AFTER the dull day and the storm a bright sun broke through the clouds
and slanted in long mellow rays across the wet country. Every flower and
herb gave out scent, and there was a sense of indescribable sweet
freshness in the air as Andy stood at the gate leading into the
Stamfords’ garden, and looked at the village through a gap in the trees.
The little whitewashed houses and red-brick ones, grown lovely with
time, clustered together round the grey church among the trees, in a
bower of small flowery gardens and climbing roses and honeysuckle. Andy
saw then, why some poet once upon a time had looked at it so, and called
it Gaythorpe: though the present generation jeered at the name being
given to a place that was over three miles from a station and had no
modern improvements.
“Gay!” they would say. “Call _this_ gay? Now, Blackpool’s gay, if you
like.”
But Andy walked up to the Stamfords’ door with a very tender feeling in
his heart for the little place that smiled in the sunshine after rain,
with something of the exquisite pathetic radiance of a child laughing
through tears.
From that moment he loved Gaythorpe—the place itself—apart from the
people, or his work amongst them.
When he entered the drawing-room Mrs. Stamford was there alone, as she
had been on the first occasion that he took a meal in the house, and her
appearance in evening dress was just of the same startlingly unfinished
kind as her day attire. By some accident somebody seemed to have thrown
a necklace round her neck and it had remained—but it was quite
impossible to feel that Mrs. Stamford had had anything to do with its
getting there. And her hair was somehow a distinct protest against the
low neck, though it would have been impossible to picture her at that
hour of the day in anything but a low neck.
She glanced out of the window after greeting Andy, and remarked—
“This rain will do old Sam Petch’s garden good. He cried yesterday when
my husband went to see him because his marigolds were dried up. I fear
he is failing at last.”
Andy looked at her, and suddenly he saw too, how the Stamfords and
Gaythorpe were one—welded together by generations of common interests.
It was as natural for Mr. Stamford to drive down to see old Sam Petch as
it was for him to sit in his own garden.
Andy recalled the “visiting of the poor,” which he had heard and seen,
and knew that he was witnessing the last of a vanishing system which may
or may not have been good but was quite certainly beautiful.
“Mr. Stamford takes a great interest in old Sam Petch,” was all Andy
found to say out of these many thoughts.
“Interest!” said Mrs. Stamford. “Why, old Sam worked for my husband’s
grandfather, and he used to make whistles out of cabbage-stalks for Dick
when he was a boy.” She paused. “By the way, I’m so glad you and Dick
are friends.” She paused again. “If there is anything at all you are
wanting for the church or village——”
Andy smiled at her in a way most women would have found pleasant.
“There’s nothing I want. And I’m only too delighted to come up for a
game of billiards whenever your son asks me.”
Another of those unspoken conversations—full of difficult pride and
mother-love on the one side, and touched recognition of it on the
other—but perfectly clear to both.
A very rare colour crept up into Mrs. Stamford’s weather-beaten cheeks.
“He’s all we have,” she said.
“I know,” Andy answered.
Then the other two came in, and they all went through the atmosphere of
reposeful centuries to dinner, when the conversation dragged
sufficiently for Andy to search his mind for a fresh topic, and he
introduced his aunt and cousins with a feeling that this was just what
they would like. And he was quite sure Mrs. Stamford would like them,
for they were social lights fitted to adorn any circle, and such very
stylish dressers.
He did not say this in so many words, but his boyish gratitude to his
aunt and admiration for the Webster girls shone sufficiently clearly
through the remarks he did make to cause Mrs. Stamford’s cordial—
“I shall be delighted if you will bring your aunt and cousins to lunch
with us.”
Andy little knew how seldom such an invitation was issued by his
exclusive hostess, and he was conscious of promising equal enjoyment to
both entertainer and entertained when he replied gratefully—
“Thank you very much. I am sure they would like to come.”
Soon afterwards the two young men adjourned to the billiard-room, while
Mr. Stamford went to his sofa, exhausted by one of his painful and
tedious days which became more frequent as time went on, and Mrs.
Stamford played with determination certain hard pieces on the piano to
distract the invalid, not because they gave her the slightest pleasure,
but because it was the duty of a wife to play music to her sick husband
if she knew how.
Through a series of open doors the sound of correct and metallic “runs”
penetrated even to the billiard-room, and caused Dick Stamford to remark
irreverently—
“There’s the mater giving the poor old dad piano exercise again. She
does believe in keeping things going.”
He was walking to a little table containing whisky and soda and cigars
as he said this, and he raised the whisky decanter, tilted it over the
glass, then paused an irresolute second and put it down with the
remark—
“She’s a good sort, is the mater, all the same.”
Andy turned away his head and answered casually—
“Anybody can tell that.”
But his whole being was filled with a sudden rush of pity and
comprehension and an intense desire to help. He felt he could go on for
ever walking interminable miles round that billiard-table if it could do
any good. He wanted, almost more than he had ever wanted anything in his
life, to do something which should strengthen this weak man for the
fight against such a tremendous enemy. Every instinct of backing the
weak against the strong which had grown with him from boyhood, became
focused and alert. But he could only say, after all—
“I’m sorry I can’t play billiards to-night. I’ve hurt my arm.”
“What a bore! How?” said Dick Stamford.
“Oh, got it strained a bit,” said Andy. “Soon be all right.”
