A Bachelor's Comedy

CHAPTER I

This was no comedy to those most concerned, of course, for comedy is like happiness – directly a person knows he is in it, he is out of it. Tragedy, on the other hand, can only touch those who do not take themselves seriously enough.

No man, however, could take himself more seriously than did the Reverend Andrew Deane as he travelled down alone in a third-class railway carriage to his new living of Gaythorpe-on-the-Marsh.

When the train neared Millsby, the station for Gaythorpe, he rose hastily and peered at the piece of looking-glass provided for self-conscious travellers. Yes, his worst fears were altogether justified. His hair curled in a stiff bush above his forehead, in spite of brilliantine applied at the very last moment before leaving his London lodgings. Why – he demanded desperately of himself – why had he not brought a bottle in his pocket?

For he considered curls not only undignified but unclerical. His sensitiveness on the subject had started at the age of six, when he still wore them rather long and other little boys called him “Annie”! He fought the other little boys and induced his mother to have his hair cut, but the wound remained and rankled.

“Pshaw! Most annoying!” he said, passing his hand over his offending head. Then he sat down and blew his nose nervously as the train glided into Millsby station.

“Morning, Mr. Deane. I suppose you are the Reverend Deane?” said a fat gentleman with black hair and a red face, approaching the carriage door.

“Yes. Thank you. How-do-you-do?” said Andy, rather jerkily.

“My name’s Thorpe,” said the fat man, with colossal repose. “I’m the churchwarden. Glad to welcome you to your new parish, though it’s only for a few hours.”

“You are very kind,” responded Andy, feeling sure that the porter, the stationmaster and three stragglers were listening, and anxious to be as like his late senior curate – who was tall, lean, and immensely impressive – as possible.

“I expect you’re going to see what you want in the way of furniture for the Vicarage?” said Mr. Thorpe, moving ponderously towards the gate.

“Yes,” said Andy breathlessly.

It is rather a breathless thing, of course, to stand finally on the summit of one’s desires.

“Cart’s waiting. No luggage this time, I s’pose?” said Mr. Thorpe, who economised words. “Come this way, then.” And to the stationmaster, who stepped forward, thin and alert: “This is the Reverend Deane, our new Vicar.”

Again the parson shook hands, but that was nothing; because an eternal handshaking is as essential a part of a clergyman’s life as putting on his trousers: it was the absence of the Andrew that went home to him. All his life he had been dogged by an undignified “Andy,” which was even more unclerical than the curls. Now he meant to drop it for ever. No one here had known him before at school or college – no one here was acquainted with the aunt by marriage and the cousins who had been his family since the age of sixteen – he would drop the boyish “Andy” into the limbo of the past.

From all this it will be gathered, and rightly, that the Reverend Andrew Deane had obtained a living almost as soon as it was legally possible, and that he had a boyish air which made every one treat him like a boy.

“There’s a good strawberry bed in the Vicarage garden,” said Mr. Thorpe, as he settled himself in the cart. “Gee-up, mare!”

Then he seemed to think he had said all there was to say, and they jogged on silently through the quiet lanes.

After the hurry and bustle of the growing years, and the time at college, and the London curacy, Andy seemed, as he sat there, to have come out into some quiet place where he could look round and listen. He felt, unconsciously, as a man does who has stood on a country road to watch a noisy procession pass: the last straggler vanishes in the cloud of dust behind it – the clash of music and shouting dies away – and a lark that has sung unnoticed all the time, goes on singing.

This is the voice of peace grown audible at last, and those are very happy who hear it.

“H-hem,” said Mr. Thorpe, rousing himself at a sharp corner. “Funny you should be a bachelor. We seem in for unmarried parsons.”

“In the present day there are many – ” began Andy. But when Mr. Thorpe started a speech he had a sort of steam-roller habit of finishing it.

“I was looking at the church-books the other day – they only go back to 1687 – and the first vicar whose name stands there was a bachelor. He was there fifty years. He signed himself Will Ford, though he’s called Gulielmus now on his grave by the churchyard path. Gee-up, mare!”

But in that minute Andy saw it all, and across the centuries he greeted a brother.

“That’s the church,” said Mr. Thorpe, pulling up on the crest of a little hill and pointing with his whip towards a square tower with the roofs of a village clustering near; a flight of rooks trailed across blue sky and grey-white clouds.

