A Bachelor's Comedy

by J. E. Buckrose

For an outing has glamour and wonder in it, and that precious atmosphere does still hang about certain feasts and seasons in lonely places, not because bicycles have not penetrated everywhere, but because the Spirits of Ancient Revelry come out from their hiding-places in barns and on deserted greens, and whisper jolly tales of days when men still had an appetite for fun—silly, childish, inferior fun that meant nothing and led nowhere.

And the very same spirit that had fled with a shriek of the violin from the Attertons’ window, properly banished after making a whole roomful of people forget that they were earnest citizens with only one purpose in life—to do well for themselves and have a good time that should cost money and look it—that very same spirit had the cheek to venture forth again and tap at all the windows in Gaythorpe village in the freshness of the early morning.

Most of the young people were used to bicycling over to Marshaven on a Sunday afternoon, and thought nothing at all of the few hours at the sea which had been regarded as such a treat when the School-Feast was first started, but even they scanned the dewy, blue distance of the pasture-lands with a feeling of joyous anticipation. And in most of the farmhouses there was a pleasant bustle of cutting ham-sandwiches, and packing them in cabbage leaves to keep moist and cool for the midday meal on the sands, and packing cheesecakes in cardboard boxes for fear the light pastry should break, and scalding cream, and corking it down in bottles, because the milk provided at the Marshaven refreshment-rooms was no sort of use to a woman who was dog-tired with walking about all day, and wanted a good cup of tea to hearten her against the return journey.

For a real outing is no brief run down to eat and back again—it is a day stretching out full of long, sunny hours, with sandwiches on the shore at half-past twelve, and tea, provided by the ladies of the parish, in a bare, high room at five.

So by nine o’clock the three waggon-loads were already rumbling down the village street. High above the horses’ heads tossed the little arches of paper roses and trembling grass, and the tiny round bells jangled with every step, to make a tune that the Spirit of Ancient Revelry knew well, but which is as strange to us as a forgotten harvest-song.

The men and girls of the choir were there with the school-children and school-teachers, but such ladies as married Thorpes and Werrits would follow later, aristocratic in gigs and dog-carts.

Andy was in the last waggon, which had a wreath of pink paper roses and green laurel all round the body, with a bunch in the centre of each wheel, and pink arches above the horses’ heads. It was a common enough sight about Marshaven between hay-time and harvest, but not to Andy; and the sight of the fine horses and the waggons in front, one trimmed with white, one with yellow, and the sunlight shining so fresh and gay upon the dewy hedgerows on either side, made him feel as if he wanted to throw up his hat and sing, in spite of his injured wrist and his other afflictions.

“It always is fine for the School-Feast,” said Rose Werrit, who was a Sunday-school teacher, and who sat on a bench in a glow of youth and importance, with an arm round a fat boy of five.

Andy—it is a disgraceful thing to have to acknowledge—but Andy felt inclined to bend over and kiss Rose’s pretty flushed cheek, and yet he was tremendously in love with Elizabeth—perhaps because he was so tremendously in love with Elizabeth; but he caught back the wandering impulse and felt ashamed of his own wickedness. How could he——

But from that instant he began to feel less harshly toward certain sinners whom he had before condemned without a hearing. A little of the tolerant humanity of Brother Gulielmus, who had loved his flock so well, because he understood them, began to mellow Andy’s crude judgment.