He apologised at once. Harriet generally cycled over, and he associated her instinctively with the steel steed that turned and rent his walls. However, she brushed him aside with scant ceremony.
“Rot! Of course I can. I’m used to paddling about by myself all over the place, and if you think I’ll feel any braver for having a land-lunatic mooning along beside me, grunting about turnips, you’re jolly well mistaken! It’s no use arguing, because I don’t mean to be bothered with you, so you can just crochet yourself over to Watters and have done with it.”
She saluted the party with a side way jerk of her head in her best ploughboy manner, and strode off, watched by her host with annoyance, and something else, altogether different, that held him back from pursuit. Courtesy conquered, however, and he started after her, only to be stopped by Wiggie. “Let me!” he said, gripping his arm. “I’ll catch you up later”—and sped away on Harriet’s swinging trail. The misty air caught him by the throat as he ran. It had been stuffy in the stock-scented room, and he had no wrap of any kind. Perhaps that was why he coughed as he came up. Perhaps he knew that she strained hungry ears to his step, and wished to spare her even a momentary disappointment. In any case, he was certainly not well received.
“You go back!” she snapped, turning on him. “You’re an insult—a howling insult! D’you think I want protecting by a thing that sings?”
“I play draughts, too, you know,” he reminded her meekly, and she laughed grudgingly and moved on again, her escort with her. And as he went he talked—strange talk that was new to her, talk that set the torch of fancy flaring through the mist. Vaguely through her dogged resistance there stole a sense of protection that was of the soul. Physically, indeed, she had no fear, as she had said, but the manly stride had covered an effort to escape the clinging pain of her own heart. Around her in the dusk Wiggie wove his net of comfort, of beauty, of magic kindliness, and by the time he let her in at her own gate, the first bitterness was past. To-morrow she would remember that he sang and coughed, and looked as though he needed cod-liver-oil and malt. To-night she only knew that an angel had walked with her.
Through the dewy garden Lanty led his guest past the ivied seat and the pink fingers of the cherry-tree, and so out by the little stile under the mighty shadow of Bluecaster walls. As they passed the great, wrought gates, already closed for the night, he caught a glimpse of the house itself, its bare flagstaff proclaiming mutely that the master was from home. Then they were under the walls again, sunk in an avenue of lime, and presently in the Lane.
There was the whole of wonder through the Green Gates to-night. The chestnuts were already turning to the pure crimson that comes with the first frost. Already, in the little plantation backing Rakestraw, the beeches had red at their feet. A late harvest-field, stooked and waiting, lay wanly yellow under the white over-world between dark building and close-laid fence. There was a moon coming, a big moon slowly topping the hill, and when it came the hill would go black, and Rakestraw lights would beckon like swung lanterns of horn. His first look was for his Mountain, as usual, but it was not there. From the day of the marsh-meeting he never saw his Ghost-Mountain again, until his life had been broken utterly and utterly re-made.
Dandy was thinking of Harriet as they walked in the quiet of the Lane. Both her sudden defeat and her violent independence had held a touch of pathos. She asked Lanty how long he had known her.
“All her life, or thereabouts. Her people belong here—good old yeoman stock, the best in the land. The backbone of England, some of the books call it! It’s true, too. That’s why Harriet’s so dead sure of herself—she’s on her own ground. She runs her own farm with the help of a good head man. I got him for her. It’s quite a model place; you ought to see it. There isn’t much about farming she doesn’t know. She’s a good hand with a plough, too, and can swing a scythe with anybody. Oh yes, Harriet’s all right in her own way! It’s only her manners that are wrong, and goodness knows I’ve no need to talk! She bullies you no end, but she’s absolutely straight—couldn’t cheat if she tried. We’ve never been very thick, she and I, but she gets on with my aunt all right, and she’s one of our own people, and that means a lot, after all!”