THE TROUBLE COMING--THE GREEN GATES OF VISION: III. MOONLIGHT
“Lancelot is a different creature to-day!” Helwise observed, hitting
hard at the empty air, and getting the ball in her left eye for her
pains. “Almost cheery and inclined to gambol--oh, I _am_ sorry! Did
it hurt? He was a little put out at breakfast, when the Duchess of
Saddleback returned him a sixpenny postal order I had meant for a
Home Tattle Limerick, instead of the subscription he had told me to
send for her Cemetery Bazaar--Armer, please, _over_ my head, not _at_
it!--but of course anybody might do a thing like that, anybody, I mean,
as busy as I am. It was the Duchess’s letter that upset him--I don’t
know why, because it was charmingly friendly and polite. Said she hoped
the sixpence wouldn’t be too late to win him the competition--nice of
her, wasn’t it? What do _you_ think? Lancelot says that now he’ll have
to double his donation, though I can’t see any reason for it myself.
Still, he didn’t really show temper about it, and I didn’t in the least
mind asking him to check the month’s groceries directly afterwards. Of
course, I can’t say that he showed any _joie de vivre_--I _do_ think
he’s lacking in _joie de vivre_--but he got the groceries to come
out all right, and do you mind if we stop?--the ball’s caught in my
hair-net.”
“Glad to hear he’s recovered!” Harriet returned, watching impatiently
while Dandy set her hostess at liberty. “He was just about the limit,
that day at Watters. Never saw such a jaundiced old crab-apple in my
life! Rotten of him, though, not to turn up to bumble.”
“He’s gone to see his lordship off--your service, I think, Miss
Shaw--but he should be back presently. He sent me down some flowers,
this morning--his lordship, I mean--and a message to say he was
prevented from calling. He makes a point of coming in to see me, as a
rule, and I tell him all the things that want doing to the house, and
we get on splendidly! I sent him an invitation to bumble, but something
always seems to stop him. Last time it was toothache, and the time
before it was a hair-cut or a motor-smash or some other very close
shave.”
Dandy caught echoes of this vocal accompaniment as she smote wildly
at dancing hanks of string under Harriet’s pitying gaze, seething
with helpless rage at the flying ball as it spun over and under and
apparently through the racquet, leaving her to plant weighty smashes
upon space or the inoffensive pole. There was something diabolical in
the way it shot down upon you like a bolt from the blue, and caught you
on the nose when you weren’t looking. When you _did_ hit it, (which
was seldom) you struck with a murderous zest that nearly dislocated
your shoulder, not in the least with the friendly dispatch of a drive
at golf, or the _esprit de corps_ of a clean clearing-shot at hockey.
The one ball was a jolly little nipper you hoped to see again very
shortly; the other a sportsman and a pal, the twelfth and keenest
member of the team; but this was a jeering devil and an aeroplane and a
merry-go-round and a slimy sneak, and you hit it as if you were killing
wasps.
She was paired against the ladies with what Harriet called
“the-man-who-scraped-up-behind,” and soon grasped that she had cause
to be thankful, since he was not only a much better player than either
of the enthusiasts, but was also thoroughly up to their little tricks.
Occasionally he tipped Dandy a respectful wink to leave the ball to
him, or to send it over instead of round, and she obeyed with anxious
alacrity. She soon rose to his tactics, and when she discovered that,
every time Harriet hit Armer, Armer responded by hitting Helwise, she
made every effort to play up to him and keep control of the ball. When,
by way of a change, Helwise hit her, and she couldn’t always manage to
hit Harriet, it was even more exciting, though not so comfortable.
Even Bluecaster noticed the change in his agent as they walked the
platform together. He was accustomed to seeing him more as a walking
encyclopædia of solid business facts than as a man with half the wine
of life yet untasted, and youth still to his hand. But to-day he looked
younger and freer than he had done for a long time, his laugh was
more ready, and his business worries seemed shelved. Even unanalytic
Bluecaster could feel that his blood ran more strongly, and his pulse
beat quicker.
