A Bachelor's Comedy. J. E. Buckrose
in there and started polishing. I’ll own it may have looked funny, but she shouldn’t have spoken as she did.”
“There! That makes all the difference. Doesn’t it, Mrs. Jebb?” said Andy eagerly, forgetting to be dignified. “I say, shake hands and make it up. Jimmy, shake hands with Mrs. Jebb to start with.”
“Won’t. Hate her. She’s got yeller teef like old Towzer.”
“Hush, hush,” said Mrs. Simpson, changing all in a minute from the fighting woman to the careful mother. “Jimmy mustn’t talk like that. Jimmy must beg the lady’s pardon.”
“Won’t,” said that gentleman truculently.
“Jimmy must do as he’s told,” said Mrs. Simpson, then, grasping the pudgy little hand firmly, she held it out to the housekeeper.
“I’m sure I’ve no wish——” began Mrs. Jebb, with trembling stateliness, when Andy cast aside the mantle of the senior curate, grabbed Mrs. Jebb’s hand in his own, and pushed the bony fingers of his lady-cook-housekeeper towards Jimmy.
“I say,” he exclaimed boyishly, “you can’t refuse to shake hands with a little chap like that!”
Mrs. Jebb felt the touch of the firm, young fingers on her wrist, weakened, advanced a step, finally ‘eye-cornered’ Andy with a tremulous smile and waggled once the fat hand of Master Simpson.
“I’m sure,” she said, “I’ve no wish to be un-neighbourly, Mrs. Simpson. It was just seeing you there on your knees rubbing the sideboard front when I never expected to see anything but the cat or Mr. Deane. I ought to be able to enter into a widow’s feelings if anybody ever could. With Mr. Jebb I was not merely a wife, I was an obsession.”
“With all my wordly goods I thee endow, of course,” quoted Mrs. Simpson vaguely, in whose mind the words possession and obsession had somehow run together and produced a blurred impression of Mrs. Jebb’s meaning. But she saw Andy was anxious for peace, and gratitude for the sideboard gradually overcoming her anger, she wished to do her part.
“Two widows living near together should be on good terms,” said Mrs. Jebb, her annoyance also cooling, while prudence dictated a course obviously pleasing to Andy. “Will you step into my room and have a cup of tea? I am no breakfast-eater, and generally take one at eleven. And”—she concluded the amend generously, “Jimmy shall have a biscuit with pink sugar on the top.”
That settled it; for Jimmy was so fond of eating that he would have accompanied the sweep—his idea of the embodiment of evil—to search for biscuits with pink sugar on them.
So the baize door of the study banged in the rear of an amicable trio while Andy sat down and mopped his brow. It was difficult to catch evolution by the tail after that—he seemed to have gone so far from it. But he knitted his brow, shook his fountain-pen, and started on the quest.
One thought, however, would creep in and out of the books of reference and between the written words—it was not so easy as it looked, to live in a place where everybody was so inextricably mixed up with everybody else. And later in the day he was to have another striking proof of this queer inter-independence of which a townsman knows so little. For when he walked past the Petches’ cottage he beheld the Attertons’ landau, drawn by a sleek and fat pair of horses and driven by a sleek and fat coachman, standing in front of the little gate. Elizabeth Atterton and an ample lady in grey occupied the carriage, and they were inspecting a parrot in a cage, which Mrs. Petch rested on the step.
“I trust,” said Mrs. Atterton, “that William is in good health. He looks”—she paused—“he looks far from well, Emma.”
“Moulting, ’m,” said Mrs. Petch. “That’s all.”
“But this is not the season for moulting,” objected Elizabeth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Petch, with an easy smile, “but William always was different to other birds. Scores and hundreds of times I’ve heard my poor mistress say so.”
“Well, it was a remark my poor aunt often made,” said Mrs. Atterton, eyeing the dejected attitude and naked chest of the parrot doubtfully.
“I’m sure you give him every attention. You would, of course, when your annuity dies with him. My poor aunt no doubt felt that.” She paused again, and added in answer to Mrs. Petch’s look of wounded innocence, “Of course, you would in any case. I do not forget what a devoted maid you were to poor Aunt Arabella.”
“She trusted me with William,” said Mrs. Petch simply, applying the corner of her apron to her eye.
“I know. I was not reflecting on you in any way, of course, Emma,” said Mrs. Atterton kindly. “Only, I promised to see after William sometimes, and I like to do it. Poor William! Of course, one can’t expect him to live for ever.”
“Parrots sometimes live to be a hundred,” said Mrs. Petch quickly. “Sam read that in the paper only the other day, ’m.”
“Well, we’ll hope William may,” said Mrs. Atterton comfortably. “I never liked him, even in his best days, but I don’t want him to die.”
There was a reposeful kindness about Mrs. Atterton that seemed exactly like that of her daughter Elizabeth—and yet, in its essence it was altogether different.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Mrs. Petch, long before Andy reached the group. She greeted him with such alacrity, indeed, that an enemy might have thought she welcomed the interruption to the interview with William.
“Oh, mamma, here is Mr. Deane. Mr. Deane, you haven’t met my mother?” said Elizabeth, who was, for some foolish and obscure reason, a little nervous.
“No—er—I am very glad—that is—I am sorry—at least, I mean to say I am delighted to meet you now,” said Andy, who, for some equally foolish and obscure reason, was nervous too.
Mrs. Atterton beamed placidly on him.
“Sorry I did not see you when you called, Mr. Deane, but it was one of my bad days. My back——” She paused, as if that explained all, and Andy filled in the blank with a sympathetic—
“Of course. I’m afraid you are a great sufferer.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Atterton pleasantly, “it is not that I have any great pain, but I collapse. Don’t I, Elizabeth?”
“Mamma is so patient,” said Elizabeth, with loving sincerity. “She hates to make us feel——”
“Come, come, come! Bring that cup of tea! Bring that cup of tea!” interrupted William, croaking hideously.
“Poor Aunt Arabella! Couldn’t you fancy you heard her voice from the grave?” murmured Mrs. Atterton, shedding an easy tear.
“William belonged to my great-aunt, Mr. Deane,” explained Elizabeth.
Then it swept over Andy again with renewed force, how everybody here was connected in some way with everybody else. He had always known in a general way, of course, as we all do, that if you slip on a banana skin and use expressions better left unemployed you may influence some one for evil in central China—but he had never before come near enough to the principle to be able to see the working of it with the naked eye.
“I thought when I first came to Gaythorpe that William was a person,” said Andy, noticing the pink nails of Elizabeth’s ungloved hand upon the carriage door.
“Well, poor Aunt Arabella always did say he had an immortal soul—and you never know,” said Mrs. Atterton, willing to give everything created the benefit of the doubt.
Then the fat coachman, who was tired of waiting, made one of his fat charges stamp idly on the ground in a perfunctory manner, and Mrs. Atterton said the horses were growing restive and it was time to go.
“So glad we are to see you on Thursday evening,” she said, over her shoulder. “Good-bye, Mr. Deane. Good afternoon, Emma. Let me know how William