THE PAINTER

AN October afternoon, bright and sunny; the touch of frost in the previous night had only accentuated the vividness of colour in the beech trees that surrounded Old Bellerton Rectory. In the cobbled stone yard at the back was Joan Adair, busy with paint and paintbrush. She had tucked her skirt up, and was enveloped in a huge white apron. Her deep blue eyes were so intent upon her handiwork that she did not notice the approach of a stalwart young man in a rough shooting costume, who stood leaning against the stable door, and surveyed her with amused appreciation.

"Ahem!"

Joan started. She turned a fresh fair face towards the onlooker. It was a typical English face, not particularly beautiful, but essentially bonny; and when she smiled, a dimple came and went in a most distracting fashion. Her bright brown hair gleamed with gold, though at present an old straw hat, with a crow's feather sticking up jauntily on one side, concealed most of her glory.

"Derrick! How like you! Have you dropped from the sky?"

"Do I look like a cherub? No; I'm out for slaughter. See my gun? Have had an invite to the Hall for a week to help old Jossy with his pheasants. What on earth are you doing?"

Joan waved her brush proudly. It was no sketch of autumn beauty which occupied her clever fingers, but a very shabby little jingle which was being liberally plastered with black and red paint.

"Our chariot," she said laughing. "Oh, Derrick, I can't tell you how I am revelling in the country! Every day here is too exquisite for words."

"How is Dominie?"

"He is as pleased as I am. We're as happy as the day is long; but perhaps that does not say much, as the days are getting short now!"

"I never knew the day that did not see you happy," said the young man. "Is tea coming on? I've got a thirst which needs a drop of something, and I know the Dominie won't give me a whisky and soda."

"Go in and talk to him. I must finish my job. Shan't we look smart?"

"You'll be taken for the Royal Mail. How fond you are of red! You always were. Do you remember when your red frock was baptised with ink? How you howled! Here, let me take a hand."

He seized her brush. Joan stood and watched him.

"Any crest to go on?"

"You can paint Dad's name."

Derrick did so; but when Joan looked over his shoulder she found "Joan's a dear!" added in large letters.

"Derrick, haven't you grown up yet?" Joan said severely.

"I'm trying to," he said meekly.

Then he threw down his brush, and she led the way into the house.

It was one of those very old-fashioned English rectories which are delightful to look at and to live in, if it were not for the thought of repairs. A low, square, oak-panelled hall, dark, and with rather a musty atmosphere; low, long sitting-rooms opening out of it, with oak beams across the ceilings, and deep casement windows overlooking a rather untidy and leaf-bestrewed garden. Pictures and books seemed to cover all the walls, a few shelves of fragile old china lightened the rather gloomy little drawing-room; but Derrick was led into the rector's study, where Mr. Adair was immersed amongst his books. Here there was a cheerful fire burning, and a square tea-table set by its side. A copper kettle was singing away on the hob.

"Dad, dear, here is one of your former pupils—the black sheep amongst them."

Mr. Adair turned round and greeted the young man heartily.

Joan's father was getting on in years, but he enjoyed excellent health. His face was ruddy and cheerful and clean shaven; his white hair and the stoop in his shoulders were the only signs of age.

"I must wash my hands," said Joan. "We will have tea in a few minutes."

She left the room humming a little song under her breath. A green baize door opened at one end of the hall, and an elderly woman's face appeared with rather an anxious look upon it.

"Is it visitors, Miss Joan?"

Joan laughed. Such a clear, happy laugh! Everyone smiled on hearing it, and the old servant was no exception.

"Mr. Derrick, Sophia! We will not make company of him."

"I'll send in some buttered toast. I remember his liking for it."

"Be careful with the butter," cautioned Joan, the dimple in her cheek appearing as she ran lightly up the wide, shallow stairs. She made her way along a passage till she opened the door of her room.

It was very small, but it bore the characteristics of the owner—whitewashed walls, white dimity bed-hangings, and white dimity curtains in the wide casement window. The carpet was thin and threadbare, but there was a chintz-covered easy chair by the window, and a little table with books and writing materials upon it. A bowl of late roses was on the window ledge over the small dressing-table, and suspended from a mirror hanging on the wall was a bunch of fresh lavender, and a bookcase on the opposite side was crowded with well-worn, shabby books.

