IF Andy had been a woman, gall would have been added to his sorrow by
the sympathetic package of sandwiches which Mrs. Jebb put into the
pony-cart, and by the carelessly careful remark which Sam Petch made,
glancing after the departing flutter of her skirts, that women seemed to
have no sense, even the best of them, but that there was one comfort,
nobody need grieve over any of them, because there were always as good
fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
However, being a man, Andy did not notice these indications of a
knowledge that he had gone fishing on the matrimonial shore to come back
with an empty basket. And he watched some apples being placed in the
cart for his friend the Millsby joiner, whom he had once fought, without
any of the intense, nervous irritation which must have followed a
woman’s intuitive discovery that she was being pitied and watched by
those about her.
The piebald pony went off, as gay as a little pony can be who has a
comfortable stable and plenty to eat and very little to do; but deep
within his heart lurked the memory of past excitements, and he was
trotting decorously through Millsby, every inch the parson’s pony, when
he heard a brass band playing the Ancient Order of Buffaloes into their
annual festivities, and he forgot everything but that he was an artiste
with a suppressed talent for dancing on his hind legs.
And as the artistic temperament—even in ponies—always brings
inconveniences upon those nearest the gifted one, it is not surprising
that Andy found himself in the road among a heap of apples with a few
ham-sandwiches across his face.
Neither was it surprising that Elizabeth should be passing down the
village street on her way from a visit to Miss Banks, because she
constantly went there; but Andy, removing a ham-sandwich from his eyes,
and jumping up unhurt, did feel it to be a particular irony of fate that
she should be passing at that moment.
It really seemed as if fate, not content with depriving him of her, was
making faces at him afterwards. But as the pony continued to execute a
_pas seul_ to the wonder of all beholders and the imminent detriment of
the shafts, he was obliged to run to the little animal’s head, and to
hold it until the band was safely housed in the Public Hall opposite. By
that time Elizabeth had entered the grocer’s shop, where she remained
until the apples were restored to the cart, and Andy departed, leaving
only Mrs. Jebb’s sandwiches on the road to show what had taken place.
He went on his way, feeling peculiarly miserable. Though he had dreaded
the next meeting with Elizabeth, he had vaguely pictured it as something
heroic—on his side, at any rate. Now nothing was left but the intense
and bitter realisation that he was no more to her than any other man who
passed her on the road.
He had wished, instinctively, to appear like those renouncing heroes on
the stage who always wring the heart of the audience to soft music when
they are having the first interview with the Beloved after she is Lost
for Ever. And he had appeared among a heap of apples with a disordered
ham-sandwich over his eyes.
But one advantage of it all was, nothing now seemed to matter. When he
came downstairs that morning, he had dreaded keeping his appointment
with Mrs. Atterton about a church window as a hurt man dreads the touch
of a sore finger on an open wound; now, he jogged up the long drive
feeling sure that nothing could happen at Millsby Hall which would make
the slightest difference to him.
“Mrs. Atterton?” he said at the door, with as little anxiety as if he
were asking for Mrs. Thorpe. And he followed a servant into the big
morning-room all full of light and people and flowers and sunshine—a
sort of temple to the jolly spirit of the Atterton family—with no more
sense that he was standing on holy ground than as if he had found Mr.
Thorpe smoking a pipe in his leather-covered arm-chair.
“No, please don’t send my pony round to the stables—I must only stay a
few minutes—I am on my way to Marshaven.”
“Often on your way to Marshaven,” chuckled the irrepressible Bill. “But
your cousins aren’t the ordinary sort, more kin than kind. These are
more kind than kin, aren’t they?”
“They are the daughters of the first husband of my aunt by marriage,”
said the Vicar of Gaythorpe, who was in no mood for jesting.
But he and Bill had been such good friends that the young gentleman
failed to realise this; and, taking Andy’s dignified reply for a joke,
he laughed uproariously.
“Ha-ha! ‘If Peter’s mother married’——”
“Hush,” interrupted Mrs. Atterton, but smiling too, “it’s a lucky thing
you go back to Cambridge to-morrow. You need toning down a little. Now,
Mr. Deane, as we have not much time, perhaps we ought to begin about the
window at once.”
