“Policeman never take baby boys like Jimmy. Never!” said Elizabeth quickly.
Sally said nothing – that policeman was a secret part of her life – and she felt vaguely that Elizabeth knew nothing of the realities of existence.
But, queerly enough, she was happier than most children can be, as she plodded up the sand-hills to her mother with no less a sum than three and ninepence halfpenny in her handkerchief.
Andy and Elizabeth watched her for a moment, and then turned towards a gap in the sand-hills whence a road ran into the open country.
“This way seems pleasanter,” said Andy.
“The sands are rather heavy,” agreed Elizabeth.
And thus fortified they walked rather quickly until they reached a turning where a great sheet of mustard-seed in flower stretched, pure blazing yellow, beneath a cloudless blue.
It was like an unexecuted flare of silver trumpets on a still and joyous day, and Andy felt the sudden, triumphant exhilaration of it.
“Elizabeth – ” he began – face shining – eyes alight.
Then the aunt and cousins who were not expected in Marshaven until the following week came round the corner, and the Vicar of Gaythorpe used an expression in the presence of the lady he adored which, one second earlier, he would have deemed himself absolutely incapable of using in the presence of any lady at all. “I beg your pardon,” he added hastily.
But Elizabeth may have felt obliged to him.
“These,” said Andy, muddling the introduction in the agitation of his feelings – “these are my cousins and aunt – at least my aunt, Mrs. Dixon and the Webster girls – Miss Elizabeth Atterton.”
Then he openly mopped his brow – anybody would – even the most refined.
“How do you do? I have heard Mr. Deane speak of you very often,” said Elizabeth, with a heightened colour but surprising composure.
Andy stared at her in astonishment, unable to understand how she did it, for that is a thing no man can understand until he has been married for at least a year.
“Delighted to meet any of Andy’s friends,” said Mrs. Dixon.
Andy scowled. So here was the adored learning the undignified name when he wished her always to think of him as Andrew. That was the worst of relatives.
“Yes, we quite look on Andy as a brother, though he is no real relation,” added Irene Webster, swinging her sunshade with an air of great fashion.
“Quite a nice little place – Marshaven – if you want to get away from the rush,” said Phyllis. “You can fancy yourself a tripper, and lead the simple life.”
She laughed, high up in the top of her head, and Andy and her family followed suit, though there was nothing to laugh at, because she considered herself smart, and they had formed a habit of applause.
Then Elizabeth thought she must be going, as she had to make a call in Marshaven – she did not say that the call was upon the carpenter – and Andy said he would walk part of the way with her, because he was due to lunch on the sands with Mrs. Thorpe, who had arrived with an overflowing dog-cart at 12.30.
But Elizabeth said that the call was exactly in the opposite direction to the sands, and that she could not, and would not, separate Andy from his new-found relatives, so they all walked together to the dip in the sand-hills whence Mrs. Thorpe was plainly visible, large and black like a derelict buoy that had been thrown upon the shore, with other members of the congregation scattered near.
So the ladies stood in a group to say farewell – Mrs. Dixon, tight about the figure and curly about the head, as she had been from Andy’s very earliest recollections of her, with a perennial purple dusting of powder on her face – , Irene, very like her mother, only willowy instead of tight – and Phyllis more willowy still. Both girls had an indescribable air of possessing more neck and more eyes and more hair than other people, though of course this could not have been the case, and it was only an optical delusion.
Andy really felt very proud of them now the first awkwardness of meeting was over, and he thought Elizabeth and the girls would get on splendidly together.
“You’re sure to meet again,” he said encouragingly. “I hope my aunt and cousins will come to stay with me.”
“Oh – a bachelor’s household – and three women – ” smiled Mrs. Dixon, shaking her head. “But we shall often go over. You will get quite tired of us in the neighbourhood, Miss Atterton.”
Then the Webster girls went off in one direction, while Elizabeth took another, thinking how pleased Mr. Kirke would be if he could only get his dancing class to willow like that; and Andy plodded down the soft sand in the full sun to Mrs. Thorpe, realising, as he had not done before, that he had injured his damaged arm further by the coco-nut shying, and that it was beginning to be exceedingly uncomfortable.
