They had had visitors, at first. Before they were fairly settled in the place, a crowd of friends had descended on them, and Hamer Shaw would sooner have shut his door to a Royal honour than an old acquaintance. But the circle, so pleasant and suitable at Halsted, was altogether out of the picture at Watters. The very house itself would have nothing to say to the guests; indeed, it deliberately sulked at them with grudging fires and lukewarm baths. It had other tricks, too—sudden stairs down which they tumbled in the dark; rattling windows, creaking boards and whistling key-holes for the hag-ridden hours of the night; soot in spotless grates, burst pipes and skilfully situated coal-buckets; while the outside world co-operated subtly, from the early rooster to the midnight owl. These drawbacks had been unknown at Halsted, and the guests asked each other dismally what could have possessed old Hamer to quit his palace for a God-forsaken monument like Watters. Their torpedo-nosed cars had a kind of abnormality in the little village at the river’s edge. The Halsted habitués rent the night with gramophones, and across the cool water flung the frenzied parlance of snooker. They were Halstedites who had tangoed through a dream in the lane. Dandy found herself shrinking from them unintentionally but unmistakably. She was glad when they went; and yet, when they had gone, she was sorry, for she felt her place to be with them. And the friends bemoaned themselves as they motored home, saying sadly—“That’s the end of you, Hamer, old man! In another year he’ll have forgotten he ever knew us. It’s the country does it—the benighted, besotted, be-swank-ridden country. Give him six months more, and he’ll be as rooted an old tree-stump as any of them!”
It wasn’t anybody’s fault, Dandy realised that thankfully. The hosts had been kind as usual, the guests hearty as ever, but the new conditions had laughed the old friendships to scorn. It was very sad, and it was also rather terrible, if you were once fully convinced that a house, a senseless mixture of stone and mortar, had done it all on its own!
Thus Dandy held review as she sat with her feet on the rungs of the high stool. Later in the day, on a sudden impulse, she unburdened her mind to her parents.
“It’s going to be a bit hard for me,” she said frankly, “so you must not be disappointed if I’m a failure! I don’t match here, and I’ve lost my old element, so at present I’m neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. I’ll have to grow to this place, and that sort of thing takes time. I don’t mean that I’m unhappy; it’s only that I don’t fit in. You’re all right, aren’t you, mummy? You touched ground over the Bluecaster butcher with the Halsted smile. And father’s been all right all along. It doesn’t seem fair that I should still be struggling in deep water.”
Mrs. Shaw said—“6 tr., 3 lacets, 1 sp., 31 tr.—have you seen the new stair-rods?—4 sl. sts. from third horizontal tr., turn!”
And Hamer took his pipe out of his mouth and added—“It’s great!” and put it back again.
“Yes, it’s great.” Dandy laughed and sighed. “So great that I’m not sure I’ll ever get round to the far side of it! It’s small and mean, too—does everybody keep a pet charity chained like a dog to nobble new-comers? And those that don’t beg seem to be tied up in a pride as big as a bath-towel—that nice, cross agent-person, for instance, who looks rather like a high-class keeper, and nabobs you off his land like a reigning duke. He’ll never want to be kind to us, I’m sure, and we must have somebody to pass the time of day with. Perhaps the house will decide. It turned a cold enough shoulder on the poor Halstedites; it owes us somebody in return. I hope it will send an interesting selection soon, though it seems queer to have to let a house choose your friends for you! I get on fairly well with the villagers, though they’re not exactly flattering. ‘Very pleased to meet you, miss, I’m sure! You mind me something surprising of her as was last school-teacher but two!’ That was the ‘Jeanne’ frock, mother, that Wiggie used to say looked like concrete moonshine, at Halsted. It looks like the fairy queen in a ballet, here. Even my sporting clothes are wrong—they sport too much. And I find I don’t know any of the things that matter—when the grass begins to grow, and which weather is coming up from the sea, and what to call it when it has come. No, I don’t fit in. Perhaps I’ll learn, after a while.”
Hamer Shaw said—“The land’ll teach you,” and leaned back and shut his eyes. He could hear milk-pails on the flags at the Parsonage Farm.
“And love,” Mrs. Shaw added, very unexpectedly, “7 lacets, 7 tr., 9 ch., turn—don’t forget to look at the rods!”
“The land—and love.” Dandy said no more, knowing nothing of either. On the fell opposite a floating wreath of mist was lifting delicately upward like a lawn kerchief drawn from a sleeping face. “The land—and love.” Great Masters. But the land, as yet, would have none of her, and love might never look her way. She could win the one if she chose to woo it; the other and greater must come unasked.