The Witham left back came out steadily and with discretion, and Wiggie’s twist carried the ball round him as easily as a dancer spins a pirouette, leaving him staring. The right sprang to meet the attack, and he passed out to the Pony, who passed back just as the racing left crossed them a second time. The Witham halves were coming up, thudding and panting, but the three were not to be caught. The right back sprang again, shouting to his partner, and Wiggie passed to the Most Kind, who dribbled cleverly to the line as if meaning to shoot, and then, with a lightning turn, centred back to the stranger. Wiggie took the ball daintily on his stick, Saunders or no Saunders, meeting the final rush of the recovered left with the same bewildering trick, and, as the goalkeeper danced and slashed, aimed delicately past her into the net. The whistle blew.
But as the teams came up, both sides ready with praise (always excepting Saunders, limping vaingloriously), Wiggie walked straight off the ground without looking at anybody, not discourteously, but as if very pressing business were hurrying him away. Indeed, from the moment he took the ball in the Bluecaster circle until he had scored his goal, crossed the field and disappeared, he never really stopped at all. It didn’t do to stop. He must go on walking ... walking ... “Lord, our Creator” ... not rushing, but just walking, or he would never get to the other end. The curate tore after him, waving a coat, but he did not look back. If he turned his head, he would never reach the farm, because he couldn’t see it any longer. He could only go on walking towards the place where it had been a minute ago. There was a stile somewhere in the field; his feet would find it all right. He had really wonderful feet; it was only all the rest of him that was wrong—his heart and his lungs and his head and his blind eyes. Well, it was something to have feet, anyhow. Gravel path, surely? Feet again! And then steps and a flagged floor. It was time he got there, because even his feet would have to stop soon. Yes, he was there ... he could feel the fire, though he could not see it ... there would be the kitten and the rocker.... “Lord, our Creator ... Lord, our——”
Harriet explained that Mr. Wigmore was knocked up, probably wanted to rest. No, she had not known he was that sort of player. He had given her to understand he knew nothing about the game. Anyhow, he had won the match for them, snatched it out of the fire at the last moment; not but what they had won it by rights already! If they would kindly make their way to the house, they would find tea in the usual place.
She shepherded them up to the back of the farm, and through the kitchen into the house-place, where tea was set on the long table, but in her heart she was troubled. Wiggie had not joined them. Perhaps he was not in the house at all. Perhaps he had gone for quiet to the parlour. She had her hand on the door when a long, gray car drew up at the gate, and the men she had seen at the church hurried up the path. The tale of the gardener’s boy at Watters had not satisfied them, and after a dismal lunch at the “Four Feathers” they had started out on a fresh hunt. Rumours had met them at last of a match and a stranger playing for Bluecaster—“a lile chap what sings a bit”—and in spite of incredulity had come on the wanderer’s trail to Wild Duck. The hatchet-faced man pushed past Harriet into the house.
“Is he here?” he flashed. He looked ready to drop.
Harriet put her hand back to the parlour door and hesitated. She understood him at once, and for some reason she felt frightened, frightened as she had never been in her life.
“I—don’t know!” she stammered, holding the knob tight; then made an effort to pull herself together. “If you mean Mr. Wigmore, I am just looking for him. He may be resting in here, away from the crowd. He seemed very tired after the match.”
The hatchet-faced man echoed “Match!” in a tone that was half-bitter irony and half a snarling curse. The big man behind laughed a sad and perfectly hopeless laugh. One of them took the knob out of Harriet’s hand and pushed the door. On the hearth by the steel fender Wiggie was fallen, the comforting glow of the fire playing over his white shirt and his closed eyes. The rocker stood empty above his quiet head. The kitten curled, purring, in the curve of his helpless arm.
But he was not dead. Sitting alone in her own room, Harriet willed it with all the force of her personality. He should not be dead! The men had said he was, and he had looked it, lying there without a breath, but she would not have it so. After they had carried him up to Stubbs’ room and shut the door on her, she had gone across to her own and willed him violently back to existence. He had been her player, her loyal man; he was her guest. He could not die under her roof. In some inexplicable fashion he seemed to belong to her, this stranger from another life and another world.