CHAPTER XXII
HOME AGAIN
Two days before Henry had planned to leave London for his holiday at home, Adrian Grant looked in upon him hurriedly at the Watchman office to ask if it were possible for him to secure accommodation at Hampton.
"You!" exclaimed Henry, in surprise, and something akin to a feeling of shame for the meagre possibilities of entertainment at his home flushed his face.
"Why not?" said his friend, with a smile. "I know less than nothing of English rural life, and it came to me as an inspiration this morning that here was a chance to try the effect of country quiet at home. I have a bit of work to finish, and most of my writing has been done abroad in drowsy places. Strange I have never tried our own rural shades, though I produce but little either in London or at Laysford."
"It's an idea, certainly," Henry observed, in a very uncertain tone. "I'm sorry my people—"
"Of course, I would not dream of troubling your folk, but I suppose there's such a thing as a village inn even in your secluded corner of earth."
"There's the 'Wings and Spur,' to be sure, but I am doubtful of its comfort."
"It's an inn, and that's enough for one who has wandered strange roads," and the bright earnestness of the novelist proved to Henry that he really meant to carry out this whim of his.
Nor did he fail to notice a strange elation of manner in Mr. P. for which he could not satisfactorily account.
The incident, however, was the matter of a moment, and the novelist went away as hurriedly as he entered after ascertaining the train by which Henry purposed travelling from St. Pancras, leaving the journalist with the uncomfortable sense of being party to some absurd freak.
His wits were not nimble enough, thus suddenly taxed, to see all sides of the project, and he swayed between the pleasant thought of visiting his old home in the company of one so distinguished as Adrian Grant, and the dubious fear of the impression which his humble relatives might make upon this polished man of the world. His father's doubtful h's sounded uncomfortably on the ear of his memory; the prospect of his toil-worn mother entertaining such a guest, if only for an occasional meal, seemed too unlikely a thing to contemplate. He turned again to his work with the wish that Adrian Grant might stay in London, or find some other rural retreat to suit his capricious taste.
But it was necessary to warn the folks at home, and to make the best of what might well prove an awkward business. So Henry wrote to his father that night, explaining that he was bringing a distinguished visitor to the village, and though he would reside at the inn, he would no doubt be a good deal at their house. This he did after having seriously debated with himself the idea of writing to his friend and framing a set of excuses or plausible reasons why he should not go. Henry's ingenuity was not equal to that.
All this explains why on a certain autumn afternoon the Post Office of Hampton Bagot, and indeed the whole of the village street, exhaled an air of expectancy. There were hurried traffickings between the shop of Edward John Charles, the "Wings and Spur," the butcher's, and sundry others. Perhaps the loudest note of warning that an event of unusual interest portended was struck by the bright red necktie which Edward John Charles had donned at the urgent request of his daughters. This was truly a matter for surprise, for while he had been seen occasionally on weekdays wearing a collar, the tie had always been a Sunday vanity. His clothes, too, were his Sunday best. His appearances at the door were frequent and short, with no pleasant play of the coat-tails; and his earnest questing glances towards the road from the station, which opened into the main street of the village some little distance east of the Post Office, were foolishly unjustified before the dinner hour, as there was no possibility of the visitors arriving until the late afternoon.
Customers at the Post Office were all condemned to a delightfully exaggerated account of the "lit'ry gent from Lunnon" who was to grace the village with his presence and suffuse Henry Charles with reflected glory, though it seemed a difficult thing to conceive the pride of Hampton as in need of glorifying. But the customers were as keen for Edward John's gossip as he to purvey it, and it is more than probable that several ounces of shag were bought that day by persons who stood in no immediate need of them, but were glad of an excuse for a chat with the postmaster. Even the snivelling Miffin shuffled across with such an excuse for a chat, and returned to tell his apprentice that he could see no reason for all this "'ow d'y' do."
"S'possin' there was a railway haccident! Stranger things 'ave 'appened, merk moi werds," said he, with a waggle of his forefinger in the direction of his junior, who, though much in use as an object for Miffin's addressing, seldom had the courage to comment upon his employer's opinions.
At the "Wings and Spur," as the afternoon wore on, there was also the unusual excitement of despatching a creaky old gig to the station to bring up the travellers, and Edward John must needs wander down to exchange opinions with his friend Mr. Jukes as the vehicle was being got ready.
Even the aged vicar was among the callers at the Post Office, inquiring if it was certain that Henry would be at home for the next Sunday, as that day was to be memorable by the preaching of Mr. Godfrey Needham's farewell sermon, and nothing would please him better than to see among his congregation "one over whom he had watched with interest and admiration from his earliest years."
Time had dealt severely with the once quaint and sprightly figure of this good man. Since Eunice had taken him in hand he had lost his old eccentric touches of habit, but year by year age had slackened his gait and slowed him down to a grey-haired, tottering figure, who, when we first saw him, took the village street like the rising wind. He had now decided to give up the hard work of his parish and his pulpit, and this was to devolve upon an alert young curate who had recently been appointed.
"We need new blood, Mr. Charles, even in the pulpit. And we old men must make way for the younger generation," he said sadly to his faithful parishioner.
