“Yes,” she said, staring at the grass path. Then she put out a hand, not touching him, only nearly, and the colour in her cheeks deepened until they were like some exquisite fruit that a young sun had kissed in orchards that belonged to the youth of the world. But Elizabeth was always greatly annoyed at her trick of blushing, and compared herself bitterly to a beetroot.
“You were going to say!” remarked Andy.
“Oh, there’s Mr. Stamford coming. I must tell you. I’ve been to see Mrs. Simpson,” said Elizabeth.
“Well?” said Andy, taken aback.
“You wanted it for her. And I bid against you until you had to pay pounds more than you need have done. And you must have had so many expenses getting into your house. And it was all so idiotic of me. My sister always says I’m an idiot, and I am. I only stopped when I did because I hadn’t another penny until next July.”
“Why” – Andy stood still, facing her, and the most wonderful scent from all the sun-warmed lilacs blew across them – enveloped them – “why – you wanted it for Mrs. Simpson too?”
“You surely couldn’t think,” said Elizabeth, “that I wanted that beast for myself!”
“You thought I did,” muttered Andy.
“Oh – a man – that’s different,” said Miss Elizabeth.
“My furniture is all Sheraton – modern, of course, but good in style,” said Andy loftily. Then he saw Elizabeth’s hair against the lilacs, all brown and gold, and something made him forget he was the new Vicar – he was a boy and she a girl, with a joke between them. “I say,” he chuckled, “you know it wouldn’t go into her house. She’s made me put her sideboard into my dining-room.”
Ha-ha-ha! They laughed together for the first time, and the sound mingled with the rustling of young leaves and the love-song of a thrush, as much a part of the sweetness of nature in springtime as the rest.
Then Dick Stamford came towards them with his mother, and Elizabeth slipped her arm through that of the elder woman with her little air of reposeful tenderness which sat almost oddly on a young girl. She had that sort of kindness in her ways which most girls only learn from their first baby, and her voice held deep notes which caught the heart every now and then, breaking her light chatter like a stone in a narrow stream.
“You’ll stay tea, Elizabeth, and then Dick shall take you home,” said Mrs. Stamford.
“I’m awfully sorry, but I must have the cart round in half an hour. Mamma’s back – ” apologised Elizabeth.
So mamma’s back was not only a convenience to herself, personally.
Then Andy said good-bye, and Mrs. Stamford, leaving Dick and Elizabeth alone, strolled down the drive with her other guest.
“You will find Gaythorpe very quiet,” said Mrs. Stamford at the gate, obviously thinking of something else, and yet lingering.
Andy glanced back at it all, and a sudden vivid picture of the tumult of things warring beyond this quiet place struck across his mind.
“This seems – ” He sought a way to say it, but none came. “This does seem quiet.” He tried again. “Seems as if it had been lived in easily for ages.”
“Um. Well, people have no leisure to live now; they’ve only time to make a living,” said Mrs. Stamford absently. Then she said what she had been meaning to say all down the drive. “My son is a great deal alone here in the evenings. More alone than is good for him. I shall be grateful if you will come in when you can and have a game of billiards. You play, don’t you?”
“Oh yes – we had a couple of tables at the Men’s Institute in my last parish. I shall be very pleased to come,” said Andy.
So he went away down the road, feeling that pleasant as the world had been that morning early, it was immensely more delightful now.
Two urchins watched him go up the road, then squashed disreputable hats down on their brows and began to imitate his professional stride which he had unconsciously copied on first arrival in London from the senior curate.
“Parson Andy walks like this! Parson Andy walks like this!” they chanted together under their breath, stepping down the road behind him.
For by this abbreviation was the Reverend Andrew Deane already known to his parishioners. It was inevitable, of course, but as yet he remained in blissful ignorance of the fact, and only the night before had secretly burned a satin tie-case on which a tactless cousin had embroidered ‘Andy.’
As he went across the churchyard, taking the short-cut home, he glanced once more at the gravestone of Gulielmus; and having glanced, he stood a moment, thinking.
It was most probable that this dead brother of his had been entertained by a Stamford of Gaythorpe Manor, just as he had been. Will Ford – who was now Gulielmus – had no doubt walked back by the very path beside which his body now lay sleeping.
What had he felt? Why had he never married? How had life gone with him?
Andy was standing very still in the warm quiet of the spring afternoon when suddenly a sense of jolly-good-fellowship and kindness seemed to fill his spirit – as if some comrade had passed that way and shouted a merry greeting. There was nothing strange or abnormal about it, either then or in the ineffaceable after-remembrance of it.
Only – Andy had felt on his first journey to Gaythorpe as if, across the centuries, he greeted a brother; now he felt as if, across the centuries, a brother greeted him.
CHAPTER V
Andy sat in his study, endeavouring to prepare a Sunday-morning sermon that should justify the high opinion of his preaching which had led Mr. Stamford to present him to the living of Gaythorpe.
A light rain fell outside and a scent of the honeysuckle – it being now June – came through the open window; but Andy was not yet aware that every wayside flower preaches the finest sermon man can preach to man, and says, more convincingly than any parson ever could, ‘God so loved the world.’
The new Vicar, therefore, had taken in turn such topics as the Origin of Evil and the Reason for Free Will, handling them with a courage perfectly remarkable when you consider how the saints of all ages have hesitated afraid before them. This morning, however, having settled these questions, he cast about him for something else which should be at once striking and profound, and it was some time before he noticed a gradually increasing noise in the other part of the house.
Even when he did become aware of it he brushed it aside from his mind and went peacefully on, reconciling the doctrine of evolution with the second chapter of Genesis. At last, however, the study door was burst open in a manner that even a poet could not ignore, and Mrs. Jebb paused, inarticulate with some unknown emotion, upon the threshold.
“Not the boiler burst again?” exclaimed Andy, who had already learned some of the trials of a housekeeper.
Mrs. Jebb swallowed, blinked, and demanded —
“Did you give that – female – permission to clean my furniture?”
It was a long way from the dawn of the world to Mrs. Simpson’s sideboard, and for the moment Andy felt nonplussed; then he remembered.
“Oh, she’s turned up to polish it, poor woman, has she?” he said, with an air of relief. “I told her she could. It’s all right.”
Mrs. Jebb fluttered forward, wavering a little like a butterfly that has imbibed too much nectar, and she alighted with one trembling hand upon the writing-table edge.
“It is not all right,” she said. “It is all very, very wrong, Mr. Deane. Poor, I am, reduced to domestic service, I may be – but I will retire to the workhouse before I will allow a female from outside to polish furniture in this house while I remain your lady-cook-housekeeper.”
“Really, Mrs. Jebb – I’m sure I never – ” began Andy.
“What will