Kitabı oku: «A Bachelor's Comedy», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XV

Andy was young and strong, so a good night’s rest and a little attention from the Millsby doctor soon put his arm sufficiently right to permit of his going about as usual. A few days later, therefore, he was quite able to escort his aunt and cousins to luncheon at the Stamfords’, whence they were to motor over to a garden-party at the Attertons’ in the afternoon.

But no one can be hurt in their vanity by a wound from which it will never recover sufficiently to grow strong again, without showing some signs of stress. And when to this is added a never-ceasing ache of suspense about the attitude of the Beloved, there is no doubt that the first chubby, careless look of youth is bound to vanish. The aunt and cousins found to their surprise that Andy was, after all, really grown up.

But enough boyishness remained to make him feel highly delighted, in spite of everything, at the prospect of showing the girls to his new friends, and his new friends to them. He was unfeignedly proud, too, of Mrs. Dixon and her smart appearance; even, vaguely, of the blue powder, which had seemed to him from earliest youth a sort of symbol of discreet dashingness.

“My aunt and cousins – Mrs. Stamford,” he said, with such a pleasant triumph in presenting people sure to accord to each other, that only a heart of stone could have failed to respond.

Mrs. Stamford, however, possessed that heart, socially; but she was so anxious to be agreeable to Andy’s relatives that she said with cordiality —

“I am so glad you were able to come.”

All the same, the stockings of the young ladies had a horrible fascination for her: she had never before realised that stockings could, as it were, so fill the horizon.

But to Dick Stamford, who entered as luncheon was announced, they were a delightful and yet familiar surprise. He had known stockings to fill the horizon before, and the general impression which the Webster girls gave, and Phyllis in particular, of having more eyes and hair and neck than other people, created an atmosphere in which he was absolutely at home.

And Mrs. Stamford was so pleased to see Dick roused from the rather sullen lethargy which was becoming habitual with him, that she began to see the Webster girls in a pleasant light too, in spite of the fact that they outraged all her inherent prejudices every minute. And yet she was a woman of strong character. But it is upon the strongest that mother-love works such ironic miracles.

“Really,” said Mrs. Dixon, seating herself at table in the beautiful old dining-room, with a feeling that here – in places like this – was where she and the girls belonged, “really, I must describe the tapestry in your hall to Lady Jones. Lady Jones is a friend of mine whose husband has just bought an estate – almost fabulously wealthy, or seems so to a poor woman who can only just afford to live.” And she gave her bangles and her expensive gown a sort of quivering movement to indicate, with subtlety, that the circles were indeed wealthy where she could be considered poor.

“The tapestry? Oh, my husband could tell you all about that, but, unfortunately, he is not well to-day, and obliged to remain in his room.”

“I said to Lady Jones when she consulted me about her house, ‘Old masters in the hall, of course. But I see now I made a mistake. I shall now advise tapestry exactly like yours.’ ”

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Stamford with a suspicion of dryness, “that Lady Jones will have rather a job to find it.”

Mrs. Dixon glanced at Mrs. Stamford’s coat and skirt, which bore obvious signs of wear, and at the exquisitely fine linen tablecloth, which was darned in three places.

“Look here,” she said. “You don’t seem to care very much for the tapestry, and I know if I just advise Lady Jones, she will be ready to give anything —anything. Now – can I? I should be so pleased. I know what agricultural depression is.”

She leaned back, feeling nothing could ever be more delicately done, but Mrs. Stamford paused, fork in mid-air, and stared at her guest with an expression that roused her son’s sense of the ridiculous.

“Ha-ha!” he laughed. “That’s good! Ask the mater to sell her nose while you are doing, Mrs. Dixon.”

“Oh, it was only a suggestion,” said Mrs. Dixon, sailing over the difficulty, and thinking it highly probable that Mrs. Stamford would come to her afterwards about the offer, in order to ask her to use her influence with Lady Jones. The power of the local millionaire does naturally appear illimitable in these days of the higher thought, when everybody is growing able to understand it. It seems odd to think that only a hundred years or so ago people believed there were things more valuable than money.

