ANDY still went up to Gaythorpe Manor fairly often to play billiards
with Dick Stamford; but the two young men no longer sat chatting after
their game, and their talk became rather strained, as it always must be
between two people who are constantly reminded by each other’s presence
of a subject about which they cannot speak.
The fact is that the air becomes, under those circumstances, so full of
interesting and unspoken conversations that you cannot hear the dull
words which do pass, and when Andy said, “Rotten weather for the time of
year,” he really was indicating the unpleasantness of life in the
present trying conditions.
So when Dick Stamford replied, “Yes, beastly,” he meant that Andy was
not the only one who suffered.
But a young clergyman who dashes about the country in a shining green
cart picked out with red drawn by a very active piebald pony does not
excite pity in the casual observer, and people round Gaythorpe, and in
all the villages between there and Marshaven, where Mrs. Dixon and the
Webster girls still lingered, said to each other that Parson Andy had
the times of it.
In this way Elizabeth was able to see very plainly that he did not wear
the willow; and Norah, who was greatly relieved to find that her sister
would not be thrown away on an impecunious country clergyman, lost no
opportunity of accentuating this obvious fact.
And as the summer days passed on into autumn, Elizabeth was obliged to
own to herself that she had given the most exquisite thing a girl has to
give—first love, with all the bloom and glory on it—to a man who had
looked at it quite near and not found it worth taking.
She did not mope or grow thin, but she looked sometimes as if she had
not slept, and her mother made her take some kind of beef juice. Beef
juice invariably is administered by those in authority for disappointed
love, though they may know nothing about the love, and Elizabeth took it
because she did not want to talk about her symptoms.
But she had some silent hours which left a mark on her life before she
finally made up her mind that Andy did not want her; and she quite
haunted the doorstep of the Miss Birketts, who were very dull, and lived
in a little house in Millsby, and always had dry cakes, and wanted her
very much indeed. She clung at this time with a sort of still passion to
those who wanted her enough. Outwardly, however, she was just the same.
Her slow voice, and her manner, which was like that of a young mother
and yet all girlish, did not change at all. The peculiar, elusive
tenderness of it only deepened; there was a sort of strength in
sweetness about Elizabeth now which you may often notice in those who
love so much that they will be bound to sacrifice—the sort of thing
which lies at the bottom of all the folly and all the glory of life.
One morning she came down to breakfast when a rather celebrated amateur
ornithologist was staying with her parents, and, Mrs. Atterton for once
being present at that meal, the conversation fell on parrots.
And that’s the worst of love—there are such ordinary topics which it
endows with the power to sting—even poll-parrots, for instance.
Elizabeth thought of that moment in Sam Petch’s kitchen when the gates
of the Enchanted Muddle shone near and splendid before her happy eyes,
and felt she could not bear it. Yet she also felt that she loved the
deceiving bird about whose obstinately silent head shone the glory of
that time when she and Andy had laughed together. She could not have it
branded as an impostor and turned out into the cold world of cheap
bird-fanciers’ windows. And that was what seemed about to happen.
“I shall be so grateful if you will drive over with me and look at a
valued parrot which belonged to my poor aunt,” said Mrs. Atterton. “I
feel I have neglected my duty—but my back——”
“Of course,” bowed the celebrated ornithologist, paying the deference
due. “No one could expect——”
“Especially,” said Mrs. Atterton, “one who now understands everything.
There were times on earth when she did not quite appreciate, poor dear,
how I suffered. But,” she added, “that makes me all the more anxious to
look after the parrot, if you understand? And the poor bird has changed
so. Lost its voice and its—its wonderful assertiveness.”
“Ha-ha! that’s what you call it, do you?” laughed Mr. Atterton. “Most
ill-tempered, ugly old bird! Those poor Petches must have been more than
thankful when it lost its voice. Enough to drive you into a lunatic
asylum.”
Elizabeth felt profoundly thankful that Norah was away and had never
been moved to investigate the parrot problem, for she recognised that
danger was in the air.
“I am sure Mr. Parrish gets enough birds at home. Besides, he only goes
in for stuffed ones,” she interposed hastily.
