IT was the day of the luncheon-party at the Vicarage, and the Vicar sat
in solemn conclave with his lady-cook-housekeeper.
“Then you really think boilers?” he said anxiously.
“I ordered boilers, so they’ll have to be,” said Mrs. Jebb, with the air
of a person rather at the end of her tether. “We agreed that with white
sauce and grated egg and lemon slices you could make boiled fowls look
more dressy than plain roast.”
“Of course, of course,” said Andy hastily, wishing to keep her in a good
temper until the great day was over. “Stupid of me to have forgotten
that. And the asparagus”—he hardly dared it, but he did—“I suppose
you’re quite accustomed to cooking asparagus?”
“Any one can cook asparagus,” said Mrs. Jebb coldly. “I haven’t cooked
it, because we never had it when I was a girl at home, and Mr. Jebb
didn’t like it. But it’s boiled with plain water.”
“_And_ melted butter served with it,” suggested Andy.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Jebb.
“I think we’d better not have any waiting,” continued Andy. “Sophy”
(Sophy was the small maid) “will hardly be up to it, eh? And is there
anything else that you can think of, Mrs. Jebb? Being a lady yourself,
you will understand——”
Mrs. Jebb thawed a little and considered dramatically, with her finger
to her brow.
“Let’s see. What did we do when we entertained at ‘The Laurels’ in Mr.
Jebb’s lifetime? Scented soap. Clean towels. Black and white pins. Ah,
there’s one thing I have forgotten—if you really wish to provide
all—but in a bachelor’s household they would never——” She paused
tantalisingly.
“What is it?” demanded Andy. “Anything I can——”
“Well, perhaps it’s hardly a subject to mention to an unmarried
gentleman,” hesitated Mrs. Jebb; “but if you want everything to be
complete you ought to provide face powder. It’s always done. Ladies come
in warm, or flustered, or shiny about the nose, and a dash of powder
means everything to them.”
“But there’s none to be bought in Gaythorpe,” said Andy, cast down at
the omission.
“Yes, there is. Go to the grocer’s and ask for a box of violet powder
the same as he keeps for babies. That’ll do quite well,” said Mrs. Jebb.
“Oh, I can’t,” said Andy.
“Well, neither Sophy nor I have time to go,” said Mrs. Jebb, “and it
doesn’t really matter at——”
“If it’s the right thing to have I’ll go and fetch it,” interposed Andy
desperately, which shows once more what any man—even a new vicar, who
thinks he knows nearly everything—will do for the Beloved before he
gets her.
It was disappointing that the Atterton girls did not enter the
guest-chamber prepared for them with such care, after all, but laid
their sunshades and dust-coats down in the hall.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to wash your hands?” urged Andy, thinking
of the black and white pins, scented soap, and violet powder.
“Mine are quite clean. I don’t know about Elizabeth’s,” said Norah, with
her little smile, marching into the dining-room, followed by her brother
Bill.
“Mamma was so sorry not to be able to come at the last minute,”
apologised Elizabeth. “But she is not very well to-day.”
“She took the schoolmaster’s words to heart the night of the dancing
class and ‘wanted to willow,’” said Norah. “At least she wanted to
willow more than she did. So she started some sort of treatment—hot
water—strict diet—and it has upset her.”
“It wasn’t the treatment that upset the mater,” said Bill, with a grin;
“it was the way she broke loose last night to make up for a week of
fasting. I watched her.”
That was how they talked about their mother, and yet it was strikingly
evident in every word they spoke how they loved her and one another. An
atmosphere of invincible family affection surrounded the Attertons like
a glow of firelight—as if they were always gathered in spirit round a
cheerful hearth.
“Father’s in Marshaven, gloating over a new row of red-brick houses,”
said Norah. “But you knew he couldn’t come? He has a magistrates’
meeting at Bardswell to-day as well.”
“Oh, here are Mrs. Stamford and Dick,” said Bill.
Voices were heard from the hall.
“No, thank you,” in Mrs. Stamford’s croaky, distinct voice.
Mrs. Jebb in a vague, persuasive undertone.
“No, my dear woman, I can’t and won’t wash my hands again. Do you think
they’re as dirty as my gloves?”
Indeed, as the Squire’s wife came forward to greet her host, it could be
plainly seen that her wash-leather gloves had known long and faithful
service.
“Your housekeeper nearly pushed me up the stairs,” she said indignantly
to Andy. “What’s she mean by it?”
“Well, Mr. Deane seemed rather anxious _we_ should wash our hands,”
laughed Norah, coming carelessly to Andy’s assistance. “I know what it
is. The Vicarage is sacred, and you wash your hands when you enter in
the same way as you take off your shoes at the door of a mosque.”