After lunch there were games to be started for the children and races to be run for prizes, and no time at all could be had for dwelling on a certain high moment that shone in a blending glory of blue and yellow at the back of Andy’s mind. At five o’clock followed a meat tea in the bare, high room, where some of the young men were late owing to a travelling circus which had put up its tent for a couple of performances. And as everybody filed out into the open air afterwards, very hot, and exuding ham fat quite visibly, young Sam Petch came up to Andy with an air of mysterious importance.
“Could I have a word, sir, in private?” he said, shading his mouth with his hand.
“What? Anything wrong?” said Andy, sharply alert – no longer a jolly boy but a leader with precious human lives under his care – something of what he might become shining clear and hard through the mists of youth.
“No, no, sir,” said Sam Petch soothingly. “Only you asked me to be on the look-out for a cheap little pony and cart, and I believe I’ve got an offer such as you’ll never see the like of again.”
“Well – I can’t now – ” began Andy.
“Sir,” entreated Sam, “it’s only the matter of a minute. The circus is doing badly this summer. Weather too fine. And the owner’s up a gum-tree for a ten-pound note.”
“How did you hear of it?” said Andy, almost unconsciously following his handy man round a corner.
“Oh, I always pick up news – overheard him telling somebody,” said Sam, forbearing to mention that the information was acquired in the bar of the Blue Tiger.
Andy glanced at him once or twice – but said no more. After all, nobody could swear he had been drinking beer – they could only be quite certain that he had eaten peppermints.
“Always have to eat one after a full meal,” said Sam. “Had a delicate stomach ever since I ate some tinned lobster that had been away from the sea a bit too long. Oh, here’s the little turnout, all ready and waiting.”
His air of ingenuous surprise showed what he might have done had his lines been cast in dramatic circles, and so did the honest way in which he said to a seedy, flashy man —
“Now, mind, I’m not going to advise this gentleman to buy. He must see for himself, and judge for himself.”
“It’s worth fifty. I’ll take twenty for it,” said the owner, rather thickly.
Andy looked at the little brown pony and the green cart picked out with red – it certainly was marvellous at the price.
“Look here. I’ll just ask Mr. Thorpe or Mr. Werrit – ” he said, turning to go back.
Sam put a hand on his arm.
“Excuse me, sir, but this is a private job – very private. This gentleman doesn’t want any one to know he has to sell the cart. Says it would ruin his circus right off. I only heard by accident, and he’s bound me over to keep quiet. Any honourable man would keep quiet under them circumstances.”
“Of course,” said Andy uneasily.
“Fact is,” said the man, “it’s twenty pound down now or nothing. Theatrical business is like that – all of it. One day a thousand means nothing to you and the next day you’ll sell your soul for a five-pound note.”
“But I do not wish to take advantage – ” began Andy with the air Sam knew and dreaded, for it upset his calculations because it was an unknown quantity.
“You aren’t taking advantage,” he interposed, with bluff honesty, as man to man. “It doesn’t matter to me – only I’ve been in a bit of an ’ole myself at times, and I thought I’d do this chap a good turn and you too, if I could. Don’t often get such a chance. But I don’t care, not for myself, I don’t.”
He put his hands into his pockets, whistled mildly a favourite air, and, as it were withdrew.
“I’ll own,” said the circus-owner reluctantly, “that you’ll be doing me a good turn if you take it. So you needn’t keep back on that account.”
“But I haven’t twenty pounds with me,” objected Andy.
“If you send a cheque to-night that I can get by first post in the morning, it’ll do,” said the owner. “Then your man can drive it back with him to-night. But I must have the money first thing in the morning.”
“Very well,” said Andy. “So long as you can assure me that the transaction is perfectly honest and legal. I must have some proof that you really are the owner of the circus.”
“Come in here,” said the man sullenly, marching into the Blue Tiger and addressing the highly respectable landlord of that inn. “Look here. Am I the owner of Kennington’s Royal Circus, or am I not?”
“You are,” said the landlord, whom nothing astonished any more.
“You’ll swear it?” said the man.
The landlord cocked a placid and incurious eye at Andy.
“If necessary I’ll swear it,” he said weightily. “Mr. Deane of Gaythorpe, I believe?”
