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.
Again he paused, appearing to say to the blank universe, “This is
actually a stile. Stiles are made to sit upon. I will sit.”
Thus he waited for his girl to pass, by a sort of logical sequence,
which impressed the sparrows very much, and quite allayed any undue
curiosity on the part of the fieldmice.
But Sam Petch, being neither a sparrow nor a fieldmouse, peeped through
the holly bush and wondered.
Then he saw Elizabeth coming along, and he did not wonder any longer,
but he did wish Andy good luck, for he had a sort of generosity, had
young Sam Petch, and a sort that is rarer than it seems—he could be
glad that somebody else was enjoying a treat while he had to work.
But all the same he chuckled to himself at the thought that Andy was
going without butter, and he had no scruples whatever about drinking all
he could afford to pay for, as usual; for he considered that his master
had interfered with the most sacred right of a Briton—the right to get
drunk on beer—and that the punishment exquisitely fitted the crime.
Still, he was growing fond of Andy, and he gazed after him through the
hole in the holly bush with a benevolent eye.
“Gosh, I could put him up to a thing or two! He doesn’t know how to
begin. Squeeze ’er ’and, squeeze ’er ’and, you young ijiot!”
And he quite danced with impatience behind the holly bush at the
respectful brevity of his master’s salute.
Then the young couple went sedately down the lane, and Sam Petch
strolled back to his work, remarking scornfully, “I could do better than
that when I was fifteen.”
He would have been more scornful still if he could have walked behind
them, for Andy knew, and Elizabeth knew, and both knew the other knew,
that this was not a chance meeting. It was, for both of them, the first
definite step upon that journey which leads to the mysterious City of
Wedded Love.
It lay before them, as it does before every young lover—strange,
wonderful, and yet with familiar streets that we all know by name—an
enchanted muddle of realism and romance.
“I think it’s going to rain,” remarked Andy, but, of course, his heart
said, “How sweet you are—sweeter even than I thought!”
And Elizabeth replied—
“Yes, the glass has gone down,” but, of course, she really said, and
Andy understood, “I’m glad to be here with you.”
Then for a little while they walked along saying nothing at all, because
that had been so tremendous. Only Andy’s young body worshipped the
exquisite harmony of his lady—cream gown, skin of that peach-like shade
that has no name, golden eyes, and pure, burning sunlight in the brown
of her hair.
And his soul worshipped the kindness of her voice and the clear candour
of the girl’s eyes.
Oh, he was in love, body and soul, was Parson Andy.
He would never have believed that Norah was really far the better
looking of the two sisters, with lovely features, graceful figure, and
perfect colouring, which left nothing for the imagination of a lover to
idealise, while Elizabeth’s charm must always be, to a certain extent,
in the eye of the beholder.
However, old Sam Petch, in his little shanty at the fag-end of the
village, gave a description of his friend Elizabeth, which was perhaps
correct, though not refined. “She’s just a niceish-looking lass,” he
said; “no beauty, though.” Then he paused, pulled at his pipe, and
winked at Andy, who was his visitor. “Bud, howivver,” he added, “she’s a
cuddlesome one, she is.”
Andy had replied with cold dignity at the time, but he thought of it
now, as he walked near Elizabeth—he thought of it to the exclusion of
all the brilliant things he meant to have said to Her.
“Here we are,” said he, opening the gate of young Sam Petch’s garden.
“Oh yes, here we are,” echoed Elizabeth, who really was rather an
intelligent talker as a rule.
But the ‘we’ she echoed was the second step—the enchanted muddle was
that glorious much nearer—and they could find no words in face of such
a view.
“How-do-you-do, Mrs. Petch?” said Elizabeth at last; then she glanced
round for the next remark, quite forgetting what she had come for.
“And how are your legs to-day, Mrs. Petch?” said Andy, hiding his
emotions under an expression of overdone sympathy. Then he felt a lady’s
legs were perhaps not subjects to mention before Elizabeth, and added
with incoherent haste, “But, of course, it’s heads the heat affects.
Sunstroke. Most dangerous thing!”
Mrs. Petch glanced at the poor ostrich trying to stick _his_ head in the
sand.
“My uncle had sunstroke,” she said, helping to bury his wriggling
extremities with a sort of tolerant contempt.
“Mr. Deane and I have been talking about the change in the weather ever
since we met by accident in the lane,” remarked Elizabeth, with a little
laugh. “It really is quite remarkable.”
“Indeed it is, miss. Fine to-day and dull to-morrow, as you may say,”
assented Mrs. Petch cordially, casting a little sand over the other
ostrich, but asking herself scornfully what they took her for.
Finally, Elizabeth remembered the purpose of her visit, and looking
round the room for an absent bird-cage, she said hastily—
“William’s not dead, is he?”
“Why, no, miss; William’s a lot better, only he has to be kept quiet.
