UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE
Hamer’s chairs in the chancel looked very select and correct. There
were four of them on the stone steps, their fine austerity fittingly
framed by the rough arch. The Vicar gazed at them lovingly, and from
them over the fast-filling building. Carriages and cars were lining up
busily at the lych-gate, dropping an audience drawn from every side of
the district. Things looked promising for the Missions over the Seas;
even for the K.O.s.
The Bluecaster Choral Society, numbering over sixty, was packed
tightly into the choir-stalls, with a surplus of men on forms. Late
comers were greeted with despairing shakes of the head, and stood
about in the aisle, looking lost, but in a minute or two they had
always miraculously disappeared, stowed away somewhere in the serried
ranks. The chancel had been partially decorated in honour of the
occasion, and through the fronds of palm and fern could be traced
exotic blooms of mystifying shape and colour, appearing presently
as ladies’ hats. There was a good deal of whispered conversation in
progress--the sort that misses your neighbour’s ear but can be heard
well across the aisle--and a fluttering of leaves like a fretted
wind up an autumn glade. Hymn-books and direction-papers were being
handed about, and anxious-looking tenors stood up and signalled
to worried-looking basses. The male portion of a choir is always
economical of concentration. No matter how its part in the programme
has been explained, it will generally wait to wonder about things until
the stick is well up on the opening beat.
A twin fluttering was going on in the congregational forest, and
feathers and fur bent towards each other in the throes of lowered
comment. So Nancy Leyburne _was_ going to be the soprano--the
Widow--after all! A little pointed, surely--curious, anyhow--so soon
after her broken engagement! And really it was a shocking pity that
Graham-Langwathby insisted upon considering himself a tenor, when it
was perfectly plain to anybody--anybody _musical_--that he was simply a
pushed-up baritone. They might have been sure he would be the Obadiah.
You met him at every old thing--like other people’s clothes.
“The Angel--oh, my dear, _do_ remember you’re in church!--the Angel,
‘Fidge’ Morseby! Let me see--was it _last_ night I saw her on the
luggage-carrier of Captain Gaythorne’s motor-cycle? And at the
Gaythornes’ theatricals--well, perhaps I _had_ better wait till we get
home.”
“Who’s the Elijah?--something Wigmore--C. or G.? Oh, I believe he’s
a friend of the new Watters people. I seem to have heard of him--the
only one of their old set that they weren’t able to choke off. Colossal
cheek to tackle a big thing like ‘Elijah,’ but perhaps he thinks it
doesn’t matter here. It’s really very distressing how little outsiders
realise our extremely high standard of culture!”
Hamer and his wife were in a convenient position for admiring both
their own chairs and their daughter’s head through the palms. Helwise
was at the extreme end of a stall under the reading-desk, just where
her wandering soprano would sail straight into Wiggie’s sensitive ear.
There was a pretty colour in her delicate cheeks. She had just been
having words with the Vicar about the necessity of providing his best
silk drawing-room cushions for the unyielding oak seats of Hamer’s
property. Harriet was in the altos. If you are not quite sure whether
you possess a voice or not, they always shove you into the altos, or
else into that last refuge of the destitute--the second trebles.
Bluecaster was talking to Lanty in the porch when a long gray car,
covered with mud, slid up to the gate, setting down a young man, thin
and eager-looking, and an older one, broad-shouldered and dark, with
sad eyes. They were evidently strangers, from the way they looked about
them, and in the porch the thin man appealed for information.
“I understand there is to be a performance of the ‘Elijah,’ this
afternoon. Shall we find seats, do you think? We’ve come some distance
to hear a friend sing.”
Bluecaster took them in tow and persuaded the verger to put them in the
Vicar’s pew in front, the Vicar’s wife being securely jammed in the
chancel sardine-box. The strangers looked tired, as if they had come
far, and they talked to each other in little, snapped-off, troubled
sentences. Once, the hatchet-faced man rose as if set on an errand, but
the big man dragged him down again. His voice was low, but singularly
penetrating, on account of its curious inflections.