“They were all alive once, my dear young lady,” said Mr. Parrish,
smiling on Elizabeth, whom he liked because she did not seem very
clever. He was of those who prefer to hold all the cards in their own
hand.
“Oh, of course; how silly of me,” said Elizabeth, with a meek little
laugh. The best of women will understand how, though they may not own
it. “I had been thinking of asking you to walk through the woods with
me—I know hardly anything about birds, and there are so many in Millsby
woods—but, of course, you would prefer to drive with mamma.”
The eminent ornithologist was also a man, and he was torn between an
intense desire to walk through the woods instructing this sweet and
teachable young lady, and politeness to his hostess. Happily Mrs.
Atterton herself solved the difficulty by saying, with a sigh of
relief—
“Now that’s delightful! I really did not feel quite equal to the drive,
but I was anxious for you to see poor William.”
It was owing to this conversation that, two hours later, Andy
encountered the couple in the wood, or rather followed them for a brief
distance down one of the cross-roads; and he could not help being
struck—no one could—by the efforts Elizabeth was making to please her
companion. He had still hoped in the very depths of his mind that she
might be pining for him, as he was for her; but now he saw that she
could be engrossed in another fellow without even feeling that he was
only fifty yards away from her. He decided that if she had ever loved
him she must have felt that he was near.
So he turned dejectedly down the next opening without making his
presence known, and could not know that Elizabeth was fascinating
against time, which is, really, no such pleasing occupation, though an
engrossing one.
At last, however, the habits of a lifetime asserted themselves and the
ornithologist looked at his watch.
“My dear Miss Elizabeth”—that shows how far he had got—“_do_ you know
it is nearly one?”
“Never!” said the deceitful Elizabeth.
“I fear,” said the gentleman, very much worried, “that I shall now not
have time to see the parrot. My train leaves at two-fifteen.”
“Does it really?” said Elizabeth.
“I would have stayed on, but I have an important meeting to-night,” he
continued, pushing his hat up from his forehead. “But”—he relaxed into
an affectionate smile—“I shall hope to come again soon—very soon. I
shall explain that to Mrs. Atterton.”
“We shall have to hurry frightfully if we are to be back in time,” said
Elizabeth, suiting the action to the word.
“I trust—I may hope—for a welcome—from you,” panted Mr. Parrish, who
was not in such good walking form as Elizabeth.
But she pretended not to hear, and finally landed a very tired and
perspiring ornithologist at the family luncheon table only three minutes
late.
“And what did you think of William?” asked Mrs. Atterton earnestly.
“We never saw him. We lost our way in the wood,” said Elizabeth.
“Lost your way in Millsby wood!” began Bill, when a beseeching glance
from his sister checked him, and he added good-naturedly: “Well, there
are a lot of—er—rum turnings.”
Only about five minutes afterwards the bottled-in chuckle suddenly
exploded.
“Bill,” said his mother—his father was away—“Bill, what are you
laughing at?”
“Elizabeth’s bump of locality,” responded that youth.
“There is nothing amusing in that,” said Mrs. Atterton coldly.
“No, mother,” said Bill, with unusual meekness, and Mrs. Atterton could
not think why her daughter turned so red. She hoped there was nothing
going on between Elizabeth and the ornithologist, because he lived
nearly all the year abroad, and she did want this home-girl of hers to
remain near home.
But after lunch Bill did remark to his sister—
“I say—I don’t want a stuffed owl for a brother-in-law.”
“That’s no worse,” retorted the goaded Elizabeth, “than having a live
donkey for a brother.”
Then she retired to her room, and Bill went out with a grin to exercise
the dogs.
* * * * *
There is a theory held by many wise people that if we were all happy we
should all be good and clever; but facts at present do seem rather to
dispute it. For instance, Andy was undoubtedly less happy than he had
ever been in his life, though he was beginning to get hold of the
meaning of life, and yet he was both better and cleverer than when he
was happy.
His soul was learning, awkwardly and timidly, with many mishaps, to
drive his body—and that is, of course, after all, the reason of human
life; when we have learned that we are ready for the next thing.
