As it happened, Harriet’s Attempt seized the Skirts of Happy Chance exactly at the right moment. Election fever had been rampant during the last six weeks, setting everybody canvassing his neighbour with delirious zeal. First, a county by-election had been rushed through in a glorious fourteen days of crowded life, taking the eye of the whole country by the fact that it was fought upon a pioneer question of national importance. Then the County Council reorganisation came on, loosing all the grinders at each other’s throats; and when that had passed, leaving the different divisions to settle down for the next three years, the District and Parish Councils followed. All sorts of unaccountable hatreds and differences were abroad, as well as still stranger enthusiasms for individuals who had not counted a snap of the fingers before. It was amazing how blood bubbled and boiled for or against some harmless person whose existence had hitherto mattered about once in a blue moon. Both men and women made each election a question of personal insult or exaltation, and said so as often and as loudly as possible; while the grinders ran from pillar to post, setting everybody by the ears, and talking loudest of all.
Into this whirlpool was flung the announcement of Harriet’s candidature as Rural District Councillor for Bluecaster. The district was still seething, but the strain was beginning to tell, and its enthusiasm showed signs of needing a fillip. Harriet gave it this fillip. The older generation was scandalised, the younger amused or contemptuous; while the earnest ladies who sit on Boarding-out and School Committees pronounced it publicly to be horrid presumption, and privately wished that they had thought of doing it themselves. In her own neighbourhood, however, when the first shock was over, she soon began to find supporters. Thorne was disliked by most outside his own peculiar, gullible clan. The story of the milk-fracas soon got round, bringing the farmers solidly to Harriet’s defence. Wild Duck milk needed no bush, and though Thorne’s slummites had a pleasant habit of shrieking “Milk O!” after his opponent, they did not succeed in bringing the blush of shame to the Knewstubb cheek of innocence. Ratepayers of standing signed her nomination, and all went merry as a marriage-bell. And in his thin, deceitful-looking, wedge-shaped boots, Ollivant Thorne shook.
Harriet did not do very much canvassing on her own account. She hadn’t the right grinding touch, which is either very bluff and “Come-along-be-a-good-dog!”-ish, or silkily insidious and appealing. Her request for a vote was apt to sound more like a County Court judgment, so she prudently left the work to her backers. Wiggie said little, but then Wiggie’s very presence smoothed the wrinkles out of the atmosphere and demoralised resistance; and Dandy sat behind, ready to hand out fresh suggestions when Hamer came to a halt. As for Stubbs, he had but one argument, the inevitable “In the family. Always in the family!” but it carried weight; and it seemed as if, in reminding others of the family honour, he was reminded of his own, for he certainly pulled himself together during this fateful time. But still it was Hamer who was the real canvassing success. These local elections are carried largely on the women, and Hamer went down with the women all the way. He turned up each evening at Wild Duck with his reports, triumphant over the certainties, miserable about the failures, and worried to death over the doubtfuls.
Wiggie often came with him, and on the first occasion was so delighted with Harriet’s dwelling that he couldn’t be made to attend to business. Wild Duck captured him from the start. While Hamer waved a pencil over the lists, he wandered round the room, worshipping the silhouette and the carriage-whip and the beer-barrel, and was positively childish about the clover-leaf into which Grandfather Knewstubb had squeezed the Lord’s Prayer. He sank happily into the comfortable rocker pulled close to the glowing bars, cuddling the kitten in his arm, and watched the colours floating in the lustres until Harriet’s voice in the background—“Oh, he’s no good! Let him slack”—brought him to his feet as if a live coal had sprung at him. She looked a trifle ashamed at his earnest apology, and, after a minute or two, muttered a word of excuse and went to fetch him a glass of new milk from the dairy; and when, on the following day, she found him at the gate with a message, she actually condescended to show him round the buildings. He looked regretfully behind him as he turned back into the road.
“I’ve always known there was a place like this somewhere,” he said, “ever since I was top angel in St. Somebody-Something’s choir, but I hardly believed I should ever really find it. It’s so beautifully restful, it almost makes me glad to be tired. I love Watters, and it’s very patient with me, but after all it only kind of shakes hands, whereas Wild Duck opens its arms and takes you on its knee. You won’t sell it, I suppose? You should have what you wanted for it. You’re a very honest person, I know. I wouldn’t haggle a farthing.”
“It’s Bluecaster property,” Harriet explained, “though I mean to buy it in the long run, if I can get his lordship to let me have it, and if Lanty doesn’t want too thieving a price. When my grandfather died, we had to turn out of the old place, and I took Wild Duck on the money he left me, though everybody said I’d have had enough in a year. But I haven’t; and I wouldn’t go back, not if I was paid! I’m sticking to the farm all right, so I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere as long as I’m over sod.”
Wiggie went a little further, looking sadder than ever.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean—I’m sorry we can’t both have it.” And as he vanished under the hedge, the wistful voice finished its speech—
“I believe I could get well here. I’m sorry.”
A surprising touch of concern startled Harriet as she heard him, prompting her to call him back to the rocker and the kitten; but she shook it off with impatient disgust. He suffered from nerves—anybody could see that. He lived too much in stuffy rooms and microbe-ridden railway-carriages, and ate all the poisonous messes they give you in towns. It was doubtful, indeed, whether he got enough to eat at all. His clothes looked prosperous, but he was as thin as a match; you could hardly see him sideways. These artist-people had to make a show, so probably he economised in food. No doubt he smoked excessively to make up for it—that was why he coughed and always looked tired. He was thoroughly under condition altogether, out of training and in a bad way generally. What he wanted was a stiff walk and a run with the bassets and ten miles or so on a push-bike; new milk, good butcher’s meat, and one pipe a week—poor, weedy rotter! Harriet drew up her own splendidly-working collection of organisms, and went within to swing dumb-bells.