The Wingfields as a topic were becoming too much for Framsby. No sooner
had the curiosities of Mr. Wingfield’s engagement to the daughter
of Farmer Wadhurst been discussed than the news came of that
hole-and-corner marriage of the pair. Agriculture was looking up, some
people said, while others asserted that it was manorialism that was
coming down. There was a feeling of indignation at being cheated out of
the marriage; the offence was in their eyes on a level with the promise
of a presentation of a stained-glass window to the church and then
sending one done on “Glacier” transparent paper. The act, if not
absolutely fraudulent, was certainly in very bad taste, a good many
people said; but there were others who announced that they were not
surprised at that young woman’s desire to avoid publicity being obtained
for such an act as her marriage to a second husband before her first had
been dead more than two months. These were the people who had invariably
referred to Priscilla as Mrs. Blaydon, and pretended not to understand
who was meant when anyone spoke of Miss Wadhurst.
The right set agreed that the whole affair, from the engagement to the
marriage, was disgraceful, and hastened to leave a second relay of cards
upon Mrs. Wingfield the elder, and to enquire with a most interesting
expression on their faces, if they were fortunate enough to get a word
with that lady, when the young couple would be at the Manor, so that
they might leave cards upon them as well.
It might reasonably have been expected, Framsby thought, that the
Wingfields had absorbed enough of the conversation of the community up
to this point; but it seemed as if the Wingfields had set themselves up
as a perpetual topic; for while the buzz about the marriage was still in
the air, there came the news, announced in ridiculously large type under
the heading of “The Nuttingford Vacancy,” that the Wingfields were in
this business as well. “The Candidature of Mr. Wingfield” soon became
the most conspicuous line in every newspaper; and the way even the
most respectable London organs lent themselves to this new scheme for
pandering to that young woman’s insatiable desire for publicity showed,
in the estimation of Mrs. Gifford and her friends, with deplorable
emphasis, how depraved was the taste of the readers for whom the
newspapers catered.
The same censors were, however, just enough to affirm that the woman
was at the bottom of it all. They rehearsed the various items in her
progress of publicity; and the result was certainly a formidable total.
The first was, of course, the sensation of the arrest of Marcus Blaydon
at the church door; and then came his trial, and the pathetic appeal
made by the prisoner’s counsel to the judge and jury on behalf of the
young wife, every line of which appeared in the papers. But this was
apparently not enough for that young woman, and her name must be dragged
into the published account of the death of her husband. Two months
later she had married Mr. Wingfield in a way that was eminently open for
discussion, and now here she was urging her poor husband--the poor rich
man whom she had inveigled into marrying her, to make a fool of himself
by coming forward as a candidate for the representation of an important
division of an important county.
They marked off the items on their fingers after the convenient method
of Lord Lovat in Hogarth’s picture, and then enquired where it was all
going to end. When were those newspapers who gave four or five snapshots
every morning of Mrs. Wingfield engaged in canvassing for her husband,
and now and again a cabinet portrait of herself, coming to reason? When
were they going to cease lending themselves to the ambitious schemes of
the farmer’s daughter? Everybody knew, and several newspapers asserted,
that Mr. Wingfield had no chance whatsoever of being returned to
Parliament for Nutting-ford, so what on earth was the sense of pushing
that young woman before the eyes of the public? That was what the
censors were anxious to know.
But when the butter-making scenes came, and the papers were strewn with
snapshots of this transaction--when the great London organs gave column
reports of it, with occasional leading articles, and when finally the
news came that Mr. Wingfield was returned by an enormous majority--the
members of the best set hurried out to the Manor with a fresh relay
of cards. Surely the new member and his wife, out of gratitude for the
distinction conferred upon them by the electors of Nuttingford, would
provide the people of Framsby with a series of _fêtes_ on a scale
unparalleled by any remembered in the neighbourhood.
Now there was in Framsby a population of some 9,000 who belonged to
none of the recognized sets, and who had never so much as heard of
the existence of these sets; these are the people who matter in
every community, not the retired civil servants, not the retired
undistinguished officers of Sappers or the A.S.C.; and these were the
people who felt that something should be done to show how proud Framsby
was of having given Nuttingford a member and of having given that member
a wife who had her portrait looking the whole world in the face out of
the pages of the illustrated papers. These are not the people who hire
halls and elect a chairman and pass resolutions to the accompaniment of
long, commonplace speeches. But they get there all the same, and they
got there when they felt that they should do something to show their
admiration for Mr. Wingfield and his wife.