“It’s no good. You can’t make a fuss, with this crowd. He would never
forgive us. Sit still, man, and trust to Heaven. You’ll have the
congregation thinking we’re the bailiffs!”
In the vestry, the Bluecaster schoolmaster, an excitable little
man with a beat like an aeroplane propeller, was giving the last
instructions to his soloists. The Obadiah was making quite sure of
his moustache in the clerical looking-glass, while the Angel, in the
very latest of earthly fashions, followed Wiggie round the room,
declaiming: “Elijah! Get thee hence, Elijah!” with playful fervour.
The Widow looked out of the window, rather sad and pale, and to her
Wiggie drifted by degrees. She was young and evidently very nervous,
and because she had blue eyes rather like Dandy’s, he wanted to speak
to her; so he opened his neat, leather-bound copy, asking how she meant
to take a certain phrase.
As he closed it again, she caught the name on the cover, and gave a
little cry, putting out her hand.
“It _was_! I knew it was! I heard you----”
Wiggie grabbed the hand and squeezed it, he was so anxious to stop her.
The conductor looked round hurriedly.
“Thought you were going to cry or have hysterics, Miss Leyburne! Don’t
be nervous. You’ll feel as right as rain the minute you hear the first
note of your beautiful voice. (I think everything is ready, now, so we
can go in.) Look at Mr. Wigmore there, as easy as you like!”
Elijah smiled politely. His hands were icy, and his heart was beating
in great, wavering bumps, but that had nothing to do with the conductor.
“He’s wrong, isn’t he?” the Widow whispered--she had touched his
hand--and he nodded.
“It’s my belief you don’t do anything great if you’re not frightened
beforehand. A self-possessed performer may get at an audience’s
admiration, but it takes the inside-frightened person to get at their
hearts. It’s like going into battle--the trembling Tommy hits hardest
when he starts.”
Seated at last under the reading-desk palm, with the Angel beside
him, the sea of faces so near seemed to rise and engulf him, turning
him faint. His heart still hammered its wavering stroke, like a bad
workman. It was a blessing Gardner could not hear it--Gardner in
London; though it was almost a wonder, it thumped so loudly.
And then he saw Gardner, with his hatchet-face over the pew-front as
if he meant to leap it--Gardner and the other dear old watchdog!--and
the sickening nervousness changed to a freakish joy, a mischievous
delight. Edgar looked upset; he had forgotten poor old Edgar. There
were the children, too--but it didn’t do to think of them. Edgar would
understand. He would have done the same himself. He sent a brilliant
smile to the men in the front pew, a smile so gaily defiant that
Lancaster, far behind, wondered. The organist played the first of the
four big chords, but he was too busy smiling to heed, until the Angel
nudged him, alarmed. But, once up, he forgot the watchdogs, forgot the
palm tickling his ear, forgot even the children of whom he would not
think. He was Elijah, flinging out his mighty message to a cowering
people.
During his long wait following, he did not look at the audience again.
They did not matter any more. The big thing that was happening was not
on their side of the building. Most of the time he sat with his eyes on
the well-known notes, but when he turned ever so little to the right,
he could see Dandy singing with every inch of her, her rapt gaze fixed
on the whirling beat. How the Dandy Shaw of Halsted would have scoffed,
not unkindly, but with sincere amusement, at such rustic enthusiasm!
He saw an admiring young joiner offer her a paper bag when the close
air caught her throat during Obadiah’s pushed-up solo, and watched her
abstract the offering without a qualm. Absurd details like these were
little wind-arrows, pointing the trackless way along which she was
drifting, further and further from him.