Andy was engrossed in youthful reminiscences with Irene, so he did not hear the whole conversation between his aunt and his hostess, and now broke in with a genial —

“Very jolly part where my aunt lives. Always something going on!”

“Some people say we give ourselves airs at Barkham – but we don’t, really. Only it’s impossible to know everybody who wants to know you, isn’t it?” said Irene.

“Yes,” continued Phyllis, who was rather excited at the way in which she was getting on with a smart man about town such as Dick appeared to be. “I’ve heard it said I was ‘sidey.’ Now you could hardly believe that, could you, Mr. Stamford?”

Mr. Stamford bent towards her, and, under cover of some general conversation about the garden-party to which they were all going, he murmured in her ear —

“Couldn’t believe anything about you that wasn’t most awfully nice, you know.”

The last young lady to whom Dick said that, had replied loudly with a push, “Get along with you!” Phyllis translated this into a whispered “Oh! I’ve heard that old tale before!” which did just as well, and held that same pleasant, beckoning intention which Dick called vaguely, in his own mind, “Having no nonsense about her.”

Then the fruit furnished a topic to Mrs. Dixon, who described the strawberries she had eaten in February at the table of Sir Henry and Lady Jones, and Andy said he hated fruit out of season, which his aunt thought stupid when it was so fashionable – she resolved to speak to him about it afterwards; and finally the whole party went out into the gardens to await the arrival of the motor which was to take them to the Attertons’ garden-party.

Speculation was rife in Mrs. Dixon’s mind during that interval. She began to feel, somehow, that Mrs. Stamford could have a silk-lined dress trimmed with lace, too, if she wanted it – and yet she wore that blouse! Could it be considered more aristocratic in county society to go to a party in loose rags than in a tight and expensive toilet? If so, she and the girls would get rags. They had climbed into the Jones’ set from an obscure company of poorish merchants and professional people by showing themselves equal to any society, and they would continue to follow out the same successful principles without regard to personal feeling.

But as Mrs. Dixon glanced at her hostess, and pictured her own carefully repressed figure in that coat and skirt, she did feel that what you have to throw away in climbing is almost as painful as what you have to take on.

The relief therefore was rather great when Mrs. Stamford remarked casually —

“I am not going to the Attertons’ this afternoon; my husband is so seedy I do not care to leave him.”

As the big motor ran silently up the drive of Millsby Hall the four young people inside caught sight of light dresses and gay flowery hats against the green lawns and the clear blue of the summer sky. Life seemed to them all – even to Dick, fighting the hidden enemy – even to Andy, hasting to a Tantalus feast – to be a sunny, flowery time of youth and pleasure. Then a gust of wind brought the sound of a band in the distance playing an inspiriting march.

“Go on – you’re sure to win – Life was made for such as you!”

That was what the sunshine and the music and the swift, exhilarating movement of the car cried out to Andy, almost in words. And he looked so noticeably young and full of eager hope in spite of, or perhaps because of, the signs of strain round his mouth and eyes, that Mrs. Atterton was moved to remark —

“It is a glorious day, isn’t it?”

She did not mean only that, of course; what her mind said to Andy’s was, “I see you are finding life glorious. How very nice!” But no pleasant, normal person spoils such things by putting them into words. And Andy understood, though he did not know he did, any more than she knew that her mind had spoken to his mind through the gay bustle and the sunshine of that greeting. He would learn to see later, would Andy, the fun and beauty to be found in unspoken conversations – so far he only felt it.

“I am obliged to receive my guests seated,” apologised Mrs. Atterton, shaking hands with Mrs. Dixon and the girls. “My back – ” she smiled the smile she always wore when referring to that part of her person, cheerful and yet obviously brave.

“How sad! I know a lady who never put her foot to the ground for three years from the same cause,” said Mrs. Dixon.