What they perceived they could do in this way was to meet the train by
which the pair whom they desired to honour would arrive at Framsby, and,
removing the horses from their carriage (they had found that the motor
was not to be used), harness themselves to the vehicle and drag it
through the streets and along the road to the Manor. From the steps of
the porch the new member of Parliament would address them, and possibly
his wife would follow him; they would all cheer and sing that about
the jolly good fellow, and then the final and most important act of
appreciation would take place: the health of the young couple would be
drunk by the crowd at the young couple’s expense. Moreover, a little
reflection was sufficient to convince the good people that the occasion
represented what was known as a double event: the celebration was
not only of the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield, after their
honeymoon; it was also the celebration of the splendid and successful
election contest in which they had both been so actively engaged.
The good people pulled themselves together. They felt that it could
be done. They felt themselves quite equal to doing the honours of the
double event, and no one who knew them would have ventured to suggest
that the confidence which they had in their own powers was misplaced.
There was very little organization in the matter--very little was
required. Half-a-dozen house painters prepared as many lengths of
canvas containing the simple manly English words “Welcome Home,” and
half-a-dozen young gentlemen in the drapery line got together some
slices of bunting which they shaped and glued on to rollers, so that
they became bannerets in a moment. For the necessary bouquets they knew
that they could depend upon the Manor gardeners; so the arrangements
for the demonstration did not occupy much time or thought. The musical
accompaniments were suggested by the Town Band, and then it was that Mr.
Mozart Tutt, Mr. Morley Quorn, and the other members of the Framsby Glee
and Madrigal Meistersingers had a chance of putting into practical form
their recognition of what Mrs. Wingfield had done for them upon one
occasion, for they prepared some choice serenade music with which to
greet the lady and her husband in the course of the night.
Someone suggested that they should practise a chorus beginning “See,
the Conquering Hero Comes” for the railway station; but Mr. Tutt was too
wise to enter into any contract that would involve competition with the
band and the cheers of the public.
And on this scale the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield was arranged
for; and as neither of them had been informed of the intention of
Framsby, they were rather surprised when, late in the evening, their
train steamed into the station, and slowed down into an atmosphere of
yells. Beyond the barrier there was a sea of faces whose waves were caps
with an occasional straw hat, and here and there a bowler--all were in
the air undulating fitfully, and lapping the base of a headland bearing
the inscription “Welcome Home.”
“Gloriana!” cried Jack. “Is this for us? And I fancied we had been done
with all that sort of thing until the next general election.”
“Of course it’s for us,” said Priscilla. “I had no idea that Framsby
would rise equal to the occasion.”
“Framsby is rather more than equal to the occasion,” growled Jack. “What
I want to know is, what has Framsby got to do with the election?”
“This isn’t an election demonstration. Can’t you see that it’s only a
welcome home?”
“Dammitall!” murmured Jack.
It is part of the penalty which people have to pay for being popular
that when they are trying to get into the church where a clergyman is
waiting to marry them, their admirers prevent them from entering;
when they are leaving a public meeting where they have made a stirring
speech, they have to fight their way to their carriage, and when they
are met at the railway station they are all but deafened first and
suffocated afterwards. Jack and his wife tried to stem that sea of faces
that roared in front of them, but they found it impossible. The platform
exit was narrow, and now it was choked with human life. But this
circumstance did not affect the enthusiasm of the people beyond. They
cheered and waved and quite prematurely broke into the “Jolly Good
Fellow” chorus which, properly speaking, should only find its vent when
Mr. Wingfield should announce from the porch of his house that he hoped
his good friends would honour him by drinking to the health of his
bride.
It was not until the railway authorities had admitted a force of police
that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield were able, following in the hollow of the
wedge which they inserted between the masses at the barriers, to reach
the outer atmosphere, which was resonant and throbbing with the fifes
and drums of “See, the Conquering Hero Comes,” though the moment
they put in an appearance, the strains were overwhelmed by cheers as
completely as the flame of a candle is overwhelmed when the extinguisher
is dropped over it. The whole space in front of the station and the
streets to the right and left were crammed with warm human life,
cheering in battalions.
