CHAPTER XIXUNDER THE JUNIPER TREE
Hamer’schairs 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 Leyburnewasgoing 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—anybodymusical—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,doremember you’re in church!—the Angel, ‘Fidge’ Morseby! Let me see—was itlastnight I saw her on the luggage-carrier of Captain Gaythorne’s motor-cycle? And at the Gaythornes’ theatricals—well, perhaps Ihadbetter 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 whena 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.
“Itwas! 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 Angelnudged 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 hiseyes 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 thepiù lentoso 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’scheeks, 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.Whowas 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 Icame round outside, as I wanted to speak to you. I say, youdiddo 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, itdoesmatter, 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 thatfrivolous 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 tome; 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 reallyrather 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-twistsnatched 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. “Youdolook 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.Didyou 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 thinkI 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 oftheirbusiness! HowwasMr. 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 silvercandlesticks 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 therereallysomething 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 youare, 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 ofher, thought forher, lived forher, 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 ahockey-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.Hewould 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?