Sam saw the bird-fancier when he went into Bardswell on Saturday, and he
said perfect quiet was the thing. It just fell out lucky, Mr. Deane
giving Sam the afternoon off to go and sell an old clock that the
second-hand dealer’s been wanting so long. Just right it did, for it
gave us a chance to get the best of advice for William. It isn’t,” said
Mrs. Petch, applying the corner of her apron to her left eye, “it isn’t
only what we get with him that makes us so anxious, but me and Sam has
no bairns, and we’re fair soft about him. We love him like a child, that
we do.”
It might have been thought that Mrs. Petch was talking on to ward off
the question she saw trembling on Elizabeth’s lips, but if so, she was
disappointed, for Elizabeth asked at once—
“Where is William? I should like to look at him. Mamma will not be
satisfied if I go away without seeing him.”
“He stands on the dressing-table upstairs in our bedroom window,” said
Mrs. Petch. “That looks out into the garden, and it’s just the place for
him, and he’s scattering seed all over everything; but what do I care,
poor lamb, so long as he gets better? Let him only get himself again,
say I, and no matter——”
“I should like to see him,” said Elizabeth, with a look which her family
would have recognised. Indeed, she possessed rather more than her share
of a quality which her friends called firmness, and her family something
else.
“I really couldn’t take it upon myself with Sam away——” began Mrs.
Petch; then she glanced at Elizabeth’s face, and added reluctantly, “Of
course, miss, if you accept the responsibility——”
“I do,” said Elizabeth. “Shall I go up and see the bird?”
“I haven’t done the room yet,” said Mrs. Petch.
“Then I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to fetch him down,” said
Elizabeth.
Mrs. Petch went slowly upstairs, creaking remonstrance at every step,
and Elizabeth whispered to Andy—
“I’m convinced that William is either dead or dying, and Mrs. Petch is
trying to hide it from us. Don’t you think so?”
Lovely to have her appeal to him, even about a bird with an unpleasant
character. Andy thrilled as he responded baldly, “Seems so.”
But, contrary to all expectations, William appeared to be in excellent
health and feather; he looked better, in fact, than he had done for a
long time. Elizabeth felt ashamed of having suspected the poor woman.
“William,” she murmured. “Poor old William!” and held out a finger. “Is
that tea ready? Is that tea ready?”
But William, for the first time since Elizabeth had known him, failed to
echo that familiar remark. He refused to whistle, to draw corks, to cry
“Cat”—to do anything at all that he had been in the habit of doing for
the past twenty years.
“That’s it!” said Mrs. Petch desperately. “I daren’t tell you. I knew
Mrs. Atterton would think we’d been neglecting him, and we never have.
He’s lost his vocaberlery. He can only make a hoarse shriek.”
She threw her apron over her head in a dramatic attitude of despair, and
in that moment the parrot turned so that the light caught three yellow
feathers in his tail.
“Why, William never had a yellow feather before!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
“No,” muttered Mrs. Petch, still hidden in her apron; “it’s the strong
medicine the bird-fancier sent as has done it.”
Elizabeth’s glance met Andy’s rightfully indignant, then both pairs of
eyes began to twinkle, and finally a tide of ridiculous, uncontrollable
laughter rose up within them. They felt it coming, tried to keep it
down, and were overcome by it.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” laughed Elizabeth, clear as a bell.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” laughed Andy in deeper tones, but just as fresh and
jolly.
She put up her hand to wipe her eyes, when, somehow, she caught her
elbow on Andy’s stick and hurt it. Andy instinctively touched her arm,
drew it tighter as they laughed together. Then Mrs. Petch looked out
from under her apron.
“Er—Miss Atterton has hurt her arm,” stammered Andy.
Mrs. Petch’s shrewd little eyes were lowered discreetly as she replied
in a dejected manner—
“You seem to think it _funny_, miss, poor William losing his voice.”
“Well, it isn’t exactly—funny,” said Elizabeth, very red and more
breathless than a fit of laughter should have left a gay young woman.
“It’s more—what you would call peculiar, isn’t it, Mr. Deane?”
She paused, recovered her self-control with a rapidity that astonished
Andy, and added briskly, “I must tell mamma about it; but no doubt his
vocabulary will come back.”
“I doubt it,” said Mrs. Petch. “I doubt it very much.”
Elizabeth walked to the door and said good-bye, but at the last minute
she turned back.
“Mrs. Petch, I think William had better give up taking the medicine that
turns his tail yellow before mamma sees him, don’t you?”
Outside, Norah and the pony-cart were already in sight, so Andy only had
time to murmur hastily—
“I say, you really ought to tell Mrs. Atterton; it’s a shame to let
yourself be done like——”
“Hush!” interrupted Elizabeth. “I am the only person it really matters
to, because the money comes out of my pocket eventually. I inherit my
aunt’s fortune when I am twenty-five, you know.”
“It isn’t a question of money only,” began Andy instructively.
“Then what is it?” laughed Elizabeth. But a glance at his face showed
her that something else must be done, and she put her hand lightly on
his arm.
“Let’s keep it a secret,” she said—“_do_.”—Oh, Elizabeth!
“Well, if you really think——” said Andy.
Then Norah clattered up with the little cart, and Elizabeth got in.