It was all very flattering and overpowering, and unless a man had gone
through a fortnight’s electioneering he would not know what to do to
restore the _status quo ante_. Happily Mr. Wingfield was such a man. He
sprang upon a trunk--a weight-carrier of the Saratoga type--and taking
off his cap, raised his hand. At once the cheers began to wane and then
they ceased altogether in the region of the station, though further away
they died hard.
“My friends,” said Jack, in strident tones. “My friends--” and so on.
Everyone knows what he said--everyone present knew what he was going to
say, and he said it. It lasted just three minutes, and before the crowds
had recovered from the effects of that spell of silence, he was in the
carriage with Priscilla by his side. The coachman had taken good care
to send the horses that had been taken out of the traces, back to their
stables, so as to prevent the possibility of a mistake being made by the
crowd. He had heard of enthusiasts taking the horses out of a carriage
upon a similar occasion and failing to return them.
It was a triumphal progress of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield from the railway
station to the Manor. Never could such a home-coming have been looked
for by either Jack or Priscilla when, in accordance with the terms of an
agreement which they had entered into at the office of the registrar of
marriages, they had left that station a couple of months earlier,
she having returned to Framsby for one day only from her visit to her
Dorsetshire friends, and he from his interesting interview with his
promising agent.
The sun had just set when the carriage was dragged along the road to the
Manor House, the crowds trotting on each side. It was a warm evening,
and they were getting into fine form for the beer which they knew was
awaiting them. On through the gates and up the avenue the carriage
was dragged. The band had been left some distance behind, so they were
spared any more suggestions of the “Conquering Hero,” but the full choir
of the Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers now ranged around the
Georgian porch, and in response to the beat of Mr. Tutt, struck into
“Hail to the Chief that in Triumph Advances,” and the effect was
certainly admirable, especially as the blackbirds and the thrushes
supplied an effective obbligato from the shrubberies. There are several
stanzas to that stirring chorus, and the young couple had ample time to
greet Mrs. Wingfield, who had come to the head of the steps of the porch
to welcome them, before the strains had come to a legitimate close. Jack
had also time to ask the butler if he had made any arrangements about
those casks of beer, and to receive a satisfactory reply.
When the last notes of the melody had died away and the cheers began
once more, he stood with Priscilla by his side (she was carrying the
beautiful bouquet with which she had been presented: every flower had
come from the garden before her) at the top of the steps.
“My dear friends,” he began, and then he said the rest of what everyone
expected him to say--even his final words, referring exclusively to
the drinking of his health and the health of Mrs. Wingfield, were not
unexpected--at any rate, they were quite as well received as any part
of his speech; and then came the true and legitimate rendering of the
anthem which marks the apotheosis of the orator, “For He’s a Jolly Good
Fellow,” followed by the “Hip, hip, hip, hooray!” thrice repeated, with
one cheer more in case that the enthusiasm had not found an adequate
vent by the triplex scheme, though the latter certainly did not seem to
be ungenerous in its application.
The butler responded to the sentiment of the cheer.
Priscilla went upstairs to her room to change her travelling-dress, but
Jack, with his arm about his mother, went into the dining-room, where
some cold eatables had been laid out, with a refreshing “cup” in an old
cut-glass jug. No candles had yet been lighted; there was no need for
them; the glow of the sunset came through the windows and imparted the
show of life to the portraits, each in its own panel along the wall on
both sides of the fireplace.
The man glanced round the room with a look of satisfaction on his face.
“Ha, my old friends,” he cried; “how have you all been since I saw you
last? Somehow you don’t seem quite so surly as you used to be when I
first came among you. You’re not altogether so sneery as you were,
my bold ancestors--what? Do you know, mother, I always had a hang-dog
feeling from the first day I found myself among these impressive
Johnnies--I had a feeling that they were jeering at me; and I was afraid
to argue it out with them on the spot. But now I can face them
without feeling that I’m like the dirt beneath their feet. I’ve done
something--I’ve married the right wife for a chap like me--she has done
it all, mother. I never should have had the cheek to try it off my own
bat. She made me go in for it, and then she pulled it off for me. And
all so quietly and tactfully; no one would fancy that she was doing it
When Franklin Forrester was stating the case to me, she sat by and never
uttered a single word, and so it was to the very end. I tell you she
almost succeeded in inducing me to delude myself into the belief that I
was doing the whole thing. Oh, she’s the wife for me!”