Andy drew a long breath.

“It’s – it’s extraordinarily peaceful,” he said.

“Not so peaceful as you’d – However, best find out for yourself,” said Mr. Thorpe.

So they jogged on again, cop, cop, cop in a sunny silence, until they neared the Vicarage, when the churchwarden added —

“Mr. and Mrs. Stamford are away, else they’d have asked you to lunch, of course, as they gave you the living. I thought you’d maybe look round the Vicarage, and then come up to my house for a meal. Mrs. Thorpe has a cold fowl waiting for you when you’re ready for it.”

“Thank you. It’s awfully good – ”

“And I’d have stopped to show you round myself,” said Mr. Thorpe, rolling on, as it were, over Andy’s acknowledgments, “but I have to see a man about some pigs. However, young Sam Petch’ll be there. He was odd man to the old Vicar.”

“Do you advise me to retain his services?” inquired Andy, with the responsible dignity of a vicar and a householder.

“Um,” said Mr. Thorpe. “I don’t know. The poor old Vicar grew very feeble towards the end, and let things go. And those Petches are none of ’em models. They don’t seem to know when they’re speaking the truth and when they aren’t. And young Sam drinks a bit too. No, I can’t really advise you to keep him on.”

“I shall certainly not do so after what you tell me,” said the new Vicar, sitting very erect. “I have the strongest feelings about the households of the clergy – they should be above reproach.”

“Y-yes,” said Mr. Thorpe. Then, relieved, “And, of course, the Petches have William to fall back on.”

“If there is any one responsible that settles – ” began Andy, when the mare shied violently at a man on the road, and he had to devote his attention to his new hat.

“It’s the man who’s waiting to see me about the pigs,” said Mr. Thorpe calmly, indicating a red-faced, angry-looking person on the roadside. “He looks as if he was tired of waiting. Should you mind walking across the churchyard instead of driving round to the Vicarage gate?”

“Of course,” cried Andy, jumping down; and followed by Mr. Thorpe’s hearty “Mind you come up for a meal as soon as you’re ready,” he went through the churchyard gate.

It clicked loosely behind him, easy with the passing of the generations, and as he walked down the path a great many of these thoughts which are common to all generous youth passed through his mind; for there is, in every one of us, such a glorious wish to do something for the world when we are young, though we can no more talk about it, then, than Andy could have done as he looked at the gravestone of that Gulielmus who in life had been plain Will Ford.

Even to his own soul, Andy did not say those things; he only remarked to himself that he would be always, as it were, Gulielmus. The abbreviation should not intrude. The Reverend Andrew Deane he was, and the Reverend Andrew Deane he would remain.

Thus reflecting he reached the little gate leading into the Vicarage garden, and a tall, middle-aged man stood there, cap in hand. Honesty was in his blue eyes – respectful candour in his pleasant voice.

“Mr. Thorpe wished me to show you round, sir,” he said.

“Ah! Good-day. Where is the lad?”

“The lad?” said the man, a little surprised. “Oh, he’s got a place at Millsby, sir.”

“Good. That’s excellent,” said Andy, much relieved at not being obliged to start with a dismissal. “Now for the house.”

“Peas here,” said the man, passing a plot of ground, “and beans there. I bought the seed and sowed them on my own responsibility. ‘Whoever’s coming,’ says I to myself, ‘old or young, he’ll want peas and beans.’ ”

The words flowed in that delightful easy way which is of all human sounds the most comfortable, running into the heart like a cordial.

“Most thoughtful of you,” said Andy warmly.

And his fellow-curates in London had talked of the apathy of village people! He would tell them about this when he saw them. What working-man of their flock would buy peas and beans and sow them for love of the Church?

“I put a row of potatoes in too,” continued the man. “Says I to my wife, ‘Married or single, he’ll want potatoes.’ ”

“You’re married, then?” said Andy, as they reached the house door, wishful to show interest in the domestic concerns of this ardent churchman.

“Yes,” replied the man. “My wife can’t get about much, I’m sorry to say. Legs given way. But” – he gave a queer side look at Andy – “it isn’t that she’s lost power, so to speak: the power’s only moved from her legs into her tongue.”

