“Excuse me,” said Andy, seizing his hat from the peg, “I am rather pressed for – ”
“And a pound of rice, if you would be so very kind?”
“Delighted. Of course,” said Andy incoherently, escaping down the steps.
He had already learned that the reminiscences of life with Mr. Jebb were so long and varied that it seemed strange a year could have held them all, and of so intimate and pathetic a nature that, once fairly started, it were sheer brutality to cut them short.
But half-way down the drive a thin voice floated out to him —
“Candles – a pound of candles – if you could?”
He looked back, and there she stood on the doorstep, eye-cornering Andy from afar, with strands of brownish hair and odd bits of cheap white lace fluttering about her.
“All right,” he shouted back; but to himself he grunted, “Silly old kitten. What on earth did Aunt Dixon get me an old fool like that for?”
Then a sudden waft of lilac scent warmed by sunshine, which is the essence of spring, swept across Andy’s freckled nose, and he felt kind to all the world.
“Oh, let her be a kitten! I don’t care. It’s hardish lines on an old woman like that having to go out into service – ”
Old woman!
What a glorious thing it is that nobody can see into the mind of anybody else.
Andy turned into Parson’s Lane, where the birds sang, and wild flowers bloomed earlier than anywhere else, and lovers walked silent on summer evenings; and he began to whistle from pure happiness. Then he remembered his position and hummed the “March of the Men of Harlech” instead.
The widow’s house stood at the farther end of the village, and when Andy went in at the farm gate he saw preparations going forward for that little tragedy, a country sale. The room into which he was ushered stood carpetless, miraculously swept and garnished, its large table crowded with glass and china that had remained for years hidden in the great storeroom, excepting on rare festivals, when it was brought out with care and put away by the hands of the mistress. A big sideboard filled one wall.
“I’m afraid,” said Andy, “that I’ve come at the wrong time, Mrs. Simpson. I’ll call again.”
Mrs. Simpson, who was a fair woman with a meek brow and an obstinate mouth, motioned him to a seat.
“Everything’s ready,” she said. “We go into the little cottage near you to-night. My husband’s cousins, the Thorpes, wanted us to stop with them for a few days, but I felt I couldn’t.”
“I hope – I hope you’ll be comfortable in your new home,” said Andy, who was not glib at consolation.
Mrs. Simpson crossed her hands on her lap.
“Oh, I shall be comfortable enough. My husband’s family have behaved well. They have clubbed together to make me and the children a little allowance – and they’re buying in all the furniture we need.”
Andy rose. He could not find anything to say to a woman years older than himself, who had lost her husband and her home – so, of course, he was a poor sort of parson.
“Is there a garden in your new home? May I send you some flowers?” he asked, going towards the door.
“Thank you; but flowers make dirt in a little house.”
They were near the big sideboard now, and in his confusion Andy caught his elbow in the corner.
“That is going to be sold, too,” said Mrs. Simpson. “The Thorpes won’t buy that in.”
“Ah – yes,” said Andy.
Then, suddenly, Mrs. Simpson’s face began to work like a child’s before it cries aloud, and she passed her hand over the smooth surface of the top.
“Nobody’s ever polished it but myself. We bought it in London on our honeymoon. Now Mrs. Will Werrit’ll get it – and those girls of hers’ll put hot-water jugs on the polished top.”
Andy 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