CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH BALDWIN’S SCAFFOLDING GIVES WAY AND
ALSO HIS RESERVE
“BREATHES there a man with soul so dead—?” You would have said that even Baldwin’s dank soul must have fired as he left the Tarn road and struck across the moor to Walker’s farm. Inman, who walked uncomfortably beside him, accommodating his long strides to the other’s nervous steps, felt the thrill of the morning in his veins if not in his soul and would have liked to quicken the pace and enliven the solitude with a whistled melody. As it was, the keen November wind was left to do the whistling, with the long bent grass for its pipe, and it did it so tunefully that Inman remarked upon it.
“The bag-pipes are busy this morning,” he said.
The pepper-coloured tufts on Mr. Briggs’ eyebrows almost touched, as he turned uncomprehending eyes on his companion’s face, and the look was easy of interpretation. Inman knew that his master thought him a fool and was therefore prepared for the reply:
“I suppose you know what you’re talking about; I don’t.”
The tone was so cold that Inman thought it best to be silent. He therefore shifted his bass to the other shoulder and made no further attempt at conversation. Nine out of ten moormen are influenced more or less consciously by the moor’s moods, and frequently reflect them—Baldwin was the tenth man, impervious to such spiritual currents by reason of his brass-bound soul as was horny-hided Siegfried to the thrust of his enemies. They covered the remaining distance like mutes, Baldwin with his eyes on the ground, and Inman sweeping the waste with a careless glance until they reached the farm where new buildings awaited their labour.
Inman dropped his tools and looked critically at the scaffolding.
“Did Drake fix them sticks?” he asked. “They aren’t safe.”
Baldwin’s anger blazed out immediately. The structure had been erected since Jagger left, and his own judgment told him that it was faulty. The poles were thinnings of sycamore which had been lying about on the farm and had seemed good enough for the purpose, though in reality they were much too brittle. Inman’s quick eyes had detected evidences of this; but Baldwin was not to be instructed by a stranger. It was for him to decide whether the erection was safe or not, and he said so in language overcharged with emphasis, bidding Inman doff his coat and get to work without more ado.