All the delinquencies and hiatuses of the plucky little chorus smote
his trained ear in a succession of torturing shocks. He knew when
the infant basses asked for bread exactly half a bar too late, and
heard Helwise calling upon Baal to listen at a moment when she had no
business to be singing at all. Through all the shades of alto he could
detect a queer grumbling like that of a home-sick cow, and traced it
correctly to Harriet. Yet you could not have told from his face that
the Second Tenor Angel had dashed his foot against several stones in
the way of accidentals, though the conductor moaned and wept, and
knocked a mauve hat eastwards in one of his volplaning movements. The
professional knew so much better than anybody else just what was the
real standard of the big work, and the long rehearsal of the night
before had set him marvelling at the perseverance which had brought
it into presentable form. He had been told the miles the choir came
through wild weather, opening his eyes at the record of attendance;
and when he had grasped their deeds achieved, in face of the average of
knowledge among them, he saw each member a Hercules striving to seventy
times seven, and the little aeroplaning schoolmaster a hero storming
Valhalla.
The Widow trembled to her feet, and Wiggie guessed that there were real
tears behind the first words of pleading for the sick child. He got
up presently, long before his time, and stood beside her to give her
courage; and when he broke at last into the thrice-repeated, conquering
prayer, with eyes fixed on a far window, unheeding the woman’s
interjected lament, it seemed to the girl, bitterly conscious of her
personal trouble, that it was her own spirit, her own future, that he
gave back alive again into her hands.
But, curiously enough, it was not the praying but the fighting Elijah
that Wiggie loved best. The pale, diffident young man saw himself as
the fierce, tanned herald of woe, and made others see him as such, too.
It was glorious to curse kings, run before chariots and slay false
prophets by the hundred! He felt the inspired words hot on his lips,
the racing blood in his veins, the warm dust spurned by his swift feet.
In the great “hammer” solo he worked to such a pitch of intensity,
beating out the last iron strokes of the _più lento_ so strongly that
the audience almost winced beneath his power, and the hatchet-faced man
shook like a whippet on leash, uttering sharp little sounds remarkably
like oaths. But after that--after the Reproach to Ahab--Elijah sank
back into Wigmore, quivering under the virulent words of the venomous
Queen as if they had been live blades. The Queen was a strenuous member
of the Society, with a bludgeon air that reminded him of Harriet, and
he shrank before her condemnation as he had shrunk many a time under
Harriet’s scorn. The tired protest under the juniper-tree, in face
of the fresh task--“Oh, Lord, I have laboured in vain! Yea, I have
spent my strength, have spent my strength for naught. O that I now
might die!” brought the tears chasing down Hamer’s cheeks, but it was
Wiggie, not Elijah, who brought them there, though he did not know it.
It was Wiggie’s own cry from a desolate heart and an almost finished
body, looking into a future void of the one hope that had kept him
alive for long--the terrible cry of the human, seeing the strength of
the flesh break, taking the strength of the soul with it. He was in the
wilderness, and no God could set his feet for Horeb.
But the pitiful personal note was felt, if not recognised, bringing
the Angel to “O Rest in the Lord” with a style very different from
her famous “Sing me to Sleep” imitation, and aweing the basses to an
unwonted mellowness of mumbling in the tender balm of “He that shall
Endure to the End.” And at the close of it, the quiet figure on Hamer’s
chair lifted his eyes and smiled the same whimsical smile at the
strangers in the front pew. The man with the sad eyes smiled also. The
leashed whippet sank back and was still.
It was over at last, the last brave spurt of confidence and hope, the
swirl of the final choruses, followed by the stillness of a prayer; and
then the organ burst out again, the doors flew open, the sardine-box
unpacked itself and stretched. A hum of wonder was running through
the congregation. _Who_ was the collapsed young man with the perfect
voice at least six sizes too big for him? Quite extraordinarily good,
and with a great look of--something like “Quagga”--the man who was
commanded to Windsor last month--but of course they all knew that he
was nothing more exciting than the Shaws’ last, unthrottled-off pal.
Wiggie saw the watchdogs spring up and leave the pew, to be checked at
their first step by the Vicar’s wife, strongly suspicious that they
had been sitting on her best Prayer-book; and as the stream from the
chancel joined the human sea below, he seized the opportunity to escape
from the adoring conductor, and steer his swimming head towards the
vestry door. Here the Vicar had his word, but at last he was out on the
step and in the air; and there he found Harriet.
