A Bachelor's Comedy

“My husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Atterton. “Oh – that young horse – I have begged him not – ”

“No, no. It’s not Mr. Atterton – nothing to do with him,” interrupted Andy hastily. “Nobody is hurt. I have only come with a message from Mr. Stamford.”

“Then why did you frighten me like that?” demanded Mrs. Atterton, not unnaturally. “Knowing as you do that my back will not stand shocks of any kind.”

Poor Andy’s sense of doing it as badly as such a thing could be done, was intensified by this to a pitch where he found the greatest difficulty in continuing; and Elizabeth’s wide eyes, dark with startled emotion, never left his face.

“I was to ask to see you alone, Mrs. Atterton,” he said, lamely enough.

“No,” said Elizabeth, speaking for the first time. “I must hear what there is to tell.”

Andy just glanced her way and turned again to her mother – he dared not trust himself to look at her.

“Mrs. Atterton,” he said, “I have been sent by Mr. Stamford, who is so upset that Mrs. Stamford cannot leave him, to tell you that – that – ”

It was of no use – the words refused to come.

“Well?” breathed Elizabeth.

“For goodness sake get on,” cried Mrs. Atterton.

“Stamford was married to Phyllis Webster at a registrar’s in London this morning.”

Andy stood, straight and white, in the middle of the hearthrug; Elizabeth buried her face in her hands with her elbows on the table, very still; Mrs. Atterton sobbed out, “My poor girl! My poor little girl!” and ran to throw her arms round her daughter. But Andy was there first.

“You care?” he said breathlessly. “You’re sorry?”

And the whole world seemed to wait upon her answer as she lifted her face from her hands.

“I’m so happy – I feel as if I should die,” she said.

Then they forgot Mrs. Atterton and everything else but themselves in the lovely view that opened out before them; for they were now almost at the end of that enchanted lane which leads to the City of Married Love – the Enchanted Muddle. And the tall spires towered so close and glorious, the mean streets lay in such a tender haze, the golden gates were so nearly opening, that their happy eyes were blinded to all else in the world beside.

But Mrs. Atterton had not been wandering in the enchanted lane, and she had lived in that city for such a long time that she had forgotten how it looked from the outside, so naturally she felt astonished.

“Elizabeth!” was all she could gasp.

Then Andy and Elizabeth did look back along the shining lane, and see an unimportant figure in the distance which, they vaguely felt, they might find of some importance again, sometime.

“We said good-bye for ever – that night I dined at the Stamfords – it was too late,” explained Elizabeth incoherently.

“Then why?” began Mrs. Atterton, but she could get no further, she was so bewildered.

“I thought I had lost her for ever – and now she’s mine,” said Andy, as much to an astonished universe as to his future mother-in-law.

However, they did manage in the end to make it clear, so far as any one could, how the whole thing had happened; and then Mrs. Atterton was so simply glad with them that even two young lovers in the first engrossment of their new joy could not fail to be touched by her attitude.

“Oh, mother – I don’t believe you care about anything in the world so long as we three children are happy,” said Elizabeth, laughing and crying and clinging to her. And in that moment she realised for the first time something of what it means to be a mother.

“You must take care of her,” said Mrs. Atterton, over her girl’s bent head.

“I will,” was all Andy said, looking straight at her; but some of the dearest and most sacred things in life passed in that unspoken conversation between Andy and Elizabeth’s mother, though neither of them knew it.

At last Mr. Atterton’s voice was heard in the hall, and he, in his turn, went through the same stages of surprise and anger and relief as his wife; and after that Norah and Bill did likewise, until, finally, some one had leisure to feel dreadfully sorry for the Stamfords. But it was Norah who went to the heart of that matter with a clear-sighted —

“So long as Dick’s all right, they’ll be all right. Don’t you worry yourself about that, mother.”

“But they wanted Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Atterton, wiping away a tear.

“Well,” remarked Mr. Atterton, “all I can say under the circumstances is, thank God they haven’t got her.” Then the memory of Dick’s perfidy roused his wrath again, and he muttered fiercely: “That hound – that hound – if he ever comes near me… What did he get engaged to my girl for?”

