“It’s really all right!” he said, feeling as sorry for Hamer as for himself. “I’ve far too much on my hands, anyhow, and this will ease me a bit. Don’t you think any more of Garnett’s nonsense. These young ’uns are always too clever by half. He’s wrong, I tell you—dead wrong!”
But he knew, and Hamer, looking down at him, knew that the “young ’un” had been perfectly right.
At Watters, the poor man tried to eat his wife’s carefully-thought-out supper and could not; and Dandy played an intricate game with a chicken-wing that was always on its way to her mouth and never got there, while Wiggie ate nothing either, in his efforts to keep Mrs. Shaw from observing the others. They drifted to a warm hearth, and were presently comforted a little, but Hamer was still very low when he took his girl in his arms for her good-night kiss.
“This is the Last Tram, little one!” he said sadly. “I’ve made a fine mess of it, and I’ll never forgive myself. There’ll be no more tramming for Hamer Shaw!”
Soon after eleven o’clock, Harriet, standing at her window in the dark, caught the shuffling of feet in the road, and directly afterwards a lusty cheer startled the sleeping peace of Wild Duck. She knew at once what it meant. So, in her grandfather’s time, had his supporters come to seal his victory. She remembered to this day the thrill of pride with which, as a child, she had listened to the demonstration, creeping from her bed to peep at the massed enthusiasts without. Lighting the lamp, she called to Stubbs and threw up the window, to meet a second cheer as she came into sight. Standing there, with her father’s hand on her shoulder, she thanked them briefly and told them to get off home, with just the same rough humour that Grand Old John had used with such effect; and after a final tribute they withdrew. She went to bed with the warmth and the pride of it glowing at her heart.
But in the night she woke and saw the thing that she had done in all its naked, irrevocable folly, saw how her stratagem had twisted in her hand, to the undoing of the man she loved. Power and adulation were sweet, but real love will have first place even in a Knewstubb heart. She had meant to-day to draw them together—deep down she knew that she had had no other hope but that—and instead it had set them leagues asunder, probably for ever. She had put herself in the very place where he could not love her—his own place. She had cut her throat with her own so subtle weapon, the clever lady of Wild Duck Hall. She hid her face in her hands, and wept.
CHAPTER XIX
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.