“Saw you bolt for the vestry,” she began, “so I came round outside, as
I wanted to speak to you. I say, you _did_ do us all proud! Hefty sort
of song, that hammer-yell--what? You must be stronger than you look, to
put all that weft into it. By the way, there’s a couple of outsiders
waiting at the lych-gate, asking for you. I suppose they didn’t see
you bunk for the short cut. Look here! Will you play hockey for me,
to-morrow?”
He gazed at her with the patient surprise of one, half-crossed to the
other world, surveying the caperings of those still firmly anchored to
this. At that moment he could not have run from one tombstone to the
next, and a hockey-ball, bounding down the path, would have taken to
itself a dozen nebulous brethren under his reeling sight. Except in the
case of her own employees, who were rigidly well looked after, Harriet,
with her superb health, rarely troubled about other people’s, unless
they were yellow with jaundice or pink with scarlet fever. And she had
already decided what was the right treatment for Wiggie.
“I haven’t played for years,” he hedged, “so I should be worse than
useless. And I’m afraid I’ve--a--a very bad headache!” he added
apologetically.
“No wonder! The atmosphere in there was enough to lift the roof clean
off its hinges. But your head will have gone by to-morrow, won’t it?
As for being out of training, it doesn’t matter; at least, it _does_
matter, but it can’t be helped. You can always get in the way and let
the ball hit you. Every little helps. It’s Dandy’s fault. She was one
of the team, and now she and her folks are scuttling off to that Motor
and Aero Show to-morrow. Don’t say you’re going with them, because you
can’t. They’ll let you stop on by yourself, won’t they? You might help
me out of a hole--especially as it’s Dandy’s hole. We’re up against a
classy team, so I don’t want to be short. I ought to have a girl, of
course, but I don’t suppose Witham will mind our playing a man extra,
as it’s only you.”
Wiggie pondered, expecting every minute to see the watchdogs round
the corner, and felt again that frivolous longing for a last snap
of the fingers in the relentless face of Fate. He had been a keen
player in his early twenties, before the Moloch of music clasped him
in its searing arms. There had even been international visions, at
one time. It would be rather fun to feel the ugly old stick again,
jumping and ready under his hand, to put out a foot in the path of the
whizzing ball and nurse it neatly up the hugged touch-line. Of course,
he couldn’t possibly last more than five minutes, and Harriet would
be extremely angry if he went and died suddenly in front of a clean
clearing-shot, but he wanted those five minutes very badly. Moreover,
for some curious reason, he had never been able to disobey Harriet’s
mandates. He did things for Dandy because it was as natural as eating
and sleeping, not in the least because he felt he had to; but he was
always conscious that Harriet was pushing him, and he seldom tried to
resist, for, deep down somewhere in his drifting soul, was a queer
sense of comfort in being pushed.
“Togs?” he asked weakly, and Harriet’s face brightened.
“Oh, Lanty will rig you out! He’s got all the necessary kit stowed away
somewhere, if Helwise hasn’t shifted it to the nearest rummage-sale.
I’ll tell him you’ll send over for it in the morning, if you don’t see
him yourself. I say--it’s jolly decent of you! Hope you don’t really
mind missing the old ’buses? It makes all the difference to _me_;
and the fresh air will do you no end of good--you take my word for
it!--that, and a bit of hopping about. D’you suppose those friends of
yours are still kicking their heels? Perhaps they’re wanting to cocker
you about the hammer-yell. Oughtn’t you to be scouting round?”
“They’re not friends,” Wiggie answered absently--he was trying to
remember that neat little twist of the stick-point that had been such a
favourite of his--“they’re police. At least, I mean----” He stammered,
catching her surprised eye. “I say, my head is really rather bad! I
think I’ll take the path across the fields, and miss everybody. You
might shunt the--the friends for me, captain, and whisper a word in
Hamer’s ear!”
“Right-o!” She swerved off with a nod as he opened the little gate and
fled across the green to the stile in the opposite wall. There he heard
her hail him a second time, just as he was stepping into safety.