Andy smiled back – and when two men enjoy together the immemorial joke about a woman’s tongue it is as good as a sign of freemasonry – then he said solemnly, “Very sad for you both, I am sure.”

“Yes,” said the man, immediately solemn too. “I’m sure I don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t for William.”

“William!” repeated Andy. “Why – what is your name?”

“Samuel Petch,” said the man.

“Then it will be young Sam Petch who has taken a situation at Millsby?” demanded Andy.

“I’m young Sam Petch. Father’s old Sam Petch. He’s eighty-one.”

“Oh!” said Andy.

And almost in silence he went over the Vicarage escorted by his pleasant and obliging guide, who said at every turn, “We ought to trim honeysuckle; I only waited until you came,” or “I put a few newspapers down here, because the sun seemed to be fading the paint.”

Andy tramped up and down stairs, and peered into cellars, and found no words in which to inform young Sam Petch that his services were not required.

How was it possible in face of that trustful confidence to say abruptly, “You are mistaken. You may remove your peas, beans, and potatoes, or I will pay for them. Even your wife’s legs are nothing to me, though I deplore them. You must depart”? Andy could not do it.

At last Sam Petch went back to lock up the opened rooms while the new Vicar stood alone at his own front door. It was rather a dignified door, with pillars where roses grew and five steps leading into the garden, and Andy’s heart swelled with a proud sense of possession. Here he would stand welcoming in the senior curate who had treated him like a rather stupid schoolboy. Here the aunt and cousins who could not remember that he was a man and a clergyman would take on a proper attitude of respect. Here the lady lay-helper who had so condescended to him in the London parish would be received, kindly, but – He held out a hand and rehearsed the greeting. The bland and prosperous Vicar on his own threshold. Quite equal to dealing with anything.

“A-hem!” coughed Sam Petch behind him.

“Ah – that you, Sam?” said Andy, turning very red and drawing in his hand. “We – er – we had better be moving on. I was just – er – exercising my arm.”

“Exercise splendid thing, sir,” said Sam, tactfully looking away. And while they walked down the road Andy said to himself that a man accustomed for two years to dealing with sharp Cockneys would find the simple villager a very easy problem. All he had to do was to wait until they reached the cottage at the next turning and then say, firmly but kindly, that he did not need Mr. Petch’s services.

The turning was two hundred yards away – one hundred and fifty —

“Here’s my poor wife at the gate,” said Sam. “Looked after the old Vicar like a mother, she did, until her legs went. It’s one of her bad days, but she was bent on saying a word of welcome to you as you went past.”

And of course Andy had to put it off a little longer while he took Mrs. Petch’s hand and bade her “Good morning.”

She placed her other hand on her heart, and began to speak quickly in a thin, high voice with a gasp in it.

“I’m done up, sir – waiting here so long for you – will you step in?”

So, of course, Andy went through the little garden in the wake of Mrs. Petch’s dragging footsteps.

“It’s such a comfort,” said Mrs. Petch, sitting limply, “to feel we’re settled again. Unsettledness is what tries the female nerves worse than anything, as you’ll no doubt find out some day, sir.”

Andy passed his hand across his brow. It was very difficult. But it was now or never. He rushed blindly at the fence with an incoherent —

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Petch, but I have – that is to say – your husband’s services will not be required.”

He mopped his brow, forgetful of all clerical dignity, while Mr. and Mrs. Petch looked at him and said nothing, and he felt as if red-hot worms were crawling about his unprotected person. Still they said nothing; and that was what made it so awful. At last a parrot screeched in the stillness.

“You – you have a relative to – er – fall back upon,” said poor Andy.

Mrs. Petch took a drink of water and passed a handkerchief across her eyes, then she asked faintly —

“What relative?”

“One named – er – William,” said Andy. “I understand – ”

“T-that’s William!” interrupted Mrs. Petch, pointing to the parrot; then she laughed hysterically and burst into tears. “We get five shillings a week from an old mistress of mine as long as the parrot lives. And for that my poor husband is to lose his place. Oh, it’s hard – it’s cruel hard.”

Andy stood up, rather upset, but determined now to go through with it.

“Look here,” he said. “That’s not the only reason. I gather that your husband is addicted to drink.” Andy paused and elevated his chin. “A clergyman’s household must be above reproach.”

