CHAPTER VIIINEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES
Thenext afternoon he ran into Harriet Knewstubb, wheeling her bicycle into his front hall. She bestowed upon him the kind of cool nod that you keep for the butcher’s boy when you find him loitering at your door without obvious excuse. She was a plain, straight girl, with keen, dark eyes and a breeziness of manner that made the air sing in your ears.
“Helwise asked me to call for her,” she announced—“explained” implies a certain courtesy very aggressively absent. “We’re going over to throw cards at Watters. You’ve no objection to my shoving this in here, have you? I hate my machine standing about in the sun.”
Lanty said he was only too pleased, and watched dispassionately while she scraped the doorpost with her off-pedal, and a valuable oak chest with the front mud-guard. Then he took it from her and put it in a corner, inviting her to come in and wait, but she refused.
“No, thanks. I’ll hang about till she’s ready. Hope she won’t be long. We arranged to go early, so as to skip kitchen tea. Is it true, do you know? By the way, Helwise said something about driving. Hope it isn’t a closed shanty, anyway! I can’t stick them, myself. I told her she’d much better cycle. Do her a lot more good than stuffing along in an old ’bus.”
“It’s too hot for cycling.” Lanty tried not to look annoyed. “You’ll hardly find it stuffy in the dog-cart, I think. I prefer my aunt to drive. She’s so energetic, I’m afraid of her knocking up.”
In reality, he had shrunk from the mental image of Helwise in flickering spots pounding through blazing motor-dust to call at Watters. He had no feeling for Dandy except irritation and misunderstanding, but it would have hurt his pride that she should see his only female relative sliding off a bicycle at her front door. He had even gone to the unprecedented length of suggesting costume, and Helwise, with a conscience shrieking subscription-lists, had consented to oblige. Miss Knewstubb, of course, was at liberty to please herself, as far as he was concerned, and her tastes were certainly plain. She could not be much older than Dandy, he reflected, looking back over years of acquaintance, but she gave no impression of appealing youth. She bullied you at bridge, hammered you at golf, while at tennis she picked you up by the scruff of your neck, shook you, and slammed you down again. These, however, were her amusements. Her main business in life was farming Wild Duck Hall, the pretty farm over the hill, and very successfully she did it. He admitted that, even while resenting her aggressive self-satisfaction, her pistol-shot conversation and general hardness of appearance.
He knew vaguely that Dandy’s smart tweeds had been too passionately sporting, the fringed tongues of her polished brogues too elaborate, her little cap worn at too rakish an angle, but she had kept a feminine graciousness, nevertheless. Harriet’s skirt and shirt were right for the place, if not exactly for a first call; her smoothly-drawn tie was a tie and not a frivolous butterfly of blue silk; her hat held no suggestion of advertisementà la mode; but she was hard from her tall silk collar to the nails in her square shoes. Even her glossy hair looked hard. He thought gloomily that no man would ever want to put his lips to it, or draw her well-set head against his shoulder. Dandy’s hair was soft as gossamer. Her little head would nestle as lightly as a downy Buff Orpington. He shook off the wandering thought, surprised and annoyed. She believed that he starved Flower!
Helwise bustled down the stairs in the requested lavender, and fell over the bicycle, which instantly swung round by the head and described a graceful curve on the paint with a ribbed handle. The master of the house picked it up, and followed the ladies out, to find them already mounted. Helwise was anxious to be off, in case he remembered the subscriptions. Harriet had dispossessed the factotum of the reins, without asking anybody, and flourished down the drive, leaving echoes of “kitchen tea” behind her. Lanty went back into the house and looked at the mark on the wall.
They did have tea, after all, though not in the kitchen. Hamer would have felt the evading of his hospitality as a child the rejection of its penny bag of sweets. He saw to it also that Armer had a square meal. There were no half-measures about Hamer Shaw.
