IT was the day before Elizabeth’s wedding. For three days a gale of wind
had been tearing across the country, shrieking through empty houses,
rattling loose doors, beating with blasts of sharp raindrops like stones
upon unprotected windows—seeming, in a way, to rejoice in its fierce
work of changing the enchanted lane past Andy’s house, which had been
thick with autumn foliage only three days ago, into something equally
beautiful but quite different.
For now it was all over, and the little world rested, tired and lovely,
after all the buffeting; there was an exquisite delicacy in the cool
sunshine on the fallen leaves, and in the tracery of fine branches on a
pale-blue sky, which Andy could not help noticing though Elizabeth was
going to be married to-morrow. And it comforted him a little, even in
that great sorrow, because there is no grief in life to which such dear
sights will not bring a little comfort, when once you learn to really
love them.
Andy had been working hard in the wrecked garden for an hour before
breakfast, and as he turned to go in he saw the two Simpson children,
Sally leading, Jimmy dragging reluctantly, come round the turn towards
his gate. So he invited them to walk in and partake of oranges while he
ate his bacon; and after awhile, having disposed of her orange, Sally
came across to his side with her anxious look on her small face, and
said hesitatingly—
“Mr. Deane, I came for something.”
“All right. Go ahead,” said Andy, drinking his tea thirstily and looking
as if he had not slept.
“Something partickler,” said Sally. She seemed to find expression a
difficulty, but at last continued: “Mother says you earn your living by
making people be good. I asked her what you did for a living, and she
told me that.”
Andy stared at his small visitor, then glanced out of the window towards
the place, beyond the churchyard hedge, where Brother Gulielmus slept in
faith: then he sighed and returned to Sally.
“I try,” he said.
“Well, then,” said Sally, dragging Jimmy forward suddenly from his
orange, “I want you to begin on him. He’s been _so_ bad the last three
days. He doesn’t _mean_ to be, and I didn’t much mind him breaking my
dolly, but now he’s pulled the blue china teapot off the table in the
best room and smashed that, and we daren’t tell mammy, so we came out. I
was minding him,” wept Sally, descending to tears at last, “but how
_can_ you mind anybody that won’t be minded?”
Jimmy turned very red and eyed his sister’s tears askance, but he
planted his legs wide apart and said sturdily—
“I want to be bad.”
“You don’t love Sally, then?” said Andy.
Jimmy glared at him for a moment, then flew, all arms and legs, across
the room and began to pommel such portions of his Vicar’s person as he
could reach.
“I _do_ love Sally. I _do_ love Sally. Naughty Parson Andy!” he
bellowed.
“Oh, Jimmy,” cried Sally, shocked out of her tears, and clasping her
little thin hands distractedly. “You mustn’t call him that. Mammy said
he would never let us come here any more if we did—never.”
That did reach Jimmy’s heart.
“No more chocs. No more noranges!” he wept. “I will be a good boy, I
will.”
“He can’t help being a bad boy,” wept Sally in concert. “But I brought
him for you to make him _want_ to be good.”
“I like you to call me Parson Andy,” said that gentleman, pulling up a
weeping parishioner upon each knee, and proceeding to administer choice
bits of bread and butter laden with marmalade to each in turn, with the
tale of “The White Cat” as a mental restorative.
It was upon this group that Mrs. Stamford was ushered in by the excited
little maid-servant.
“Sorry to interrupt you at breakfast, but——” began Mrs. Stamford. Then
she broke off. “What’s this?”
“A lady and gentleman who called to consult me in a spiritual
difficulty,” said Andy, rising. “I’ll see them to the door and then I am
at your service.”
Mrs. Stamford sat down, her old tweed skirt very wet about the hem with
crossing the grass field, and her weather-beaten hat well over her eyes,
but her appearance indefinably more emotional than usual.
“I’ve come,” she said without further circumlocution, “to tell you we
shall be obliged to have the wedding at Gaythorpe Church.”
“What wedding?” said Andy, though he knew.
“Dick’s, of course,” said Mrs. Stamford, and she might just as well have
said, “What a fool you are!”
