THE year was just at that most pleasant pause between hay-time and
harvest, and the Vicarage brooded in the sun amongst the full-leaved
trees like an architectural embodiment of repose. Quiet joys seemed to
cluster round its broad windows like the roses, and a very faint
‘Coo-coo!’ from the pigeons in Mr. Thorpe’s yard sounded like a lullaby
heard only by the soul—something too deeply peaceful to be real.
And in spite of all that, there were three broken hearts, or cracked
hearts—anyway, hearts not in a comfortable condition—under that very
roof.
For Elizabeth had receded, mentally and physically, to a remote
distance. She first departed to some inaccessible region in a sort of
glory of white draperies and careless smiles when Andy caught sight of
her in the window-seat across the blank distance of her mother’s
drawing-room. It seemed then incredibly audacious that he could ever
have dreamed what he had dreamed.
In addition to which she had actually gone to stay with an aunt for a
week, a fact of which Andy was unaware; and he haunted the lanes where
he had sometimes met her in the past with so sad a countenance, that
such of his parishioners as met him reported it was true—he _had_
ruined his stomach with over-eating—no young feller with a good house
and a decent income would go about like that if he could digest his
food. There was no doubt a very good reason for his abstaining from
butter, as Mrs. Jebb told Miss Kirke he continued to do.
Then Mrs. Jebb herself. She also suffered—not from blighted affection
exactly, but from a blight upon certain vague hopes which were ready to
ripen into affection. It was, she had felt on coming to the Vicarage,
notorious that young men _did_, in the present age, often marry women
old enough to be their maiden aunts; and though Mr. Jebb still loomed
monumental in her heart, she had a large heart, and there was plenty of
room for another occupant. So she went about her work with a certain
romantic melancholy that was not unpleasant, and her sighs were like the
wind rushing sadly through those empty spaces which Andy declined to
fill. She was short with the little maid, however, during those days, to
a degree that would have caused Sophy to rebel if she had not been so
full of her own concerns, and inclined to disregard a universe on
account of a blue silk tie presented to another young lady.
So, by the day previous to the school-treat, there was a charged
atmosphere at Gaythorpe Vicarage, which only required a match to make it
explode; and the match was provided by Mrs. Jebb in the shape of a
gingerbread pudding, which she had absently sweetened with carbonate of
soda, instead of sugar.
Andy rang the bell.
“Take this stuff away,” he said. “It is not fit for human food. Tell
Mrs. Jebb I wish to speak to her.”
But in the five minutes which elapsed before she appeared, Andy’s wrath
began to cool, and, unfortunately, his courage cooled with it, so that
the dignified and stern rebuke which had been waiting for her at the
moment of tasting the pudding petered out on her arrival into a rather
feeble—
“I say, Mrs. Jebb, this won’t do, you know. You really must cook better
than this.”
“When I entered your service,” said Mrs. Jebb, whom Sophy had not spared
in her recital of the message, “I expected to be treated very
differently from what I have been in many ways. I never expected to be
sent for by cheeky maid-servants, in a manner”—she paused, gulped, and
concluded—“that no gentleman should send for a lady in.”
“It’s not only the pudding,” said Andy, nettled afresh by this want of a
proper attitude, “it’s your cooking altogether. You must see that.”
But Mrs. Jebb’s interview with the triumphant Sophy had left her in a
state of mind that allowed her to see nothing but a mist, through which
Andy’s boyish, reproving face loomed as a last irritation. She wanted to
box his ears, but replied instead—
“If you are not satisfied, I will go. Pray accept my notice from this
day forth.”
Feeling vaguely that she had given notice in a dignified, Biblical
manner suited to her position as housekeeper at a vicarage, she walked
from the room.
But when she reached the door the air blew in from the garden, and a
little shower of rose-leaves fluttered down through the sunshine. She
stopped short with a sudden stunned contraction of the heart.
What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? Had she been mad?
She passed a handkerchief over her forehead and came back slowly into
the room.
“I apologise,” she said breathlessly. “My temper got the better of me.
Pray think no more about it.”
Andy turned round from the window.
“I think we will not discuss the matter further,” he said. “Please
consider your resignation accepted.”
He was pleased now at the thought of getting rid of her—though if she
had not given notice, he would have kept her for an indefinite period,
with a man’s usual dislike for any change in his domestic arrangements.
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Jebb, gathering some remnants of dignity round
her, “it must, of course, be as you wish.”
She attempted to flutter with her usual light air towards the door, but
just before she reached it she stopped short and began to cry.
“Come, Mrs. Jebb,” said Andy, unable to leave well alone, “you gave me
notice, you know. And you’ll find heaps of other places.”
“Where?” said Mrs. Jebb, turning on him with a sort of desperate
sincerity that made all her foolish little affectations fall from her
like a mantle, leaving the real woman—old, defenceless, incapable—so
nakedly plain for Andy to see that he felt almost ashamed.
“Lady-cooks,” he murmured—“there’s a constant demand for lady-cooks.”
“I’m not very strong,” sobbed Mrs. Jebb. “I couldn’t take an ordinary
place. No—I shall have to go back to my brother—and his wife——”
“Well, that will be pleasanter for you—with relations,” suggested Andy
cheerfully.
Then the bitterness of the unwanted—which is no less terrible because
they do not deserve to be wanted—gripped Mrs. Jebb’s soul and made her
jerk out in breathless sentences—
“Pleasant! To sit down to meals all the rest of your life where you have
to say you don’t like anything tasty because there’s never enough for
three!”