He had a warm greeting for Lancaster’s aunt, and laboured heartily through her mixed periods, while Mrs. Shaw murmured crochet-patterns as she made the tea, and Dandy, with an anxious expression, hearkened to Harriet’s slashing opinions. There was a fair, pale young man, sitting as close to her as possible, who also seemed fascinated by the caller’s conversational methods. Harriet was enjoying herself.
“Two and a half,at least!” she pronounced firmly, with a critical eye on Dandy’s skirt. “Anything less would be certain to trip you in turnips. And I don’t recommend leather—no, I can’t say that I recommend leather! It’s very nutty when it first comes home, but give it a day over plough, and slap it has to go into the bucket! Those brogues of yours are nailed all wrong, too. They should be done in threes”—she extended a foot for inspection—“and plain tongues, of course, the plainer the better. Those Indian-scalp imitations would soon hang you up in a fence.”
“Does one runallday in the country?” the youngman inquired, deeply interested. Harriet nodded with condescension.
“One gets about. Of course there are crowds of cat-footers who frowst indoors with a book or a needle, but nobody worth mentioning. One’s always off somewhere, either on a push-bike or Shanks’s pony. The tennis is getting over, but I can put you up for the hockey, if you care about it, Miss Shaw. I’m captain, and Miss Lancaster is secretary and all that kind of thing. By the way, Helwise, have you got your fixtures out yet?”
Miss Lancaster turned a vague eye.
“Fixtures? I believe Lancelot has them somewhere. He generally arranges them for me—I’m so busy! He likes doing little things like that. Of course,Ido all therealwork, shaking hands with the teams when they come, and seeing that they have plenty of hairpins and two cups of tea.Heonly writes the letters and keeps the funds straight.”
“That’s her nephew,” Harriet kindly explained to Dandy and the pale young man. “Agent for Bluecaster—perhaps you’ve met him. Rather a slow old tortoise, but well-meaning. So it’s settled you’ll play hockey? Where’s your place, I wonder? Forward, I should think, in a decent skirt.”
Dandy thanked her politely, having expressed no opinion whatever on the matter. Hamer looked across with a twinkle in his eye. Both Harriet and Helwise pleased him mightily. The buffeting breeziness of the one moved him to tolerant amusement, while the silvery ineffectiveness of the other claimed his chivalry. He promised subscriptions without demur, and Helwise almost purred aloud. Lancelot was so ridiculously narrow and proud. Why, these new peoplelikedto be asked!
“You’ll be going to the Show, of course?” Harriet demanded. “Bluecaster Agricultural Show, I mean. What do you do? Oh, you—youprod. Sheep and cows and things, that is. I’m showing, of course, and if I don’t get anything there’ll be a row. Perhapsyou know I farm? And you scrap with your friends as to which hunter will grab the card—at least, other people do. I’ve given it up myself, because I’m always right. Occasionally I get a bit lost at the Royal, and have to fall back on Lanty Lancaster, but I’m always O.K. at these local arrangements. You’ll join the choral society, I suppose? I’m nothing of a singist personally, but I always put in an appearance. They like it. Keeps the thing together, don’t you know? I’m not sure that it’s quite good form to have much of a voice—looks a bit like swank—so you’ll be all right. Lanty Lancaster used to belong at one time. He’s got a few decent notes somewhere round the bottom C.”
“Wiggie—Mr. Wigmore—sings, too,” Dandy put in meekly, glad of a chance to speak. The pale young man was the only friend from the old life that had managed to get into touch with the new. He had stayed on unobtrusively after the others had departed blatantly, and the house had not repudiated him. Harriet gave him a casual stare.
“Oh?” she said, not at all encouragingly. “Not platforms and things, I hope? We leave that to the tradespeople, here. Evening-dress and a red handkerchief—youknow! Are you only stopping, or do you belong? You might enter for my bumble-puppy tournament, next Thursday.”
The pale young man looked regretful.
“I’d love to, but I shan’t be here, worse luck! I’ve got to sing for a few people, that very day. I’m so sorry.”
“Platforms and things, I’m afraid!” Dandy added, with a touch of mischief. “But a white handkerchief. That’s something, isn’t it?”