“Indeed I feel that she is,” said his mother, still keeping her hand
upon his arm. “I am so glad that I have lived to see your happiness,
Jack. I am so glad that I loved her from the first.”
“I knew that you would, dearest. That made you doubly my mother. I felt
that I was giving you a daughter after your own heart.”
She pressed his arm, and held up her face to him. He kissed her silently
on each cheek, and then on the forehead.
“Good-night, my boy,” she said. “I must leave you now. You will be
together.”
“Don’t think of going yet,” he cried.
“I have not been quite so well to-day,” she said. “I just got up so as
to be able to welcome you both, but it has been too much for me. You
will say good-night to her for me.”
“You do look very pale and frail, my dearest,” he said. “You should not
have left your bed. We could easily have put off our return for another
day.”
“Oh, I’m not so ill as all that,” she said, with a laugh. “But you
know how I need to be careful. If I have a good night I may be able to
breakfast with you in the morning. Good night, my own boy. God bless
you.”
“God has blessed me,” he said. “I have the best mother in the world--the
best wife in the world.”
He put her in the hands of her maid, who was waiting for her in the
corridor at the head of the staircase. Then he walked to the further
end of the same corridor and stood at the window, looking out at the
dissolving crowds below, hearing the “chaff” of the boys and the
girls, and the cackling laughter of incipient but certainly not insipid
love-making. The advances of the young men were no more deficient in
warmth than was the retreat of the young women. The giggle and the
shriek were, of course, the natural accompaniments of this playfulness.
And the Meistersingers were giving their serenade in a self-respecting
style. Mr. Tutt knew all about how that sort of thing should be done.
He had spent close upon three months at Leipzig, studying music on its
highest plane and becoming thoroughly familiar with the varying aspects
of German sentimentality.
Jack was waiting for the sound of Priscilla’s door and of her steps on
the corridor. Half-an-hour had passed since she had gone upstairs, and
she was not the girl to be making an elaborate toilet at this time. She
should have been ready long ago.
He returned half-way down the corridor, and entered his own
dressing-room to change his coat and brush his hair. The bedroom was in
silence.
“Hallo!” he said, without opening the connecting door. “Hallo,
Priscilla, what are you about that you haven’t come down yet?”
He heard her voice say, “Jack, come to me--come,” but he scarcely knew
the voice to be hers; it was the voice of a stranger.
He opened the door and passed through.
She was standing in the centre of the room, still in her
travelling-dress--she had only taken off her hat.
“I say, what’s the matter?” he began at the moment of entering. But
then he stood still, as she turned her face to him. “Good God!
Priscilla--dearest, what is the matter? You are as pale as death.”
He thought that she was about to fall--she was swaying as a tall lily
sways in a breath of air. He hurried to her and put his arm about her.
“My God! You are ill. You have been doing too much. You have been
overdoing it at that beastly election, and this is the reaction. Pull
yourself together, darling.”
She seemed trying to speak, but no word would come. She gasped. Her
attempt to speak was choking her. At last she managed to make herself
audible. Clutching at his shoulders rather wildly and with her face
rigid, pushed forward close to his--with wild eyes and cheeks as pale as
moonlight, she cried in gasps:
“Jack--Jack--my own Jack--my husband--swear to me that you will stand by
me--that you will never leave me whatever may happen.”
“My darling! Calm yourself! Tell me what has happened.”
“What? What? Only one thing--one thing! I saw his face in the
crowd--close to the carriage. He was not drowned--he’s alive--he has
returned.”
“What do you mean?--he?--who? God above--not--not that man?”
“Marcus Blaydon--I tell you I saw his face. He smiled--such a smile!
There is no chance of a mistake. He is alive, and he has returned.”
The Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers were giving a spirited
rendering of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o’ lang syne?