CHAPTER XX
WIGGIE’S FIVE MINUTES
It was still scarcely day when he heard the house rouse to action, and dragged his miserable body out of bed for a look at the weather. He had not slept much—most of the night he had been toying with an imaginary hockey-stick in a dull stupor—but every time he had waked to acute consciousness he had been certain that the rain was dripping heavily down the pane. He would have been bitterly disappointed if Harriet’s hockey-match had been frustrated, and that little ecstasy of five minutes had slipped his reach. But he might have remembered that Harriet always got everything she wanted—almost everything; little things like weather and Rural District Councillorships, anyhow. And certainly it was not raining now, though the brightening earth had a watery look which would be dried presently from its clean, green face, sparkling through its veil of soft, gray air, and clothed around with the dark zone of wood. It was going to be just the right sort of day for hockey, with the ground springy and true, and the air soft but strong, and all the little spring-voices calling to you as you line up, light and free. He wondered what sort of a stick Lanty would be able to find him, and hoped it wouldn’t be a Bulger. You wanted something lighter and whippier to bring that point-twist off properly. But of course it would be a Bulger. It was just the right sort of steady whacker for a respectable person like a land agent, playing back. He was absolutely certain Lancaster had played back. He always seemed to be behind things, somehow, on guard and keeping watch.
Then he heard Hamer’s voice in the passage, and realised suddenly that he was very cold, and the bed a terribly long way off. However, he got back there all right, and was busily reminding himself about the nice, quiet day, and trying not to think of the Bulger, when Hamer knocked and entered. How was he? Oh, topping, thanks! Just a bit tired, though. Hoped they’d excuse him for not showing to see them off. Would get up after a bit and have a nice, quiet breakfast. It was awfully decent of them to think they would miss him, but he was sure the Show atmosphere would have bowled him over at once. He hoped Hamer would buy that motor lawn-roller they were advertising. It would save the gardeners a lot of work, and he might lend it to Harriet, perhaps, for the hock—well, why on earth shouldn’t he say “hockey-ground”? The motor-roller kept his host off the guest’s health for the next five minutes, and by that time the car was at the door.
He had handled Hamer rather artistically, he thought, sinking back with somewhat weary satisfaction, and then came Dandy’s fingers drumming lightly on the panel.
Was he better? Sure he was better? If he didn’t say it more convincingly than that, nothing on earth would induce her to leave him. She wasn’t half-certain she wanted to go, as it was! But it was going to be a lovely day, and she loved the long run, and of course she loved the aeroplanes and the lovely, big cars—
“In fact, God’s in His Heaven, and no doubt about it, my lovely dear!” Wiggie observed sadly to his sorry self, and, because the panel was between them, put into his hearty wish for her day’s happiness all the melody of the beautiful things he would never say to her now as long as she lived. And then there came the pulsing roar of the car beneath his window, throttled down after to a steady purr, and the big wheels gripped the drive and slurred off and out into the distance. He lay in bed, listening to the sudden silence of the house, and feeling in every nerve the desolation of being left behind.
After an argument—carried on, it seemed, independently of his own brain—between a body which flatly refused to arise, and something brandishing threats with faces like Harriet’s—he found the body dressed and at breakfast, by some curious conjuring, and feeling a little braver and bigger by virtue of a large bath, strong coffee and the bright morning. Blenkinship’s Marget waited on him with ardent devotion, and he began hastily to lay his evil plans, seeing sofa-cushions and beaten-up eggs quite plainly in her yearning eye. With a royal air he ordered the limousine and the under-chauffeur for ten minutes to eleven.
Blenkinship’s Marget stared, as well she might, for although she knew that everything at Watters was entirely at Mr. Wigmore’s service, down to the last salt-spoon, he had never so much as ordered a wheelbarrow before. Wiggie read the newspaper upside down, and tried not to look as though he knew she was staring.
“I thought you’d to keep quiet, sir, to-day, if you’ll excuse my mentioning it,” she ventured at last, “and you’re looking that poorly, it fair makes my heart ache! There’s them two gents., too, as was to call at eleven. You’ll just miss them.”
“No, Marget, I shall not!” he replied firmly. “I shall meet them on the road, and so you will be saved answering the bell. And we shall both be saved having to throw them out of the house, because they will never be inside it. You can’t say it isn’t keeping quiet to sit perfectly still on a padded seat while things called spiggots and stub-axles and tappets and gudgeon-pins pull you along. And I’m looking poorly this morning because you didn’t bring me that treacle-posset you promised, yesterday. You can’t expect me to be very hearty and blooming after screaming with hunger all night.”