“Er – yes,” said Andy. “A little matter of business – ”
“Quite so,” said the landlord. “Quite so.”
Then he went to draw three-pennyworth of whisky for a customer, and Andy, Sam, and the circus-owner filed out again in the by-lane.
“I’ll have it,” said Andy.
“Done with you,” said the man, leading the pony and cart back into the yard.
“My eye, you’ve got a bargain,” said Sam. “Cheapest pony and cart I ever see.”
And indeed it was a wonderful bargain, only to be accounted for by the fact that the circus-owner decamped next day, leaving behind a wife, a tent, a few assorted animals, and the responsibilities of existence in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Fortunately for himself, Andy never knew that he had provided the means of flight, but as the wife prospered much better alone it may be assumed that the circus-owner was no irretrievable loss to the circus or the country.
By the time the bargain was concluded, the waggons were already rumbling up to the door of the refreshment-rooms, and tired and happy babies cuddled down against their mothers’ knees to sleep all the way home, while the bigger ones sang hymns that sounded very sweet and touching, in spite of the rough, untrained voices, as they floated back in the still, evening air.
They were all very tired – young and old – but you want to be tired after a real outing, for that is a part of it – and as Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe, the solid and unemotional, followed in their dog-cart behind, they could hear all three waggon-loads singing “Abide with me.”
“Another School-Feast over,” said Mr. Thorpe.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Thorpe.
That was all they said aloud, but one of those wonderful unspoken conversations went on between them.
“How many more School-Feasts shall we see?” was what Mr. Thorpe’s heart said to Mrs. Thorpe’s.
And hers said to him —
“There are more behind us, dear, than before.”
Then, clear and faint, came the end of the hymn across the quiet fields —
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.”
CHAPTER XII
Any gentleman who begins a sentence by saying “Elizabeth” – in the tone which Andy used near the mustard-field at Marshaven, is bound, if he be a man of honour, to complete that sentence at the earliest possible opportunity.
Should he be suffering from a very painful arm – as Andy was – and should the skies look like a storm – as they did above Gaythorpe the next morning – so much the worse for the gentleman; but the thing has to be done at once.
So Andy put on his best coat with a good deal of difficulty, and cut himself in shaving, and ate a poor breakfast, and finally set forth in the new pony-cart to call upon Elizabeth at the house of her aunt, with a bleak and desolate feeling, as if he were going off in a tumbril to his own execution.
It does not sound romantic, but it is true, and it is none the less true that Andy was as much in love with the girl as any young and ardent man who has not frittered his emotions away can be.
However, the cool sweet air blew on his forehead as he drove along the lanes, and calmed his nerves, which were fretted by pain and suspense and a sleepless night. Andy began to feel better, and to forget everything but the fact that he loved her and would soon see her. He could not help thinking there was hope for him, because of a look that had come across her face when he said the fateful “Elizabeth.”
Andy’s reflections broke short at that point, and the grey summer world under a low sky seemed suddenly strange and unreal – nothing was vividly real to him in that moment but a blaze of blue and yellow and a girl’s face – all life since he was born seemed only to have been the dim antechamber to that moment.
He whipped up the pony, who really might have known that he was a substitute for the wings of love so sportingly did he respond, and as his little hoofs clicked on the hard road they made a merry sound that was pleasant to hear.
“Love’s all – folly. But it’s – jolly.”
So the gay little hoofs kept beating out all the way to the house of Elizabeth’s aunt; but Andy would have felt annoyed at such a sentiment if he had not been too engrossed to hear it.
The house was square, and extremely substantial, and rather ugly – just the house, somehow, where one would expect a widowed aunt to dwell – and the very superior parlour-maid who came to the door was just the sort of servant one would have expected a widowed aunt to engage; for this aunt really was, in many useful and profitable ways, particularly to herself, an epitome of the expected.
The only unexpected thing she ever did was to omit having a family, and that was why the Atterton girls were obliged to stay with her rather more than they felt inclined to do; for an epitome of the expected is honoured by all and gets everything, but is not usually a great favourite with nice young people who have no wish to be remembered in her will.
