The lonely plough

In the country there are houses far more truly the recipients of formal visits than their occupants, just as, at public functions, your carriage comes up to your place’s name instead of your own; for master and tenant pass away, but the House remaineth. You do not call “on” Bythams, Lyndesays and Wyllens; you call “at” Gilthrotin, Crump or The Laithes. It is the house that stands on your visiting-list,—that has become a habit; and your dropped pasteboard is for its door rather than for those beneath its roof.

Watters was one of these “habits,” but the Legend of the Kitchen Tea, mysteriously promulgated and enlarged, held many aloof who had no particular axe to grind. Mrs. Shaw, divided between crochet and creameries, was indifferent to the quality and size of their social circle. Hamer, sweetly taking the grinders at their personal estimate, was unconscious of any difficulty. It was only Dandy on whom the situation, seen more clearly, pressed unkindly.

She began to grow suspicious of callers, to strain her ears when the sound of the grinding was low, waiting for it to start up with the roar of a motor-cycle. She came to know the grades in leeches—the business-leech and the hobby-leech and the charity-leech and the soul-leech. No matter what their particular goal, it was reached by the same path—Hamer Shaw’s cheque-book. The grinders did not want money, as a rule. Their needs as well as their methods were more subtle, based upon the pure ethics of elections, local, general or “by,” demure eyes turned upon next year’s voting-register. It was most of it “by,” Dandy reflected, watching their tortuous procedure. On the whole, she preferred the leeches.

She began to wince a little when Harriet, cheerfully unconscious of having helped the Legend on its way, took it for granted that their acquaintance was in common; and though, at Dandy’s disclaimer, she would grunt “Cat-footers! Gees out of repair or something!” her contempt for the ostraciser did little to soothe the soul of the ostracised.

Visiting Harriet’s farm, Dandy had come, with some surprise, upon Harriet’s father. Harriet seemed to stand so very much alone; you did not credit her with such weaknesses as near relations. Yet Fawcett Knewstubb was a distinct weakness, a very delicate spot indeed. He was very horsy, very check and utterly selfish, and a really strong connoisseur in language and whisky. Harriet kept him and his hunters, called him “Stubbs!” in the voice of a sergeant, and wished him dead, in a bitter heart.

Hamer and his daughter motored to Bluecaster Show along a road swarming with enthusiasts who had no notion of making room for anybody. Dandy felt more of an outsider than ever in the crowded field, with its jumping and cattle rings, its tents, its long lines of wooden stands. She saw many faces she had come to know, but few held return signs of recognition. The usual people were busy greeting each other, very contented, very much at home. They were there because they had always been there, since the time they could first sit on a stand without falling through. After the greetings, they buried their heads in their catalogues and slouched along from pen to pen, walking blindly into everybody else, and offering information to the empty air. Anxious to do the thing thoroughly, Dandy and Hamer bought catalogues and slouched, too. By this means they were successful in running into Harriet, leaning up against something extremely solid with four legs and a horn or two, gloating over the blue-ribboned card opposite. When Hamer’s catalogue knocked her hat sideways, she merely remarked “How’s that for beef?” and continued to gloat. It was a minute or two before they could call her back to earth, but as soon as she realised their existence she left off gloating, and trotted them round the field in a terrific whirl of instruction, leading them at last, somewhat stunned, to a seat on the Grand Stand.

The day was brilliant, but Harriet, defended against all odds by Donegal, Burberry and K., with a huge carriage-umbrella tucked under her arm, insisted stoutly that you never could tell. It always rained at Bluecaster Show—everybody knew that—and it would rain to-day; this in a tone indicating that it jolly well better had. Dandy, dressed with the delicacy of a Blue Wyandotte, felt abashed until she discovered that Harriet was practically alone in her gloomily-barometric choice of attire.

Ringed in its green cup brimmed by blue hills, the scene had its own untheatrical charm, but its thrills were mild and long in arriving. Business went forward with little regard to spectators, and after a tedious half-hour, during which four horses, eight cows and twelve sheep stared solemnly at the crowd, while the whole Committee got down into the ring and wrangled about them, she found her thoughts straying to the social ethics of the meeting.

There was a rail dividing the stand, cleaving the two-shilling section from the half-crown. This puzzled her, as the planks on either side were equally hard. Harriet’s explanation that you got sixpenny-worth more water-jump scarcely seemed to go deep enough. The grinders were half-crowners, she noticed, glued as a rule to the side of some local celebrity, such as the Member or the High Sheriff or the President; but the leeches only ran to two shillings—with the exception of Helwise, who was inviting Bluecaster to come and see how badly they wanted a new bath at Crabtree, when she wasn’t issuing orders to Lanty in the ring.

Apart from his aunt, Lancaster was having the usual harried time of an authority on these occasions. When he wasn’t helping or looking for the judge, he was calling competitors or catching stray sheep, artfully eluding business-demands from button-holing tenants, or rescuing the usual veterans of the ring who stand so trustingly behind the hurdles. He knew everybody, it seemed, just as Helwise, talking baths, knew everybody, and Harriet, flourishing her clumsy gamp. Names passing from mouth to mouth were no more than empty sound to herself. The fact that Seaman was jumping did not fill her with anticipation, nor could the recent death of a well-known horseman move her to a sense of loss. She began to be rather bored by the unhurrying succession of events, and checked herself guiltily in a yawn. The judge of the moment was having a real day out with a fine hunter-class, and had to be practically dragged off each horse in turn. Hamer was drinking in Harriet’s observations like an eager child, but he was as new to it all as his daughter.