His air of sane and jolly boyishness was just the same, but strength
showed through it; you saw that he might grow into one of those sane and
jolly men who keep the world from going mad, but you also saw that if
anything went wrong with the driving-gear he would have a bad fall.
As he sat in his study window the sunlight filled the garden with that
deep radiance peculiar to an English September afternoon, and he looked
out with a glance more focused, and features sharper, than on that
spring day when he saw it all in a glory of gold and green. After a
while he straightened his shoulders, as if banishing some insistent
thought, and drew the paper towards him.
His little articles were accepted more often now, and he wrote slowly,
so that a good deal of his spare time was occupied in this way. But he
was learning to follow the Holy Grail of all writers, which is to find
the arresting and beautiful which hides in the obvious, and those who do
that seek long and never come quite close; but there is a wonder in the
far glimpse they catch sometimes which makes up for years of pilgrimage.
However, those only start on the quest to whom sorrow has wept and
reality spoken, though a secret joy goes with them all the way which
makes the dullest path a highway of adventure.
So Andy gave up trying to write of the infinities, and yet they began to
shine, somehow, through the simple things he wrote about common life.
He worked on until Sam Petch came back from his tea and desired an
audience, then he put down his pen and turned to the open door with some
impatience.
“Well, what is it?”
“The Primitives has got our apples,” burst forth Sam, before he was well
inside the room. “For six years we’ve had the pulpit done with ’em, and
the Primitives has been and got the promise of them.”
“Well, let them,” said Andy. “I don’t mind. We can use something else.”
Sam struggled to be polite, because he was a polite man, but he could
not keep it out of his voice that he thought Andy a fool.
“Use something else?” he repeated. “Can’t you see, sir, what a smack in
the face it is for you and the Church? Strangers come from far and near
to the harvest festival. Everybody in the parish has somebody to tea for
it. As far as Millsby they come from, and last year I counted no less
than four Bardswell people. And they’ll all say, ‘Where’s the apples?’
For nobody ever saw such red little apples anywhere. And folks’ll have
to answer back, ‘Primitives has got ’em.’ It’s a slight on you, sir,
that’s what it is.”
But Andy had not yet learned that this affair, in Gaythorpe, assumed the
same proportions as the seizing of a burdensome protectorate by a rival
nation, and was as hurtful to the pride of the vanquished.
“It’s very good of you to bother about it,” said Andy, “but I really
don’t care a bit. What does it matter whether we have red flowers with
the corn or red apples?”
“And after you giving that old f——”—Sam checked himself—“body a
whole ounce of your own tobacco only last week—it’s outrageous! But he
has a niece stopping with him from Bardswell that’s a hot Primitive, and
there you are!”
“Poor old chap, surely he has a right to do what he likes with his own
apples—he can’t eat ’em, more’s the pity,” said Andy.
“He can!” retorted Sam. “Anybody can with a scoop made out of a mutton
bone. But it’s the principle of the thing I hate.” He paused. “Then you
won’t go to see him about it, sir?”
“Certainly not,” said Andy, returning to his work.
Sam closed the door and retreated thoughtfully down the passage.
The next morning—the day before the harvest festival—was one of those
autumn mornings when the world seems full of a cool sparkle, and the
sunshine is to summer sunshine as champagne a little iced is to some
still, golden wine which you drink under heavy-leaved trees at a Spanish
inn. There’s a quality in it that makes the dullest want to be a little
jolly—and those who are jolly already, like young Sam Petch, feel a
little drunk with the clear exhilaration of it. They are buoyantly ready
for anything, and not to be beaten even by Fate or nieces who are hot
Primitives safely in possession of a desired object.
Anyway this was how Sam felt as he picked up Andy’s fallen apples which
were only tame green and yellow, and he meditated, whistling, on the
lovely red clusters which hung in a little garden at the other end of
the village.
By and by out came Mrs. Jebb, ostensibly to fetch apples for a pudding,
but really for conversation and fresh air, for she too felt the
prickling stir of this lovely autumn morning.
Sam’s eyes lightened and grew younger than ever under his grizzled mop
as he caught sight of her, and after a moment of that tense quietude in
which men await a growing, fine idea, he slapped his thigh and
muttered—
“I’ve got it!”