“The—the fact is,” said Andy, “Mrs. Jebb has made everything as smart
as she could upstairs, and I expect she wanted you to see.”
“Oh, poor thing! I say, Mrs. Stamford, let us go after all. She’ll be so
disappointed,” said Elizabeth.
“I’ll come too, if you like,” suggested Dick, whose conception of wit
was rather elemental.
“Don’t be foolish, Dick,” said his mother, who actually enjoyed his
jokes because they showed his frequent moods of sullen discontent had
lifted for the time being.
Then they all went out and returned in five minutes, Norah’s nose being
conspicuously white.
“You see we’ve used _all_ the luxuries you provided,” she said.
Andy gave an involuntary chuckle, for the coating of coarse, white
violet powder had such an odd effect on her little nose, contrasted with
her delicate face. Then all the others began to laugh too—Mrs. Stamford
because the rest did, and she wished to be a sort of jolly-good-fellow
with her son’s friends. It was really almost grotesque to see this woman
run counter to every instinct but that of mother-love in order to please
her boy—at least it would have been grotesque if it had not been almost
tragic.
But a violent irritation was produced in her by the effort, all the
same, and she turned sharply to Bill Atterton.
“When do you start work?”
“In October. At least I’m supposed to be reading with old Banks and
Bardswell now, but I go up to Cambridge in October.”
“Hum,” said Mrs. Stamford. “Well, it’s time you did. You are getting too
stout. Face of fourteen and figure of forty.”
The Atterton girls laughed and took it all in good part—they were so
used to shafts of that kind flying about the family—but it hit Bill on
his most tender spot.
“I can return the compliment,” he said, with a pleasant smile. “Now, you
have the figure of sixteen and the face of sixty.”
They all involuntarily glanced at Mrs. Stamford’s spare, angular form
and weather-beaten face, and found it too true to trifle with.
“What nonsense,” said Norah, with a lightning glance at Bill.
“Ha-ha! I call it rather good,” laughed Dick Stamford.
Mrs. Stamford laughed too, with him; but something pulled tight inside
of her. So that was how she looked to her son!
Then they all began to cast surreptitious glances at the clock, and Andy
saw that it was already ten minutes past two, though the guests had been
invited for one-thirty. The anxious host began to fidget about the room
and give distracted replies, and the conversation grew more desultory
than ever.
“So this is Mrs. Simpson’s sideboard,” said Norah. “How dreadful in this
room! And how weak of you! Don’t you hate it?”
Andy caught sight of Elizabeth’s averted face and for a moment forgot
all about the lateness of the luncheon. She was thinking the same thing
as he was thinking. Glorious moment!
“_Don’t_ you hate it?” repeated Norah.
“No, I—er—sort of like it now,” said Andy.
Then a faint colour crept up the bloomy cream of Elizabeth’s cheek to
her ear, and Andy could not help trying to make her turn towards him
with a futile, “What do you think of it, Miss Elizabeth?”
“Oh, it’s hideous! But there’s something I rather like about it too,”
said Miss Elizabeth demurely.
Then the little maid appeared in the doorway with an expression which
would have made the most obtuse hostess on earth remember that she had
forgotten her handkerchief and go hastily in search of it. But Andy,
being a man, only glared vacantly at her and wondered what she wanted.
She whispered a ‘Sir’ so hoarse with nervousness that no one could hear
it, and then in despair she beckoned with her forefinger.
“I think,” suggested Elizabeth apologetically, “that your maid——”
“What is it? Luncheon ready? Then bring it in,” commanded Andy.
But the child shook her head hopelessly and tears appeared in her
goggling blue eyes. A sound as of wood crackling and a range roaring,
with all dampers out, came through the open door behind her.
“What is it?” asked Andy again, with some impatience.
“She said I was to tell in private, but you won’t _be_ private,” burst
forth the maid, half crying and finding her voice at last “The asparagus
won’t cook. We’ve been feeding the fire since twelve with all the
firewood there is, and the soft end is boiled to a mush, but the hard
end’s as hard as ever it was. You’ll have to do without it.”
Then she flung up her apron and clattered back to the kitchen.
“It’s really most——” began Andy, pale with annoyance, striding towards
the door.
But Bill caught hold of a flying coat-tail.
“Easy on,” he said. “She couldn’t help it. She’s done”—he paused, then
burst out into an irresistible guffaw—“she’s done her best!”
“It’s very kind of you to make a joke——” began Andy again, when Norah
remarked—
“_Make_ a joke! You couldn’t _make_ a joke like that!”
And the whole party, excepting Mrs. Stamford, laughed with such
infectious gaiety that the agitated host at last joined in.
