A Bachelor's Comedy. J. E. Buckrose
stood there, touched to the heart, struggling for something to say, and only able to stammer out ridiculously at last—
“Perhaps they’ll use mats.”
But as he went home he began to wonder if he could afford to buy the sideboard and present it to Mrs. Simpson. No; he had had so many expenses on entering the incumbency that there was practically nothing at the bank. The little fortune which had sufficed for his education and for furnishing the Vicarage was now at an end. He literally could not lay hands on a spare five-pound note. A certain sum he had set aside for the new bicycle which was a necessity in a country living, but that was all he had over and above the amount for current expenses——
His thoughts stopped in that unpleasant way everybody knows, when a conclusion is forced upon an unwilling mind. He turned into the yard and pulled out his old bicycle. It would do. It was not a dignified machine, but it would do.
He had to see that as he trundled it dismally back again and went into the house to search for a bill of Mrs. Simpson’s sale among his papers.
Oh, nonsense! He wouldn’t!
He sat down to tea and glanced at his dining-room furniture, almost ecclesiastical in its chaste simplicity, and heaved a sigh of annoyance. Then, taking a large piece of cake in one hand and a newspaper in the other, he endeavoured to immerse himself in the news of the day.
Did Mr. and Mrs. Simpson feel anything like as jolly as he did when he bought his new furniture? If so——
He turned to the foreign telegrams, and in the midst of China and Peru he saw Mrs. and an imaginary Mr. Simpson buying a sideboard for their new home.
Pshaw! He flung down his paper and rang for the little maid.
“Please tell Mrs. Jebb I shall want lunch at twelve to-morrow. I am going out.”
Then, feeling that it was a deed which accorded more with a freckled nose and an abbreviated Christian name than with the dignified attitude of a Vicar of position, he began to search the sale catalogue for a mahogany sideboard. He knew that the senior curate would never have done such a thing. He would have given the money to the deserving poor.
Andy felt profoundly thankful that the senior curate would never know as he wrote to countermand his order for a new bicycle.
After that he went across the field and looked over the hedge into the churchyard, where that Mrs. Werrit who was his rival for the sideboard chanced to be tending the graves of such Werrits as were already taking their rest. People in Gaythorpe said that it was the only time a true Werrit did rest; and Mrs. Will was one to the backbone though she had been born a Thorpe of Millsby.
It was strange to Andy, who had always lived in towns, to find that nearly all the people were more or less related to one another: the Thorpes and Werrits permeated the social relationships of the countryside in the very same way as one or two great families have done the aristocracy of England. It is a thing that is going, but it survives still in many country places, and it produces a social atmosphere which is rather different from any other.
“Good afternoon,” said Andy.
“Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Deane,” called Mrs. Will Werrit, shrill and piping.
Andy stood idly watching the low sun slant across the graves, and across the woman’s kneeling figure. A cuckoo cried up into the clear, keen air; a little way off a cock was crowing. Something that Andy felt, and tried to grasp, and couldn’t, was in that quiet afternoon.
He came back over the fields with his hands deep in his pockets, unconsciously trying to make out what it was, and he felt inclined to write a piece of poetry that afternoon because he was young and alone and in love with life. It is an instinct, under such circumstances, for people to try to catch hold of the glory by putting it into words, just as a child instinctively tries to get hold of the sunshine, and both occupations are equally silly and joyful and engrossing.
So Andy walked in through his study window and sat at his table, looking out over the green and golden day that shimmered up by most exquisite gradations to a sky just before sunset. Green of the close-cut lawn—green and gold of the holly hedge—gold and green of the trees full in the sun—gold of the lower sky—translucent green of the cloudless upper reaches. No wonder Andy’s growing soul groped and groped after some way of keeping this. No wonder he stretched out baby hands of the soul. And no wonder that he grasped nothing. Or so near nothing that this is all he found to say about the Werrits near the church porch with Mrs. Will Werrit bending over them. He called it “The Others,” and was melancholy—as all happy poets are—
“When I can bear no more
The sound of tears,
And all the muffled roar
Of hopes and fears,
I let my tired mind a vigil keep,
To watch in silence where the others sleep.
A moment—and I go
Where green grass waves,
Where still-eyed daisies grow
On quiet graves,
While every afternoon the setting sun
Falls on the names there, like a benison.”
Andy read it over. He thought it was very beautiful indeed, and began to compose an epitaph for himself when he should lie, like Gulielmus, beneath the shadow of the ancient church.
“A great poet and a great priest. Fifty years of untiring service——”
Oh, he was so young and so happy that he enjoyed it very much indeed. And he was so hungry afterwards that he was able to eat Mrs. Jebb’s pastry.
The next day about two o’clock he went across the lawn to speak to his gardener about the radishes when it suddenly occurred to him that he had seen nothing of that worthy since half-past ten, though he had been about the place all the morning. Evidently young Sam Petch was beginning his games. This should be put a stop to at once. Andy walked over the short grass with a determined step, and was about to start the inquisition when Sam, with a pleasant smile, remarked—
“Nice morning I had of it. Searching high and low, I was, for bits of cloth to nail up the creepers on the stable wall. And in the end my poor missus gave me the clippings she’d saved for pegging a hearthrug.”
Andy looked hard at his gardener, but it was his own eyes which fell before the radiant honesty shining in Sam Petch’s face.
“Very good of Mrs. Petch—I must see if I haven’t an old pair——”
He broke off, for he had come closer to Sam in speaking, and there was somewhere in the air an unmistakable odour of the public-house.
“Your oldest would be too good for that job,” said Sam hastily. “My wife would sponge ’em with beer with a drop o’ gin in it and they’d look like new. She does that, time and again, to my old clothes. These I have on she did last night. On’y drawback is, you can’t get the smell of the liquor out all at once. You’ll maybe not have noticed, but I smell a smell of drink about this here jacket yet, though I’ve been out in it since morning.”
Andy looked hard again. Again he was met by the clear, blue gaze of honesty and simple candour. He walked away, making no remark.
But half-way across the grass he paused, shook his head, and went back.
“I would have you know,” he said, copying as closely as possible the air and manner of the senior curate, “that I am perfectly able to appreciate the difference between the odour of beer applied externally and internally. Pray remember that for the future.”
Then, head in air, he marched towards the house, feeling greatly annoyed that a dandelion root should trip him up half-way and spoil the exit.
Sam watched him go into the house, and then bent over the mowing machine in a paroxysm of helpless laughter.
“Golly—he’s