“Ah, I have my family to think of,” sighed Mrs. Atterton, whose back was not to be outdone by any stranger’s. “No one knows the effort – ”

“How splendid of you,” said Phyllis. “I do admire pluck.”

“To give a large party in your state of health – awfully unselfish,” murmured Irene.

Then they all passed on, and Mrs. Atterton remarked to her daughter Norah that Mr. Deane’s relations seemed very good-hearted, kind people. She was glad, because she liked Mr. Deane.

“You wouldn’t like those eyes and those stockings in the family though, would you?” said Norah, looking after the young ladies.

“In our family?” said Mrs. Atterton. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I suppose if Elizabeth were to marry Mr. Deane they would be in our family, in a way, wouldn’t they?”

“Elizabeth – Mr. Deane – how ridic – ” began Mrs. Atterton, when a new batch of visitors came up. But when they also had gone on into the gardens she said uneasily —

“Norah, where is Elizabeth?”

Norah laughed.

“Oh, she’s all right just now – she is over there shepherding the two old Miss Birketts – and they are such clingers that she won’t get away from them for some time. You can always tell a clinger at a party – they’re so afraid of losing you for fear they don’t get any one else.”

Mrs. Atterton’s jolly face grew even pleasanter than usual, and she looked extraordinarily like her daughter Elizabeth, in spite of her huge bulk, as she replied —

“How awful not to be sure you are wanted!”

Norah glanced in the direction of her sister, who sat between two elderly ladies on a long seat.

“It’s awful to care about being wanted as much as Elizabeth does.” She paused, her keen, lovely little face and slim, erect figure outlined clearly against the green lawn. “It’s dangerous,” she added. “She’d far rather be with a dull person who wanted her badly than the most brilliant one who was indifferent. It’s a fault in her character. I’ve always felt it, even when we were at school.”

She stood frowning, speaking more to herself than to her mother; her strong affection for her sister, of which neither ever spoke, making her uneasy and alert.

“Elizabeth has not a weak character,” said Mrs. Atterton.

“No – she’s strong – with a weak spot – that’s worse,” answered Norah, still more to herself than to her mother.

“You can’t move her when she has once made up her mind,” pursued Mrs. Atterton vaguely.

“That’s the worst of all,” said Norah. “However” – she shrugged her shoulders – “life is apt to get muddled whether you’re clever or not. Oh, here’s father with the Mayor and Mayoress of Marshaven and party. He’s happy, anyway. The Marshaven Corporation is his toy. How is it all men have to have a toy? Women don’t.”

“That’s why so many of them can’t get there,” said Mrs. Atterton, who knew perfectly well what she meant. But Norah, not unnaturally, thought her mother was talking nonsense again, sweet old dear, and asked if she should fetch her a cup of tea.

Andy meantime had deposited his aunt with Miss Banks, daughter of the Vicar of Millsby, while Dick Stamford after seeing that Elizabeth was not available had taken the Dixon girls to see the greenhouses.

“Dear boy – like a son to me – and my girls are devoted to him, though he is no blood relations,” purred Mrs. Dixon to Miss Banks as they watched the young Vicar of Gaythorpe stroll across the grass towards the tennis courts. “So delighted to find him in such a pleasant neighbourhood. We have just been lunching with the Stamfords. I was glad to have the opportunity of getting a few hints for the furnishing of a place that a friend of mine, Lady Jones, has taken. I made,” she creaked towards Miss Banks with confidential importance, “I don’t mind telling you that I made a tentative offer for the tapestries. Nothing settled, of course. But I know how most of these old county families are situated nowadays.”

“The tapestries at Gaythorpe?” gasped Miss Banks, in much the same tone as if Mrs. Dixon had proposed purchasing Westminster Abbey. “You made an offer for the Gaythorpe tapestries?”

“Not for myself,” said Mrs. Dixon, with proud humility, waving a tight white glove. “We are quite poor people. But to Lady Jones money is no object. And we are like sisters.”