Bluecaster himself seemed depressed and rather restless, one moment
anathematising the delay of his train, the next hinting that he should
stay on, in a tone that openly asked for encouragement. As the train
came in at last, he thrust an envelope into Lanty’s hand, climbing
reluctantly to his place.
“From that infernal Brack, I suppose!” he said in a tone of irritation,
going across to close a window which he knew he would reopen
immediately. “There’s no name to it, and the address might have been
written with the poker, but I think it’s pretty obvious.”
Lancaster took it with a shrug--the usual, cheap envelope that carries
unsigned slander. The postmark gave no sort of clue, and the fierce
venom of the writing disguised it effectually. Within was a page torn
from the Book of Ezekiel, scored carefully so that the phrases ran into
a connected message. Lanty read it aloud as he stood by the open door.
“Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because ye have spoken vanity,
and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord
God. And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity and that
divine lies ... and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. Because, even
because they have seduced my people, saying Peace; and there was no
peace; and one built up a wall ... say unto them ... that it shall fall
... there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones,
shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it.
“Thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my
fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great
hailstones in my fury to consume it. So will I break down the wall ...
and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall
be discovered, and it shall fall ... and ye shall know that I am the
Lord. Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and will say unto
you, The wall is no more ... there is no peace, saith the Lord God.”
On the margin was scrawled the one word “MARCH” in the vitriolic hand
of the envelope, but that was all. Everything else had been left to
Ezekiel.
Lancaster looked up with a laugh.
“Must be Brack!” he agreed, making as if he would tear the page
across, and then, since, after all, it was sacred speech, however
distorted, folding it and slipping it into his pocket. “The same trail
of omniscience is over it all! I ran into him in Witham on Saturday,
and suggested that, if he was really bothered over the matter, we
might put him on to some other place. ’Tisn’t business, but it might
save us trouble in the end, and Thweng won’t go wanting. However, he
wasn’t having any--talked about sticking to the ship and holding by
the fort, like Casabianca and Sankey and Moody mixed. That annoyed me
a bit, though he was quite quiet and polite--didn’t even offer me his
confounded Turkish cigarettes! Just as we separated, he asked quite
casually whether I believed in clairvoyance. I said no rather shortly,
for I was keen to be off. (I’d have said no, in any case, to _him_.)
Then he told me he’d come across a lot of it in America, been rather
thick with some chap who went in for it professionally, and would
have it Brack had the gift, too. This fellow gave him some rather
curious information--the name of the farm he would take in England,
for instance. That was certainly queer. Thweng isn’t the sort of name
you’d naturally get your tongue round without a little assistance! He
looked as if he could tell me a lot more if he chose, only I didn’t
stop for it. He rapped out something after me, but I didn’t catch any
of it except the word ‘wool.’ Wonder if he sits up all night with his
Trilby and his Turks, summoning spirits! He’s been fearfully ragged by
the rest of the marsh-men, by the way. Denny left a parcel at Thweng,
the other day, which turned out to be some old bathing-togs he had dug
up somewhere!”
The train moved off, and he walked a few yards with it.
“You won’t be up again just yet, I suppose?”
Bluecaster shook his head.
“Not to stop. I’ll run up for the Show, and I’ll be home for the audits
as usual. I’m shooting a good bit, and then going abroad. Christmas in
Cairo. But I’ll be back altogether”--he leaned out and called as the
train gathered speed, his expression half-laughing, half-earnest--“I’ll
be back--in _March_!”
Lanty found his guests reinforced by Wiggie when he got home at last.
They were seated round a table in the drawing-room, engaged in an
impromptu foxhunt evolved by the singer, by means of dice, a surprising
collection of knick-knacks, and the pot dogs off the mantelpiece. He
had spent the day in Manchester with Hamer, and looked paler than
ever and desperately tired, but he hunted with the infectious zest of
a Troughton or a Peel. Even the host, standing with his back to the
cheerless grate, smiled as he watched the absurd game.