However, the little maid now reappeared bearing the chickens, which were
so elegant in their white sauce and golden egg and green parsley that
Andy felt comforted.
“Nothing I like so much as a boiled chicken,” said Elizabeth, assuming
an air of greedy expectation.
“I always maintain,” said Bill, “that if you ask the King to lunch and
give him a fowl, he’s all right.”
“I expect that’s what you gave him, last time he lunched with you, eh?”
chaffed Dick Stamford.
Andy took no part in the conversation. He was too much engaged in
carving, and being at no time an expert, he failed to find the joints of
the fowls and cut slices from various parts. It required a silent
concentration of mind and muscle to sever the legs, of which in cooler
moments he would have been incapable.
At last, however, everybody was served, and he sat down, bathed in
perspiration, to talk about the weather. He had already done so twice
over, but he could think of nothing else. He forgot to give himself any
chicken, and ate potatoes agitatedly with a knife and fork.
“One wonders if this weather can possibly last,” he said, unconsciously
grasping at the manner of the senior curate in his emergency. “It will
be a providence for the farmers if it continues to——”
His voice slackened—stopped. He glanced from one guest to the other. No
one had even touched their chicken.
“I hope——” he began.
Then Mrs. Stamford, as it were, stepped forward.
“We’re so very sorry. No doubt your cook, being from the town, is
accustomed to have the fowls ready prepared.” She paused.
“I got these from Mrs. Werrit. Usually we have them from Mrs. Thorpe,”
said Andy hopelessly.
“In summer,” continued Mrs. Stamford, “it is usual about here to send
the poultry home not drawn—it keeps better so.”
“Not drawn,” echoed Andy vaguely, all at sea.
Then Bill took hold of the situation.
“The old girl’s boiled ’em with their insides in,” he explained.
“I thought,” said Andy, staring wide-eyed from one to the other, “that
there was _something_ funny. But I never dreamed of anything as bad as
this.”
“Mrs. Jebb’ll die. She’s so refined,” said Dick Stamford, trying to turn
the thoughts of his host from his own despair.
“She deserves to die,” said Andy with extreme bitterness.
The Beloved for the first time under his roof—and he had offered her
this! If he had been a woman he would have wept.
“Poor Mrs. Jebb! She decorated them so beautifully. She tried so hard,”
murmured Elizabeth.
“I must say I’m sorry for the woman. It will never be forgotten in
Gaythorpe so long as Gaythorpe exists,” said Norah.
“Look here,” said Bill. “It is rough on the poor old thing. She’s tried
her best. Let’s bury the bits in the garden, and she’ll think we’ve
eaten them, and we’ll say nothing about it.”
“Ridiculous!” said Mrs. Stamford. “Personally I like bread and cheese
for lunch better than anything, so I am going to help myself from that
Gorgonzola on the sideboard.”
But the idea of burying the lunch in the garden struck the Atterton
family as novel and delightful. And when they were in certain moods
there was no withstanding them; so a procession headed by Mrs. Stamford
and closed by Andy, each person bearing a plate, actually did creep with
caution through the French window of the dining-room.
“A spade,” whispered Bill, to whom the whole thing had already become a
thrilling adventure.
“Here’s one,” replied Andy in the same tone; he was gradually warming to
the spirit of it all and forgetting his despair. “That’s a good place
under the gooseberry bushes.”
“You’ll have some juicy ones next year,” suggested Dick Stamford.
“Now,” said Norah. “We must do the thing in proper style. Mrs.
Stamford—you first. Mr. Deane—you didn’t take any.”
“Wise chap. Knew better,” said Dick.
Andy lifted an anxious face from the hole under the gooseberry bushes.
“You surely don’t think——” he began, aghast.
“Rubbish. Of course not. Here, Elizabeth, pop in your lot,” said Norah
briskly, but in a guarded tone, and with an eye on the windows of the
house. “Give me the spade. I’ll pat him down. Now, let’s creep back to
the house. Oh, isn’t it lovely? Don’t you feel as if you had murdered
somebody and just been burying the body?”
They sat down again before empty plates, and Andy, half amused and half
rueful, paused with a hand on the bell.
“Shall I ring now?”
“Yes, yes. We’re all ready,” said the young people excitedly.
So the little maid came in and began to remove the plates in her usual
clattering style. But when she had gathered four in a heap on her tray,
her blue eyes began to goggle again, and by the time she had amassed the
lot they seemed ready to fall out of her head with some incomprehensible
emotion; or a mixture of emotions. For horror, surprise, and admiration
were all mingled in the final goggle which she cast upon the party as
she retired from the room.
