Lanty met him as cheerfully as he could with his usual—“Well, Wolf, how’s yourself?” but the time-hallowed reply—“A long way on to ploughin’ over Jordan!” drew but a ghost of the old smile from both; and when business was through with, the shaky old figure still sat in the chair, saying nothing and staring at the floor. Lancaster made a movement with his hand, and the clerk got up and went out. The agent waited, sorry and patient.
“How’s your missis?” he asked at last, when the silence grew unbearable, trying to keep the same brisk, commonplace tone. Wolf raised his eyes.
“She’s a deal better, thank you kindly, sir. She’s not like the same woman since things was fixed. She never fashes herself over the water, nowadays. I can’t rightly make her out, though—but it’s no matter. It’ll not be for long.”
“You’ll be getting into the Pride soon, I suppose?”
“Ay. In a few weeks.”
“You’ll not think better of it?”
“Yon’s over an’ by with, sir. I reckon we can let it bide.”
Lancaster nodded, and there was a second silence. Wolf sat still, as if unable to make the move which would mean the end of all the former things. Unspoken, between them was the memory of many other days when he had sat thus, first with the father, and later with the son. Reminiscences surged upward of kindnesses on either side, of mutual sympathy and encouragement. There had been bad years when the farmer had needed help, but on the other hand the agent had had in return many a piece of rough advice, worth its weight in gold. Looking back to his early struggle, Lancaster knew that, both to Michael’s tolerant handling of a problem and Wolf’s fierce cutting at the root, he had owed much. And Wolf was a link between himself and his father. The younger men, even loyal partisans like Denny, did not count the same. Again, as months before in his own office, he felt old, seeing the strong man of his father’s time tottering on the last steep slope. This was the end of Wolf’s real life, whether he went to his grave a year later or ten. The situation wrung his heart, fretting him with his own helplessness. He could do nothing except attempt, by some recurring instinct, to turn him from the one last boon he craved.
They sat on while the clerk, kicking his heels on the mat, wondered at the silence. This was their real good-bye, without thanks or spoken sorrow, the last speechless God-be-with-you! of two troubled men of the North.
The clerk’s attention was distracted by a dog in the bar-parlour—a dog that had a fluffy-haired damsel as background—and into the death-chamber of a passing relationship Brack stepped, unchecked. Looking up, Lanty saw him at the door, running his curious eyes over the pair at the table. In spite of what came after, he never in all his life quite forgave Brack for his intrusion at that moment.