A Bachelor's Comedy

“A lie – ” repeated Sam. “Well, it’s often” – he searched the ceiling and derived inspiration from a string of onions – “it’s often the truth the other way out.”

“The difference between truth and falsehood is always perfectly clear and distinct,” said Andy, opening the door. And, really, he was still young enough to think so.

Sam Petch accompanied him with a sort of subdued dignity to the Thorpes’, and there said farewell.

“You may rely on me, sir,” he said.

Andy held out his hand impulsively.

“I think I may, Petch.”

Then the churchwarden’s wife came hospitably forward and shook hands with the new Vicar. She was as fat as Mr. Thorpe, but with a different sort of fatness; for while he seemed to be made of something very solid, like wood, she shook and wobbled to such an extent that Andy, following her down two steps into a cool room, held his breath involuntarily for fear she should crack.

“Mr. Thorpe’s out still,” she said, panting slightly. “But my nephew will take you to wash your hands. Wa-alter!”

A fat youth with round cheeks that swelled up under his eyes came reluctantly through the French window, followed by a friend.

“They’re holidaying,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “Now you go and have a wash, and then come down and help yourself. I shall be somewhere about when you’ve finished your meal.”

The fat boy escorted the guest upstairs, and left him in the spotless stuffiness of the spare-bedroom, where everything smelt of camphor and lavender. When Andy came down he was almost dismayed to see the banquet which had been prepared for him. Cold fowls. A whole ham. A huge trifle. A dish of tarts and cheesecakes. A cream cheese. It was stupendous. And Mrs. Thorpe’s fowls and cheeses and hams were all bigger, tarts more full of jam, cheesecakes more overflowing with yellow richness, than any in the whole shire.

Mrs. Thorpe had never been an uncharitable woman, and in speaking of a mean relative the most scornful thing she could say was, “You could eat one of her cheesecakes in a mouthful. Now you know the sort of woman!”

Andy sat down, realising that he was very hungry, and he was rather consoled to find that some one had obviously been lunching before him. He would scarcely have dared to mar the exquisite proportions of the trifle or to disturb the elegant decoration of the fowls. The previous luncher had even spilt fragments on the shining tablecloth.

He glanced at his watch, and began to eat hastily, finding his time was growing short, and as he was finishing Mrs. Thorpe came in. She paused at the door, gave a little grunt of astonishment which she changed into a cough, and said heartily —

“Well, I am glad you’ve enjoyed your lunch. Mary” – she shouted down a long stone passage – “bring in the coffee.”

Mary – and this was a queer thing – Mary also paused in the doorway with a grunt of astonishment which she turned into a cough; but Andy did not notice this, and after drinking his coffee he climbed into Mr. Thorpe’s cart, and was driven to the station, feeling as only a man can feel who gets what he wants from life before he loses his illusions.

The groom eyed him curiously as he sat looking straight ahead with the light of youth and hopeful candour shining in his eyes – but the groom’s gaze was upon his slack waistcoat, not upon his face.

And in a corner of the Thorpes’ orchard fat Walter and his friend were still munching the last remnants of a stolen feast.

The cart arrived so early at the railway station that Andy had nearly half an hour to wait, and as one country person after another came upon the platform, and joined a group, an obvious whisper went round, followed by a furtive inspection of the black-coated stranger.

Andy straightened his shoulders, and unconsciously endeavoured to assume an expression of benevolent dignity. Naturally, they were interested in the new Vicar of Gaythorpe. It would have surprised Andy very much at the moment to have met any one who was not interested in that gentleman, and he felt a little glow, in passing one of the groups, to hear a woman say —

“He’s so slight and thin. You’d wonder where he could put it.”

“H-hush!” warned the rest.

Andy smiled inwardly and settled his collar. Of course they referred to his brain. Well, it was rather a wonderful thing to have a living presented to one at twenty-five by a man who had only chanced to hear a single sermon. He thought it all over again. The old friend of his Vicar attending morning service – the interview three days later – the astonishing offer of a living that was a rich one, as livings go in these days.

“Of course,” said Andy to himself, stepping into the railway carriage, “I was rather trenchant that morning.”

He glanced out of the window as the train slipped away through the spring afternoon, and congratulated himself on the impression he seemed to have made on his new neighbours. They would be eager to see him again. Ridiculous for the London clergy to talk of apathy in the face of such interest as he had seen at Millsby station. The parishioners were already discussing the mental qualifications of the new Vicar with a keenness that was perfectly delightful.

And in the next compartment three women bent together, discussing a wonder.

“Was it six cheesecakes that Thorpe’s groom said?”

“And eight tarts! And you know Mrs. Thorpe’s tarts.”

“Besides ham and fowl and half one of her great trifles.”

“He must have got some complaint.”

“Oh, I hear them London curates is half starved. P’raps he’d never seen a meal like that before, and he couldn’t stop.”

“But you’d think he’d burst!”

“That’s just it. That’s just where the wonder comes in. Cool and thin as a lath after it all.”

“I shall go to hear him preach.”

“So shall I. Good as the Sword-Eating Man at Bardswell Fair. Ha-ha!”

Poor Andy!

CHAPTER II

As Andy passed through his own hall between his own umbrella-stand and eight-day clock on his way to pay a parochial call, he stepped lightly, less like the proud incumbent of an excellent country living than a schoolboy who endeavours to escape a maiden aunt.

But it was no use. Before he reached the porch a door was opened, and Mrs. Jebb, the housekeeper, fluttered forth from the back regions. She had previously fluttered in and out of matrimony in rather the same way, and seemed to have brought nothing from it but a wedding ring and a black satin dress trimmed with beads.

She had, however, brought something hidden as well – a profound conviction that she was fascinating to the gentlemen. Her late husband had been wont to remark, during their brief married life, that there was a something in her way of looking out of her eye-corners that was enough to upset an aconite. He meant a rather different thing, but he was not as cultured as Mrs. Jebb would have liked him to be. Still the habit of – as she inwardly phrased it – “eye-cornering” clung to her still.

Andy’s aunt chose her solely because she and sex seemed to have no connection – which is only another proof that nobody knows anything at all about anybody else – and she called herself a lady-cook-housekeeper.

She “eye-cornered” Andy now as she came flitting after him to the front door, but more for the sake of practice than from any ulterior motive.

“Might I ask you – you do pass the grocer’s shop – and we are out of soft sugar?” She had a way of talking in gasps until she got fairly started, when nothing would stop her. “I am so sorry to make mistakes, but I must ask you to try and remember that I never expected to serve even in the – er – higher reaches of domestic – when Mr. Jebb – ”

“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.