“You know where the ground is, I suppose? The big meadow just below
Wild Duck. Don’t forget. Bully-off at 2.30, _sharp_!”
He stood a moment with a foot on the hollowed stone. The feel of the
farm came back to him, and the rocker, and the furry cat. He was glad
the ground was just there--wherever it was. If he might not live at
Wild Duck, he might at least, when the match was over, go and die in it.
He kept close to the hedge until he was safely out of the danger zone,
like a hare lying low in its form for the wind to bring news of the
pack. He began to feel a little better in the cool and the quiet, and
the same mischievous excitement crept upon him that had roused at
the sight of Gardner’s face. He would have a good run for his money,
wherever it ended, but he must be careful, or the watchdogs would nab
him before he was ready. For all he knew, they might be at Watters
when he got there, which would be more than awkward. He must keep out
of their way until he had stood long enough in front of a hockey-ball
to please Harriet, even if he had to tell lies to do it. He wondered
whether lies counted when you were finishing with everything, and
breaking all the foolish little threads of life, or whether a special
concession was made by the Angel of the Judgment, just as, in some
fatal illnesses, you may eat anything that you fancy, because nothing
can possibly harm you ever any more. He laughed a little. It was all
quite amusing, and he wondered why he had felt so dismal under the
juniper-tree. But of course he hadn’t remembered then just how that
neat little point-twist snatched the ball from under an opponent’s
nose. He pulled a stick out of the hedge, and began to practise with
it, and when he found the old turn still oiled after all these years,
he laughed again, and a farm lad heard him over the fence, and confided
to his dog that there was somebody on the loose “as mun sewerly be a
bit wrang in t’ garrets!”
At Watters there was no sign of the long gray car, but he reconnoitred
carefully before committing himself to the prisoning of four walls.
Dandy was a little bit hurt because he had elected to walk home alone,
escaping all laudation. She was very excited about the performance, and
perfectly convinced that it must have been faultless in every detail,
seeing that she herself hadn’t sung a single wrong note from beginning
to end. But her momentary chagrin vanished at sight of the star’s drawn
face, and she pushed him into a chair and brought him tea, comforting
him with pleasant little words of praise. He received her attentions
without protest because he was still thinking about that point-twist,
and practised it mentally with the teaspoon.
“You’ll have to take a long rest, Cyril, my boy!” Hamer said kindly.
“You must have to raise a deal of steam to keep that rock-breaking
business going up to time. It made me feel sore inside, just watching
you breathe! It can’t be good for you, to my way of thinking. You’ll
please just keep quiet for a bit, or we’ll have you going to pieces
altogether.”
“Oh, I’ll soon be having a lot of quiet!” Wiggie answered cheerfully,
twiddling the spoon. (He wondered whether they would think him silly
if he asked to have a hockey-stick buried with him. Working out a
new point-twist would put him on nicely until the Judgment.) “You
know, I haven’t any more engagements for a long time.” (He hoped they
wouldn’t collar him at once for the Heavenly Choir. He would like to
sit and listen for a bit, and hear somebody else getting up steam for a
change.) “I’m glad I had ‘Elijah’ as the final bust-up.”
“Why, you talk as though you never meant to sing again!” Dandy
exclaimed curiously. “You _do_ look tired, Wiggie dear! I feel anxious
about you. Don’t you think you’d better stop here quietly, to-morrow,
and just lounge about and do nothing, instead of coming up to the Show?
I’m sure you’re not fit for a hard day, and we’d be back at night, you
know, so you wouldn’t be alone for long.”
This suggestion was loudly encored by both parents, and Mrs. Shaw
offered to stay down with him, but Hamer wouldn’t hear of it.
“No, no, Mother! We know what you and Cyril are when you get together.
He’d be carrying jam-pots for you, or reading your crochet-patterns and
singing you little snooze-tunes when he ought to be resting. He’ll be
best alone, brutal as it sounds.”
