A Sheaf of Corn Part 47

"Mrs Bust was insolent about that cup of tea. I greatly hope Jessica did not notice the way she banged the tray down. She said afterwards that no _single_ lady should come to a _single_ gentleman's rooms, let alone take a meal with him. If there were other rooms to be had I would not put up with this creature. My dear Charles, I'm getting to be, in reality, what I've had the credit for being all along--a woman-hater.

"I go a good bit to Mrs Carter's. Her house is comfortable, and she is an amusing creature. Sees jokes, and cheers one up. She teases me about my beset condition, and tries to get me to _say_ things. She calls me Job, and the Fifteen my comforters. Neither witty nor appropriate, but it pleases Mrs Carter. She says the least I can do is to give the nine donors of the nine tea-cloths tea. I frankly told her of the difficulty with Bust, who is inexorable on the matter of etiquette. It will be all right if she comes, Mrs Carter says. She is so set on it, I've had to give in. I've asked them. They're coming on Thursday.

"Oh, my dear old man, how my head aches!

"Mrs Carter keeps sending me up chickens, jellies, game, and things.

She says I've shrunk three stone since I came. It's love, she says, and I shan't be all right till I'm married to Jessica.

"What rot women talk!

"Can this be true? She declares to me that the vicar told her in confidence he would soon be losing his daughter from his house, if not from his parish.

"You see the inference. There is not another even faintly eligible bachelor in the whole _charming_ place. (Use your own epithet in place of the underlined word. I should rather like to hear you do it).

"I said, straight out, she had no business to repeat to me what, however silly, had been said in her private ear. She was quite unimpressed. 'In such a place as this what should we do if we did not repeat things?' she asked.

"She told me, as a huge joke, that her husband had overheard the servants saying she called me by my Christian name! Carter went to her for an explanation. No doubt she had chosen to call me 'Job,' or some nonsense of the kind, when the servants were in the room. She's delighted, and says Carter was quite annoyed.

"He's about the only Man in the woman-ridden place; after this I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.

"When Mrs Bust was taking away my supper to-night she requested me not in future to speak to her daughter as 'Cissy.' It was so very _marked_.

I was not in the mood to receive the rebuff calmly, and she simmered down. Young girls got such strange ideas in their heads, she said. It was better not to be _too_ familiar!

"Poor little Cissy, aged sixteen, and her flower on my plate! I've had a certain pleasure in that unfailing mark of a little girl's goodwill; but to receive a flower from _Miss Bust_! I shall hurl it into the coal-box in the morning....

"2_nd January_ 1902.

"You harp a great deal on one string, old man. I know you mean it kindly, I know you'd like to see things put right for me in that quarter, but do believe I've had enough. I don't pretend--to you--it was a pleasant experience. I won't deny it was a nasty knock--but it's over, and Richard's himself again.

"You ask about the tea. Oh, well, there was no tea. At the last minute Mrs Bust refused to make tea for Mrs Carter. To the other nine she did not actively object--safety in numbers, I suppose--but Mrs Carter, it seems, had asked her during the progress of my last cold if she had neglected to air the sheets for my room. Such impertinence from any woman no lady could suffer, Mrs Bust informed me. Into her house Mrs Carter shall never set foot again. Seeing that I had laid in the cakes and sweeties and rubbish for the tea she suggested that she herself and Cissy should be of the company. In that case the most particular, she a.s.sured me, would have nothing to get hold of. I scrupled not to make plain to her that her plan did not commend itself to me.

"Mrs Carter is delighted, and tells the story, with additions, everywhere. She asked the nine to her own house and I had to show up.

Carter was to have come home but of course he didn't. Small blame to him. By the way, he has become positively uncivil to me lately. In my hearing, the other night, he said something about the clergy 'for ever smothered with women's petticoats, and with their feet under better men's tables.' I have liked Carter hitherto, and shall have it out with him when I get the chance.

"You see, Charles, that girl fooled me thoroughly. I thought she liked me. You thought it yourself; you said so. I thought she meant me to know she liked. She is so young, so pretty, so rich in everything the world holds of value. If I had not fancied encouragement I never should have made the attempt. To come down such a crusher! Perhaps what you say is right. She may seem to think kindly of me now, she may even have spoken to your sister of the episode as you say; but let me put myself in the same place again and the same thing would happen. I'm not blaming her. G.o.d knows I don't blame her. I blame myself for being a blind a.s.s. I hope she'll be happy, poor little girl. I want her to be.

With all her irresponsibleness and her outside naughtiness and frivolity, her carelessness of men's feelings, her nonsense, and her teasing, pretty ways, I know that she is good at heart, sound, and sane and sweet. I want her to be happy!

