AN UNEXPECTED LETTER
JOHN sat down to breakfast at about nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the
following Wednesday morning. It was the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption;
he had been to Mass at Delancey Chapel.
A letter was lying in his place. He took it up, and opened it. Here are
its contents.
“DEAR JOHN,--Unexpected business has brought me over to London. It
seems a thousand pities to go back to Ireland without seeing you.
Could you get rooms for me at your sequestered spot for ten days or
so? Send me an early wire if possible, and I’ll come down by the train
arriving tomorrow evening.
“Your affectionate sister,
ELIZABETH DARCY.”
Now, it is very certain that, from the time of our Mother Eve, women
have played an important part in the affairs of mankind, either for
good or ill. But it is equally certain that John had not the faintest
conception of the part Elizabeth would play in the life of at least one
person by this her proposed visit.
“Elizabeth suggests coming down for a few days,” said John tentatively,
and helping himself to bacon.
“Elizabeth?” echoed Corin, gazing enquiringly at John.
“My sister, Mrs. Darcy. I forgot you didn’t know her.”
“By all means advocate her coming,” quoth Corin. “I shall be delighted
to make her acquaintance.”
“I wonder--” began John, and stopped.
“Well?” queried Corin.
“I wonder whether Mrs. Trimwell has another room. Elizabeth suggests
that I should take rooms for her. She wants an early reply.”
“Then my suggestion,” remarked Corin calmly, “is that you ask Mrs.
Trimwell. On the whole it would be simpler and more practical than
merely wondering.”
“Brilliant man!” responded John genially. And he rang the bell.
Mrs. Trimwell, it appeared, had not. She was profuse in her apologies
for the lack of accommodation. You would have imagined that she was
entirely to blame for the fact that the White Cottage possessed merely
three bedrooms and a cupboard, so to speak. Tilda and Benny--aged
four--slept in the cupboard.
“But there’s the Green Man what isn’t seven minutes’ walk from here,
and though I’ll not vouch for the cooking myself, a bit of bacon and a
cup of coffee for breakfast is what any idiot might rise to, it being
pleasanter for the lady not to be afoot too early, and the beds I
believe is clean, while for other meals she’ll natural take them along
of you.”
Of course Chance--so-called--had a hand in the arrangement. If
Elizabeth had both slept and breakfasted at the White Cottage, I’ll
vouch for it that matters would not have happened precisely as they
did; indeed, they would probably have been totally different.
John finished his breakfast, and then took a telegram to the
post-office.
He was genuinely, undeniably pleased that Elizabeth was coming. He had
a sensation of something like exultation in the thought. She was so
extraordinarily reliable. Never under any circumstances did Elizabeth
“let you down,” to use a slang phrase. There was never the smallest
occasion to remind Elizabeth that the intimate remarks you made to her
were confidences. It was a foregone conclusion in her eyes. She would
no more dream of repeating them than she would dream of tampering with
another person’s letters. Also, so reflected John, she never reminded
you that you had made them, unless it was entirely obvious that you
desired to be so reminded. She never glossed over any difficulty, but
faced it squarely with you. The only people who were ever disappointed
in Elizabeth were those who looked for a maudlin sympathy from her, who
desired her to fight their battles, when she was fully aware that they
alone could fight them. Yet Elizabeth was entirely feminine, from the
top of her glossy brown hair, to the tip of her dainty shoes. John,
perhaps more than any one else in the world, understood and appreciated
both her strength and her femininity. It was therefore with a feeling
of intense satisfaction that he dispatched his telegram.
“Things move when Elizabeth’s around,” reflected John.
And then he walked on to the Green Man.
* * * * *
John, on the platform of Whortley station, surveyed the people there
collected with idle interest.
It was market day in Whortley. Stout market women, clutching empty,
or partially empty, baskets, sat on benches, their feet squarely
planted on the ground. Leather-gaitered men, whose clothes gave forth
a powerful aroma of horses and cattle, strolled up and down, and
talked in groups. Children, hot and tired, and consequently slightly
irritable, bickered with each other, or poked sticks at bewildered
and exhausted hens in crates. Somewhere in the back regions of the
station a couple of refractory oxen were being driven into trucks.
An atmosphere of almost aggressive patience pervaded the much-tried
porters.
“’Eat may be mighty good for the ’arvest,” remarked one motherly
looking woman, wiping her face with a large white handkerchief, “but I
do say as ’ow it’s a bit trying to the spirit, and likewise the body.”
“It’s the tempers of most people it gets at,” replied her neighbour
succinctly.
To which remark John responded with an inward and fervent acquiescence.
There was no denying the heat; there was no denying the sultriness of
the dusty platform.
John strolled down to its further end.
Behind the town the sky was crimsoning to sunset. The roofs of the
dingy houses were being painted red-gold in its light. The smoke from
a factory hung like a veil in the still air, lending mystery to the
atmosphere. The buildings lay in a web of colour,--blue, grey, purple,
and gold. A cynic might have likened the sunset glory to the glamour
with which some foolish people endow a merely sordid existence. In a
measure, too, his simile might have been justifiable; but, whereas he
would have scoffed, John, with something of the same simile in mind,
thanked God for the gift of imagination.
And then, far to the right, he caught a glimpse of white smoke above a
dark serpent of an oncoming train.