It did not take Joan long to tidy herself, but just for one moment she leant her elbows on her windowsill and gazed with far-seeing eyes over the scene before her. An old lawn sloped down to a row of beech trees; beyond, the fields rose up again till they met a belt of pines on the horizon. Behind these pines the sun was already slowly sinking, sending rosy rays across the dusky sky. Rooks were cawing in a rookery close by, there was a smell of wood fires, and a slight whiff of hot bread which delighted her senses.

"What a haven it is!"

Joan breathed the words; then a little shadow stole into her blue eyes.

"Oh, I hope they will be pleased—they must be!" A quick sigh escaped her, then she made her way downstairs and re-entered the study like a fresh breeze.

Derrick glanced at her as she sat down and began making the tea. He was three years her senior, and they had played together and learnt in this old rectory as a boy and girl when his grandfather had been the rector here, and Mr. Adair had been his curate and lived with his young family in a whitewashed cottage at the entrance to the village.

Mr. Adair had gone to a busy town later on, and had taken pupils. Derrick Colleton had gone to him there and renewed his acquaintance with his old playmate. Then he had gone to Oxford, and thence had drifted first into law, and then, not finding that satisfy either his purse or his intellect, had taken a post as private secretary to a member of the Cabinet. He had never lost his boyish spirits, and as his humorous, twinkling eyes met Joan's, she laughed.

"I'd like to know your thoughts," she said.

"I didn't think I'd tumble into such domesticity," he said. "Joan of the inkpot and of midnight studies I remember—never Joan of the tea-table!"

"But Dad must have his tea," said Joan. "He and I have settled down here together with infinite peace. I left Girton two years ago."

"And where is Mrs. Adair? Still abroad with Cecil?"

"They are coming home at the end of this week," Mr. Adair said quickly. There was a light in his eye as he spoke.

Derrick looked round the room, then out into the dusky garden.

"It's so queer your coming back here after all these years. I see my marks still upon that window shutter. I was shut and locked in here one day by my grandfather. He rued his deed when he opened the door. My knife had been busy on every bit of wood in the room!"

"You were an awful little brat!" said Joan, her dimple appearing.

"Yes," said Mr. Adair gravely. "It is queer, I suppose, but very mercifully ordained by God, I consider. Sir Joseph, by giving me the living, has enabled us to be one united family again. I am sure this bracing country air will be quite as good for Cecil as that of the Swiss places in which she has been living, and the house will be far more comfortable for my dear wife."

There was a moment's silence. Derrick was casting his mind back to the narrow terraced house in a dingy street in which the Adairs had lived for the past ten years. He saw again Mrs. Adair moving about it in her restless, preoccupied fashion, her graceful figure and dainty dress—a strangely incongruous sight in that shabby house. He wondered if this country rectory would be more to her liking.

Then he turned to Joan.

"How's the learning? I saw you had taken any amount of degrees and honours. What good is it going to do you?"

Joan's eyes flashed.

"It has done me good. It has quickened and fed the mental part of me. It has developed—"

"Oh, Pax! Don't flood me with your rhetoric. If you want to be pleasant to your neighbours, let the past be buried deep. Your Girton knowledge won't be wanted here."

"I'm not going to argue with you," said Joan suddenly, smiling. "You're only a man. All men are dreadfully afraid of cultured women."

"I shall never be afraid of you, Joan—never!"

Sophia at this instant opened the door. She bore a plate of hot buttered toast, and when Derrick saw her, he seized it from her and wrung her by the hand.

"Good old Sophia, you're going strong yet! And your toast is as balmy as ever!"

"Mr. Derrick, I hope you're well."

Sophia dropped an old-fashioned curtsy. She was evidently a privileged servant, for she went on:

"I knew your tea would be nothing without a bit of toast; and what the boy is, that will be the man. I fancy you, sir, going through life and looking for buttered toast and takin' it as your right—the right to enjoy what other folks have worked to give you, which is, so to say, a parable. Buttered toast comes to some quite easy, but 'tis not always wise."

"Oh, Sophia, stop," said Joan, laughing. "Don't give us a treatise on buttered toast. If you spoil Derrick, don't blame him for being spoiled."

Sophia edged towards the door. Looking over her shoulder, she said:

"Mr. Derrick be one of fortune's favourites. He has never met discipline yet."