Andy rose, supposing she would lead him to a more retired room, but that
was not the Attertons’ way; so she only beckoned him into a corner,
while Bill continued to laugh and talk with Norah by the window.
Then Mr. Atterton looked in to say he was just off to a meeting of
county justices, and when Mrs. Atterton indicated the subject of her
discussion with Andy, he said in a rather less breezy tone, “Ah yes. The
window, of course. It must be attended to at once. My poor aunt wanted
one with birds in, if possible, Mr. Deane. She owned William, you know.
Left instructions in her will about the window. I suppose——” he
paused, eyed Andy dubiously—“I can’t recall to mind any Biblical
parrot—but if there were——”
Now Andy was as miserable as a man well could be, but he was also one of
those whom the deepest sorrow cannot blind to the blessed funniness that
is always shining out, like stars in a dark sky, to help travellers for
whom life’s road would otherwise become impassable; and when he saw Mr.
Atterton’s face—reverent yet annoyed—while that gentleman searched
mentally the pages of Holy Writ with an inward, “Deuce take it! why
_isn’t_ there a parrot?” he could no more help smiling inwardly than he
could help breathing. However, he replied, with a gravity befitting the
subject—
“There are other birds—something can easily be arranged.”
“That’s all right. That’s all right,” said Mr. Atterton. “Of course,
it’s of no real importance, but when you know what people would have
liked and they’re not there to speak for themselves, you know——”
He left it at that and went off with a brisk farewell, to encounter
Elizabeth in the doorway, who half turned to go when she saw Andy, but
came on after all and shook hands.
“May I offer you my heartiest congratulations—Mrs. Atterton has been
telling me——”
“Thank you, very much.”
There, the impossible had happened, and the world went on just the same;
so one sort of youth was past for Andy, by the time Mrs. Atterton
added—
“We _are_ so delighted, Mr. Deane.”
But she did not look at him as she said it, because of what Norah had
once told her, and because the poor boy might have had a passing fancy
for Elizabeth. So many young men had suffered in that way.
“You will be glad to have your daughter near,” replied Andy, with so
much calmness that Mrs. Atterton felt greatly relieved. It would be
highly unpleasant if there _were_ anything—with Elizabeth at the Manor
and Mr. Deane at the Vicarage—so inconvenient at Mothers’ Meetings and
Christmases.
She looked up at her girl with tears of joy in her eyes because they
were not to be parted farther than the next parish.
As Elizabeth looked back at her mother, the colour started under her
eyes and slowly crept under her whole face. It was like watching a rose
open softly; and her tremulous mouth that she pursed up to keep firm,
was like the heart of a rose.
Andy put out his hand hastily.
“Then I’ll be off now, Mrs. Atterton. You shall have the sketches and
estimates as soon—”
“Please, wait a moment,” interrupted Mrs. Atterton. “Oh, here _is_
Edwards with the tray. You must have a sandwich before you start on your
drive.”
Andy did not want a sandwich, of course, but it was impossible to refuse
being fed by Mrs. Atterton without being boorish, because she made it so
the outward and visible sign of that atmosphere which pervaded the
Atterton household. So he ate a combination of bread and meat which
ought to have been very good, but which tasted like chaff to him at that
moment.
The others came round and took a cup of tea or a glass of milk and sweet
cakes or sandwiches, with no appearance of wanting them particularly,
but rather as a further expression of the family sentiment: “If there
_is_ anything pleasant going let’s be in it!”
Elizabeth’s cake, in fact, crumbled in her saucer, while she drank the
tea thirstily enough; and Bill remarked with a chuckle—
“I say—no breakfast—and now leaving her cake! Our Elizabeth ‘wants to
willow,’ now she’s an engaged young woman, but banting won’t do it.” He
clapped his sister on the back: “You’re not made that way, my girl.”
The Attertons all laughed—not because there was anything to laugh
at—but because the schoolmaster’s saying had passed into one of those
family jokes which are so dear and silly. For this is age—when there is
no one left who knows the family jokes—when there is nobody in all the
world to whom an idiotic remark means youth and hope and the golden days
gone by.