“Why?” asked Andy, and he had a difficulty even in saying that.
“Because Millsby Church has been so injured by the gale that it cannot
possibly be put right in time. Part of the steeple blown down. Roof
broken in. I always told Mr. Banks that it would happen.”
“Of course,” said Andy, after a pause which he knew to be growing long
and yet was almost powerless to end, “I shall be glad to help you in any
way I can.”
“Then if you’ll come with me—I have Sims the head gardener waiting
outside—we will go to the church at once and see about the decorations.
I have arranged with Mrs. Atterton that we will help with them, as we
are so near, though their gardener will decorate the chancel.”
Andy took the keys from their familiar place on the nail in the hall,
and as he went up the path past Brother Gulielmus, he had, for a strange
second, a feeling as if some voice outside had said, “Be a man. Keep a
brave heart, my brother.”
Of course it could only be the association of ideas grown vivid through
emotion, but it made Andy square his shoulders and give his best
attention to the necessary arrangements for the ceremony.
“Really,” said Mrs. Stamford, when they had finished, “your advice has
been quite invaluable. Poor Mr. Banks——”
“He has not been curate in a fashionable London parish,” said Andy
grimly. “We’re used to arranging theatrical performances there.”
And that was the only sign he gave of the bitterness which underlay his
ready interest in the decorations.
Mrs. Stamford glanced at her watch and caught up her gloves.
“No idea it was so late,” she said. “Dick is coming by the eleven train.
We expected him yesterday, but he was delayed—diamonds not finished
re-setting, and he wanted to bring them with him. I do hope he won’t
miss the train; it starts so early from London.”
“Oh, he’ll turn up all right,” said Andy calmly—while all his being
cried out, “Miss his train—when he is going to marry Elizabeth
to-morrow!”
They were almost at the church door now, and Mrs. Stamford turned to
give a last injunction about the music, when a queer, hoarse voice which
neither of them recognised struck upon their ears, and they turned
sharply round to see Mr. Stamford standing in the porch on the arm of
his man-servant.
“Ellen,” he said, and then he sank upon the stone seat of the porch,
motioning the man to go away.
She sat down beside him, schooling herself to quietness, but white to
the lips.
“Yes, James. What is it?”
He opened his hand and held out to her a crumpled sheet of paper which
lay upon it.
“Our son,” he said.
Mrs. Stamford took the telegram, and what she saw, though it was bad
enough, was so much less terrible than she had feared that she broke out
into a passion of weeping that could not be stayed, and she cried
through it all—
“He’s alive! He’s alive!”
So long as he lived, whatever he did, there would always be something
left in the world for his mother, and she gave the telegram to Andy with
a brief “This concerns you, too,” which was bitter enough but not
hopeless.
“Sorry to cause trouble. Cannot hope to make you understand.
Married to Phyllis Webster by registrar this morning. Will
Mother tell Elizabeth at once.”
Then, in a burst of feeling at the end—
“Awfully happy but for complications, hope you and Mother will
forgive.”
“Complications,” said Andy stupidly, while the pews raced swiftly round
him and seemed to settle, queerly enough, with a thump inside his head,
into their accustomed places. “Of course—complications.”
“What is the use of standing and muttering that?” demanded Mrs.
Stamford, wiping her eyes. “It’s all terrible—terrible—but we must
make the best of it. She is your connection, and respectable, though she
has such eyes and stockings, and it might very well have been the back
row of the ballet.”
It is only in such moments as these that the raw truth comes out, and it
is infectious.
“She is good enough for your son, and she will see that he behaves
himself—I know that,” Andy retorted. “She has a will of iron under a
fluffy exterior, and that’s exactly the sort to manage him.”
Then Mr. Stamford said agitatedly—
“You must go to Elizabeth. Poor girl! Poor girl! To think that my
son——” he broke off, grey about the mouth, and leaned back against the
stone wall of the porch.
Mrs. Stamford pulled her weather-beaten hat farther over her forehead,
and started, without another word, down the path; but before she was out
of hearing her husband called hoarsely, “Ellen! Ellen!”