Harriet looked puzzled.
“But don’t youdoanything?” she inquired briskly. “What’s your handicap at golf? You look rather like a bank.Areyou a bank? Surely you do something besidessing?”
Dandy opened her lips sharply, but Wiggie’s gentle gaze crossed her own, checking her.
“I play draughts quite nicely,” he said thoughtfully; and Harriet snorted and gave him her shoulder. Dandy looked at the carpet.
“Well, I can rakeyouin, can’t I, Miss Shaw? Two bob entrance, grub provided. Helwise, I’m bringing Miss Shaw to practise on your pole! Mine’s being painted for the tournament. If Lanty or the scrape-up-behind man will play, we can have a foursome.”
“Pleasure—of course—certainly!” Miss Lancaster responded, dragged from a demand for rummage. “Armer isn’t very safe, though. Hewillplay a sort of Aunt Sally, and it hurts. And Lancelot is very worried, just now. Some of his silly tenant-people are leaving, and he’s quite put out about it. You’d think he actuallycaredwhen an old man began to fail, or his children turned out badly! I tell him they all look exactly alike to me, so I’m afraid I can t pretend to be very sympathetic.”
“You mean the Ninekyrkes business?” Harriet asked. “It’s all over the place, of course, about young Whinnerah and Michael’s daughter. The girl’s been over-educated, that’s what’s wrong. Thinks herself too good for her own class. They sent for Lanty, didn’t they, to try and patch things up?”
“Why, does he always lend a hand in the tenants’ love-affairs?” Hamer laughed. “That’s a big order, surely!”
“Oh, they use him as a family iron to smooth out the creases!” Helwise sighed. “I have no doubt he talked to the girl like a Methuselah. He has nojoie de vivre. People with nojoie de vivreare very depressing to live with. Oh,thankyou, dear Mr. Shaw! That will be a guinea each for the Protesters and the Rummage, half a guinea for the Paper Roses—itwasthe Paper Roses, wasn’t it?—and, by the way, did I mention the Torn Tea-Cloths? Oh, you must really allow me to interest you in the Torn Tea-Cloths!”
She had the money in her hand when Lanty wassuddenly announced, and Hamer, following his accusing eyes, grasped the situation instantly.
“I’ve just been getting Miss Lancaster’s opinion on your local charities,” he remarked, putting his big, kindly person between the two. “I’m a whale at charities—you just ask our Dandy Anne! They’re a sort of hobby of mine, and I’m glad to have a bit of advice from somebody who knows what’s worth helping. Mother, give Miss Lancaster another cup of tea!”
“Hamer doesn’t count life worth living if he hasn’t a hand in somebody’s pie,” his wife added, comfortably following on. “There was one whole year I declare he talked of nothing but overworked tram-horses! I’m glad to see you, Mr. Lancaster! You know Dandy there, I fancy? That’s Mr. Wigmore, an old friend of ours from our old home.”
Lanty found himself engineered to a chair beside the daughter of the house, while his aunt hurried clinking coins into her purse behind Hamer’s broad back.
“You needn’t scowl at old Helwise like that!” Harriet flung at him, brutally undoing the family diplomacy in a breath. “Why shouldn’t she go round catching pennies if she wants? It’s no business of yours!”
Lanty looked at her seethingly, the memory of the bicycle handle still rankling, but before he could answer, Wiggie was at his elbow with a teacup. He remembered him now as the singer in the Lane, and a further memory, of much older standing, fretted vainly at the back of his brain. A moment later he heard him telling Helwise that he had found half a sovereign in the gutter, and couldn’t in conscience spend it on himself. The gentle voice was so convincing, the purring answer so ecstatic, that he smiled unwillingly, meeting deprecating flower-blue eyes at his side.
“It seems so rotten to rook you at a first call!” he broke out. “I expect you’ve come up against a fearful lot of that sort of thing already, and it can’timpress you very favourably. That’s the worst of the country. Everybody has some sort of a show wanting a leg-up, and all the giving falls on the same people. You’ve got to help, even when you’re not interested, or half the things would never run at all. But new-comers should have a certain amount of rope. You must stand out when it gets to rank robbery, and ask for time!”
