“It’s damp under foot,” said Mrs. Jebb. Then something in the woman’s voice and look as she tried to keep him there for company struck home to Andy’s perceptions, and he suddenly realised that she might be dull and lonely too.
“I say – it’s awfully good of you to bother about my tastes like that. You mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it,” he said eagerly. “Those gooseberry dumplings we’ve been having are fine.”
“Now Mr. Jebb couldn’t assimilate boiled paste at any price,” began Mrs. Jebb, delighted.
So Andy listened to her for quarter of an hour and then went back to the path by the churchyard hedge and that dream which Mrs. Jebb had interrupted.
Or perhaps it was scarcely a dream as yet – only the indescribably delicate stuff of which dreams are made.
Gradually, however, the quietness of all about Andy seemed to fit in with his misty memories of Elizabeth. Tenderness. Sweetness. Repose. Why – those meant Elizabeth – they were but other names for her.
Words gathered in his mind, singing of themselves about her sweetness. The nightingale in a little wood half a mile away was no more singing to his mate than Andy there, beneath the churchyard hedge.
Only, the nightingale’s song was lovely for every one, and Andy’s could never be lovely for any one but Elizabeth.
He pictured them, hand in hand, there in the garden together, watching the village as it went to sleep.
“Let us watch the quiet village
Till each little casement glows
For there’s something in the sight, Love,
That is like a heart’s repose.
Let us watch the starlight glimmer
Through the windless evening air,
For there’s something in your eyes, Love,
That is like a star at prayer.
Let us watch – ”
“Beg pardon, sir. Didn’t see you. Churchyard’s chortesh way home for me,” said Sam Petch, blundering through the gate in the hedge. “Beautiful night, sir.”
Sam was not uproariously drunk, but he was affably so, and took no notice of Andy’s frigid —
“I will speak with you in the morning, Petch. Go home at once.”
“Sho I will, sir. Sho I will,” said Sam heartily. “An’thing to oblige. Good-night, sir.” He paused, then looked back and said pleasantly, “Had a bit o’ bad luck on my way home, sir. Wife sent me for sixpennoth o’ brandy for her spasms, and I’ve broke the bottle. I suppose you haven’t a drop you could – ”
“No,” said Andy sternly. “Go home.”
“Of course, sir. Of course. No offence taken and none meant,” said Sam, moving off. He paused again and added solemnly, “It’s a great relief to me, after the way our poor late Vicar went on, to find you don’t keep no spirits in the house, sir. A great relief it is. Good-night.”
CHAPTER VI
When Andy went into the garden next morning he buckled on tight the mantle of the senior curate and advanced across the grass to where Sam Petch was bending over a flower-bed with an air of decent contrition. No skulking behind bushes for him – he prodded dismally for all the world to see.
Andy, in spite of himself, felt slightly mollified, but he had made up his mind to say a certain thing, and he said it.
“This state of things cannot continue. You bring discredit on my profession, my parish, and myself.”
There – that was it – just as the senior curate would have put it; Andy took hold of his coat lapel, coughed, and waited – just as the senior curate would have done.
It is one of those facts about human nature which cannot be explained, that while Andy disliked the senior curate exceedingly, and had groaned under his oppressive rule, he strove to imitate that gentleman. Perhaps he unconsciously wanted people to be as much impressed by him as he had been by the senior curate.
Anyway, Sam Petch appeared to be greatly impressed by the dignified rebuke.
“I own I’d had a drop too much,” he said repentantly. “But Bill Shaw drank five times what I did and never turned a hair. It shows how unfair things is, sir.”
“If a little makes you drunk you must refrain from that little,” said Andy, severely.
“I know,” acknowledged Sam. “But it is hard when a man can’t take his mug o’ beer with the rest without getting what you might call jolly; isn’t it, sir?”
“After all – what is a mug of beer?” argued Andy. “I’m not a total abstainer myself, but I will become one if you will.”
Sam’s potations of the previous night still hung about him sufficiently to make him very irritable, and he suddenly lost control of his temper.
“It’s all very well talking like that,” he said. “You, who don’t care whether you ever have another drink or not – what do you know about it? Give up the thing you like best and then I’ll do the same.”
Andy looked at the man, and the mantle of the senior curate was blown away in the blast of truth that swept across him. He even forgot to notice the disrespectfulness of Sam’s manner as that wind burst open a closed chamber in his mind and he saw farther than he had ever done before.
“All right,” he said simply. “I like” – he sought for his preference – “I like butter best of anything – always did, as a little kid – I’ll give up that.”
“I’ll give up beer, then,” agreed Sam Petch; but he made certain mental reservations of which Andy, naturally, could know nothing. Every man had a right to beer on a Saturday night, of course; that was the privilege of a British working-man which was above and beyond all other agreements.
Then Andy went back into the house with a complete sense of failure dogging his footsteps. It was a ridiculous and undignified thing to do, to make a compact of that nature with a drunken gardener. He ought to have insisted in a dignified manner upon instant reform or instant dismissal.
“Mrs. Jebb,” he said, looking in at the kitchen door, “please do not send butter into the room with my meals. I shall not be taking any for some time.”
“What? No butter?” said Mrs. Jebb. “Are you bilious? Well, I know towards the last Mr. Jebb never could – ”
“And I am dining out to-night,” continued Andy, who was particularly disinclined, just then, for Mr. Jebb.
“How convenient! I mean, how strange!” said Mrs. Jebb. “I was just about to ask if you would have any objection to my going over to Millsby Hall this evening.”
“Why – are you invited too?” said Andy, very much astonished. “I mean, there’s no reason why you should not be dining with the Attertons, only I hadn’t heard – ”
“Once a lady always a lady, of course,” replied Mrs. Jebb, smoothing her lace cravat. “But the conventions of life are such that, as lady-cook-housekeeper, I neither am, nor expect to be, bidden to Mrs. Atterton’s table. I was referring to the Long Night.”
She gave to the two last words such a melancholy emphasis that Andy had a vague idea, for the moment, that she was in some new way referring to the demise of Mr. Jebb.
“The long night?” he echoed stupidly.
“I mean the final evening of the Parish Dancing Class,” said Mrs. Jebb, “which Mr. and Miss Fanny Kirke have pressed me to attend.”
“Of course,” said Andy. “I’d forgotten. It is to be held at Millsby Hall, of course, so that Mrs. Atterton may see the final practice of the country dances for the Garden