” said Mrs. Jebb. “I was just about to ask if you would have any objection to my going over to Millsby Hall this evening.”
“Why – are you invited too?” said Andy, very much astonished. “I mean, there’s no reason why you should not be dining with the Attertons, only I hadn’t heard – ”
“Once a lady always a lady, of course,” replied Mrs. Jebb, smoothing her lace cravat. “But the conventions of life are such that, as lady-cook-housekeeper, I neither am, nor expect to be, bidden to Mrs. Atterton’s table. I was referring to the Long Night.”
She gave to the two last words such a melancholy emphasis that Andy had a vague idea, for the moment, that she was in some new way referring to the demise of Mr. Jebb.
“The long night?” he echoed stupidly.
“I mean the final evening of the Parish Dancing Class,” said Mrs. Jebb, “which Mr. and Miss Fanny Kirke have pressed me to attend.”
“Of course,” said Andy. “I’d forgotten. It is to be held at Millsby Hall, of course, so that Mrs. Atterton may see the final practice of the country dances for the Garden Fête next week.”
“Mr. and Miss Kirke told me in confidence,” added Mrs. Jebb, with an indescribable air of being ‘in the know,’ “that Mrs. Atterton’s back would not permit of her coming to the village schoolroom.”
“Ah,” said Andy, to whom even the back of the Beloved’s mamma was sacred. “Well, go, by all means, Mrs. Jebb. I expect I shall see you dancing like a girl.”
“My girlhood’s days are over,” sighed Mrs. Jebb. “But” – she cheered up – “married ladies are very popular in ballrooms now, I understand. The gentlemen seem to like mature conversation combined with their dancing. And I do not intend to refuse. I think it neither Christian nor right, Mr. Deane, for a widow to make a suttee of herself.”
“Of course not,” agreed Andy absently. “Well – no butter – you quite understand?”
“Trust me,” said Mrs. Jebb effusively, “to understand a gentleman’s inside. For months before he died, Mr. Jebb – ”
Andy departed, and the recording angel put it down to the right side of his everlasting account that he did not say, “Damn Mr. Jebb.”
The day seemed long, and the afternoon appeared to stretch out interminably until the hour when Andy could adorn himself in a new clerical dress-suit which he now thanked the aunt and cousins in Birmingham for insisting upon; thus arrayed, he surveyed his newly plastered curls in the looking-glass, and felt that, though severely freckled and rather short than otherwise, he was the right thing.
He stepped jauntily in the cool of the evening past Brother Gulielmus asleep, and never gave him a thought, only wondering if he had buckled his braces high enough, or if his trousers were, after all, a shade too long. He paused behind the yew at the corner to adjust matters, and gazed down at his legs with a keen preoccupation that left no room for anything else.
He felt it was such an immensely important thing that Elizabeth should see him with his trousers exactly the right length, and he was very much startled to hear a voice behind him saying tentatively —
“Excuse me – as a married lady – perhaps I might oblige with a safety-pin – ”
Mrs. Jebb again! – taking the air in the congenial neighbourhood of the tombstones.
Not daring to trust himself to speech, Andy shook his head and marched out of the churchyard. He began to hate Mrs. Jebb.
But when he came in sight of Millsby Hall he forgot all about her, and approached with beating pulses the extremely ugly, modern house which sheltered the lady of his dreams. It had been built by Mr. Atterton’s father after he developed from a small county landowner into the owner of a watering-place. Marshaven, previously to 1850, had been the resort of fishermen and waterfowl only; now it was crowded from June to September with train-loads of trippers from all over the country, and Mr. Atterton found the joy and interest of his existence in supervising the erection of ever-new rows of red-brick villas, and in putting his finger into every pie which the town council of that prosperous resort made for the purpose of attracting visitors.
“I believe we’ve got that matter arranged with the Bandmaster,” he said, rubbing his hands energetically as he entered his drawing-room that evening. “I did think for a time that the situation looked serious, but I approached him informally at first, and then officially, as the Chairman of the ‘Amusements Committee,’ and I think the crisis is over.” He paused, and smiled with satisfaction at his assembled family. “I’m glad to have my mind free for the Promenade question – that will take some engineering – but of one thing I am absolutely determined,” – he hit one hand on the other – “I will not have blue seats picked out with gold. I admit they may look prosperous – that is the argument Smith uses – but I dislike the idea. I cannot say why, but I dislike it.”
“Your artistic sense suggests to you unconsciously that they’ll make the sea look dirty,” said his daughter Norah, glancing across at him with the corners of her thin lips more mocking than usual – and she always seemed to be making game, a little contemptuously, of all that happened at Millsby Hall.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Mr. Atterton eagerly. “That will be an argument to use at our next meeting. It polishes your wits up, Norah, going about speaking in public as you do – though I can’t say I always – ”
“Mr. Deane,” said the servant.
Then, immediately afterwards —
“Mrs. Stamford. Mr. Richard Stamford.”
There were only eight people in all, in the room, but they seemed to Andy like a crowd each possessing more than the normal number of feet, and it was only after treading upon the toes of Bill Atterton and then stepping back heavily upon those of the divinity that he managed to pull himself together sufficiently to realise that there was ample space in the apartment for the feet of a small army.
“Very – er – hot for the time of year,” he said to Dick Stamford, with whom he had become more or less intimate.
“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.