“Well, we’ll have a smoke instead,” said Stamford, drawing a chair to
the empty fireplace and putting his feet on the fender-stool. He was not
in the least drunk, but he had taken enough whisky during the day to
make him confidential and talkative, and he gave Andy to understand that
when he was with the regiment he had enjoyed a gay and lurid past.
“You’re not like some parsons,” he said. “A chap can make a friend of
you. You know there _are_ such things as chorus girls—eh? What?”
“The only ones I ever met were dull,” said Andy.
“Dull!” The bare originality of the suggestion struck Stamford dumb. How
_could_ a chorus girl be dull?
“Too jolly pleased with themselves to have any sort of humour,”
maintained Andy.
“What’s a woman want with a sense of humour?” said Dick Stamford—and it
must be owned that there he spoke for his sex.
“Well—the Atterton girls—they’ve got any amount,” suggested Andy.
Stamford leaned forward in his chair.
“Yes, and between you and me that’s the one thing I don’t like about
’em. Norah, now; you never quite know if she isn’t getting at you.”
“But you can’t say that of Miss Elizabeth,” said Andy.
“No. No, you can’t say that of Elizabeth.” He paused, and added very
confidentially, “I shouldn’t be doing the good little boy as I have been
doing the last eight months if you could say that of her.”
Andy stared at him but said nothing, because he could not—all sorts of
unheeded incidents were crowding into his mind so quickly that he felt
as if it would burst.
“Fact is—I’m on probation. If I behave, I may pay my addresses to Miss
Elizabeth Atterton next October. Old Atterton doesn’t want it, but Mrs.
does, because Elizabeth would live next door, so to speak, instead of
perhaps going off to India or goodness knows where. And I believe the
mater would go straight up to heaven in a sort of bust of thankfulness
if it ever came off. But I’ve promised on my honour to say nothing to
her until next October, so of course I can’t. Rum situation, isn’t it?”
And he drew a long whiff of his cigar and leaned back with the
consciousness of being interesting.
Andy stared at the stove and still said nothing.
“Queer, ain’t it?” said Stamford, a little surprised at this lack of
sympathy.
Then Andy got up.
“Look here,” he said. “I’m in love with Miss Elizabeth Atterton. I want
to marry her.”
Stamford gazed at him with unflattering astonishment.
“You!” he said. “My dear chap—they’d never look at you. Don’t you know
they’re rolling in money and consider those girls Venuses? Why, they
wouldn’t think _me_ good enough, even if I were as steady as you are, if
I didn’t own a place next door.”
“I know I’m a bad match. I know I’m not to ask her,” said Andy.
“Well,” said Stamford with slight alcoholic emotion, “we’ve been pals,
you and I. I never thought you’d go and steal a march on me when my
hands were tied and I couldn’t do anything.”
“I’ve—I’ve sort of half proposed,” said Andy, turning very red. “I must
go on. She’ll think it so dishonourable if I don’t, whether she likes me
or not.”
“Oh, very well,” said Stamford, rising and walking across the room to
the whisky and soda. “You are perfectly within your right, of course.”
He jolted out a stiff glass and drank it off.
Andy’s thoughts ran round and round like a rat in a trap as he sat
watching. Then something in the lad which underlay all his clerical
affectations and easy immaturity rose up and made itself felt. It was
that germ—that something—which has informed the saints of all creeds
and all ages, and with which a very human, faulty man may be a saint,
and without which no man can be.
“If you’ll—if you’ll keep clear of that—I’ll wait,” he said. “We’ll
take an equal chance.”
“What business is it of yours whether I drink or not?” demanded Stamford
violently—only he used other terms which it is unnecessary to repeat.
“And you’d have no earthly chance with her, anyway.”
But certain unnoticed incidents were also crowding into his mind now,
and he was sufficiently in love with Elizabeth to feel outraged at the
thought of any other man proposing to her. He was more in love with her
at that moment, as a matter of fact, than he ever had been before.
“Whether I have any chance or not, I mean to ask her,” said Andy
steadily. “But I’ll play fair. I’ll wait until you are free!”
“I suppose you think you are mighty magnanimous,” replied Stamford
unpleasantly. “Do you propose that we should walk up to the lady
arm-in-arm, and say, ‘Which of us will you have?’”
That was a difficulty which certainly had not presented itself to Andy,
but he grappled with it in a desperate—
“Let’s write then! So that she gets both letters by the same post.”
Stamford kicked the fender-stool in silence for a moment or two, then he
said suddenly—
“You’re a good chap, Deane. My father knew what he was doing when he
liked the look of you, and asked you to accept Gaythorpe.”
“It was odd I should happen to be preaching that morning,” said Andy
dully.
“Preaching! Why, you don’t suppose your _sermon_ had anything to do with
it, do you? If it had, you and I would never have hit it off as we have
done.”
“Why did he offer me the living, then?” said Andy.
“Oh, he saw you were a decent chap, and young and all that, of course.”
“So that was it, was it?” said Andy. “Well, I think I’ll be going. My
arm bothers me a bit.”
“Queer thing. If it hadn’t been for your bad arm we should never have
had this talk. We should have been playing billiards.”
Queer thing! It was indeed, thought poor Andy as he went home. First he
owed his meeting with Elizabeth at Marshaven to his fight with the
carpenter, and now this conversation. He realised more acutely than ever
that there are in the world no private black eyes or damaged arms. They
all concern the Universe.