In an incredibly brief space of time, considering she had to put on a
clean apron, Mrs. Jebb appeared bearing a dish of stewed raspberries and
cream. The little maid followed close behind her, as if for protection,
and they both now wore the queer mingled expression, complicated, in
Mrs. Jebb’s case, by the most acute and lively curiosity.
She had sworn never to wait, and held any form of “waiting” to be
beneath the dignity of a lady-cook-housekeeper, but curiosity is a
passion stronger than pride, and she glanced hastily round the room,
searching the sideboard, the side-table, the window-seat, even the
floor.
Then an imperceptible nod passed between her and the little maid—but it
expressed columns of close newspaper print—and they retired backwards
together, both now goggling alike upon the company and closing the door
with an odd reluctance, as if they shut in some fascinating horror.
The guests feigned to be unconscious of this singular behaviour, though
Mrs. Stamford really began to feel as if she were having lunch in a
nightmare, and it was Andy himself who spluttered out, purple with
suppressed laughter—
“They think we’ve eaten the b-bones!”
“The _what_?” cried Bill.
Then a light kindled from one face to the other until they all sat in a
blaze of hilarious comprehension.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
The young laughter pealed out through the open windows, and across the
garden as far as the quiet place where old Gulielmus lay asleep—but it
made no discordance there, because it only sang in the long grass above
his head, the jolly creed of his lifetime: “Laugh when you can, and cry
when you can’t, and trust God to make all right at the finish.”
“Don’t know why I’m going on like this,” said Norah, wiping her eyes.
“It’s never the funny things that do split your sides,” said Bill. “It’s
always something just idiotic.”
“That little maid of yours thought we were going to crunch _her_ bones
next,” gasped Elizabeth.
Then they all started again. Again the young laughter pealed out over
the quiet graves, saying “Life’s a jolly thing!” and there was, in that
moment, an atmosphere in the room which seemed made up of beauty and
hope and simple merriment.
Oddly enough, Andy himself suddenly thought of the grave beyond the yew
hedge. It was almost as if Gulielmus had answered back that message of
laughter with a splendid, “And death’s also jolly.”
But, of course, all this passed sub-consciously through Andy’s mind, and
the only definite thought that reached him was embodied in his casual—
“There was another bachelor vicar here in 1687. A man called Will Ford.”
“I wonder if he gave luncheon parties,” laughed Elizabeth.
“Oh, he’d give anything that was going, would Will Ford,” said Andy,
smiling back at her.
But, oddly enough, he felt as if he were talking of his friend to the
woman he loved.
“I’ve had a splendid lunch,” said Mrs. Stamford, rising. “Haven’t eaten
so much for years.”
“I’d no idea bread and butter and cheese were so delicious,” said
Elizabeth. “It shows we always eat them at the wrong end of a meal.”
“Never enjoyed a luncheon-party so much in my life,” said Bill. “Hate
’em as a rule,” he added, rather dimming the compliment.
“Great sport,” condescended Dick Stamford, helping Elizabeth on with her
coat. He did not talk much to her, but he was usually somewhere near
her.
Andy stood, looking from one to the other, half proud and half dubious.
“I’m glad—if you really did—awfully good of you to be so kind about
it.”
“And now,” said Norah, “we shall have a most delightfully ghoulish
reputation in Gaythorpe village. The bone-eaters—to be seen almost any
day free of charge—ladies and gentlemen—please walk up!”
“I shall inform Mrs. Jebb,” began Andy anxiously.
“If you do, I’ll never speak to you again—nor Elizabeth either,” she
added, with something far too delicate to be called a wink—and yet—
Andy blushed.
“Of course—if you’d rather not——”
Then he remembered he had said that to Elizabeth about the parrot
secret, and blushed still more deeply, and could have kicked himself for
blushing at all.
Norah’s lips curled in that odd little smile of hers that did not show
her teeth, and her eyes twinkled maliciously.
“I should be greatly annoyed, and I’m sure you wouldn’t annoy me for the
world, would you, Mr. Deane?”
“N-no,” said Andy, puzzled what on earth she was driving at.
But if he had been behind the two sisters as they walked up the drive to
their own house that evening he might have felt enlightened—or he might
not.
“It was fun at Gaythorpe Vicarage, wasn’t it?” said Norah blandly.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Are you going to Bardswell to-morrow or——”
“Elizabeth!” interrupted Norah. “Surely you’re not going to be so
silly?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Elizabeth.
“I mean,” responded Norah, “that you’d better remember life at a country
vicarage isn’t all laughing at nothing and burying boiled fowl under a
gooseberry bush.”
“I never thought it was,” said Elizabeth somewhat shortly. “Oh, here’s
father!”
And she greeted her parent with quite unusual effusion.