“How nice!” murmured Miss Banks vaguely, quite out of her bearings. “Oh, here are the Miss Birketts coming across to speak to me.”

“And my nephew is joining Miss Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Dixon, putting up her eyeglasses. “Sweet girl! We met her at Marshaven. She was staying somewhere with an aunt.”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Banks, glancing at Mrs. Dixon’s tight fringe, and reflecting on the passing vision of Phyllis and Irene. They were all new to the county, and they wore and did the very things which had been repressed in her from the moment she left school lest she should be cast out from the charmed circle, and yet they were intimately in it.

Miss Banks accepted an ice and gave the puzzle up, just at the moment when Andy was shaking hands with Elizabeth in the green distance beneath the mulberry trees.

“I was sorry to miss you that day you called upon my aunt,” she said.

Andy’s heart began to thump. What had he not meant to say that morning? And yet here he stood – a stranger.

“It turned out very wet,” he answered, glancing at his boots.

“But you were driving – that was better than being on a bicycle.”

Then Andy knew she had taken the trouble to inquire how he came, and the blood rushed up into his forehead. It was awfully hard, but he had said he would play fair, and he would keep his promise.

“Were you out in the storm?” he said.

“No, we came back after it was over,” responded Elizabeth, whose manner began to change almost imperceptibly. “Well, I must go and help Norah with the other guests, I think,” she added in her soft, slow voice, and she began to move away.

But she had not been able quite to control that voice, which would catch on a deep note sometimes, just when she most wished to keep it even; and at the sound for which Andy’s heart unconsciously waited something rose up in him which belonged to the great powers of existence – strong to sweep a man off his feet, and down a current against which he strives with all his might. He had meant to keep his promise – he had done his best – but this was stronger than his will.

“Elizabeth – ”

But when we have wanted to do our best, it is a fact that something outside of us often does intervene to help us when we fail – though nobody could possibly recognise anything supernatural in the intervention. Anyway, nothing could be less like a divine messenger than Lady Jones in blue and gold, who came round the end of the mulberry avenue with Mr. Atterton and the Mayor and Mayoress of Marshaven.

“My daughter Elizabeth – Lady Jones,” said Mr. Atterton, who was in high feather.

“Lady Jones came to open a bazaar for a former curate of the church she attends at home,” explained the Mayoress. “We took the liberty of asking for an invitation.”

“Very ’appy to be of any service to the town,” said Lady Jones with ineffable aplomb and condescension.

“Lady Jones bought most of the big things, including the screen your aunt sent, Miss Elizabeth,” said the Mayor effusively. He was a decent man, but you have to be effusive to millions.

“I hope you like the embroidery – my aunt spent months over it,” said Elizabeth.

“Which was it? Oh, the cockatoos? Very nice, I’m sure. But I just pass the things on, on mass, to another bazaar. I don’t buy what I want for the Towers at bazaars.”

“Of course not,” murmured the Mayoress. “Maple’s, more likely, or Christy’s – ”

“Lovely things at Christy’s,” agreed Mr. Atterton, who also saw, not a fat, rather vulgar woman, but a heap of money which had shed some of its particles to forward an object which he had at heart, and could shed more at will.

Then Andy came forward – it had taken him the few moments to recover his self-control – and the great lady shook hands with him.

“Glad to hear you’ve got a living,” she said. “But I always told your aunt it was a pity you would be a parson. Never a penny to bless themselves with – and begging all round.”

“I’m satisfied,” said Andy, with a grin.

Lady Jones smiled affably back.

“How can you be satisfied if you are poor?” she said. “Nobody could.”

“Poverty isn’t always a question of money,” said Elizabeth.

“Ha-ha!” laughed Lady Jones. “I see your daughter’s young yet, Mr. Atterton. She hasn’t learned that everything’s a question of money. You and me knows that.”

“We does,” agreed Mr. Atterton, involuntarily following the lady’s lead; then he recollected himself, gave a quick glance round, and added, in some haste, “Of course, money is a power.”

