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?