A Bachelor's Comedy

So Andy put on his best coat with a good deal of difficulty, and cut himself in shaving, and ate a poor breakfast, and finally set forth in the new pony-cart to call upon Elizabeth at the house of her aunt, with a bleak and desolate feeling, as if he were going off in a tumbril to his own execution.

It does not sound romantic, but it is true, and it is none the less true that Andy was as much in love with the girl as any young and ardent man who has not frittered his emotions away can be.

However, the cool sweet air blew on his forehead as he drove along the lanes, and calmed his nerves, which were fretted by pain and suspense and a sleepless night. Andy began to feel better, and to forget everything but the fact that he loved her and would soon see her. He could not help thinking there was hope for him, because of a look that had come across her face when he said the fateful “Elizabeth.”

Andy’s reflections broke short at that point, and the grey summer world under a low sky seemed suddenly strange and unreal – nothing was vividly real to him in that moment but a blaze of blue and yellow and a girl’s face – all life since he was born seemed only to have been the dim antechamber to that moment.

He whipped up the pony, who really might have known that he was a substitute for the wings of love so sportingly did he respond, and as his little hoofs clicked on the hard road they made a merry sound that was pleasant to hear.

“Love’s all – folly. But it’s – jolly.”

So the gay little hoofs kept beating out all the way to the house of Elizabeth’s aunt; but Andy would have felt annoyed at such a sentiment if he had not been too engrossed to hear it.

The house was square, and extremely substantial, and rather ugly – just the house, somehow, where one would expect a widowed aunt to dwell – and the very superior parlour-maid who came to the door was just the sort of servant one would have expected a widowed aunt to engage; for this aunt really was, in many useful and profitable ways, particularly to herself, an epitome of the expected.

The only unexpected thing she ever did was to omit having a family, and that was why the Atterton girls were obliged to stay with her rather more than they felt inclined to do; for an epitome of the expected is honoured by all and gets everything, but is not usually a great favourite with nice young people who have no wish to be remembered in her will.

But the kindness that underlay everything in the daily life of the Attertons, without ever being seen or spoken of, made it a matter of course that the girls should go over for a week when they were wanted. Norah went less often that Elizabeth, because of her public engagements and her Club in London; still, she took her turn all the same.

“Is Miss Elizabeth Atterton at home?” said Andy, his heart hammering so loudly against his ribs that he thought the superior maid must hear it and wonder. But she replied with a calm which was equal to that of any powdered footman —

“Not at home, sir.”

It may sound foolish, or as if Andy were the neurotic young man he certainly was not, but the bare fact remains that Andy felt physically sick and the garden rocked about him. The reaction was so great, and the feverish night had unnerved him.

“When will she be back?” he managed to ask at last.

Then the superior housemaid proved that soft hearts do beat even under starched garments, and a demeanour so stiff that any softness at all might, at first sight, seem incredible.

“The ladies have gone out for the day, sir,” she replied. “I’m sorry to say they won’t be back until evening.” She paused, then added, in almost a confidential tone, “Can I give any message?”

“Please tell Miss Atterton I called, and was sorry to find her out,” he said dejectedly.

“Yes, sir.” The parlour-maid had once had a young man in the weak and low-waged past, and she knew how it felt. “May I offer you any refreshment, sir? I am sure my mistress would wish – ”

“No, thank you,” said Andy, climbing back into his cart. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sir,” said the parlour-maid feelingly. “I hope you’ll get home before the storm starts.”

But Andy did not care, as he jogged along home again, whether the rain fell or not. He had come in the cart so as to present an immaculate appearance to the Beloved and the Beloved’s aunt, and he had used nearly quarter of a bottle of brilliantine to ensure his curls remaining flat under any stress of circumstance, and now she was out. He didn’t care what happened after that. Somehow he had never expected her to be out when he wanted to ask her to marry him. He felt vaguely that fate ought to have waited on so important an event.

The pony took his own time, clicking doggedly on the long way back, “Come on – Come on – Come on,” and about half-way home a heavy thunderstorm broke over the country, lightning zigzagged in streaks across the horizon, and at length followed a deluge of rain. Andy had brought no mackintosh or overcoat, and the big drops whistled down in sheets from a still, low sky upon his shoulders and the pony’s back.

It was such a storm as sometimes comes in an English summer after a long spell of dryish weather, and it seemed capable of going on for ever.

Andy eyed the landscape with a dreary gaze, and felt a savage pleasure in being as uncomfortable as possible until he remembered that his best suit was being ruined, and that the pony and cart had absorbed all his available spare cash. If the time ever came when the Beloved were at home – but that now seemed vague and improbable – he would have to court her in his second-best suit.

Another grievance against fate.

He was surveying the trotting pony with an uninterested gaze, including even that new and cherished possession amongst the things that did not matter, when his glance suddenly sharpened. What on earth – ? He jumped out of the cart and ran round to the pony’s left side. Yes, his sight had not deceived him. A faint patch of yellowish drab was appearing where before had been only a rather different shade of brown. And there was another similar patch on the animal’s hindquarters.

He looked at the pony, and the pony flicked his tail as much as to say, “This is really no affair of mine – I must leave it for you humans to settle among yourselves.”