“It’s not true,” said Mrs. Petch eagerly. “He’s always so much livelier than the other men at Gaythorpe that when he gets a glass and is a bit livelier still, they think he’s drunk.”

“Give me a chance, sir,” said Sam Petch, in a low tone, speaking at last.

And of all the winged words in any language which he could have chosen to shoot straight at Andy’s heart, those were most sure to hit the core of it.

A chance!

Oh, Andy’s young soul had been wrung during those two years in London by the sight of thousands who had never had a chance, or who had missed it, or had wilfully wasted it. The ragged horde of them with haggard eyes and dirty soft hands seemed to press about him in the flowery silence of the cottage doorway.

“All right,” he said, drawing a long breath. “I’ll give you a chance.”

“You shan’t have cause to regret it, sir,” said Sam Petch quietly, with a simple manliness that pleased Andy.

All the same, on leaving the cottage, he felt bound to pause at the door in order to deliver a further warning.

“I must ask you to adhere to the strict truth in all our dealings together,” he remarked austerely.

“He always does,” said Mrs. Petch, before her husband could reply.

“I shall be glad to find it so,” said Andy.

“Only,” added Sam Petch, scratching his head, “it’s so hard to tell the difference. A lie – well, often it isn’t exactly a lie – ”

“What else can it be?” demanded Andy.

“A lie – ” repeated Sam. “Well, it’s often” – he searched the ceiling and derived inspiration from a string of onions – “it’s often the truth the other way out.”

“The difference between truth and falsehood is always perfectly clear and distinct,” said Andy, opening the door. And, really, he was still young enough to think so.

Sam Petch accompanied him with a sort of subdued dignity to the Thorpes’, and there said farewell.

“You may rely on me, sir,” he said.

Andy held out his hand impulsively.

“I think I may, Petch.”

Then the churchwarden’s wife came hospitably forward and shook hands with the new Vicar. She was as fat as Mr. Thorpe, but with a different sort of fatness; for while he seemed to be made of something very solid, like wood, she shook and wobbled to such an extent that Andy, following her down two steps into a cool room, held his breath involuntarily for fear she should crack.

“Mr. Thorpe’s out still,” she said, panting slightly. “But my nephew will take you to wash your hands. Wa-alter!”

A fat youth with round cheeks that swelled up under his eyes came reluctantly through the French window, followed by a friend.

“They’re holidaying,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “Now you go and have a wash, and then come down and help yourself. I shall be somewhere about when you’ve finished your meal.”

The fat boy escorted the guest upstairs, and left him in the spotless stuffiness of the spare-bedroom, where everything smelt of camphor and lavender. When Andy came down he was almost dismayed to see the banquet which had been prepared for him. Cold fowls. A whole ham. A huge trifle. A dish of tarts and cheesecakes. A cream cheese. It was stupendous. And Mrs. Thorpe’s fowls and cheeses and hams were all bigger, tarts more full of jam, cheesecakes more overflowing with yellow richness, than any in the whole shire.

Mrs. Thorpe had never been an uncharitable woman, and in speaking of a mean relative the most scornful thing she could say was, “You could eat one of her cheesecakes in a mouthful. Now you know the sort of woman!”

Andy sat down, realising that he was very hungry, and he was rather consoled to find that some one had obviously been lunching before him. He would scarcely have dared to mar the exquisite proportions of the trifle or to disturb the elegant decoration of the fowls. The previous luncher had even spilt fragments on the shining tablecloth.

He glanced at his watch, and began to eat hastily, finding his time was growing short, and as he was finishing Mrs. Thorpe came in. She paused at the door, gave a little grunt of astonishment which she changed into a cough, and said heartily —

“Well, I am glad you’ve enjoyed your lunch. Mary” – she shouted down a long stone passage – “bring in the coffee.”

Mary – and this was a queer thing – Mary also paused in the doorway with a grunt of astonishment which she turned into a cough; but Andy did not notice this, and after drinking his coffee he climbed into Mr. Thorpe’s cart, and was driven to the station, feeling as only a man can feel who gets what he wants from life before he loses his illusions.

The groom eyed him curiously as he sat looking straight ahead with the light of youth and hopeful candour shining in his eyes – but the groom’s gaze was upon his slack waistcoat, not upon his face.

And in a corner of the Thorpes’ orchard fat Walter and his friend were still munching the last remnants of a stolen feast.