"There, Derrick! Sophia knows all about you."

Derrick nodded.

"Have you and Banty met yet?" he asked, munching his toast with much appreciation.

"Yes," said Joan. "I have spoken to her after church. She is usually out when I call. I know Lady Gascoigne best. She is always at home. Banty and I are strangers; she has nothing left of the small girl I used to know. She was a fat baby then."

"Only a couple of years younger than yourself," said Derrick with a laugh. "Banty is very good sport. She's as good a shot as her father, which is saying a good deal. What do you think of the cousin living with them? He's a queer fish if ever there was one!"

"I haven't met him. He has been up in town. Does he live here? Lady Gascoigne talks of him as if he is a kind of secretary or upper servant. He's a Gascoigne, isn't he?"

"He's the son of a younger brother—Wilmot, his name is. He has travelled a good bit, I believe, is mad over books, and old Jossy is keeping him busy cataloguing his library and sorting out family chronicles. It's the fashion nowadays to publish family reminiscences, and I believe this fellow is trying to do it. He's too literary for me. Those book fellows are always such self-assertive brutes; I longed to pull his nose!"

"By which I know he snubbed you," said Joan with her dimpling smile.

Mr. Adair had sat listening in silence; now he engaged Derrick's attention by asking him questions about the glebe fields and various other matters upon which he hoped he might be able to throw some light.

Joan slipped away to finish her cart before darkness stopped her. Derrick came out to her on his way back to the Hall.

"So you're settling down into a country parson's daughter," he said. "I heard you played the organ better than old Tabbs did. Had he chucked it before you came?"

"Was he the old schoolmaster? Yes; we have a modern schoolmistress now who is practising hard to become organist. She has no idea of time, unfortunately, which is funny, because of course she teaches part singing in school. No, Derrick; I love it here, but I am not settling down. Shall I tell you a secret?" She stood up, and a grave, earnest look came into her face. "Yesterday I had the offer of a post in a first-class high school which will bring me in from £150 to £200 a year."

"Good for you! But, oh, my dear Joan, don't you take to schoolmistressing! You don't know how much better I like you in your present setting!"

"Being a man, that goes without saying," said Joan cheerfully. "But I am panting for higher, wider interests. I don't want to let my knowledge rust, and I love—I adore—imparting knowledge; they say I have the knack of it. Some, you know, have the brains, but not the faculty for teaching."

"How can your father spare you?"

"That is the rub! Of course he could not, unless Mother and Cecil are here; but it would do Cecil such a lot of good to take my place and run the parish. She wants an interest in life. She is so much stronger than she thinks she is, and I dread her getting self-centred. Dad and I are hopeful that they will settle down. We're going to do our very best to make them like it. Oh, what am I saying? But you know us, Derrick; it's no good hiding it from you."

"Not a little bit!" said Derrick hastily. "But mark my words, your mother is not old enough to settle down in this quiet spot. In your heart you want to be up and away, and so will she. Your mother won't fit into this part. I'll bet you ten quid she won't!"

Joan put out her hand as if to ward off a blow.

"Don't say it. Wait and see. Dad has been a new man since he came here—so much brighter and more hopeful. He said to me last night: 'Please God your mother and I will spend our old age together here. It is all I ask.'"

Joan's voice shook, then she laughed.

"Go away, Derrick; you're making me too communicative, only I know you're as safe as a post! Here, give me a hand and push this into the coachhouse. Have you seen our old pony? He is over twenty, I am told, but he goes like steam. We bought the cart and harness from Dray Farm, and they threw the pony in for an extra three pounds. Wanted a good home for him, they said. I like those Drays."

Derrick took hold of the cart and pushed her aside. Then for an instant, he let his hand rest on her shoulder.

"Joan, for auld lang syne, don't you leave poor Dominie in his old age! He's worth more than brats of girls who don't know one teacher from another."

He gave her no time for reply, shouldered his gun, and vaulted clean over the white gate that led out into the road. Then, waving his hat, he cried:

"If Jossy doesn't send you some of the pheasants that I help him to bring down, I'll give the order to his keeper myself. Au revoir!"

Joan stood for a moment leaning her arms on the gate and watching his retreating figure in the dusk, then she gave a quick sigh and went indoors.