But the kindness that underlay everything in the daily life of the Attertons, without ever being seen or spoken of, made it a matter of course that the girls should go over for a week when they were wanted. Norah went less often that Elizabeth, because of her public engagements and her Club in London; still, she took her turn all the same.
“Is Miss Elizabeth Atterton at home?” said Andy, his heart hammering so loudly against his ribs that he thought the superior maid must hear it and wonder. But she replied with a calm which was equal to that of any powdered footman —
“Not at home, sir.”
It may sound foolish, or as if Andy were the neurotic young man he certainly was not, but the bare fact remains that Andy felt physically sick and the garden rocked about him. The reaction was so great, and the feverish night had unnerved him.
“When will she be back?” he managed to ask at last.
Then the superior housemaid proved that soft hearts do beat even under starched garments, and a demeanour so stiff that any softness at all might, at first sight, seem incredible.
“The ladies have gone out for the day, sir,” she replied. “I’m sorry to say they won’t be back until evening.” She paused, then added, in almost a confidential tone, “Can I give any message?”
“Please tell Miss Atterton I called, and was sorry to find her out,” he said dejectedly.
“Yes, sir.” The parlour-maid had once had a young man in the weak and low-waged past, and she knew how it felt. “May I offer you any refreshment, sir? I am sure my mistress would wish – ”
“No, thank you,” said Andy, climbing back into his cart. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, sir,” said the parlour-maid feelingly. “I hope you’ll get home before the storm starts.”
But Andy did not care, as he jogged along home again, whether the rain fell or not. He had come in the cart so as to present an immaculate appearance to the Beloved and the Beloved’s aunt, and he had used nearly quarter of a bottle of brilliantine to ensure his curls remaining flat under any stress of circumstance, and now she was out. He didn’t care what happened after that. Somehow he had never expected her to be out when he wanted to ask her to marry him. He felt vaguely that fate ought to have waited on so important an event.
The pony took his own time, clicking doggedly on the long way back, “Come on – Come on – Come on,” and about half-way home a heavy thunderstorm broke over the country, lightning zigzagged in streaks across the horizon, and at length followed a deluge of rain. Andy had brought no mackintosh or overcoat, and the big drops whistled down in sheets from a still, low sky upon his shoulders and the pony’s back.
It was such a storm as sometimes comes in an English summer after a long spell of dryish weather, and it seemed capable of going on for ever.
Andy eyed the landscape with a dreary gaze, and felt a savage pleasure in being as uncomfortable as possible until he remembered that his best suit was being ruined, and that the pony and cart had absorbed all his available spare cash. If the time ever came when the Beloved were at home – but that now seemed vague and improbable – he would have to court her in his second-best suit.
Another grievance against fate.
He was surveying the trotting pony with an uninterested gaze, including even that new and cherished possession amongst the things that did not matter, when his glance suddenly sharpened. What on earth – ? He jumped out of the cart and ran round to the pony’s left side. Yes, his sight had not deceived him. A faint patch of yellowish drab was appearing where before had been only a rather different shade of brown. And there was another similar patch on the animal’s hindquarters.
He looked at the pony, and the pony flicked his tail as much as to say, “This is really no affair of mine – I must leave it for you humans to settle among yourselves.”
Andy climbed back into the trap again, and drove for another hour through the deluge with an eye upon the increasing paleness of the drab patches. By the time he reached Gaythorpe he was driving an openly and flagrantly piebald pony in a green cart picked out with bright red, and it really did look a little gay for a country vicar.
“Sam!” shouted Andy at the top of his voice, as he drove into the great stable-yard where the little pony was to reign alone.
“Yes, sir!” called Sam, running.
“Look here,” said Andy, pointing to the patches that were now cream-colour. “What’s that?”
“Struck with lightning!” cried Sam dramatically. “Well! it’s a mercy it wasn’t you, sir. That’s all I can say. But shock will turn hair white in animals as well as people. I remember my poor old aunt had a white patch over her left ear ever after the roof fell in one stormy night.”
Andy looked at his henchman. “Come to me in the house in half an hour,” was all he said.
But Sam knew that this was one of his rare failures.
About half an hour later the Vicar sat in dry clothes, drinking hot tea, and awaiting the culprit. He was irritated, chilled through, and as like the senior curate as he had ever been in his life.