“We’ll consult Watters!” Dandy said promptly. “This is a very strong-minded house—did you know? We have to give in to it dreadfully. It was simply hateful to our Halsted friends, especially the Tango ones—youdidn’t like them either, did you?—and now it has taken a dislike to the gardener we brought with us—drops slates on him in a dead calm, smokes him out of the potting-shed, and, if he tries to put up a ladder, simply humps its back and throws it off again! I’m afraid he’ll have to go. It’s bearingus, so far, but of course we’re very careful. Mother wanted to turn the old nursery into a linen-room, but the minute she suggested it a patch of damp appeared on the ceiling, though there hadn’t been any rain for weeks; so we had to give up the idea. It likes Wiggie tremendously, though. His bathwater is always hot, and his room’s always full of spiders, and stacks of little sunbeams follow him everywhere, patting him on the head.”
Lanty laughed, and she felt quite disproportionately pleased. When he laughed, he looked years younger and a hundred times less worried. Then Harriet plunged into the lightened atmosphere with the pawing of a battle-horse.
“I say—what about this matrimonial agency of yours? We’ve all been hearing about Francey Dockeray and young Lup. What did you say to the girl, and how did she take it?”
The transient boyish look left his face. Dandy had drawn him into a quaint little world where tenants and their troubles had no place, but Harriet hauled him out again.
“Aren’t you asking a bit too much?” he answered as amiably as he could. “You’re a Bluecaster tenant, too, remember! You’ll likeyoursermon kept private, I fancy, if ever I come arbitrating inyourlove-affairs!”
It was said merely to chill her curiosity, but its actual effect was quite unaccountable. Harriet blushed—a slow, surprising blush from the rigid silk collar to the smooth hair—but she met his eye with fierce contempt in spite of it.
“Oh, well, be an oyster, if you choose!Ishan’t die of it! You didn’t do much good, from all accounts. Have you seen Brack Holliday, lately? They say he’s raking up the old fuss about the Lugg.”
The foreboding slid in and tapped him on the shoulder. He had not meant to come to Watters, but something had driven him; perhaps the same need of Hamer Shaw’s strength that he had realised yesterday. He had left the worry at Hamer’s door. Things were no different, he told himself. The Lugg held no threat. Brack had no case. But after that one bright moment of clear-eyed proportion, Harriet had whistled the fear back to his side.
“Brack’s teeming with theories—has his pockets full of them!” he answered abruptly, getting up. He moved across to his hostess, excusing himself on business grounds. Helwise gathered herself together in a flutter and dropped her open purse, standing helpless in chattering dismay while everybody else dived and darted after trundling coins. Lanty took a last look round the room, while Wiggie, grave and anxious, moved the coalbox and the fender and the fire-screen and all the fire-irons to rescue a threepenny-bit. It was a lovely room, and it soothed him; it made his own still more absurdly desolate and drear; but even this was not his ideal. Somewhere, dimly defined in his imagination, was his holy place, with time-worn furniture and the calling atmosphere of home.
“Queer little body!” Hamer observed when hehad seen Helwise and her purse safely off the horizon. “Talks like a string of telephone-wires touching in a wind. And the young one sounds as though she was pillow-fighting folk all the time! But they’re both ladies—queer how it creeps out, in spite of the top dressing! And the lad’s a gentleman too, although he’s so short and see-you-damned-first! He’s worrying, though, more than a bit. Seems to me he’s got something on his mind. Didn’t he strike you that way, Dandy Anne—as if he’d something on his mind?”
“He isn’t happy,” Dandy answered slowly. “He’s always thinking you’re going to hurt him, and getting ready for it. People don’t do that when they’re happy.”
“Likely he’s got too much to carry,” Hamer said thoughtfully. “He’s bitten off a big bite in Bluecaster, and they say the young lord don’t help much with the chewing. Some writing-chap has it that the strongest man is the one that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, but he doesn’t say how soon he drops in his tracks. I’ve a feeling that that Bluecaster agent isn’t so far from dropping.”