"There is a girl among my Fifteen--she is quite young and has to be protected against herself. She has haunted me. When I got home she would be lurking in the dark of the road, when I went out I met her coming round the corner. Notes in her childish scrawl have fallen on me, thick as autumn leaves. I have had to see her mother at length.

Mother, for my pains, told me roundly I was not a gentleman. I declare to you she abused me like a pickpocket, Charles.

"But this silly child had the excuse of youth. There is another of nearly three times her age to whom I had thought it safe to be civil.

Well, it wasn't. She pursued me even within my own strong-hold, the pulpit. In a moment's weakness I had owned to her that I liked violets--pah! I am sick of the scent of them now. On Sunday morning I found a bunch of them, done up after a well-known fas.h.i.+on, with dried maiden-hair as a background, laid beside the pulpit cus.h.i.+on. I had good reason to know from whence it came. I said to her when she waylaid me on my homeward course that the woman who cleaned the church would have to be reprimanded. She had let fall a bunch of flowers from her frowsy dress upon the pulpit desk and had left them there. An unpardonable piece of negligence.

"'I thought you liked violets?' the foolish old woman said, looking ashamed; and I told her hardily that I loathed the sight of them and hoped never to look upon one again.

"This all seems only laughable to you. I can hear you sn.i.g.g.e.r over it--and me! Laugh at me, but don't hate me as I do myself. A man nearing forty years of age, not particularly anything--either clever, or eloquent, or good-looking, or attractive. Don't I know it all? I can't write of it----

"And yet this one thing more I must tell you before I close.

"As I parted from the sensible, self-respecting, self-contained Jessica the other day--I protest to you my reliance on her womanly dignity and st.u.r.dy reasonableness has been to me as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land--I ran against her father, the old vicar. He put his hand on my shoulder, and looked at me with a kind of playful reproof in the face.

"'Ah, how long is this s.h.i.+lly-shallying to go on?' he asked.

"... I broke off there to see Mrs Carter. It has. .h.i.therto been a relief to see her. The only laughing I've done since I've been here has been with her. She did not laugh to-day. She came to me because she had no other friend, she said. She could not trust the gabbling womankind. Her husband had changed to her. He had become all at once unreasonable and unkind. He had told her that he did not trust her. He would no longer allow her to go to church, he had forbidden her to receive me again in his house.

"In utter bewilderment I could only ask her why. And then she burst into tears, and then--then there was another scene.

"Mrs Bust was no doubt listening at the door. At any rate she burst in upon us. I, for my part, was not sorry, but poor Mrs Carter--! Poor?

Fool, idiot!

"She is forty years of age, her husband is a decent, honourable sort of fellow who wors.h.i.+ps her----

"That finishes the Carter friends.h.i.+p.

"If it were not for Jessica--good, matter-of-fact, reliable Jessica, welcome contrast to these hysterical, half-mad women, who laugh at and despise her--where should I be, Charles?...

"1_st February_.

"You have been a true friend to me and to her. I shall see you soon (D.V.), and then no doubt I shall say--nothing. But you will remember that I am grateful to you to the last drop of my heart's blood--and so is she.

"Now as for B.... The finish has come; it came to-day. Let us sing and give thanks with the best member that we have! All the same, the end has been a shock, and I wish it had come in some other way.

"She came in here at eleven this morning. You know who--Jessica. I thought she came to talk over last night's concert. It was a failure.

The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those--women (my cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my last shred of character. I a.s.sure you I am regarded as a libertine in the place--a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of my conquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her own wrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs Carter's house. I shouldn't care the value of one of their hairpins, but one does not like to see the church empty; and it is not agreeable, having gone to the bother of getting up a concert, to sing to empty benches.

It was not, however, to talk over the concert she had come.

"She had come to tell me she thought it would be better for us thoroughly to understand each other. I said I thought we had done so from the first. She told me she hoped so, but that we were going to speak out plainly now. She despised the underhand methods of other women, she said, and when she wanted to know a thing she went to the person capable of giving an answer and asked a direct question.

"Then she asked me, 'Did I mean to make her an offer of marriage?'

"In so many words she asked me, and never flinched.

"And I didn't flinch. I was so indignant, so outraged!

"'No!' I said.

"I hope I did not shout the word, but the room seemed to echo with it, somehow.

"'You mean that?' she asked; and I said that I meant it fervently.

"She got up and went to the door. There she waited, her hands in her coat-pockets, staring at the door. 'Of course you know that you have behaved disgracefully?' she said. 'I should never have trusted myself so much in your society but that I believed you to be an honourable man. I find you are not. If my father were younger he would punish you as you deserve. As it is--.'

"As it is, thank goodness, she went. Where's the good of bothering you with more of her invective?

"And I am going; to make room for another curate--another confirmed bachelor.