Norah looked across at him with her odd little smile: “Look here, father, I believe Dick would have given anything to run away that night mother sent him to Elizabeth in the morning-room. I watched him going through the hall when he thought he was alone – I couldn’t make it out, then – but if ever a man was saying to himself, ‘I’m in a dickens of a fix,’ Dick Stamford did at that moment. Only after asking leave a year ago, before he’d even met the lovely Phyllis – ” Norah broke off, leaving the rest to their imaginations, for she was nothing if not suggestive.

“It will be so awkward – such near neighbours,” sighed Mrs. Atterton.

“Why, mother,” said Elizabeth, “it will be delightful. Every time we see Dick and his wife we shall think how thankful we are, and every time they see us they will think how thankful they are, so the oftener we meet the jollier we shall be.”

And this was a point of view so in keeping with the sentiments of the Atterton family that by the time the guests had been informed by telephone and wire that the marriage would not take place, they all regarded the unpleasant part of the business as over and done with, and were ready for the next jolly thing. Probably no interrupted wedding ever went like that before, but then there are not many Attertons. And they were so tremendously glad that Elizabeth had escaped being unhappy.

“To think,” said Mrs. Atterton, raising cold beef to her lips at luncheon, “that it is all over; and that we have food in this house to feed a hundred people!”

“What!” said Bill, jumping up with a sort of war-whoop and flinging down his napkin. “Girls – do not eat cold beef when a banquet waits without! Hi! Minion!” to the convulsed Sims, who adored him and regarded his vilest pun as the essence of refined art, “Fetch forth the baked meats which the seneschal has basted for the morrow’s feast.”

“A seneschal isn’t a cook, you idiot!” laughed Norah.

“There is some boned turkey, ma’am,” suggested Sims at Mrs. Atterton’s elbow, “and a good many of the sweets are made.”

“Come and let’s see for ourselves,” shouted Bill, who was rather beyond himself with all the excitement. “Andy – Elizabeth – Father, come on! Norah, don’t be grand to-day. Sims, lead on to the larder!”

So, pulling, pushing, shouting, dancing by Mrs. Atterton’s side like a lunatic at large, did that insane Bill manage to get his family out of the dining-room and into the great still-room, where the fine dishes that were ready for the luncheon next day had been already placed. It was only when the cook hurried in, flushed and indignantly astonished, that they knew how utterly ridiculous they were.

“Now, cook,” said the brazen Bill, the only one not abashed, “as we can’t have a wedding feast to-morrow, we’ll have one to-day. We’ll take the six best sweets and the boned turkey, and you can have a jollification in the servants’ hall with the rest.”

“Madam!” said the cook, turning upon her mistress. It was all she could say, but it saved her from bursting.

“Bill – this is really too – ” began Mrs. Atterton when the queer spirit which had inspired her husband at the dancing class, months ago, took possession of him again and made him seize a tall tower made of pink and white cream, step forward jauntily, and call back over his shoulder a reckless —

“I’ll lead – everybody a dish. Now – Tum-tum-te-tum-tum-tum-tum!”

And it is a fact that they all walked out of the still-room headed by Mr. Atterton humming the wedding march in a sort of hoarse, crowing bellow; and Sims brought up the rear with a jelly in his hand and tears of laughter rolling down his purple cheeks, while he tried to look as if nothing unusual were happening.

“You can never,” said Mrs. Atterton breathlessly, suddenly remembering her back, “you can never wonder again why Bill is so idiotic. It’s hereditary. He can’t help it.”

“Andy – make Elizabeth have some of that pink stuff. She has eaten nothing for ages. But she won’t ‘want to willow’ now. A parson’s wife should look solid,” called Bill across the table.

Everybody laughed and sat down, while Andy cut off the top of the pink tower; and as he brought the plate to Elizabeth it seemed just the lovely beginning of all the ways in which he meant to serve her throughout their lives. Their fingers touched as she took it from him, and their deep happiness made them grave for a moment.

Then Mrs. Atterton said comfortably —