“Good morning, Sam,” said Mrs. Jebb, immensely condescending.
“Good morning, ’m,” said Sam, humbly respectful, with an ingenuous air
of being grateful for such a lady’s notice; but his brain was working
like a steam engine. How was he to begin?
Then Fate helped him, as she does, perversely, such people, while she
leaves deserving objects like you and me severely alone.
“Mr. Deane says you may drive me into Bardswell this morning, if you
will. Mrs. Dixon and the young ladies are coming to supper after the
harvest festival to-morrow night, and there is no whisky in the
house—Mrs. Dixon takes whisky for her gout—and we want various other
little things.”
“How many bottles are you to get?”
“Er—two,” said Mrs. Jebb, whose dignified coldness intimated that it
was no business of his.
Then Sam came a little nearer and spoke earnestly to Mrs. Jebb under the
apple tree, and Mrs. Jebb appeared at first annoyed, then interested,
then righteously indignant, finally in a state of fluttered
adventurousness, for through this stirring, sparkling day she too was
going forth to do something desperate for the sake of Romance, and it
made her feel agitatedly splendid.
Really she was going to give Sam the second bottle of Andy’s whisky,
presuming on the safe assumption that only one would be required and
that he would forget all about the other. But it was a reckless and
daring deed for one who had taken through life the motto of her pinafore
days: “It is a sin to steal a pin, and much more so a greater thing.”
Her mother had worked that on a sampler and, incidentally, on Mrs.
Jebb’s soul—as mothers did in the dark days before we all grew too
clever to work samplers.
So no wonder that, having so given herself away to Sam, she should try
to take a little back with a final—
“Then, Petch, you will be round punctually at half-past two.”
Or, that, when she did climb into the cart behind the frisky piebald,
she should remark to her coachman—
“Mr. Jebb always maintained that the sign of success was the ability to
take a cab without consideration, and for weeks together I never so much
as crossed the street on foot. Now I consider _this_ luxury. Other
times, other manners.”
“It is so, Mrs. Jebb,” agreed Sam, with respectful heartiness, though he
had no idea what she was driving at. “Gee-up, Tommy.”
The cart gave a slight lurch, and for a moment Mrs. Jebb clung to her
hat, which was of the airy, summery kind which some women always wear
forlornly on into autumn, just as they cling to felt in a burning June.
It is not a question of money but of temperament. Then they passed a
little garden where an apple tree with the reddest apples ever seen,
deep crimson with ruby streaks on them, glowed like jewels in the
sunshine.
“That’s them,” whispered Sam behind his hand, though there was not a
soul in sight.
Mrs. Jebb averted her eyes and shivered slightly.
“Do you think it really would be taken as an indication by all the
villages round that Mr. Deane was not getting on well with his
parishioners?”
“I’m certain sure it would,” breathed Sam earnestly.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Jebb, drawing a long breath.
Sam glanced at her and hastened to change the subject from apples to
women, with some instinctive sense of the connection.
“He doesn’t get a wife—Mr. Deane doesn’t. They say Miss Elizabeth
Atterton give him the mitten. I don’t credit it. She seemed keen enough
on him so long as he kept going to see her.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Mrs. Jebb coldly; then she closed
her eyes as if the light affected them and conversed no more.
But under her calm exterior a great storm was going on, and above that
storm echoed some words that her father had read aloud from _David
Copperfield_, while they all sewed in the old, old days in a narrow
street of the place where she was born. “The first fancy of an
undisciplined heart”—that was how the quotation came back, not quite
correctly, of course, to a brain like Mrs. Jebb’s, but near enough to
make her feel another Agnes, and to dismiss Elizabeth to that
sentimental paradise where foolish girls with light hair and creamy
complexions belong.
She pictured Andy turning for consolation to a more mature affection
such as an experienced woman could give, and she was walking down the
church aisle in pale-grey on his arm when Sam drew up with a jerk at the
grocer’s shop, and she was obliged to come back from all that and order
food. No wonder she forgot the sardines and the gelatine! Ordinary
groceries, of course, were purchased in Gaythorpe, but these were to
have been part of the supper next night. However, even when Mrs. Jebb
remembered them on the way home, she still was in an exalted state of
mind which made her feel vaguely that where love was, all was, and that
a sardine more or less mattered nothing.