The room was as hideously comfortless as ever, and smelt abominably of
stocks. Tea had been taken away, and it had not occurred to Helwise to
offer him a fresh brew. A détour upstairs before entering, prompted by
some inexplicable shyness, had shown him his dressing-table standing in
water. Evidently the window had been open when the factotum wielded
his weekly hose. On the hall-floor he found a telegram requiring
immediate answer, and an envelope containing money had slipped off the
table into Helwise’s umbrella. Yet he felt less irritated than usual
as he stood on his mockery of a hearth, while Wiggie, with a throw
of double sixes, sprang Climber over an imitation brass inkstand, a
framed funeral card and a mug from Morecambe. Helwise looked happy, he
thought, tossing dice with breathless intensity. He did a great deal
more for her, every day, than this foolish young man was doing at the
moment, but it never evoked that spirit of flagrant joy. He realised
suddenly that, in spite of her rattle-headed irresponsibility, she had
something he had not--a youth of soul at once a blessing and a curse.
Perhaps he had taken her too seriously, demanded too much of her, not
in practice, but in temperament. The Shaws and Wiggie asked nothing of
her except to be her aimless and absurd self. Even Harriet bullied but
protected and liked her. He alone kept her, made things easy for her,
and found her a pricking thorn. He shrugged his shoulders. After all,
it was _his_ dressing-table.
Harriet had grabbed the only true hound in the pack, a daintily-finished
model that Bluecaster had brought Helwise from Grasmere, and was
playing in her usual fashion, barking orders and rattling the dice like
an enemy’s brains. After Lanty came in, she barked rather louder than
before, especially at Wiggie, for whom she seemed to have a measureless
contempt. Nobody noticed it, though, but Wiggie himself, with all his
little thread-ropes of intuition flung out like so many cables.
Dandy was having very bad luck, laboriously boosting a pincushion-backed
dachshund over a pink mountain of Lanty’s best blotting-paper. She
wooed the fates with a variety of chants and curses, but to no purpose.
For her the dice would not fall. Her cheeks were as pink as the paper
by the time Pincushion’s head came over the hill.
“He despises me for being a wretched town-person!” she said dismally.
“Wiggie’s getting on all right, but then Wiggie’s a magician. All hairy
and feathery and furry things love him. We can’t keep the birds out of
his bedroom.”
“Birds in your room mean bad luck!” Harriet observed brutally, slinging
the dice-box at the magician, and adding “Butter-thumbs!” when he
missed it. “Rotten luck--illness--death! You’d better be making your
will.”
A fresh shadow drifted almost imperceptibly across Wiggie’s tired
face. Dandy looked up quickly, but, as once before, he smiled her into
holding her peace, and with a sharp fling of the dice she scrambled
Pincushion down the mountain and over a wall of matches.
He took heart of grace after that, and began to forge rapidly ahead,
passing Helwise’s pug-nosed St. Bernard and Wiggie’s black and tan with
the Pomeranian tail. Harriet’s hound was leading easily. Her fierce
throws seemed to frighten the dice into showing their most lucrative
faces. The fox--as represented by an ancient pen-wiper lately chewed by
mice--was in imminent danger.
Pincushion gained, however, straining clumsily after Cragsman’s
delicate grace. The others withdrew, leaving them to fight it out, and
then a curious thing happened. The moment Pincushion’s head drew level
with Cragsman’s lean flank, Harriet began to throw blanks. Cragsman
stayed stubbornly glued to the same spot, while Dandy’s monstrosity,
in a succession of twos, finished the course and claimed the quarry.
Harriet reached for her gloves and announced that she must be going.
Dandy stood up, too, still looking at the game.
“That was queer, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The finish, I mean? Cragsman
stopped playing!”
“The luck changed,” Lancaster said briefly. “All the same, they say
in the fells that if a mongrel joins in the chase the pure-bred hound
drops the fox instantly. No wonder Cragsman took steck at that overfed
pincushion of yours!”
