A Bachelor's Comedy

CHAPTER X

The year was just at that most pleasant pause between hay-time and harvest, and the Vicarage brooded in the sun amongst the full-leaved trees like an architectural embodiment of repose. Quiet joys seemed to cluster round its broad windows like the roses, and a very faint ‘Coo-coo!’ from the pigeons in Mr. Thorpe’s yard sounded like a lullaby heard only by the soul – something too deeply peaceful to be real.

And in spite of all that, there were three broken hearts, or cracked hearts – anyway, hearts not in a comfortable condition – under that very roof.

For Elizabeth had receded, mentally and physically, to a remote distance. She first departed to some inaccessible region in a sort of glory of white draperies and careless smiles when Andy caught sight of her in the window-seat across the blank distance of her mother’s drawing-room. It seemed then incredibly audacious that he could ever have dreamed what he had dreamed.

In addition to which she had actually gone to stay with an aunt for a week, a fact of which Andy was unaware; and he haunted the lanes where he had sometimes met her in the past with so sad a countenance, that such of his parishioners as met him reported it was true – he had ruined his stomach with over-eating – no young feller with a good house and a decent income would go about like that if he could digest his food. There was no doubt a very good reason for his abstaining from butter, as Mrs. Jebb told Miss Kirke he continued to do.

Then Mrs. Jebb herself. She also suffered – not from blighted affection exactly, but from a blight upon certain vague hopes which were ready to ripen into affection. It was, she had felt on coming to the Vicarage, notorious that young men did, in the present age, often marry women old enough to be their maiden aunts; and though Mr. Jebb still loomed monumental in her heart, she had a large heart, and there was plenty of room for another occupant. So she went about her work with a certain romantic melancholy that was not unpleasant, and her sighs were like the wind rushing sadly through those empty spaces which Andy declined to fill. She was short with the little maid, however, during those days, to a degree that would have caused Sophy to rebel if she had not been so full of her own concerns, and inclined to disregard a universe on account of a blue silk tie presented to another young lady.

So, by the day previous to the school-treat, there was a charged atmosphere at Gaythorpe Vicarage, which only required a match to make it explode; and the match was provided by Mrs. Jebb in the shape of a gingerbread pudding, which she had absently sweetened with carbonate of soda, instead of sugar.

Andy rang the bell.

“Take this stuff away,” he said. “It is not fit for human food. Tell Mrs. Jebb I wish to speak to her.”

But in the five minutes which elapsed before she appeared, Andy’s wrath began to cool, and, unfortunately, his courage cooled with it, so that the dignified and stern rebuke which had been waiting for her at the moment of tasting the pudding petered out on her arrival into a rather feeble —

“I say, Mrs. Jebb, this won’t do, you know. You really must cook better than this.”

“When I entered your service,” said Mrs. Jebb, whom Sophy had not spared in her recital of the message, “I expected to be treated very differently from what I have been in many ways. I never expected to be sent for by cheeky maid-servants, in a manner” – she paused, gulped, and concluded – “that no gentleman should send for a lady in.”

“It’s not only the pudding,” said Andy, nettled afresh by this want of a proper attitude, “it’s your cooking altogether. You must see that.”

But Mrs. Jebb’s interview with the triumphant Sophy had left her in a state of mind that allowed her to see nothing but a mist, through which Andy’s boyish, reproving face loomed as a last irritation. She wanted to box his ears, but replied instead —

“If you are not satisfied, I will go. Pray accept my notice from this day forth.”

Feeling vaguely that she had given notice in a dignified, Biblical manner suited to her position as housekeeper at a vicarage, she walked from the room.

But when she reached the door the air blew in from the garden, and a little shower of rose-leaves fluttered down through the sunshine. She stopped short with a sudden stunned contraction of the heart.

What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? Had she been mad?

She passed a handkerchief over her forehead and came back slowly into the room.

“I apologise,” she said breathlessly. “My temper got the better of me. Pray think no more about it.”

Andy turned round from the window.

“I think we will not discuss the matter further,” he said. “Please consider your resignation accepted.”

He was pleased now at the thought of getting rid of her – though if she had not given notice, he would have kept her for an indefinite period, with a man’s usual dislike for any change in his domestic arrangements.