“My aunt is there, under those trees,” said Andy, covering the retreat.

“Mrs. Dixon!” exclaimed Lady Jones, for some vague reason rather annoyed to find that lady even with her here too. “How did she get invited? Oh, came with you, Mr. Deane, of course.” And suddenly the county society round Gaythorpe seemed less select in her eyes, as she walked up to the bench in the shade where her friend and Miss Banks were sitting.

“Well – ’ow are you, my dear?” she called across a space.

Mrs. Dixon jumped up, creaking in every whalebone, and, after a moment’s breathless pause, rustled forward with her most fashionable air of greeting —

“Charmed to meet you here, Lady Jones. How very fortunate – but how unforeseen!”

“Lady Jones has been kind enough to help us most generously with the bazaar for the new chancel,” explained Mr. Atterton.

“Came to us for the opening ceremony, and remained the night,” added the Mayor.

Mrs. Dixon’s prominent grey eyes glanced swiftly round the group, and returned to the face of her friend. It was all right then. But she might have known. You had only got to be rich enough. She went nearer, and slipped her hand through the blue and gold arm.

“How lovely to see you again. I was talking of you at luncheon.”

“Shall we go and have tea?” said Mr. Atterton.

So the whole group went into the house, Elizabeth and Andy being the last to cross the wide terrace before the open French windows; but just as they were about to enter, Elizabeth paused, and said to her companion in a careless voice —

“How hot and crowded it looks in there!”

Her face was turned towards the house, and rather away from Andy, so that he could not see the colour deepening in the creamy bloom of her cheeks, or how her golden eyes shone with changing lights, or how the tendrils of hair which the sun caught became pure gold to crown this golden girl; but his heart knew that she was giving the woman’s eternal invitation, and it was very hard – so hard, that his own face became aged and sharpened – to answer as he did —

“Oh, it’s a big room. I don’t suppose we shall feel the heat much.”

For a moment Elizabeth felt as if some one had struck her a sudden blow, because what lay under those words was the unspoken “No,” which is the most bitter thing the heart of a woman can ever hear. The spoken “No” can never bring quite such bitterness, because the woman who could force that would not feel so shamed by the refusal.

Then she brought all her girl’s pride to her aid, and looked him, laughing, in the face.

“You did not suppose I wanted to stay outside, and go without my tea, did you?”

“N-no,” said Andy. The ages have not taught men to hide as they have taught women.

“I’m ravenous,” said Elizabeth, speaking more quickly than usual; then, with a bright colour in her cheeks and a fire in her eyes, she ran into the room where Dick Stamford was administering tea to the Misses Webster. He glanced at her, casually at first, and afterwards with roused attention.

“I say, Elizabeth,” he took occasion to whisper, “you do look stunning in that lilac gown. You make all the other women look – look tough.”

“Oh, well, I’m tough enough,” said poor Elizabeth ruefully. “Girls have got to be.” But the remark acted as a sort of safety-valve to her seething anger and shamed resentment, so that she was able to keep back her tears, and laugh and joke, with eyes only the more brilliant for them, amongst the group of young people who gathered round her.

The Webster girls being thus left without a cavalier, Andy sat down beside them, and tried to respond to a stream of conversation while he watched Elizabeth and wondered miserably if he had been a conceited ass to think she meant anything. He came to the conclusion that he must have made a mistake as he saw her take a large cake with cream inside and chocolate out, for his own soul loathed even bread and butter at this moment, though he had felt hungry half an hour earlier, and he was very fond of cakes with cream in them.

“Lovely day,” he said, trying to rouse himself with an effort that would have been obvious to the Webster girls if their minds had been sufficiently composed to notice his manner. But they were so engaged in glancing self-consciously about them, and wondering what people thought of them, that they also made perfunctory remarks with no particular connection between one and the other.