Andy climbed back into the trap again, and drove for another hour through the deluge with an eye upon the increasing paleness of the drab patches. By the time he reached Gaythorpe he was driving an openly and flagrantly piebald pony in a green cart picked out with bright red, and it really did look a little gay for a country vicar.

“Sam!” shouted Andy at the top of his voice, as he drove into the great stable-yard where the little pony was to reign alone.

“Yes, sir!” called Sam, running.

“Look here,” said Andy, pointing to the patches that were now cream-colour. “What’s that?”

“Struck with lightning!” cried Sam dramatically. “Well! it’s a mercy it wasn’t you, sir. That’s all I can say. But shock will turn hair white in animals as well as people. I remember my poor old aunt had a white patch over her left ear ever after the roof fell in one stormy night.”

Andy looked at his henchman. “Come to me in the house in half an hour,” was all he said.

But Sam knew that this was one of his rare failures.

About half an hour later the Vicar sat in dry clothes, drinking hot tea, and awaiting the culprit. He was irritated, chilled through, and as like the senior curate as he had ever been in his life.

“I gather,” he remarked when Sam appeared, “that you were aware of the – er – tinting of the animal?”

Sam faced him as one honest man another.

“I won’t deny I were aware,” he said. “I won’t deny it. I’d seen the pony before the owner knowed the likely customer was a clergyman, and after. But he told me on his sacred oath that the stuff he’d put on was permanent. ‘Stand the little beggar under a tap for a year, and it won’t wash off,’ was his very words. And I thought what a man doesn’t know he can’t grieve about, so I kept it to myself. I was sure, being a clergyman with a quiet taste, that you’d rather not know he was so circussy underneath. And he was dirt cheap. Piebald or plain, he was dirt cheap.”

“I know that,” said Andy, “but what I object to is the dishonest dissimulation – yes, I can call it nothing else, dishonest dissimulation on your part.”

“I did it for the best,” said Sam with humble simplicity. “I wanted you to have a good pony and a cheap pony, and not to be bothered thinking if it was fit for a clergyman’s household or not, and I did it all for the best. But I made a mistake. I ought to have been more straighterer.”

“Is there anything else” – Andy paused for a word – “unusual about the animal?”

Sam scratched his chin and replied with reluctance —

“Well – there’s just one thing – he waltzes when he hears a band. Only there never is a band.”

“I should like to know,” said Andy, rising and standing in a dignified attitude with a hand on a book, “what you got out of this transaction?”

Then Sam threw himself, as it were, upon Andy’s mercy, and looked his master straight in the eye, with an honesty indescribable.

“I’ll be straight with you,” he said. “The man offered me half a crown, and I took it.”

He omitted to mention the other seventeen and six, because he felt that was between himself and the landlord of the Blue Tiger, where much of it had been expended, but he did, after a great deal of fumbling in a dingy pocket, produce a half-crown.

“Here it is,” he said in a voice charged with manly feeling. “You take it, sir. It justly belongs to you.”

“I don’t want your half-crown,” said Andy hastily.

“And I can easily sell the pony and trap for what you gave,” pursued Sam. “Hall, the butcher at Millsby, wants one for his wife. He’d jump at it.”

“Well, I’ll think the matter over,” said Andy. “You can go.”

But when he was alone the hot tea began to stimulate him, and he had a very pleasant sensation of repose after all the fresh air, following his sleepless night, and his depression suddenly lifted in that odd way which every one recognises who suffers from it at all. It is as if a cloud passed away from the spirit.

So Andy began to see that the end of everything was not come because he could not see Elizabeth for twenty-four hours. Then he remembered how the little pony had trotted on through the sunshine and through the rain like the game little creature it was, and he began to feel the first stirring of that affection which a decent man has for the horse or the dog that serves him faithfully. No, he would keep the pony, though it was such a secular-looking little animal, and he would go out now to see if the hot mash had been administered.

He stuffed a few lumps of sugar from the basin into his pocket, and went out into the stables, where he found Sam. He was afraid Sam would have to go after all.

“Enjoying his feed, sir. Not a penny the worse,” said the culprit with a sort of chastened pleasantness.

Then he glanced at the cream-coloured spots and his mouth began to twitch, and he caught Andy’s eye, and Andy’s mouth was twitching too, and before they knew where they were, the big echoing stable was ringing with uproarious laughter.

“Beg pardon, sir, but it sort o’ came over me how funny it was,” gasped Sam, wiping his eyes. “When I see you drive in – all piebald – when you’d gone out plain brown – you might have knocked me down with a feather.”

Andy wiped his eyes, too, and pulled himself together.

“You ought not to have lied about it, Sam. Why did you say the pony was struck by lightning?”

Sam rubbed the back of his head and eyed Andy apologetically.

“It was a silly thing to say. But I had to say something. And it jumped out of itself.”

“It is a sad pity that lies should jump out so easily,” said Andy, trying to erase the memory of that unclerical laughter.

“It is, sir,” agreed Sam. “I’ve often thought so myself.”

After that Andy returned to the house and slept, and woke up stiff for evensong, and came back from the church to dress for dinner at the Stamfords’, where he had promised to go that evening.

It already seemed so long a time since he had talked to Elizabeth in the sunshine that he could scarcely believe it was only yesterday.