“I know a song about that,” Wiggie put in. “Yes, I _shall_ say it if I
like!” He began to quote softly--
“There was a Love went after a Heart,
Haughty and fine and fleet,
Till it chanced a little Cur-Love took part,
That hadn’t been at the meet.
And the Proud Love bowed in a cold despite,
And out of the running stept;
And said--‘It’s very bad form to fight.
J’accepte!’
But the little Cur-Love made shift to pass,
For it cared too much for pride,
And, stealing fearfully through the grass,
Came out on the other side;
And said, as it took the Heart to keep
And hold and cherish and cleave,--
‘I’m glad I wasn’t too proud to creep.
J’arrive!’”
Harriet glared at him, dragging on her hard gloves in ruthless
snatches, but as he finished he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile
so full of warm goodwill that her own dropped. Wiggie knew what the
ugly room meant to her, and the ridiculous game and the taciturn man,
where nobody else had even so much as guessed. But then Wiggie was a
magician, so Dandy had said, and magicians don’t count.
Dusk was dropping as they came out of the house, and along the quiet
fields had risen the heart-high, ghostly barriers of the mist. A
far-off touch of frost was in the air, and the clean smell of a bonfire
soared with its faint, pale smoke beyond a distant wall.
“I’ll walk over to Watters with you, if I may,” Lancaster said, groping
in the hall for his cap. “I’ve papers for Mr. Shaw.”
“But what about Harriet?” Helwise fluttered. “You must see her home
first, Lancelot, and then you might take Mrs. Shaw that crochet pattern
she wants for my Deep-Sea Fishermen--or was it the Night-Cap Club?
Eight ch., 1 d.c. into sixth ch., back, 2 ch., 1 d.c.--perhaps I’d
better write it down. Of course Harriet mustn’t go home alone!”
He apologised at once. Harriet generally cycled over, and he associated
her instinctively with the steel steed that turned and rent his walls.
However, she brushed him aside with scant ceremony.
“Rot! Of course I can. I’m used to paddling about by myself all
over the place, and if you think I’ll feel any braver for having a
land-lunatic mooning along beside me, grunting about turnips, you’re
jolly well mistaken! It’s no use arguing, because I don’t mean to be
bothered with you, so you can just crochet yourself over to Watters and
have done with it.”
She saluted the party with a side way jerk of her head in her best
ploughboy manner, and strode off, watched by her host with annoyance,
and something else, altogether different, that held him back from
pursuit. Courtesy conquered, however, and he started after her, only
to be stopped by Wiggie. “Let _me_!” he said, gripping his arm. “I’ll
catch you up later”--and sped away on Harriet’s swinging trail. The
misty air caught him by the throat as he ran. It had been stuffy in
the stock-scented room, and he had no wrap of any kind. Perhaps that
was why he coughed as he came up. Perhaps he knew that she strained
hungry ears to his step, and wished to spare her even a momentary
disappointment. In any case, he was certainly not well received.
“You go back!” she snapped, turning on him. “You’re an insult--a
howling insult! D’you think I want protecting by a thing that _sings_?”
“I play draughts, too, you know,” he reminded her meekly, and she
laughed grudgingly and moved on again, her escort with her. And as he
went he talked--strange talk that was new to her, talk that set the
torch of fancy flaring through the mist. Vaguely through her dogged
resistance there stole a sense of protection that was of the soul.
Physically, indeed, she had no fear, as she had said, but the manly
stride had covered an effort to escape the clinging pain of her own
heart. Around her in the dusk Wiggie wove his net of comfort, of
beauty, of magic kindliness, and by the time he let her in at her own
gate, the first bitterness was past. To-morrow she would remember that
he sang and coughed, and looked as though he needed cod-liver-oil and
malt. To-night she only knew that an angel had walked with her.