"Aye, Mr. Needham, none o' us can stand up again' Natur'. But you're good for many a year yet to come, and I hope I am too."
"You are hale as ever, but I can say with the Psalmist: 'My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.'"
"True, Mr. Needham, all flesh is grass, but it is some comfort to the grass that's withering to see the new blades a-growing around it"—a speech Edward John recalled in later years as one of his happiest efforts in the art of conversation.
"Yes, if the old grass knows that the new is its seedling. You are happy, Mr. Charles, in that way."
Edward John hitched at his uncomfortable collar and modestly fingered his necktie, while Mr. Needham proceeded to sound the praises of Henry.
"But I confess," the vicar went on to say, "I am at times troubled in my mind as to how his faith has withstood the shocks it must receive in the buffetings of City life. I trust the good seed which I strove to plant in his heart as a boy has grown up unchoked by the thistles which the distractions of the world so often sow there."
"Oh, 'is 'eart's all right, Mr. Needham," said the postmaster cheerily, as the vicar shook hands with him, and moved slowly away towards his home.
Despite the excitement of preparation both at the Post Office and the inn, and the beguilement of gossip which brought the most improbable stories into circulation among the village folk, as, for example, that Mrs. Charles had borrowed a silver teapot from the wife of the estate agent to Sir Henry Birken; a story devoid of fact, for Edward John had paid in hard cash at Birmingham for that article, as well as a cream jug to match, making a special journey for the purpose the previous day, and thus carrying out a twenty-five-year-old promise to his patient wife—despite these excellent reasons for speeding the time, the hours wore slowly on, and the postmaster must have covered a mile or two in his wanderings between his shop door and the corner of the street, from which a distant view of the returning vehicle might be had. It was expected back by four o'clock, and when on the stroke of five it had not returned, Mrs. Charles was sitting in gloom, with terrible pictures of railway accidents passing before her mind, gazing in a sort of mental morgue upon her dead boy.
Soon after five o'clock the gig pulled up before the door at a moment when the vigilance of the postmaster had been relaxed, and Henry had stepped into the shop before his father was there to greet him; but it had been Dora's good fortune to see him arrive while giving some finishing touches to his bedroom upstairs, and the clatter of her descent brought the whole group about him in a twinkling.
In the excitement of the moment Henry's expected companion was forgotten, until his father asked suddenly: "And where's your lit'ry friend?"
"Oh, I've missed him somehow. He didn't turn up at St. Pancras this morning, and I've no idea what's become of him."
The news fell among them like a thunderbolt, and all but Henry immediately thought of that silver teapot and other preparations for the distinguished visitor. Edward John secretly regretted his journey to Birmingham; but Mrs. Charles was glad she had the teapot, visitor or no visitor.
Henry was not altogether sorry, if he had spoken his mind, for he had never quite reconciled himself to his friend's proposal. But he did not speak his mind, and he endeavoured to sympathise with his father's regrets at the absence of Adrian Grant, as Mrs. Charles had been straining every nerve to provide a meal worthy of the man.
"P'raps he'll be to-morrow," said Edward John "Poor old Jukes 'll feel a bit left. He'd been building on 'aving 'im."
"I'm sorry for the trouble he has caused you all, and I hope he may yet turn up so that you won't be disappointed."
"Never mind, 'Enry, my lad, it's you we want in the first place, and right glad we are to see you. The vicar was in asking for you this afternoon. You'll know a difference on the old man. Going down the 'ill, he is. But we're all growing older every day, as the song says. You're filling out now, and that's good. I said you were growing all to legs last time. Aye, aye, 'ere you are again."
"You haven't been troubled with your chest, Henry, I hope," said Mrs. Charles, taking advantage of a moment when her husband did not seem to have a question to ask.
"Chest! dear no, mother; always wear flannel next the skin, you know," her son replied lightly.
Mrs. Charles sighed, and her lips tightened as in pain.
"What books has Mr. Grant written?" Dora asked, à propos of nothing.
"Some novels which I don't advise you to read," said Henry.
"Why that? I'm growing quite literary," his sister returned. "Eunice has infected me; she's a great reader now."
At mention of the name, Henry coloured a little.
"Indeed!" he said. "She always had good taste, I think; but really I'm sick of books and writing. I think you used to do pretty well without them."
"Hearken at that," said his father. "Sick of books! It's the same all over. Old Brag the butcher used to say, leave a cat free for a night in the shop to eat all it could get, and it was safe to leave the beef alone ever after. I'm sick o' postage stamps, but we've got to sell 'em."
"I'm not so tired of my work as all that," Henry went on, "but down here I'm glad to get away from it."
We know this was scarcely true, as he had brought down his unfinished manuscript of "that book" to work at it if he felt the mood come on. He spoke chiefly to divert the conversation from the topic of Adrian Grant's novels, which he felt he could not frankly discuss in this home of simple life.
"I must call on Mr. Needham before Sunday," he added inconsequently to his father.
"Eunice is at home just now, but she's going away on a visit to her aunt at Tewksbury next week," said Dora, and Mrs. Charles watched the face of her son anxiously as his sister spoke.
"Oh, indeed!" said Henry, without betraying any feeling.