A Bachelor's Comedy

Mrs. Stamford sat down, her old tweed skirt very wet about the hem with crossing the grass field, and her weather-beaten hat well over her eyes, but her appearance indefinably more emotional than usual.

“I’ve come,” she said without further circumlocution, “to tell you we shall be obliged to have the wedding at Gaythorpe Church.”

“What wedding?” said Andy, though he knew.

“Dick’s, of course,” said Mrs. Stamford, and she might just as well have said, “What a fool you are!”

“Why?” asked Andy, and he had a difficulty even in saying that.

“Because Millsby Church has been so injured by the gale that it cannot possibly be put right in time. Part of the steeple blown down. Roof broken in. I always told Mr. Banks that it would happen.”

“Of course,” said Andy, after a pause which he knew to be growing long and yet was almost powerless to end, “I shall be glad to help you in any way I can.”

“Then if you’ll come with me – I have Sims the head gardener waiting outside – we will go to the church at once and see about the decorations. I have arranged with Mrs. Atterton that we will help with them, as we are so near, though their gardener will decorate the chancel.”

Andy took the keys from their familiar place on the nail in the hall, and as he went up the path past Brother Gulielmus, he had, for a strange second, a feeling as if some voice outside had said, “Be a man. Keep a brave heart, my brother.”

Of course it could only be the association of ideas grown vivid through emotion, but it made Andy square his shoulders and give his best attention to the necessary arrangements for the ceremony.

“Really,” said Mrs. Stamford, when they had finished, “your advice has been quite invaluable. Poor Mr. Banks – ”

“He has not been curate in a fashionable London parish,” said Andy grimly. “We’re used to arranging theatrical performances there.”

And that was the only sign he gave of the bitterness which underlay his ready interest in the decorations.

Mrs. Stamford glanced at her watch and caught up her gloves.

“No idea it was so late,” she said. “Dick is coming by the eleven train. We expected him yesterday, but he was delayed – diamonds not finished re-setting, and he wanted to bring them with him. I do hope he won’t miss the train; it starts so early from London.”

“Oh, he’ll turn up all right,” said Andy calmly – while all his being cried out, “Miss his train – when he is going to marry Elizabeth to-morrow!”

They were almost at the church door now, and Mrs. Stamford turned to give a last injunction about the music, when a queer, hoarse voice which neither of them recognised struck upon their ears, and they turned sharply round to see Mr. Stamford standing in the porch on the arm of his man-servant.

“Ellen,” he said, and then he sank upon the stone seat of the porch, motioning the man to go away.

She sat down beside him, schooling herself to quietness, but white to the lips.

“Yes, James. What is it?”

He opened his hand and held out to her a crumpled sheet of paper which lay upon it.

“Our son,” he said.

Mrs. Stamford took the telegram, and what she saw, though it was bad enough, was so much less terrible than she had feared that she broke out into a passion of weeping that could not be stayed, and she cried through it all —

“He’s alive! He’s alive!”

So long as he lived, whatever he did, there would always be something left in the world for his mother, and she gave the telegram to Andy with a brief “This concerns you, too,” which was bitter enough but not hopeless.

“Sorry to cause trouble. Cannot hope to make you understand. Married to Phyllis Webster by registrar this morning. Will Mother tell Elizabeth at once.”

Then, in a burst of feeling at the end —

“Awfully happy but for complications, hope you and Mother will forgive.”

“Complications,” said Andy stupidly, while the pews raced swiftly round him and seemed to settle, queerly enough, with a thump inside his head, into their accustomed places. “Of course – complications.”

“What is the use of standing and muttering that?” demanded Mrs. Stamford, wiping her eyes. “It’s all terrible – terrible – but we must make the best of it. She is your connection, and respectable, though she has such eyes and stockings, and it might very well have been the back row of the ballet.”

It is only in such moments as these that the raw truth comes out, and it is infectious.

“She is good enough for your son, and she will see that he behaves himself – I know that,” Andy retorted. “She has a will of iron under a fluffy exterior, and that’s exactly the sort to manage him.”

Then Mr. Stamford said agitatedly —

“You must go to Elizabeth. Poor girl! Poor girl! To think that my son – ” he broke off, grey about the mouth, and leaned back against the stone wall of the porch.

Mrs. Stamford pulled her weather-beaten hat farther over her forehead, and started, without another word, down the path; but before she was out of hearing her husband called hoarsely, “Ellen! Ellen!”

She ran back and bent over him as he leaned back, spent, against the stone, and in his bodily weakness and bitter disappointment he whispered to her, “Ellen – I can’t be left – you can’t leave me!”

She saw that it would be quite unsafe either to agitate him still further or to make him move from that seat, and yet – what was she to do? That poor girl – those poor Attertons – they must be told at once – every moment was of value.

Mr. Stamford himself, with closed eyes and fluttering breath, solved the question.

“Let Deane go,” he said feebly. “The parson – it’s the best thing. He can ask to see Atterton and explain – I’m ill – take the telegram.”

“But – ” began Mrs. Stamford, when she saw that her husband could bear no more, and she silently held out the telegram to Andy.

“I can’t,” said Andy.

“You must. It’s your duty,” interrupted Mrs. Stamford in an urgent whisper.

Andy drew a long breath. How could he go on such an errand – he who was in such a turmoil of love and hope and amazement?

“I tell you,” he said desperately, “I wanted to marry her myself.”

“What does that matter? Go!” said Mrs. Stamford.

So he glanced once more at the spent man upon the stone seat of the porch and went.

At first he saw nothing about him, but soon the shock of unexpected joy, which stuns for a while like unexpected sorrow, gave place to realisation. Then every dewdrop, on every little blade of grass he passed, seemed like a joybell ringing; and the fine branches of the leafless trees wrote love letters upon the tender sky, and a huntsman’s horn far off was like love’s herald, ushering in the bride.

But when he stood at the Attertons’ door asking if Mr. Atterton were at home, things became more ordinary; and when the man replied that his master had gone to Bardswell, but the mistress was at home, Andy replied in a state of embarrassed discomfiture that he wished to see Mrs. Atterton alone.

In a moment or two the man returned and ushered Andy into the morning-room where Elizabeth and her mother sat together. After one glance at his face, Elizabeth’s own grew very pale, and she stood with her hands crushed together, not offering to greet him.

“If I might have a moment with you alone, Mrs. Atterton?” said Andy, very grave and nervous.