Well, it was no reason for retaining an incompetent housekeeper, but
there is something so helplessly touching about every real self, when
the outside self which hides it fades away, that no wonder Andy said,
after a pause—
“All right, Mrs. Jebb. Have another go and see how you manage.”
For a moment longer Mrs. Jebb’s real self remained visible while she
leaned her head on the door-post and mopped her eyes in speechless
relief and thankfulness; then it disappeared, and she patted her fringe
with a fluttered—
“How foolish of me! But I have become so attached to Gaythorpe. I am so
delighted that our little misunderstanding has been cleared up. I am so
glad you spoke candidly, Mr. Deane. I hope you always will in future if
there is any little matter you don’t like.”
And she tripped into the hall with something of her old airiness.
An hour later Andy was bending over the plantains on the lawn in the
front part of the garden, facing the road, and two women passed by on
the other side of the hedge without seeing him.
“Nice house, I allus think.”
“Yes. Rare thing being Parson Andy.” Then they passed on, and their
Vicar saw through a hole in the hedge that it was the meek and
respectful Mrs. Burt who had spoken.
He ground his teeth. Parson Andy, indeed! Then the undignified
abbreviation was going to dog him to his dying day.
It was the last straw—he flung down his spud and stalked into the
house.
* * * * *
Nothing in life is more interesting and queer than the way in which
every trifling event fits into and influences the rest.
For instance—Andy fell in love.
That made him feel a new chivalry and kindness towards all girls,
particularly towards those who lived in his own parish. It may have been
ridiculous, or it may not, but he became secretly proud of their fresh
looks and jealous of their honour, like an elder brother. Several of
them sang in the choir-gallery whose families attended chapel, and, one
way or another, he knew nearly every one in the parish by now, as a
country parson will in old-fashioned places. So when one of those
regrettable incidents occurred which happen in all country parishes, he
was inclined to forget his casual knowledge of such affairs in London,
and to look on the thing as a personal outrage.
It was no longer a vague girl who had taken a wrong turning, but a
definite Gladys Wilton, whose life was spoilt, and a John Wilton,
shepherd, who went sorrowful and shamed.
Falling in love with Elizabeth, therefore, had made girls sacred to her
lover, and that is rather a fine thing to say of Elizabeth.
The other events at work in Andy when he encountered the author of the
misfortune in a lonely lane were, the difference with Mrs. Jebb, the
“Parson Andy” of the two women passing the hedge, and, in the immediate
present, a meeting with a big young man instead of the eagerly expected
Elizabeth, who was still away from home, though Andy did not know it.
He had walked miles, scanning the fields and lanes round her house in
vain, but not venturing to call. So he was feeling tired, and irritable,
and more in love than ever. And the events mentioned pushed him on into
a course of action which he would otherwise not have taken.
The young man, too, was looking very jolly, with a pipe in his mouth and
a good bicycle and every evidence of self-satisfied prosperity.
“Afternoon!” he said rather insolently, with a smirk that irritated Andy
still further. He had been asked by old Wilton to speak to the young
man, and he suddenly made up his mind that he would speak now.
“Stop!” he cried. “May I have a word with you?”
So they entered into a conversation which began all right, but ended, as
it was bound to do under the circumstances, by Andy calling the young
man a coward, and the young man calling Andy a blanked, interfering
parson, who only dared to say things like that because he knew he
wouldn’t have to fight.
“I don’t mind a fight,” said Andy, beginning to go white about the nose
and to breathe heavily.
No one, of course, could maintain for one moment that Andy was the right
sort of parson.
“All very well to talk,” sneered the young man, sticking a crimson face
close to Andy’s. “Do, then I’ll believe you! Parsons”—(he used
adjectives)—“we’ll soon have done with parsons in this country” (and he
used adjectives again).
“I’ll fight you,” said Andy slowly, “if you’ll promise to marry her if I
win.”
“If you win, I will,” panted the young man. “I can safely promise that.
But you daren’t. You’ll get me to start and have me up for assault. I
know you.”
He thrust his face so near that his rough moustache tickled Andy’s nose
and that was enough.
Andy began to take off his coat.
Then, for a few moments, ensued an unseemly and unchristian scene which
no friend of the Vicar of Gaythorpe would wish to dwell on.
According to all the laws of fiction Andy ought to have come off
victorious, but, as a matter of fact, he was badly beaten, and it was
only by a fluke that he managed to give his opponent a black eye in
return for his own damaged wrist.
The big young man silently watched him struggling to put on his coat,
then, with a hand over the injured eye, assisted him into it.
“Do you know I’m the best boxer for ten miles round?” he asked grimly.
“I—I believe I’d heard so,” replied Andy, still very confused and
hardly knowing what he said.
“And you made no more of going for me than as if I’d been a
counter-jumper?” continued the young man.
“I forgot,” said Andy. “However——” and he began to trudge on, very
much ashamed of himself.
“Look here,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you a thing I didn’t mean
to. There wasn’t no need for you to fight me about Gladys. I promised
the old man last night I would marry her. But I wasn’t going to tell you
that when you started jawing me.”
“I see,” said Andy. “Well, I’m glad,” and he started to plod on again,
very shaky about the knees.
“Look here,” said the young man, following him, “you’re not fit to walk
home. I gave you a doing, I did. Here’s my bike.”
Andy looked at him and he looked at Andy, and the virile souls of both
met in that look and, in a sense, shook hands.
“Thanks,” said Andy, mounting the bicycle.
“I say,” the young man shouted after him, “we were going to be married
at the registry in Bardswell, but you can marry us if you like.”
“All right,” Andy called back over his shoulder.