She ran back and bent over him as he leaned back, spent, against the
stone, and in his bodily weakness and bitter disappointment he whispered
to her, “Ellen—I can’t be left—you can’t leave me!”
She saw that it would be quite unsafe either to agitate him still
further or to make him move from that seat, and yet—what was she to do?
That poor girl—those poor Attertons—they must be told at once—every
moment was of value.
Mr. Stamford himself, with closed eyes and fluttering breath, solved the
question.
“Let Deane go,” he said feebly. “The parson—it’s the best thing. He can
ask to see Atterton and explain—I’m ill—take the telegram.”
“But——” began Mrs. Stamford, when she saw that her husband could bear
no more, and she silently held out the telegram to Andy.
“I can’t,” said Andy.
“You must. It’s your duty,” interrupted Mrs. Stamford in an urgent
whisper.
Andy drew a long breath. How could he go on such an errand—he who was
in such a turmoil of love and hope and amazement?
“I tell you,” he said desperately, “I wanted to marry her myself.”
“What does that matter? Go!” said Mrs. Stamford.
So he glanced once more at the spent man upon the stone seat of the
porch and went.
At first he saw nothing about him, but soon the shock of unexpected joy,
which stuns for a while like unexpected sorrow, gave place to
realisation. Then every dewdrop, on every little blade of grass he
passed, seemed like a joybell ringing; and the fine branches of the
leafless trees wrote love letters upon the tender sky, and a huntsman’s
horn far off was like love’s herald, ushering in the bride.
But when he stood at the Attertons’ door asking if Mr. Atterton were at
home, things became more ordinary; and when the man replied that his
master had gone to Bardswell, but the mistress was at home, Andy replied
in a state of embarrassed discomfiture that he wished to see Mrs.
Atterton alone.
In a moment or two the man returned and ushered Andy into the
morning-room where Elizabeth and her mother sat together. After one
glance at his face, Elizabeth’s own grew very pale, and she stood with
her hands crushed together, not offering to greet him.
“If I might have a moment with you alone, Mrs. Atterton?” said Andy,
very grave and nervous.
“My husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Atterton. “Oh—that young horse—I have
begged him not——”
“No, no. It’s not Mr. Atterton—nothing to do with him,” interrupted
Andy hastily. “Nobody is hurt. I have only come with a message from Mr.
Stamford.”
“Then why did you frighten me like that?” demanded Mrs. Atterton, not
unnaturally. “Knowing as you do that my back will not stand shocks of
any kind.”
Poor Andy’s sense of doing it as badly as such a thing could be done,
was intensified by this to a pitch where he found the greatest
difficulty in continuing; and Elizabeth’s wide eyes, dark with startled
emotion, never left his face.
“I was to ask to see you alone, Mrs. Atterton,” he said, lamely enough.
“No,” said Elizabeth, speaking for the first time. “I must hear what
there is to tell.”
Andy just glanced her way and turned again to her mother—he dared not
trust himself to look at her.
“Mrs. Atterton,” he said, “I have been sent by Mr. Stamford, who is so
upset that Mrs. Stamford cannot leave him, to tell you that—that——”
It was of no use—the words refused to come.
“Well?” breathed Elizabeth.
“For goodness sake get on,” cried Mrs. Atterton.
“Stamford was married to Phyllis Webster at a registrar’s in London this
morning.”
Andy stood, straight and white, in the middle of the hearthrug;
Elizabeth buried her face in her hands with her elbows on the table,
very still; Mrs. Atterton sobbed out, “My poor girl! My poor little
girl!” and ran to throw her arms round her daughter. But Andy was there
first.
“You care?” he said breathlessly. “You’re sorry?”
And the whole world seemed to wait upon her answer as she lifted her
face from her hands.
“I’m so happy—I feel as if I should die,” she said.
Then they forgot Mrs. Atterton and everything else but themselves in the
lovely view that opened out before them; for they were now almost at the
end of that enchanted lane which leads to the City of Married Love—the
Enchanted Muddle. And the tall spires towered so close and glorious, the
mean streets lay in such a tender haze, the golden gates were so nearly
opening, that their happy eyes were blinded to all else in the world
beside.
