A Bachelor's Comedy

by J. E. Buckrose

Should he be suffering from a very painful arm—as Andy was—and should the skies look like a storm—as they did above Gaythorpe the next morning—so much the worse for the gentleman; but the thing has to be done at once.

So Andy put on his best coat with a good deal of difficulty, and cut himself in shaving, and ate a poor breakfast, and finally set forth in the new pony-cart to call upon Elizabeth at the house of her aunt, with a bleak and desolate feeling, as if he were going off in a tumbril to his own execution.

It does not sound romantic, but it is true, and it is none the less true that Andy was as much in love with the girl as any young and ardent man who has not frittered his emotions away can be.

However, the cool sweet air blew on his forehead as he drove along the lanes, and calmed his nerves, which were fretted by pain and suspense and a sleepless night. Andy began to feel better, and to forget everything but the fact that he loved her and would soon see her. He could not help thinking there was hope for him, because of a look that had come across her face when he said the fateful “Elizabeth.”

Andy’s reflections broke short at that point, and the grey summer world under a low sky seemed suddenly strange and unreal—nothing was vividly real to him in that moment but a blaze of blue and yellow and a girl’s face—all life since he was born seemed only to have been the dim antechamber to that moment.

He whipped up the pony, who really might have known that he was a substitute for the wings of love so sportingly did he respond, and as his little hoofs clicked on the hard road they made a merry sound that was pleasant to hear.

“Love’s all—folly. But it’s—jolly.”

So the gay little hoofs kept beating out all the way to the house of Elizabeth’s aunt; but Andy would have felt annoyed at such a sentiment if he had not been too engrossed to hear it.

The house was square, and extremely substantial, and rather ugly—just the house, somehow, where one would expect a widowed aunt to dwell—and the very superior parlour-maid who came to the door was just the sort of servant one would have expected a widowed aunt to engage; for this aunt really was, in many useful and profitable ways, particularly to herself, an epitome of the expected.

The only unexpected thing she ever did was to omit having a family, and that was why the Atterton girls were obliged to stay with her rather more than they felt inclined to do; for an epitome of the expected is honoured by all and gets everything, but is not usually a great favourite with nice young people who have no wish to be remembered in her will.