* * * * *
Through the dewy garden Lanty led his guest past the ivied seat and
the pink fingers of the cherry-tree, and so out by the little stile
under the mighty shadow of Bluecaster walls. As they passed the great,
wrought gates, already closed for the night, he caught a glimpse of the
house itself, its bare flagstaff proclaiming mutely that the master was
from home. Then they were under the walls again, sunk in an avenue of
lime, and presently in the Lane.
There was the whole of wonder through the Green Gates to-night. The
chestnuts were already turning to the pure crimson that comes with
the first frost. Already, in the little plantation backing Rakestraw,
the beeches had red at their feet. A late harvest-field, stooked and
waiting, lay wanly yellow under the white over-world between dark
building and close-laid fence. There was a moon coming, a big moon
slowly topping the hill, and when it came the hill would go black, and
Rakestraw lights would beckon like swung lanterns of horn. His first
look was for his Mountain, as usual, but it was not there. From the day
of the marsh-meeting he never saw his Ghost-Mountain again, until his
life had been broken utterly and utterly re-made.
Dandy was thinking of Harriet as they walked in the quiet of the Lane.
Both her sudden defeat and her violent independence had held a touch of
pathos. She asked Lanty how long he had known her.
“All her life, or thereabouts. Her people belong here--good old yeoman
stock, the best in the land. The backbone of England, some of the
books call it! It’s true, too. That’s why Harriet’s so dead sure of
herself--she’s on her own ground. She runs her own farm with the help
of a good head man. I got him for her. It’s quite a model place; you
ought to see it. There isn’t much about farming she doesn’t know. She’s
a good hand with a plough, too, and can swing a scythe with anybody.
Oh yes, Harriet’s all right in her own way! It’s only her manners that
are wrong, and goodness knows _I_’ve no need to talk! She bullies you
no end, but she’s absolutely straight--couldn’t cheat if she tried.
We’ve never been very thick, she and I, but she gets on with my aunt
all right, and she’s one of our own people, and that means a lot, after
all!”
He laughed as he finished, surprised to find himself so urgent in
Harriet’s praise. He was thinking purely of his offended guest,
but his companion felt, as she had felt at Watters, the intangible
barrier of outlook rise between them. She had better manners than
Harriet--yes--but she knew nothing whatever about a farm. She was
better-tempered, but she couldn’t tell the signs of the weather. And
she was decidedly better-looking, but she couldn’t bumble or scythe or
pick out a prize hunter. And all that this first autumn night meant to
Lanty, Harriet knew as she couldn’t possibly know. She was outside.
The smell of the bonfires came again--the fine, pungent smell that is
incense in country nostrils. Lancaster lifted his head as he caught it.
“That’s real back-end!” he exclaimed. “Unless you’ve lived in the
country all your life, you can’t know what it means. You need only shut
your eyes, and it paints little pictures for you. I can see things I
loved when I was a boy: shadowy autumn evenings, driving home with
my father from Witham, the long, white road and the black hedges and
the dim land. Children running in to bed, and the cattle close under
the fence, and no birds singing--all the field-things resting. The
horse’s hoofs going clip-clop, a bit tired, and myself snuggled under
my father’s elbow, half-asleep. The smell of the bonfires all the
way--frost coming--leaves dropping--the lights showing one by one,
and then the quiet night. The smell of the bonfires all the way, and
then--home.”
He was quite evidently talking to himself only, and again isolation
turned her chill. Harriet would have known what he meant. Harriet, who
nodded like a ploughboy, was born to the mysteries of bonfires and the
back-end.
They reached the Third Gate in Lancaster’s Lane, and there a big bank
of mist laid its ghost-hands over their eyes, shutting out the scene
beyond. Below it, on the soft, wet, vivid grass, was a fairy-ring.
Dandy asked the meaning of it.
“Fungus,” he explained, “but who wants to believe that? Do you know
that picture of Butler’s--‘Pixie-Led’--the farm lad caught by the
fairies in the gloaming, with the mist-wreaths twining round his knees,
and the lights of the farm and the low, red sunset behind? He looks
such a clumsy, bewildered giant, whirled round by the mischievous
shreds of elves! I wonder if he remembered or forgot? They say if you
dance with the fairies, you’re never the same again.”