“Oh, well,” said Norah, coming to the rescue with the freemasonry that
exists between sisters, “one lamp-post is enough in any family, isn’t
it?”
She stood near the window, erect, smiling, alert, so exceedingly able to
take care of herself and other people too, if necessary. And she
continued, after looking out at some one passing, “I forgot—we’re going
to have another in the family soon—here she is!”
A moment later Mrs. Stamford was ushered in, or rather she did not wait
for that, but hurried on ahead of the panting Edwards and across the
expanse of carpet that separated her from Mrs. Atterton.
“My dear—I’m so glad—I’m so glad——”
It was significant that her unusual outburst of emotion did not
culminate, as would have been natural, upon Elizabeth’s shoulder, but
upon that of the girl’s mother. For once the ideas and traditions of a
lifetime were in abeyance, and she came straight, swept along by an
overwhelming tide of relief and thankfulness, to the one person in the
world who would understand.
“You’ve walked all the way?” said Mrs. Atterton, patting the hard, slim
hand of her visitor. “How sweet of you to come like this.”
Mrs. Stamford half turned to Elizabeth.
“I’m so delighted, Elizabeth, my dear, I can never say how
delighted——”
Then she somehow became aware of the other people in the room, and sat
up straight, remarking hastily, “Cold coming on. Been taking quinine.
Always makes me so excitable. Only thing that does. I could drink a
hogshead of port—but quinine!”
“I expect the capacity for unlimited port is hereditary. Weren’t _all_
our ancestors, three-bottle men?” said Norah, composedly, tiding over
the situation.
“The doctors all say my back is owing to that—gouty tendencies, you
know,” assisted Mrs. Atterton.
And everybody felt immensely relieved to get down to Mrs. Atterton’s
back from the emotional heights where they had stood during the past
three minutes.
For it had been evident, even to young Bill, that Mrs. Stamford was
saying a Magnificat as plainly as ever a Hebrew woman did in the days of
old. And no mother ever rejoiced in the birth of a new life with a
greater ecstasy of joy and thankfulness, than did Mrs. Stamford, in this
beginning of a new life for her son. It seemed, after all the hidden
suspense and agony of mind, as if he had been born again to her. She was
so certain he would settle down to be all she had hoped and dreamed,
when he was once married to Elizabeth.
And Mrs. Atterton had never known any harm of Dick save that he was, at
one time, like other young fellows, a little wild. So his exemplary
behaviour of late had quite disarmed both her and Mr. Atterton, and they
were inclined to admire the honourable way in which he had kept the
spirit as well as the letter of the arrangement come to a year ago.
And Norah was glad for her sister to be mistress of such a fine
historical place as Gaythorpe Manor, and greatly relieved that there was
now no danger of her becoming the wife of a country parson; while Bill
was pleased to think ‘good old Elizabeth’ would remain, as it were, a
part of home, with excellent shooting to offer in addition to her
present virtues, and a five-pound note ever at the service of a brother
who always seemed to run short of money at critical moments.
So everybody was pleased, and there was so much unspoken congratulation
in the atmosphere that poor Andy felt rather choked with it by the time
he got away.
But before he was really out of the house he encountered Dick Stamford,
who had motored round by Bardswell, and who bore in his hands a bunch of
flowers and an immense box of chocolates tied with pink ribbons.
The two young men passed with a nod and a muttered “Good morning,” but
Stamford stopped a second later, turned back, and said with some effort,
“Jolly morning. Cold, though. Frost in the air.”
“Yes. Beautiful flowers you’ve got,” said Andy, equally uncomfortable,
and speaking at random. “Chocolates, too.”
“Oh, I know what girls like,” said Stamford with an uneasy laugh.
“Something pretty to look at and something good to eat. All alike.”
But Andy did not pause to discuss this view of the feminine nature, and
they parted with another constrained nod.
However, on the way to Marshaven, Andy began to wonder if he could stay
on at Gaythorpe when Elizabeth came to the Manor, and Mr. and Mrs.