But Mrs. Atterton had not been wandering in the enchanted lane, and she
had lived in that city for such a long time that she had forgotten how
it looked from the outside, so naturally she felt astonished.
“Elizabeth!” was all she could gasp.
Then Andy and Elizabeth did look back along the shining lane, and see an
unimportant figure in the distance which, they vaguely felt, they might
find of some importance again, sometime.
“We said good-bye for ever—that night I dined at the Stamfords—it was
too late,” explained Elizabeth incoherently.
“Then why?” began Mrs. Atterton, but she could get no further, she was
so bewildered.
“I thought I had lost her for ever—and now she’s mine,” said Andy, as
much to an astonished universe as to his future mother-in-law.
However, they did manage in the end to make it clear, so far as any one
could, how the whole thing had happened; and then Mrs. Atterton was so
simply glad with them that even two young lovers in the first
engrossment of their new joy could not fail to be touched by her
attitude.
“Oh, mother—I don’t believe you care about anything in the world so
long as we three children are happy,” said Elizabeth, laughing and
crying and clinging to her. And in that moment she realised for the
first time something of what it means to be a mother.
“You must take care of her,” said Mrs. Atterton, over her girl’s bent
head.
“I will,” was all Andy said, looking straight at her; but some of the
dearest and most sacred things in life passed in that unspoken
conversation between Andy and Elizabeth’s mother, though neither of them
knew it.
At last Mr. Atterton’s voice was heard in the hall, and he, in his turn,
went through the same stages of surprise and anger and relief as his
wife; and after that Norah and Bill did likewise, until, finally, some
one had leisure to feel dreadfully sorry for the Stamfords. But it was
Norah who went to the heart of that matter with a clear-sighted—
“So long as Dick’s all right, they’ll be all right. Don’t you worry
yourself about that, mother.”
“But they wanted Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Atterton, wiping away a tear.
“Well,” remarked Mr. Atterton, “all I can say under the circumstances
is, thank God they haven’t got her.” Then the memory of Dick’s perfidy
roused his wrath again, and he muttered fiercely: “That hound—that
hound—if he ever comes near me.... What did he get engaged to my girl
for?”
Norah looked across at him with her odd little smile: “Look here,
father, I believe Dick would have given anything to run away that night
mother sent him to Elizabeth in the morning-room. I watched him going
through the hall when he thought he was alone—I couldn’t make it out,
then—but if ever a man was saying to himself, ‘I’m in a dickens of a
fix,’ Dick Stamford did at that moment. Only after asking leave a year
ago, before he’d even met the lovely Phyllis——” Norah broke off,
leaving the rest to their imaginations, for she was nothing if not
suggestive.
“It will be so awkward—such near neighbours,” sighed Mrs. Atterton.
“Why, mother,” said Elizabeth, “it will be delightful. Every time we see
Dick and his wife we shall think how thankful we are, and every time
they see us they will think how thankful _they_ are, so the oftener we
meet the jollier we shall be.”
And this was a point of view so in keeping with the sentiments of the
Atterton family that by the time the guests had been informed by
telephone and wire that the marriage would not take place, they all
regarded the unpleasant part of the business as over and done with, and
were ready for the next jolly thing. Probably no interrupted wedding
ever went like that before, but then there are not many Attertons. And
they were so tremendously glad that Elizabeth had escaped being unhappy.
“To think,” said Mrs. Atterton, raising cold beef to her lips at
luncheon, “that it is all over; and that we have food in this house to
feed a hundred people!”
“What!” said Bill, jumping up with a sort of war-whoop and flinging down
his napkin. “Girls—do not eat cold beef when a banquet waits without!
Hi! Minion!” to the convulsed Sims, who adored him and regarded his
vilest pun as the essence of refined art, “Fetch forth the baked meats
which the seneschal has basted for the morrow’s feast.”
“A seneschal isn’t a cook, you idiot!” laughed Norah.
“There is some boned turkey, ma’am,” suggested Sims at Mrs. Atterton’s
elbow, “and a good many of the sweets are made.”