“It’s worth trying!” she put in half-mischievously. “They might teach
me what the bonfires mean.”
He shook his head.
“That’s heritage--and association. By the time you’re old you’ll
understand, if you go on wanting to. It’s the having grown with you,
the being part of you, that fills the country with glamour. Rain in
the night, the rolling of cart-wheels in the early morn, hounds giving
tongue in a soft November--things like that--they’re riches, handfuls
of gold, when you understand!” He dropped suddenly from the heights to
tug at the ancient bars before them. “Time there was some new timber in
here, by the look of it! This rotten stuff’ll hardly last the winter.”
The golden lamp of the moon was up by now, shredding the barrier into
misty scarves and skeins, and showing green-shaded fields where turnips
and potatoes were grown alongside. Every shadow grew pitilessly sharp,
and from the black hill-sides the lights sprang warm.
“I like to watch the windows open their eyes,” Lancaster said. “They’re
so quiet, and yet there’s all life behind them. Tragedy, often. At
Oxenfoot the old man’s dying by half-inches. Up at Topthorns they’re
slipping slowly down the fell into the workhouse. It’s nobody’s fault,
and nobody can help. The young folk at Cowgill--bad hats, every one
of them!--make the place a hell among them, with the hate and the
quarrelling and the mean striving to best the rest. Better things,
too--men and women sticking to in the teeth of bad luck and bad health,
paying their rent somehow, and keeping a stiff neck whatever comes
along. All life--and yet the lights so quiet and steady, just as if
peace were the real thing and the trouble behind only an ugly shadow.
You don’t remember it, outside. You think of folk sitting happy round a
fire or at their evening meal, or slipping away quietly to sleep. You
think of home.”
Over Dandy, listening, came a sudden longing for Halsted, cheerful,
rampant, unmagicked, clean away from this mist-wrapped lane and the man
who made the underneath things seem so real. They were not hers and
therefore she feared them, and though they were not even looking at
her, cared nothing for her existence, she ran away from them in spirit
as fast as she could scamper.
“It doesn’t mean home to _me_!” she broke out with reckless hurry.
“At _my_ home there’s a blaze from hundreds of tantalums, and there
are motor-horns tooting on the drive and crowds of people coming up
the steps, laughing and talking. There’s dancing in the drawing-room,
and snooker in the billiard-room and rinking in the hall. In _your_
house there’s a bowl of milk and a candle and a smoky chimney and a
hard bed”--she was half-hysterical, by now--“but in mine there are
spring-mattresses and gramophones and Thermos flasks and electric
hair-curlers----” She stopped, laughing unsteadily. “You’ve made me
really home-sick for the first time since I came to Watters!”
He turned from the gap, rebuffed and ashamed.
“Afraid I’ve bored you!” he apologised bluntly. “Why didn’t you stop
me yarning? Harriet said I’d get mooning about turnips, you know.
I’ve only one subject. You’ll soon learn to steer clear of it! That’s
Wigmore behind us, I should say.”
Wiggie joined them, trying very hard to put a morning freshness into
his dragging step, and because Dandy had fallen silent, exerted himself
to bridge the gulf. He was quite willing to make an ass of himself over
the rotation of crops, if it saved her the burden of conversation.
Arrived at Watters, there was no getting away from Hamer’s hospitality,
and Lancaster stayed to dinner with a sardonic consciousness of cold
sausage and scrambled eggs awaiting him at Crabtree. They were still at
table, however, when the lights of his dog-cart flashed on the windows,
summoning him to a fire at Far Borrans. Hamer and Dandy followed him
out to listen to Armer’s explanation. It was the hay, it seemed--like
enough the late crop had been got in too fast--and the Hall itself
was in danger. There was a big crowd of helpers gone up, and the
fire-engine was out from Witham, as well as the small one from the
House. Armer, full of theories and excitement, had thought the master
ought to know at once. He had brought the trap in case he was tired;
incidentally, that he might himself assist at the pageant.