“Very well,” replied Mrs. Jebb, gathering some remnants of dignity round her, “it must, of course, be as you wish.”

She attempted to flutter with her usual light air towards the door, but just before she reached it she stopped short and began to cry.

“Come, Mrs. Jebb,” said Andy, unable to leave well alone, “you gave me notice, you know. And you’ll find heaps of other places.”

“Where?” said Mrs. Jebb, turning on him with a sort of desperate sincerity that made all her foolish little affectations fall from her like a mantle, leaving the real woman – old, defenceless, incapable – so nakedly plain for Andy to see that he felt almost ashamed.

“Lady-cooks,” he murmured – “there’s a constant demand for lady-cooks.”

“I’m not very strong,” sobbed Mrs. Jebb. “I couldn’t take an ordinary place. No – I shall have to go back to my brother – and his wife – ”

“Well, that will be pleasanter for you – with relations,” suggested Andy cheerfully.

Then the bitterness of the unwanted – which is no less terrible because they do not deserve to be wanted – gripped Mrs. Jebb’s soul and made her jerk out in breathless sentences —

“Pleasant! To sit down to meals all the rest of your life where you have to say you don’t like anything tasty because there’s never enough for three!”

Well, it was no reason for retaining an incompetent housekeeper, but there is something so helplessly touching about every real self, when the outside self which hides it fades away, that no wonder Andy said, after a pause —

“All right, Mrs. Jebb. Have another go and see how you manage.”

For a moment longer Mrs. Jebb’s real self remained visible while she leaned her head on the door-post and mopped her eyes in speechless relief and thankfulness; then it disappeared, and she patted her fringe with a fluttered —

“How foolish of me! But I have become so attached to Gaythorpe. I am so delighted that our little misunderstanding has been cleared up. I am so glad you spoke candidly, Mr. Deane. I hope you always will in future if there is any little matter you don’t like.”

And she tripped into the hall with something of her old airiness.

An hour later Andy was bending over the plantains on the lawn in the front part of the garden, facing the road, and two women passed by on the other side of the hedge without seeing him.

“Nice house, I allus think.”

“Yes. Rare thing being Parson Andy.” Then they passed on, and their Vicar saw through a hole in the hedge that it was the meek and respectful Mrs. Burt who had spoken.

He ground his teeth. Parson Andy, indeed! Then the undignified abbreviation was going to dog him to his dying day.

It was the last straw – he flung down his spud and stalked into the house.

Nothing in life is more interesting and queer than the way in which every trifling event fits into and influences the rest.

For instance – Andy fell in love.

That made him feel a new chivalry and kindness towards all girls, particularly towards those who lived in his own parish. It may have been ridiculous, or it may not, but he became secretly proud of their fresh looks and jealous of their honour, like an elder brother. Several of them sang in the choir-gallery whose families attended chapel, and, one way or another, he knew nearly every one in the parish by now, as a country parson will in old-fashioned places. So when one of those regrettable incidents occurred which happen in all country parishes, he was inclined to forget his casual knowledge of such affairs in London, and to look on the thing as a personal outrage.

It was no longer a vague girl who had taken a wrong turning, but a definite Gladys Wilton, whose life was spoilt, and a John Wilton, shepherd, who went sorrowful and shamed.

Falling in love with Elizabeth, therefore, had made girls sacred to her lover, and that is rather a fine thing to say of Elizabeth.

The other events at work in Andy when he encountered the author of the misfortune in a lonely lane were, the difference with Mrs. Jebb, the “Parson Andy” of the two women passing the hedge, and, in the immediate present, a meeting with a big young man instead of the eagerly expected Elizabeth, who was still away from home, though Andy did not know it.

He had walked miles, scanning the fields and lanes round her house in vain, but not venturing to call. So he was feeling tired, and irritable, and more in love than ever. And the events mentioned pushed him on into a course of action which he would otherwise not have taken.

The young man, too, was looking very jolly, with a pipe in his mouth and a good bicycle and every evidence of self-satisfied prosperity.

“Afternoon!” he said rather insolently, with a smirk that irritated Andy still further. He had been asked by old Wilton to speak to the young man, and he suddenly made up his mind that he would speak now.