“I gather,” he remarked when Sam appeared, “that you were aware of the – er – tinting of the animal?”
Sam faced him as one honest man another.
“I won’t deny I were aware,” he said. “I won’t deny it. I’d seen the pony before the owner knowed the likely customer was a clergyman, and after. But he told me on his sacred oath that the stuff he’d put on was permanent. ‘Stand the little beggar under a tap for a year, and it won’t wash off,’ was his very words. And I thought what a man doesn’t know he can’t grieve about, so I kept it to myself. I was sure, being a clergyman with a quiet taste, that you’d rather not know he was so circussy underneath. And he was dirt cheap. Piebald or plain, he was dirt cheap.”
“I know that,” said Andy, “but what I object to is the dishonest dissimulation – yes, I can call it nothing else, dishonest dissimulation on your part.”
“I did it for the best,” said Sam with humble simplicity. “I wanted you to have a good pony and a cheap pony, and not to be bothered thinking if it was fit for a clergyman’s household or not, and I did it all for the best. But I made a mistake. I ought to have been more straighterer.”
“Is there anything else” – Andy paused for a word – “unusual about the animal?”
Sam scratched his chin and replied with reluctance —
“Well – there’s just one thing – he waltzes when he hears a band. Only there never is a band.”
“I should like to know,” said Andy, rising and standing in a dignified attitude with a hand on a book, “what you got out of this transaction?”
Then Sam threw himself, as it were, upon Andy’s mercy, and looked his master straight in the eye, with an honesty indescribable.
“I’ll be straight with you,” he said. “The man offered me half a crown, and I took it.”
He omitted to mention the other seventeen and six, because he felt that was between himself and the landlord of the Blue Tiger, where much of it had been expended, but he did, after a great deal of fumbling in a dingy pocket, produce a half-crown.
“Here it is,” he said in a voice charged with manly feeling. “You take it, sir. It justly belongs to you.”
“I don’t want your half-crown,” said Andy hastily.
“And I can easily sell the pony and trap for what you gave,” pursued Sam. “Hall, the butcher at Millsby, wants one for his wife. He’d jump at it.”
“Well, I’ll think the matter over,” said Andy. “You can go.”
But when he was alone the hot tea began to stimulate him, and he had a very pleasant sensation of repose after all the fresh air, following his sleepless night, and his depression suddenly lifted in that odd way which every one recognises who suffers from it at all. It is as if a cloud passed away from the spirit.
So Andy began to see that the end of everything was not come because he could not see Elizabeth for twenty-four hours. Then he remembered how the little pony had trotted on through the sunshine and through the rain like the game little creature it was, and he began to feel the first stirring of that affection which a decent man has for the horse or the dog that serves him faithfully. No, he would keep the pony, though it was such a secular-looking little animal, and he would go out now to see if the hot mash had been administered.
He stuffed a few lumps of sugar from the basin into his pocket, and went out into the stables, where he found Sam. He was afraid Sam would have to go after all.
“Enjoying his feed, sir. Not a penny the worse,” said the culprit with a sort of chastened pleasantness.
Then he glanced at the cream-coloured spots and his mouth began to twitch, and he caught Andy’s eye, and Andy’s mouth was twitching too, and before they knew where they were, the big echoing stable was ringing with uproarious laughter.
“Beg pardon, sir, but it sort o’ came over me how funny it was,” gasped Sam, wiping his eyes. “When I see you drive in – all piebald – when you’d gone out plain brown – you might have knocked me down with a feather.”
Andy wiped his eyes, too, and pulled himself together.
“You ought not to have lied about it, Sam. Why did you say the pony was struck by lightning?”
Sam rubbed the back of his head and eyed Andy apologetically.
“It was a silly thing to say. But I had to say something. And it jumped out of itself.”
“It is a sad pity that lies should jump out so easily,” said Andy, trying to erase the memory of that unclerical laughter.
“It is, sir,” agreed Sam. “I’ve often thought so myself.”
After that Andy returned to the house and slept, and woke up stiff for evensong, and came back from the church to dress for dinner at the Stamfords’, where he had promised to go that evening.
It already seemed so long a time since he had talked to Elizabeth in the sunshine that he could scarcely believe it was only yesterday.