Lanty climbed in, said good-bye, and clicked to Blacker, but from an
overgrown rambler a thick briar reached out and held him fast. Hamer
laughed as he loosed him with difficulty.
“My little girl says Watters has the choosing of our friends. It’s made
a pretty tight grab at _you_, anyway! I hope you’ll take it as an omen.
See here--can’t I run you to this farm in the car? I could have her out
in five minutes.”
“Thanks, but it’s up the Dale,” Lancaster said. “No motor-road. Narrow.
Bad surface. Dangerous to-night, with so many traps going up. I suppose
you wouldn’t care to come with me?”
Hamer shook his head.
“Not unless I’d be of use! It hurts me to see good stuff going by the
board. I’d be dreaming all night it was Watters, and waking Mother
twisting ropes out of the sheets! I’ll have a Minimax in every corner
after this, won’t I, Dandy Anne?”
He linked his arm in hers, and they followed the trap as it spun out
into the main road, and turned quickly into the Lane. Now and again,
over and through the hedges, they caught the gleam of the lamps; and
once Lanty’s head and shoulders stood out black on the golden air. In
the drawing-room at Watters, Wiggie used the perfect artistry of his
_demi-voix_ to set Mrs. Hamer nodding over 1 d.c. between sixth and
seventh d.trs.
Hamer sighed in the Lane, and Dandy knew he was away on his tram-horse
hobby once more.
“I could have lent a hand with a bucket!” he said regretfully, “though
they’ve likely more than enough men on the job already. I could have
sent the hat round, too, though perhaps they’d not say thank you for
that sort of thing, up here, and of course they’re insured. But I’m a
big weight. I’d have made a difference to the going, and Lancaster was
in a hurry. But I’d have liked to lend a hand!”
Dandy was not listening. Their wandering had brought them to the Gate
of the Fairy-Ring, and she drew him up to the fence. There she told him
something of the walk home and the talk that had roused her to revolt.
“I’m a Halstedite still!” she said ruefully. “I’ve no right to Watters
until lean make little pictures out of the smell of burnt wood and the
flicker of a farthing dip--until sight and sound and scent are all
mixed more or less into one. At present, when I wake to a slow Scotch
drizzle, I don’t smell violets, or see mushrooms rushing up, or hear
cabbages taking long drinks, but I’ve got to learn. Do you think I
might ask the fairies to put me up to a thing or two--what ‘fog’ means,
for instance, and ‘hoggin’ taties,’ and ‘a good tommy-spot’; and how
you ‘kill’ hay, and why the weather is always wrong for turnips? Let me
through, Daddy dear, and I’ll see if they’ve anything to say to me!”
Hamer slipped a bar and let her slide past, and with a laugh she
stepped on limber feet into the circle, a fairy-thing herself in her
white gown, with the yellow light on her uncovered hair. But even as
she caught her dress in her fingers and pointed a foot, she checked,
her lips parted, her ear bent to listen. Lancaster’s trap, long lost in
the myriad turns of the Lane, had emerged into the open road, and the
horse’s hoofs, quickened to a sharp trot, rang from hill to hill. There
are things to be read from a hoof-beat in the country quiet. Up in the
Dales, when a man gallops, the farmers come to their doors, knowing he
rides for succour. Lanty’s trot spelt urgency, and more than one voice
hailed him as he passed. They heard him answer without stopping; saw
the far-off lamps flung on the dark borders; heard the hoofs dwindle
and quicken and finally die.
Hamer’s wise eyes were on Dandy as she stood, her head stooped for the
last message. She had forgotten him as well as the fairies, and her
face, in its unconscious revelation, was neither that of a spirit nor
of the little girl he loved, but the face of a woman come into her
kingdom. With a passionate sense of loss, he strode over and lifted her
out of the Ring.