“Stop!” he cried. “May I have a word with you?”

So they entered into a conversation which began all right, but ended, as it was bound to do under the circumstances, by Andy calling the young man a coward, and the young man calling Andy a blanked, interfering parson, who only dared to say things like that because he knew he wouldn’t have to fight.

“I don’t mind a fight,” said Andy, beginning to go white about the nose and to breathe heavily.

No one, of course, could maintain for one moment that Andy was the right sort of parson.

“All very well to talk,” sneered the young man, sticking a crimson face close to Andy’s. “Do, then I’ll believe you! Parsons” – (he used adjectives) – “we’ll soon have done with parsons in this country” (and he used adjectives again).

“I’ll fight you,” said Andy slowly, “if you’ll promise to marry her if I win.”

“If you win, I will,” panted the young man. “I can safely promise that. But you daren’t. You’ll get me to start and have me up for assault. I know you.”

He thrust his face so near that his rough moustache tickled Andy’s nose and that was enough.

Andy began to take off his coat.

Then, for a few moments, ensued an unseemly and unchristian scene which no friend of the Vicar of Gaythorpe would wish to dwell on.

According to all the laws of fiction Andy ought to have come off victorious, but, as a matter of fact, he was badly beaten, and it was only by a fluke that he managed to give his opponent a black eye in return for his own damaged wrist.

The big young man silently watched him struggling to put on his coat, then, with a hand over the injured eye, assisted him into it.

“Do you know I’m the best boxer for ten miles round?” he asked grimly.

“I – I believe I’d heard so,” replied Andy, still very confused and hardly knowing what he said.

“And you made no more of going for me than as if I’d been a counter-jumper?” continued the young man.

“I forgot,” said Andy. “However – ” and he began to trudge on, very much ashamed of himself.

“Look here,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you a thing I didn’t mean to. There wasn’t no need for you to fight me about Gladys. I promised the old man last night I would marry her. But I wasn’t going to tell you that when you started jawing me.”

“I see,” said Andy. “Well, I’m glad,” and he started to plod on again, very shaky about the knees.

“Look here,” said the young man, following him, “you’re not fit to walk home. I gave you a doing, I did. Here’s my bike.”

Andy looked at him and he looked at Andy, and the virile souls of both met in that look and, in a sense, shook hands.

“Thanks,” said Andy, mounting the bicycle.

“I say,” the young man shouted after him, “we were going to be married at the registry in Bardswell, but you can marry us if you like.”

“All right,” Andy called back over his shoulder.

CHAPTER XI

When you live in a large community you feel it possible to give an enemy a private black eye and that there the matter ends – nobody’s business but yours and his – and it is only when you live in a little place that you realise the extraordinary fact that there are no private black eyes – every black eye affects the universe.

Of course every one knows this, but only through the microscope of narrow lives do you see the principle at work.

Which all means that Andy would not have met Elizabeth at Marshaven if the young man who was her aunt’s carpenter had not been obliged to abstain from attending upon particular widows; for Elizabeth would have been unable to find any excuse which would possibly hold water for coming into the little town on the day of the school-treat. And her own self-respect – the self-respect of a girl in such matters is a queer and chancy thing – would not permit her to come in without a decent excuse.

However, a carpenter happened to be rather urgently needed, and, as the young man’s father was laid up with bronchitis, and the young man himself had a black eye, Elizabeth volunteered to walk over to Marshaven, a distance of about two miles from her aunt’s house, which lay between Millsby and the sea.

“Take the pony-cart,” entreated the aunt.

But Elizabeth’s face assumed the expression which her family knew well, and she walked.

Meantime, Gaythorpe had awakened early to the sense of an outing, which is a vastly different thing from just going out – as different as moonshine from electric light.

For an outing has glamour and wonder in it, and that precious atmosphere does still hang about certain feasts and seasons in lonely places, not because bicycles have not penetrated everywhere, but because the Spirits of Ancient Revelry come out from their hiding-places in barns and on deserted greens, and whisper jolly tales of days when men still had an appetite for fun – silly, childish, inferior fun that meant nothing and led nowhere.