“Lancelot is a different creature to-day!” Helwise observed, hitting hard at the empty air, and getting the ball in her left eye for her pains. “Almost cheery and inclined to gambol—oh, I am sorry! Did it hurt? He was a little put out at breakfast, when the Duchess of Saddleback returned him a sixpenny postal order I had meant for a Home Tattle Limerick, instead of the subscription he had told me to send for her Cemetery Bazaar—Armer, please, over my head, not at it!—but of course anybody might do a thing like that, anybody, I mean, as busy as I am. It was the Duchess’s letter that upset him—I don’t know why, because it was charmingly friendly and polite. Said she hoped the sixpence wouldn’t be too late to win him the competition—nice of her, wasn’t it? What do you think? Lancelot says that now he’ll have to double his donation, though I can’t see any reason for it myself. Still, he didn’t really show temper about it, and I didn’t in the least mind asking him to check the month’s groceries directly afterwards. Of course, I can’t say that he showed any joie de vivre—I do think he’s lacking in joie de vivre—but he got the groceries to come out all right, and do you mind if we stop?—the ball’s caught in my hair-net.”
“Glad to hear he’s recovered!” Harriet returned, watching impatiently while Dandy set her hostess at liberty. “He was just about the limit, that day at Watters. Never saw such a jaundiced old crab-apple in my life! Rotten of him, though, not to turn up to bumble.”
“He’s gone to see his lordship off—your service, I think, Miss Shaw—but he should be back presently. He sent me down some flowers, this morning—his lordship, I mean—and a message to say he was prevented from calling. He makes a point of coming in to see me, as a rule, and I tell him all the things that want doing to the house, and we get on splendidly! I sent him an invitation to bumble, but something always seems to stop him. Last time it was toothache, and the time before it was a hair-cut or a motor-smash or some other very close shave.”
Dandy caught echoes of this vocal accompaniment as she smote wildly at dancing hanks of string under Harriet’s pitying gaze, seething with helpless rage at the flying ball as it spun over and under and apparently through the racquet, leaving her to plant weighty smashes upon space or the inoffensive pole. There was something diabolical in the way it shot down upon you like a bolt from the blue, and caught you on the nose when you weren’t looking. When you did hit it, (which was seldom) you struck with a murderous zest that nearly dislocated your shoulder, not in the least with the friendly dispatch of a drive at golf, or the esprit de corps of a clean clearing-shot at hockey. The one ball was a jolly little nipper you hoped to see again very shortly; the other a sportsman and a pal, the twelfth and keenest member of the team; but this was a jeering devil and an aeroplane and a merry-go-round and a slimy sneak, and you hit it as if you were killing wasps.
She was paired against the ladies with what Harriet called “the-man-who-scraped-up-behind,” and soon grasped that she had cause to be thankful, since he was not only a much better player than either of the enthusiasts, but was also thoroughly up to their little tricks. Occasionally he tipped Dandy a respectful wink to leave the ball to him, or to send it over instead of round, and she obeyed with anxious alacrity. She soon rose to his tactics, and when she discovered that, every time Harriet hit Armer, Armer responded by hitting Helwise, she made every effort to play up to him and keep control of the ball. When, by way of a change, Helwise hit her, and she couldn’t always manage to hit Harriet, it was even more exciting, though not so comfortable.
Even Bluecaster noticed the change in his agent as they walked the platform together. He was accustomed to seeing him more as a walking encyclopædia of solid business facts than as a man with half the wine of life yet untasted, and youth still to his hand. But to-day he looked younger and freer than he had done for a long time, his laugh was more ready, and his business worries seemed shelved. Even unanalytic Bluecaster could feel that his blood ran more strongly, and his pulse beat quicker.
Bluecaster himself seemed depressed and rather restless, one moment anathematising the delay of his train, the next hinting that he should stay on, in a tone that openly asked for encouragement. As the train came in at last, he thrust an envelope into Lanty’s hand, climbing reluctantly to his place.
“From that infernal Brack, I suppose!” he said in a tone of irritation, going across to close a window which he knew he would reopen immediately. “There’s no name to it, and the address might have been written with the poker, but I think it’s pretty obvious.”
Lancaster took it with a shrug—the usual, cheap envelope that carries unsigned slander. The postmark gave no sort of clue, and the fierce venom of the writing disguised it effectually. Within was a page torn from the Book of Ezekiel, scored carefully so that the phrases ran into a connected message. Lanty read it aloud as he stood by the open door.
“Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God. And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity and that divine lies ... and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall ... say unto them ... that it shall fall ... there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it.