“Do you know that they say I may—perhaps—be able to sing again, in a year’s time? I’ve still a half-crown or two in the toe of a stocking, and Edgar’s got a post somewhere where they waggle their fingers instead of their tongues, so the babies won’t starve yet awhile. We’ll keep the pot boiling, somehow, but I do not think I shall ever be the Great Quetta again.”
Edgar uttered an exclamation of angry pain, and his brother smiled at him affectionately. Blenkinship’s Marget came up and handed him a medicine-glass, and he finished the tail of the smile on her.
“What does it matter? Anyhow, I can always teach; and the Little Great Quetta will keep us all out of the Workhouse when we’re old! You must hear him sing, Lancaster. He has the true singer’s throat, and cords like the harp of all the winds. Perfect ear, of course. Even the Quetta-lings, shrieking themselves hoarse over there, have that. He will be the Greatest Quetta some day, please God, and make up to Edgar for his poor old ears, and to me for all the poor other things that have gone wrong in my inside—won’t he, old man?”
“He looks very sensitive,” Lanty observed, watching the child.
“The instrument has to be tuned,” Wiggie answered, rather sadly. “It is out of wrung strings that both God and man make their sweetest music.”
“Still jabbering about your stupid singing!” Harriet scoffed, thrusting a plate of scones into his face. “Try these. They’re buttered with Wild Duck. I told the examiner it was the stuff from the Van, and he cleared out like a shot, and hasn’t been seen since. By the way, the L.G. knows what you call your Quetta-Song perfectly now. He was singing it all morning.”
“It’s a song I used to sing,” Wiggie explained, for Lanty’s benefit, “a song about lambkins and resting-places and things. We call it the Quetta-Song because the Quettas never have a resting-place. They are always on the move.”
“I know a song like that,” Lanty said slowly, out of far depths when Harriet had turned away, and nobody but Wiggie could hear. “I call it my Home-Song. I heard it years ago at the Westmorland Festival.”
“You heard me,” Wiggie said simply. “I remember singing it there. It is known as the Quetta-Song in the profession, so the others do not sing it. It was when I first came out and was plump and pretty, with my voice not quite full grown, so of course you wouldn’t remember me. But I thank you ever so much for remembering the song.”
“I always remembered it, but I lost faith in it,” Lanty said. “I could find no home to match the song.”