“Come and let’s see for ourselves,” shouted Bill, who was rather beyond
himself with all the excitement. “Andy—Elizabeth—Father, come on!
Norah, don’t be grand to-day. Sims, lead on to the larder!”
So, pulling, pushing, shouting, dancing by Mrs. Atterton’s side like a
lunatic at large, did that insane Bill manage to get his family out of
the dining-room and into the great still-room, where the fine dishes
that were ready for the luncheon next day had been already placed. It
was only when the cook hurried in, flushed and indignantly astonished,
that they knew how utterly ridiculous they were.
“Now, cook,” said the brazen Bill, the only one not abashed, “as we
can’t have a wedding feast to-morrow, we’ll have one to-day. We’ll take
the six best sweets and the boned turkey, and you can have a
jollification in the servants’ hall with the rest.”
“Madam!” said the cook, turning upon her mistress. It was all she could
say, but it saved her from bursting.
“Bill—this is really too——” began Mrs. Atterton when the queer spirit
which had inspired her husband at the dancing class, months ago, took
possession of him again and made him seize a tall tower made of pink and
white cream, step forward jauntily, and call back over his shoulder a
reckless—
“I’ll lead—everybody a dish. Now—Tum-tum-te-tum-tum-tum-tum!”
And it is a fact that they all walked out of the still-room headed by
Mr. Atterton humming the wedding march in a sort of hoarse, crowing
bellow; and Sims brought up the rear with a jelly in his hand and tears
of laughter rolling down his purple cheeks, while he tried to look as if
nothing unusual were happening.
“You can never,” said Mrs. Atterton breathlessly, suddenly remembering
her back, “you can never wonder again why Bill is so idiotic. It’s
hereditary. He can’t help it.”
“Andy—make Elizabeth have some of that pink stuff. She has eaten
nothing for ages. But she won’t ‘want to willow’ now. A parson’s wife
should look solid,” called Bill across the table.
Everybody laughed and sat down, while Andy cut off the top of the pink
tower; and as he brought the plate to Elizabeth it seemed just the
lovely beginning of all the ways in which he meant to serve her
throughout their lives. Their fingers touched as she took it from him,
and their deep happiness made them grave for a moment.
Then Mrs. Atterton said comfortably—
“After all, it will be great fun getting the furniture.”
“Yes, we’ll all go up to London and help to choose,” concluded Bill.
“What fun!”
So there was another jolly side of it, and Mrs. Atterton felt almost
consoled for the loss of the Stamfords’ heirlooms by the thought of
buying furniture for Elizabeth’s new home.
“But what is to become of Flitterkins?” said Bill. “The lady with the
roving eye—you won’t want her?”
“We might find Mrs. Jebb a post,” said Mr. Atterton.
“She doesn’t want a post; she wants a home,” said Elizabeth.
“I should hate to behave badly to her,” said Andy.
Then Norah gave her opinion—
“A little fancy shop at Bardswell, where she can be as refined as she
likes, and talk about Mr. Jebb to everybody until she sees him in wings
with a halo round his head, and really believes she never could have
married anybody else.”
“We could all buy embroidery silks every time we went into Bardswell,
whether we wanted them or not,” agreed Mrs. Atterton.
“We’ll stock the shop when we go to buy the furniture,” said Elizabeth
eagerly.
“And call it ‘The Ladies’ Needlework Club,’” added Norah, with her
little smile.
“I say, Elizabeth,” remarked Bill, “I shall take back that hunting-crop
and give you a new wedding present. What would you like?”
Elizabeth looked first at him and then at her lover.
“A mahogany sideboard with a plate-glass back exactly like Mrs.
Simpson’s.”
“What?” cried Bill. “Go on, you silly! I mean, really.”
“So do I,” said Elizabeth.
After that they went away from the table, and there was a buzz of
talking and laughter, until Elizabeth and Andy found themselves alone at
last in the twilight.
“You didn’t think it silly about the sideboard?” said Elizabeth.
“No,” said Andy.
But the last unspoken conversation here recorded was quite different.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.
A cover was created for this eBook.