“It will be horrid, leaving you behind!” Dandy added regretfully, and
Wiggie felt a little spasm of happy warmth, and then a little twinge of
shame because he was going to deceive these kind souls so completely.
He grasped the teaspoon a little tighter, and tried not to care. It
would be no use trying to make them understand how impossible it was to
disobey Harriet.
“I forgot to tell you I heard two men asking for you,” Dandy went
on. “They were sitting in the front pew--perhaps you noticed them?
They wanted to know the way to Watters, and just as I was thinking
of telling them you belonged to us, Harriet came up and said you’d
gone to the station to meet the 4.45. I was so taken aback that I
missed my opportunity, and let them escape, and when I tried to get at
Harriet, to ask her what she meant, she just nodded and disappeared.
I’m afraid she’s dreadfully vexed about the hockey-match. I hope she’ll
get somebody all right. _Did_ you go to the station, Wiggie, or was I
dreaming? I suppose you don’t know who the men are? They’ll probably
come on here, I should think, if they didn’t find you.”
“Probably!” Wiggie agreed. “Oh yes, I think I know them all right.
They want to worry me about something, and I don’t think I could stand
being bullied to-night. They’re terribly difficult people to get rid
of, any time. Don’t you think we might tell them to call again?”
“In the morning,” she suggested, “just for a few minutes before you
begin your nice, quiet day? How would that do? We’re starting before
nine, you know, so I’m afraid we shan’t be here to protect you, but
we’ll leave Blenkinship’s Marget in charge. She’s very brave with all
the one-foot-on-the-mat people, and she’ll simply stand on her head for
a chance of nursing somebody, so I do hope you’ll lie on the sofa and
let her bring you beaten-up eggs and things.”
“And treacle-posset? I love treacle-posset!” Wiggie murmured happily,
then got up quickly, dropping the teaspoon. He had heard a car turn in
at the gate. “May I go and see her about it now?”
But instead of seeing Marget, he slid silently through the old gun-room
into the stable-yard, and shinned up the Jacob’s Ladder in the loose
box to the loft above, and sat on a rusty old turnip-chopper and
shivered in the dark until there had been time to rout the enemy’s
attack. It was Dandy who caught Blenkinship’s Marget in the hall,
and whispered instructions that set that warlike damsel yearning for
battle. She was a little surprised to find two quite pleasant, if
rather tired and troubled gentlemen on the doorstep, but her orders
were definite. Yes, Mr. Wigmore had been in, and gone out again,
leaving word for them to call and see him at eleven o’clock in the
morning. Well, could they see the master, Mr. Shaw, or say, Mrs. Shaw,
if there was one? They couldn’t. The master was up to his ears in
letters for the post, and as to whether there was a mistress or not,
that was none of _their_ business! How _was_ Mr. Wigmore? Alive and
kicking, if they cared to know, and fit to stick up for himself against
anybody, any day. No, they couldn’t come in and wait. They’d lost
two silver candlesticks off the hall-table, that way, already--but
they might leave cards if they had such things--considered doubtful.
However, the cards were forthcoming, and the disappointed callers drew
back on their tracks. Watters had received them odiously altogether.
They had found difficulty in turning into the drive, to begin with,
and, when once safely through, had nearly run into a wheelbarrow that
some idiot had left in the middle of it. Then they had been allowed to
shiver unregarded on the step, and afterwards treated with contumely.
The gate that had refused to open when they entered, swung heavily on
their tail-lamp as they drove out. Decidedly, this wasn’t their day.
Blenkinship’s Marget, studying the cards with interest, found Wiggie at
her shoulder, and handed them over, though under protest. “They said
as they were for t’ master,” she explained, but Wiggie only smiled and
began to talk about treacle-possets. It was just as well that Hamer
shouldn’t see those cards.
Everybody was very kind to him, that evening, and thought he should not
only have a nice, quiet day following, but a nice, quiet night straight
away, so he was packed off to bed soon after dinner was over. As he
crossed the hall to the foot of the stairs--very slowly, for he was
afraid of the night--Dandy came out of the smoke-room to meet him. She
looked singularly radiant, he thought, from the depths of his own chill
fear. Beyond, he could hear Hamer at the telephone.