Stamford had retired to the Dower Lodge, as they intended to do upon
their son’s marriage. He began to think he could not endure it. Then he
turned a corner and felt on his face the cold, salt air that blows
across the flat country near Marshaven, and all the sane manliness in
him was stirred into activity again.
Give up his work because the girl he wanted was going to marry some one
else and live next door!
Ya-a-a-h! howled the winds in contemptuous protest, across autumn fields
where men, all bent with age and toil, were following the plough.
Andy whipped up Tommy and sat very straight in the little cart as the
wheels twinkled, merry green and red, through the streets of Marshaven.
Mrs. Dixon with her daughters, the Webster girls, was living in a large
bow-windowed house facing the sea, and from her post in an arm-chair on
the sunny side of the window she waved to Andy as he went in. He felt
how elegant and fashionable she was, when she rose in her tight bodice
with her tight curls in perfect order and a bluish bloom upon her
nose—just as he had always felt when he came home from school or
college and she received him kindly. For women gain the same hold on men
by being always in full regimentals as soldiers do upon savages.
“My dear Andy,”—she had always been kind, but now she was doubly
kind—“how pleased I am to see you.”
“I thought I must run over to say good-bye, as you were off to-morrow,”
said Andy, shaking hands with the girls, who seemed, in this strong
morning light off the sea, more especially endowed with eyes and hair
and neck than ever.
“We’re not going until the end of the month, now. We’ve changed our
minds,” said Phyllis. And she closed her lips in a way which intimated
that she was in the habit of making up the family mind.
“Such nice people about, and so kind,” said Irene. “Ridiculous idea that
we had before about county society being sidey. Of course they _can_
be—you can see that—even your Elizabeth has it in her.”
Andy took a breath like a man going for a big ditch; then he said with a
laugh—
“Haven’t you heard? She is Mr. Stamford’s Elizabeth.”
There—it could not have been done in a worse or more tasteless way, he
knew, but it was done.
“What!” cried Mrs. Dixon.
“Mr. Stamford engaged—you can’t mean it!” said Irene.
“Oh!” said Phyllis. Nothing else. But she wore Eastern beads that
morning, with a flimsy blouse, and her expression now matched her
toilet—she looked somehow like a chorus girl who had strayed
accidentally into melodrama.
After a good deal more conversation on the subject, during which Andy
really felt as if he were walking with bare feet on red-hot cinders, he
rose to depart, in spite of an urgent invitation to remain for luncheon.
“Then you _must_ have a sandwich,” urged Mrs. Dixon.
He replied most truly that he would rather not.
“Oh, if you won’t stay to lunch we shall _insist_,” said Irene.
“We should really consider it quite unkind,” said Mrs. Dixon.
So he was obliged to masticate another sandwich, and that seemed to add
the last touch to his desolation. For though it is a dignified and even
heroic thing to be dogged through misfortune by dragons, there is only
plain annoyance in being dogged by ham-sandwiches.
But the climax was reached when Andy, long after luncheon time, arrived
home and awaited tea in his study, where the maid appeared bearing the
tray, while Mrs. Jebb fluttered after with a plate in her hand.
“I thought,” said she, signing to her underling to depart, “that you
would be glad of a few sandwiches after your drive. We had nothing but
ham in the——”
She stopped short with her mouth open, for Andy had seized the plate
from her and flung the sandwiches upon the fire.
“Bread and butter,” he said thickly.
It was atrocious. It was everything that can possibly be said against
such an action. But it did Andy good.
The only drawback was that he had to spend quite an hour, later in the
evening, in talking to Mrs. Jebb about Mr. Jebb and the glories of the
past.
When they parted, Mrs. Jebb, having forgiven him, eye-cornered him from
the doorway and said, very softly—
“I understand. I know what”—she made a pause—“what _tooth_-ache is,
myself.”
She felt sure he would also understand that by “tooth” she meant
“heart.” Only a woman can put these things delicately enough.
But Andy stared after her in heavy amazement as the door closed.
“Toothache!” he thought to himself. “Surely I haven’t been telling her I
had toothache, have I? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”
For a few minutes he sat staring into the fire, then he got up and went
to his desk, and his work gained strength, no doubt, as work always
does, from love and sorrow decently borne.