The cart arrived so early at the railway station that Andy had nearly half an hour to wait, and as one country person after another came upon the platform, and joined a group, an obvious whisper went round, followed by a furtive inspection of the black-coated stranger.

Andy straightened his shoulders, and unconsciously endeavoured to assume an expression of benevolent dignity. Naturally, they were interested in the new Vicar of Gaythorpe. It would have surprised Andy very much at the moment to have met any one who was not interested in that gentleman, and he felt a little glow, in passing one of the groups, to hear a woman say —

“He’s so slight and thin. You’d wonder where he could put it.”

“H-hush!” warned the rest.

Andy smiled inwardly and settled his collar. Of course they referred to his brain. Well, it was rather a wonderful thing to have a living presented to one at twenty-five by a man who had only chanced to hear a single sermon. He thought it all over again. The old friend of his Vicar attending morning service – the interview three days later – the astonishing offer of a living that was a rich one, as livings go in these days.

“Of course,” said Andy to himself, stepping into the railway carriage, “I was rather trenchant that morning.”

He glanced out of the window as the train slipped away through the spring afternoon, and congratulated himself on the impression he seemed to have made on his new neighbours. They would be eager to see him again. Ridiculous for the London clergy to talk of apathy in the face of such interest as he had seen at Millsby station. The parishioners were already discussing the mental qualifications of the new Vicar with a keenness that was perfectly delightful.

And in the next compartment three women bent together, discussing a wonder.

“Was it six cheesecakes that Thorpe’s groom said?”

“And eight tarts! And you know Mrs. Thorpe’s tarts.”

“Besides ham and fowl and half one of her great trifles.”

“He must have got some complaint.”

“Oh, I hear them London curates is half starved. P’raps he’d never seen a meal like that before, and he couldn’t stop.”

“But you’d think he’d burst!”

“That’s just it. That’s just where the wonder comes in. Cool and thin as a lath after it all.”

“I shall go to hear him preach.”

“So shall I. Good as the Sword-Eating Man at Bardswell Fair. Ha-ha!”

Poor Andy!

CHAPTER II

As Andy passed through his own hall between his own umbrella-stand and eight-day clock on his way to pay a parochial call, he stepped lightly, less like the proud incumbent of an excellent country living than a schoolboy who endeavours to escape a maiden aunt.

But it was no use. Before he reached the porch a door was opened, and Mrs. Jebb, the housekeeper, fluttered forth from the back regions. She had previously fluttered in and out of matrimony in rather the same way, and seemed to have brought nothing from it but a wedding ring and a black satin dress trimmed with beads.

She had, however, brought something hidden as well – a profound conviction that she was fascinating to the gentlemen. Her late husband had been wont to remark, during their brief married life, that there was a something in her way of looking out of her eye-corners that was enough to upset an aconite. He meant a rather different thing, but he was not as cultured as Mrs. Jebb would have liked him to be. Still the habit of – as she inwardly phrased it – “eye-cornering” clung to her still.

Andy’s aunt chose her solely because she and sex seemed to have no connection – which is only another proof that nobody knows anything at all about anybody else – and she called herself a lady-cook-housekeeper.

She “eye-cornered” Andy now as she came flitting after him to the front door, but more for the sake of practice than from any ulterior motive.

“Might I ask you – you do pass the grocer’s shop – and we are out of soft sugar?” She had a way of talking in gasps until she got fairly started, when nothing would stop her. “I am so sorry to make mistakes, but I must ask you to try and remember that I never expected to serve even in the – er – higher reaches of domestic – when Mr. Jebb – ”

“Excuse me,” said Andy, seizing his hat from the peg, “I am rather pressed for – ”

“And a pound of rice, if you would be so very kind?”

“Delighted. Of course,” said Andy incoherently, escaping down the steps.

He had already learned that the reminiscences of life with Mr. Jebb were so long and varied that it seemed strange a year could have held them all, and of so intimate and pathetic a nature that, once fairly started, it were sheer brutality to cut them short.

But half-way down the drive a thin voice floated out to him —

“Candles – a pound of candles – if you could?”

He looked back, and there she stood on the doorstep, eye-cornering Andy from afar, with strands of brownish hair and odd bits of cheap white lace fluttering about her.