“You’re going up? That’s right!” she said with a relieved air. People
always think things are going to straighten themselves out when they
have persuaded you to do something unpleasant. She gave him her hand
with a kindly pressure. “Are you sure you have everything you want?
Isn’t there _really_ something more we can give you or do for you?
You’ve had such a fearfully hard day, and you’re so tired! And, look
here, you must promise--promise faithfully, or I won’t let you
go--that if you feel bad in the morning you’ll let us know, first
thing. I’d never forgive myself if we went off for a day’s pleasure,
leaving you to be ill all alone.” She wrinkled her brow, looking at him
very earnestly. “I sometimes wonder, Wiggie, whether you tell us all
the truth. You never do talk much about yourself, do you? We know who
you _are_, of course, and we’ve been friends for years, but you never
tell us your troubles, and though you always say there’s nothing the
matter with you that matters, I don’t think I quite believe it. You
look so”--she laughed rather shakily, and put a comforting hand on his
arm--“so dreadfully ‘gone before!’ Don’t you know how precious you are
to us all, Wiggie dear? Let us have a chance of taking care of you if
you really need it, won’t you?”
With his own hands tightly clasped on the banister, he stood looking
down into her eyes, and at her hair, tossed into a mesh of gold by the
little watchman’s lamp at the foot of the stair, at the pleading mouth
and the pearls at her throat, at the whole, terrible, beautiful want
in his life that she represented, and an impulse came over him to tell
her the truth, and see the mouth quiver, and the tears so near the
surface brim over for his sorry plight. He had always taken care of
_her_, thought for _her_, lived for _her_, but perhaps she had had help
for him, too, all the time. If he broke now, completely and in utter
thankfulness, would he find himself, if only for a little, within the
comfort of her arms?
The telephone rang off, and instantly, as if snatched by a cord, Dandy
dropped her hand and turned, her lips opened to an unspoken question
as Hamer came into the hall with a pleased expression on his face. He
nodded to her as he advanced.
“Not gone yet, Cyril? Come, now, be a good lad, and get tucked up! The
missis is still set on stopping behind, but I tell her she’ll only fuss
you. I’ve got Lancaster persuaded to come, Dandy Anne! He hung fire for
some time, talked about work and umpiring a hockey-match, but I made
him promise to cry off and join us. I’m talking of to-morrow, Cyril.
I had an idea at dinner. As you’re a bit under the wind, I’ve asked
Lancaster to come along in your place.”
Wiggie moved a few steps up the stair.
“Glad you thought of it! And awfully glad he’ll go! He doesn’t give
himself a day off very often. Hope you’ll have a first-class time, all
the lot of you!” He glanced at Dandy, thrilling with a happy excitement
she could not repress. (No, he had no right, there.) “Sleep well, Dandy
Anne, and don’t worry your dear head. I’ll be as fit as ever, after my
nice, quiet day.”
Inside his silent lavender room with the rosy curtains, he found a
well-groomed spink sitting on the rail of his bed. It cocked its head
on one side when he closed the door behind him, and they surveyed
each other with interest. Harriet had said that birds in your room
meant disaster, and Harriet was always right. He had thought, for a
moment--one crowned, delirious moment on the stair--that Harriet would
not find him at her hockey-match, after all, but Fate did not mean him
to fail her. Lancaster was going to the Show. Lancaster would have his
place in the car. Very well! Let Lancaster have his Show and his seat,
and his share of Life Everlasting. _He_ would have his five little
minutes of the point-twist.
He laughed aloud as he had done in the fields, scaring the bird from
its perch, and after a minute or two he caught it deftly in his thin
fingers. How frail it felt! he thought, as he opened the window and
tossed it lightly into the night. Would the Almighty find him just
so, he wondered--a piteous, frightened heart beating the walls of its
fragile tenement--when His Fingers closed softly round him for the
last, light fling into the Dark?