On the other hand, he was of use to the older man in many ways, engineering him over social pitfalls, along the precipice of tradition and through the network of county relationship; while to Mrs. Shaw he was an everlasting support and stay. He knew the best methods of reconciling modern grates with ancient hearths; why the newspaper didn’t turn up, and what was wrong with the milk; how to re-tape Venetian blinds and bottle fruit, and where to buy the best blankets and hams; what was a tramp and what wasn’t; what you might say to your servants, and what you certainly might not; why it was wrong to tip the Force, and right to use steamers in apple-tarts; the neatest way of clearing cockroaches, and what the Government was going to do.
But with Dandy he seemed to get very little further. He was often so absorbed that he forgot to speak to her, though he seldom forgot—unconsciously, perhaps—to look at her. He knew vaguely that he liked her, found her presence pleasing, and was grateful for her kindly acts; and sometimes, in some hour magnetised by Wiggie’s singing, he turned to her as to the woman of his dreams. But always he came back doggedly to his first impression of her in the Lane. She was not of his world—the world of the soul, where it walks alone until the silver fingers of its eternal mate make music on the thrilling door. She did not speak his language, or love his loves; and sometimes he would leave the beauty of Watters with a queer relief, to talk shop with Harriet under a shippon wall.
The latter drove in now, in her smart, new milk-float, affecting the farmer’s jog-trot which would soon ruin the brisk little cob he had bought for her, he reflected, with a shrug. She had Wiggie with her, and threw him the reins while she made the pilgrimage from the Bank to the “Duke.” Wiggie knew nothing about horses, but he would have held a megalosaurus if Harriet had commanded, so hung on and murmured all the horse songs he could think of, from “The Tin Gee-Gee” to “The Arab’s Farewell to his Favourite Steed.”
She scowled when Lancaster and the clerk got up as she entered, and the former offered her a chair. She resented their reception of her as a lady rather than as a rent-paying tenant, and her ploughboy manner was particularly evident upon these occasions. Perhaps, in spite of her strenuous pose, the pilgrimage, ending at Lancaster’s table, hurt something of her hidden woman’s pride. In any case she needed to carry a high head for Stubbs, who marked the day with a white stone. He always insisted upon attending the dinner with Harriet’s ticket, and the result, if customary, was none the less galling.
She refused the seat, flipping the bank voucher across the table, and thrusting the estate receipt into an important-looking pocket-book; then, remembering her part, sat down sideways and dug her hands into her pockets.
“What about that pig-hull you promised me?” she demanded, in a Judge Jeffreys tone that made the clerk jump.
Lanty temporised solemnly, with the tactful evasiveness of custom. He knew quite well that she had only said it to impress his subordinate, because the pig-hull had been granted at least a week before, but he wouldn’t for worlds have denied her the traditional privilege of the punctual tenant, which was in this case no more than just a little bit of side.
“I see you’ve Wigmore with you,” he added, looking out to where that unhappy gentleman, to the tune of “Come, pretty bird, and live with me!” was trying to persuade the cob that the bar-parlour of the “Duke” was not the mouth of his private stable.
“We’ve been to see the Vicar—Bluecaster, I mean—so I brought him on. The choral has been asked to oblige with ‘Elijah,’ sometime in March, in aid of missions over the seas and kindred objects. Would you consider Stubbs, half-seas-over, a kindred object? Wiggie happened to say he knew something about the music, so I told him he could sing. He hung back a bit at first, but I wasn’t standing any nonsense. Mind you turn up with plenty of cash. By the way, there’s that match with Bortun to-morrow.” (Hockey understood.) “You’ll be pig-and-whistle as usual, of course? I’ve got some sort of a team scratched together, but I’m still short of a centre-half. I expect I’ll have to play there myself, unless you’ll take it on?”
“Too old!” Lanty shook his head. “Is Wigmore training for a circus, by any chance?”