Mrs. Shaw laid a hand on his arm and drew him towards the door. Wiggie had petitioned her with a glance.
“Now, Father dear, you leave that particular tram alone! The horse may be a bit overwilling, but it doesn’t follow it isn’t up to weight. Don’t start putting things right before you’ve found the hitch. Come and help me unpack the new vacuum cleaner.”
“I hate to see any creature overpressed,” Hamer said pitifully. “I know what it is—it eats the soul out of you if you haven’t some big happiness behind to hold you up. And he hasn’t that. I can see he doesn’t take kindly to that little aunt of his. I should say they don’t pull well together. He’s lonely, is that young chap; he’s not satisfied—right you are, Mother, I’m coming!”
Wiggie had got his wish—Dandy all to himself—buthe did not say anything for quite a long time. Instead, he came as if by accident to the piano, and though he played nothing coherent, he drew out funny little bunches and ripples of sound that somehow made the cool room seem cooler. Now and again he glanced at Dandy, sitting on her favourite stool with her head bent. She was changed already, he thought, and she was only too obviously not thinking of him. She had lost a little of her Halsted brilliance; she was a shade thinner, a shade dimmed, as if some new power had breathed a moment on her soul. Wiggie turned his eyes away when he thought that. His own soul was full of delicate little instincts like the dainty grace-notes tripping under his touch.
Dandy was thinking of Lancaster, and wondering why she had felt pleased when he laughed. Was it because in that instant he had ceased to be aloof? Yet how alien he really found her! There was the whole network of outlook between them. More than anybody else he had made her feel “new.”
Wiggie stopped playing bunches and began to whisper a desperate French appeal—
“Ma chandelle est morte,Je n’ai plus de feu:Ouvre-moi la porte,Pour l’amour de Dieu!”
“Ma chandelle est morte,Je n’ai plus de feu:Ouvre-moi la porte,Pour l’amour de Dieu!”
“Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu:
Ouvre-moi la porte,
Pour l’amour de Dieu!”
Dandy said “Don’t!” quite suddenly, without in the least meaning to, and, without in the least meaning to, he got up and came to her.
“Are you hankering to help the tram-horse, too?” he asked, and she lifted her eyes with a laugh.
“Nothing so unselfish, Wiggie dear! But that song always makes me shiver. The door is so fast and so hard. It is bolted and barred, with iron knobs as big as mushrooms, and nothing gets under it but the draught of one’s sighing.”
“Mydoor isn’t like that!” Wiggie said quickly. “It’s as fine as thistledown and as thin as air, but it keeps you out all the same. You can see through itall the dearness within, but—it keeps you out! If it were hard, you could hammer the ache out of your heart, and lay your cheek against the mushroom knobs for pity. But you cannot bruise your fists on gossamer, and the web of it blows weakly pitiless against your cheek.”
“But it’s not for you to hammer at doors,” he added presently. “They fly open all along your road!”
She shook her head doubtfully.
“I’ve a feeling I may come to it before I’m through!” she said whimsically. “I can see myself in the dust and the dark, hugging a dead candle, and begging, begging——”
He stopped her with a gesture.
“Don’t cheapen yourself! Don’t stand at the door like the milk. The golden drink should be kept for the golden chalice.”
“Why, Wiggie, what snobbish butlerage! It is the stone jar that makes the beauty of the miracle. Watters has taught me that.”
He took her hands.
“But for me even Cherith’s brook is dried up,—Dandy dear?”
Her lips quivered.
“Don’t quote Elijah into my mouth, Cyril!”
He let her fingers slip,—not abruptly, but with a lingering touch that left no sense of desolation.
“Forgive me! When one is thirsty, even the golden wine is not too precious and wonderful to drink. It’s all right. I didn’t mean to worry. Go on thinking about the tram-horse.”
He went back to the piano and played more bunches. Presently he asked to be taken to see the vacuum cleaner.