She was rather rudely shaken out of this blissful state by Andy’s
reception of the news.
“But sardines on toast were to have been the only hot dish,” he said,
“and you can’t get decent ones in Gaythorpe. Why didn’t you make a
proper list, Mrs. Jebb? You know you have no memory.”
“Is it likely I should have a good memory after all I’ve gone through?”
she asked.
So Andy felt rather ashamed of himself, while knowing he had no reason
to be, and that a man who orders sardines ought to get them.
After tea young Sam Petch watched the little cottage with its one apple
tree now black against the end of the sunset until the niece, who was a
hot Primitive, had departed to an evening class at the chapel. He held a
bottle concealed beneath his coat, and every now and then he laid its
cool side affectionately against his face, while he sniffed at the
leaden cap which jealously retained the fragrance locked within. Once he
muttered something to himself and began to ease the cap, but with a
terrific effort he desisted and put the bottle resolutely farther away
from his thirsty mouth.
At last the hot Primitive went out, looking very cool and self-reliant
in neat blue serge, and Sam knocked at the cottage door just as dusk was
hiding the quiet fields beyond the village.
He remained within for half an hour, while voices rose and fell, and
there were emotional silences of indecision; then he opened the door and
stood cautiously within, holding a basket in one hand and a small ladder
in the other, while he looked back for a last word—
“She’ll be that mad,” urged an old man’s voice from the dark interior.
“But you know what to say,” responded Sam, curbing his impatience. “Say
you’ve always given the apples to the Church, and when I came for ’em
you couldn’t refuse me. That’s true enough.”
A match was struck, a faint and pleasant clinking which made Sam’s mouth
water came through the quiet air, but he walked away into the dewy
garden with his ladder and basket. And as he stood between the cool
green world and the reposeful sky, where faint stars began to glimmer
through the dusk, the poet that hides in almost every man was stirred a
little. He laid the apples in the basket with the same charmed sense of
adventure that children know when they hear of the cave of Aladdin and
that spirit first awakes which drives them forth later into the far
places of the earth, whence they bring nothing back but a secret memory.
Young Sam Petch, with his breeches tied with string, and his grizzled
hair, was gathering, in that moment, the enchanted, forbidden fruit of
every fable since the world began. The greatest can do no more—a
schoolboy in a wood can do no less—real adventure is so splendidly
democratic.
At last the apples were all gathered, and the misty twilight had cleared
into the soft radiance of a starlit night.
“Here’s your ladder,” said Sam, tapping very cautiously at the cottage
door—not that there was any one to hear save a belated crow, but the
spirit of adventure is always unconsciously dramatic.
The old man popped out his head into the starlight—he, too, felt
somehow stirred and jolly.
“Got ’em?” he whispered.
“Yes, every one,” whispered Sam back.
For men can always go on being boys playing at robbers—that’s why they
never grow so old as women.
“Put the ladder back in just the same place,” chuckled the old man under
his breath. “I don’t want _her_ to find out till to-morrow morning.”
“Why, you’re not frightened?” said Sam. “Frightened of a niece?”
“No, no—course not.” Pause. “You’re not frightened of anything with a
drop of something warm inside you.” Pause again and a conclusion of
intense bitterness. “Barley water! She keeps me on barley water!”
“Well, I know if I’d let myself be frightened by any w——”
Faint footsteps in the lane—rapid dispersal—and when the hot Primitive
reached the cottage all was in darkness and nothing seemed alive but a
smell of whisky.
“Uncle!” called the hot Primitive. “Come down!”
But he had armed himself.
“Can’t, my dear. Got my trousers off.” And he repeated the formula about
the apples.
“It’s Sam Petch, then. I might have known,” cried the indignant niece.
“He’s an evil liver and wants to drag you down to his level.”
“_His_ liver’s all right—it’s mine that won’t work nowadays,” answered
the old man at random, for he was trying his door to see if the lock
really held; then when he found it did, he called more valiantly,
“Good-night. Sleep well, my dear.”
