Lanty said no; he had work on hand, and couldn’t be taken from it; and Helwise thought how snappy he had grown of late, taciturn at meals, and quick to take all her statements awry. It was tiresome when a man began to grow middle-aged and surly. She congratulated herself upon being neither one nor the other.
And Lanty thought of the morning’s problem, and longed to speak of it, but did not. He would receive more consolation from the shut lips of his father’s portrait than from the mindless mouth of his aunt. He could not tell her, but he fancied he could have told Hamer Shaw. Hamer had captured him, even in their brief meeting. He could picture himself laying the case before the big, sane mind, feeling his burden lightened by the big, generous hand. But he knew he would not speak; he had learned to keep silence too long. He would see this through alone, as he had seen many another anxious point. He went into his office, and shut the door. Helwise spent the rest of the day hunting up subscription-lists.
CHAPTER VIII
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES
The next afternoon he ran into Harriet Knewstubb, wheeling her bicycle into his front hall. She bestowed upon him the kind of cool nod that you keep for the butcher’s boy when you find him loitering at your door without obvious excuse. She was a plain, straight girl, with keen, dark eyes and a breeziness of manner that made the air sing in your ears.
“Helwise asked me to call for her,” she announced—“explained” implies a certain courtesy very aggressively absent. “We’re going over to throw cards at Watters. You’ve no objection to my shoving this in here, have you? I hate my machine standing about in the sun.”
Lanty said he was only too pleased, and watched dispassionately while she scraped the doorpost with her off-pedal, and a valuable oak chest with the front mud-guard. Then he took it from her and put it in a corner, inviting her to come in and wait, but she refused.
“No, thanks. I’ll hang about till she’s ready. Hope she won’t be long. We arranged to go early, so as to skip kitchen tea. Is it true, do you know? By the way, Helwise said something about driving. Hope it isn’t a closed shanty, anyway! I can’t stick them, myself. I told her she’d much better cycle. Do her a lot more good than stuffing along in an old ’bus.”
“It’s too hot for cycling.” Lanty tried not to look annoyed. “You’ll hardly find it stuffy in the dog-cart, I think. I prefer my aunt to drive. She’s so energetic, I’m afraid of her knocking up.”
In reality, he had shrunk from the mental image of Helwise in flickering spots pounding through blazing motor-dust to call at Watters. He had no feeling for Dandy except irritation and misunderstanding, but it would have hurt his pride that she should see his only female relative sliding off a bicycle at her front door. He had even gone to the unprecedented length of suggesting costume, and Helwise, with a conscience shrieking subscription-lists, had consented to oblige. Miss Knewstubb, of course, was at liberty to please herself, as far as he was concerned, and her tastes were certainly plain. She could not be much older than Dandy, he reflected, looking back over years of acquaintance, but she gave no impression of appealing youth. She bullied you at bridge, hammered you at golf, while at tennis she picked you up by the scruff of your neck, shook you, and slammed you down again. These, however, were her amusements. Her main business in life was farming Wild Duck Hall, the pretty farm over the hill, and very successfully she did it. He admitted that, even while resenting her aggressive self-satisfaction, her pistol-shot conversation and general hardness of appearance.
He knew vaguely that Dandy’s smart tweeds had been too passionately sporting, the fringed tongues of her polished brogues too elaborate, her little cap worn at too rakish an angle, but she had kept a feminine graciousness, nevertheless. Harriet’s skirt and shirt were right for the place, if not exactly for a first call; her smoothly-drawn tie was a tie and not a frivolous butterfly of blue silk; her hat held no suggestion of advertisement à la mode; but she was hard from her tall silk collar to the nails in her square shoes. Even her glossy hair looked hard. He thought gloomily that no man would ever want to put his lips to it, or draw her well-set head against his shoulder. Dandy’s hair was soft as gossamer. Her little head would nestle as lightly as a downy Buff Orpington. He shook off the wandering thought, surprised and annoyed. She believed that he starved Flower!