At last Mrs. Dixon rustled up, looking to Andy’s loyal eyes extremely smart still, in spite of the fact that her nose was no longer so calmly, palely blue as when she arrived. And when she parted from her nephew over the side of the hired motor vehicle which was to take her and her daughters back to Marshaven, he felt no less than she did that her final remark, “We’re so glad, Andy, to be able to come among your friends and give you a little help socially,” was as just as it was generous.

“It’s awfully good of you. I knew you and the girls were certain to get on with the people about here,” he said gratefully.

A moisture almost appeared in Mrs. Dixon’s prominent eyes, and her nose-end flushed unmistakably; she had taken a liqueur before leaving, and was more emotional than usual.

“Brilliantine your hair and always wear a good hat,” she said earnestly, “and you may end by being a bishop.”

Then the car went off, and the embryo bishop trudged home through the afternoon sun, trying to piece his thoughts together, and conscious of a burning, stinging spot in the back of his mind that he was afraid to touch.

But it drew – as the aching spot always does – and he got to it at last.

If Lady Jones had not appeared when she did he would have broken his promise to Dick Stamford. Instead of helping a weak man, he would have proved himself to be a weaker.

With bent head and dragging feet he trudged up the churchyard path. Here – he felt it in the bottom of his soul – here, but for the grace of God, went a breaker of promises – a sneak – a man who couldn’t play fair.

He would have to keep away from Elizabeth, because he could no longer trust himself.

He mechanically glanced at the church clock, and saw there was still a quarter of an hour before the time for evensong, and he suddenly realised that he was dog-tired. So he sat down, more from force of habit than anything else, upon the convenient edge of the tombstone beneath which Brother Gulielmus’ body lay resting.

And after a while a little comfort crept into poor Andy’s soul from somewhere, and he began to lose that impression of loneliness which to some natures is so intensely real and desolate. He began to have a sense of brotherhood with all those who have tried and nearly failed and not quite failed through no goodness of their own.

And so he felt a brother to all men – for every one of us must pass that way.

Finally, he got up from the tombstone and walked towards the church, and round the corner of the porch he heard the voices of two women near a grave.

“Churchyard grass wants cutting,” said one.

“Oh, the parson’ll see to it,” said the other. “He does look after the bit there is to do, does Parson Andy.”

And the poor lad went in, comforted still further by the warm, motherly note in the woman’s voice as she said ‘Parson Andy.’ He had come down low enough – or gone up high enough – to be grateful that the people of Gaythorpe called him ‘Parson Andy.’

About the same time Elizabeth and Norah Atterton went across the lawn towards the house in order to dress for dinner. Some of the guests had stayed, so there was not much time, but Norah had something to say, and when she had something to say she said it.

“The Deane females were quaint,” she remarked.

“They are called Dixon and Webster,” replied Elizabeth – but it must be owned that a great deal more was said than the words indicated.

“Has Lady Jones a daughter? If so, Mr. Deane really ought – ”

“How vulgar you can be,” said Elizabeth. “You talk as if Mr. Deane were a mere fortune-hunter – ”

“Of course he is,” said Norah calmly. “All clergymen are. They have to be.”

Elizabeth said nothing for a few steps, then she remarked rather abruptly —

“Well, he is not what you’d call an eager hunter, exactly.”

Norah stopped dead.

“You don’t mean to tell me he hasn’t proposed to you? We were all sure he had done, and that you were now behaving to him like a sister.” She broke off, and looked at her sister with her odd, mocking little smile. “That would be so exactly like you, Elizabeth.”

“He has not proposed to me – if that is what you want to know.”

“How odd!” said Norah.

“Why odd?” said Elizabeth, with some pardonable asperity. “I don’t expect every young man I meet to propose to me.”

“Of course not,” said Norah. “And now he has these girls within reach, I expect he will not be always making excuses to come over here. I dare say he was dull, and no wonder. And after all, you are not so unused to admiration that you would feel the loss of one young man, would you? Even if he did prove faithless?”

“I think I can exist without Mr. Deane, if that is what you mean,” said Elizabeth, marching on with her head in the air.