“Good-night, uncle,” said the niece, but it did not seem to mean that;
then she flung open the cottage door and the window where the geraniums
flowered, and thought with pious resignation of the time when the apples
would be inevitably hers.
Meanwhile, Sam tramped between wet, scented hedges underneath the stars
with the big basket of apples on his arm, but he stopped still every now
and then and muttered something that was obviously not in tune with the
soft quiet of the September night. He put the apples in a safe place in
the hayloft, and then went straight to Andy’s study door without the
usual preliminaries.
“Come in,” said Andy.
He looked white and fagged as he sat over his papers, as if he were
keeping some wearing thought at bay, which yet made the writing a great
mental strain. It is not easy for a man to be in love, body and soul, at
twenty-six, and yet to remain away and wait. And Andy had more to bear
than mere waiting, for he began to be torn by those fears and agonies
which seem trivial to other people but are more real and poignant to
those most concerned than any of the tremendous things of life which can
come afterwards.
“Well, Sam?” he said, seeing the man through a haze of ideas that he was
forging amid the fire of his emotions, and only half aware of him. “What
is it now?”
“I’ve got the apples. Old Bateson’s given me them.”
“Oh, all right,” said Andy, turning back to his work.
“There’s something else,” said Sam. “I told you I wouldn’t touch drink
again without giving you notice. Well—this is notice. I’d have a glass
of beer this night if I knew the devil was waiting to get me when I’d
drunk the last drop.”
The mist of thought cleared out of Andy’s eyes and they became very kind
and bright. He rang the bell without speaking, while Sam watched him
uneasily. And when the little maid appeared he ordered her to bring in
tea in ten minutes.
“I don’t want no——” began Sam roughly, driven beside himself by the
old enemy.
“Will you wait ten minutes for me?” asked Andy. “I won’t ask you to do
more than that. I am going out.”
“I don’t——” began Sam again.
“It’s all right, Sam,” said Andy.
There was a moment’s silence while the two men looked at each other,
then Sam drew a long breath and said—
“Very well, I’ll wait.”
A moment after the time stated Andy rushed in breathless with two
bottles under his arm, and almost upset the little maid, who was
carrying the tea-tray.
“A tumbler, please,” he said, sitting down to the table. “Here, Sam, you
have that chair.”
Sam sat gingerly on the edge of it, feeling suspicious that he was being
‘had,’ and yet scarcely thinking it of Parson Andy—but parsons were all
alike, evidently, when you got deep enough down.
The door closed on the little maid again, the tumbler stood clean and
shining on the table. Sam’s throat became dry as he stared morosely at
it. Then there was a click, as of a beer-bottle being opened, the golden
fluid ran ‘clop-clop-clop’ into the glass.
“Here, Sam,” said Andy, holding it out; and turning to the teapot, he
poured himself out a cup of tea without looking at his visitor.
“Bit of cake?” he said, holding the plate. Then he glanced at Sam. “Why,
you’re not drinking the beer?”
“Do you mean it, sir?” asked Sam.
“Of course I do. Here’s another bottle when you’ve finished that. I was
glad of somebody to talk to.”
“My respects,” Sam said, gulping down the ale.
Then Andy poured out another bottle and brought forth tobacco, and as
they smoked they talked together about everything on earth. Certain it
is, that Andy had never been so amusing or so brilliant in his life, and
sounds of laughter could be heard long after eleven in the apartment
where Mrs. Jebb enjoyed her chaste repose, while the study was misty
with tobacco-smoke.
Next morning, however, the little maid came out of the room aghast, with
the two empty beer-bottles on her tray.
“Smoking and drinking till nearly twelve o’clock with Sam Petch! Why,
even the public-house closes at eleven!” she exclaimed.
“Mr. Deane has a perfect right to do as he likes in his own house
without giving rise to foolish remarks,” said Mrs. Jebb with her
lips—but her heart was so little in it that Sophy felt emboldened to
reply—
“It does seem queer, ’m.”
“When you get to my age, you will find that things are not always what
they seem,” said Mrs. Jebb vaguely.
But she shook her head as she took up the bottles, and again as she
secreted them with her own fair fingers in the dust-bin.