Even the old hands were getting a little weary, and found time to turn a speculative eye upon the strangers—the cheery, handsome man and the slim, well-groomed girl; and the Legend went round in ascending chromatics of incredulity. Some knew Hamer by accident, so to speak: “Behaved very decently over that Abbey Corner smash, don’t you know! Sporting and all that—gave a thumping big subscription to to-day’s business,” etc. etc., and wondered vaguely whether he might not be worth cultivating. The women with sons looked at Dandy and said that anybody married anybody nowadays, and that even Kitchen Tea might be made positively chic if the butter were spread thick enough. The women with daughters only were not interested.

Dandy had ceased to be self-conscious, however. She was watching Lancaster at work with the same dreary chill of separation that she had experienced in the Lane. This was his life, this interchange of business and friendship to which she was an absolute stranger. Harriet was perfectly at ease in it, grumbling, grunting, cracking a joke with a passing farmer or summing-up a prize-winner in a pithy sentence—at ease and happy.

“Dull enough to you, I expect,” she observed, detecting Dandy’s secret yawn. “We’re brought up to it, of course. Besides, it’s my trade. Rotten show, though! Rotten judging! Fool of a crowd! But all the same I couldn’t stop away, any more than Lanty Lancaster. I’ve grown to it, you see. When I was a kid it was my big blow-out of the year, and I’ve still got the same feeling for it, like Christmas Day and all that piffle. It isn’t the thing itself—it gets slacker and rottener every year, as I’m always telling them, especially Lanty Lancaster—it’s what it stands for, and all the years behind it. If ever I want to purr, it’s when I’m sitting on this shaky old stand, watching a flat-footed imitation of a horse going slap for the water. But you must be about fed up on it, I suppose! It’s as slow as Noah’s Ark, and, besides, it always rains.” She slipped the catch of the gamp to see if it worked, and shot a glance at the sun which should have sent it slinking over the horizon like a dog shouted to kennel. “We’re getting through to the jumping, though. You’ll find that a bit more enlivening. Stubbs is turning out—did I tell you? He’s got a mount that can jump about as much as a hedgehog, but he thinks he’s going to win all right. It’s no use my jawing; he won’t take anything from me. I hope he’ll behave decently, that’s all, and not get slanging the judges. Trust Stubbs to have been where the sun is shining, even though it always rains!”

The band behind the stand broke into a dirge which proved to be “The Girl in the Taxi,” and to this suitable motif the leapers sidled into the ring for their primary reconnaissance. There was something of the dignity of ritual in their solemn progression from fence to fence, in the measuring thrust of the intelligent heads through the furze. Dandy had her first thrill in spite of the accompaniment. She wanted to beat a little drum in the wake of the processional hoofs.

Harriet knew the riders, gentleman, groom or horse-dealer, just as she knew the mounts,—from the hunter, that did a little gentle following of hounds by the aid of gates, to the professional “leppers,” that never see open country, but spend their time winning prizes at a round of shows, and jump more with their brains than with any other section of their queer-shaped carcasses. She dragged out a pencil like a poker, and settled down to work.

“That’s Captain Pole-Pole on Griselda, the little gray. Rushes everything that she doesn’t take steck at, and a brute to hold, by the look of her. The big roarer waving its wild tail and doing an imitation of a charging squadron belongs to Bluecaster. Lanty has her out for the fun of the thing. They call her something idiotic—oh, yes—Flossie! She can jump quite a bit—Heaven knows how—though you can feel the stand shake. There’s a groom up—plays the triangle in my village orchestra. The thing called Chipmunk, looking as though it was made of knitting-needles, belongs to the Ritson Bros. One’s riding, and the other runs in and throws things if Chippie starts frivolling. There’s the winner—the little brown like an oak box with head and legs. You’d think he hadn’t the reach for a grass-plot rail, but he’s there, every time. Watch his eyes, and his good-tempered ears! He’s as pleased as Punch all along, and as dead in earnest as a city man sprinting for his train. Yes, he’ll win right enough! Why? Because he jumps with his head. You can see him stop to think just before he takes off, and he doesn’t give the fence an inch more than is wanted. This is his living—he comes from Saddleback way—and little Seaman doesn’t mean to waste himself playing round. Stubbs must be cracked to think he can beat him! The rough-looking black with the rope-reins has been taught to behave like a mad circus and an Ulster riot combined. Its owner is a blacksmith in his spare time, and nobody else can stick on its back. It’s clever, too, but it’s apt to get carried away by its play-acting and make mistakes. Flyer goes to sleep and leaves his heels behind him, and Grace tries to do the tight-rope act on the pole with all four feet at once. That’s Stubbs on his beetle-crusher—Lapwing, he calls it! He doesn’t look any too genial, does he? We had a row before starting about rotifers, if you know what those are—some sort of a measly swimming microbe or rotten reptile of that kind. It’s the only thing he cares a rap about except horses and the inside of a glass, and he was ramping mad because some of the beastly things had got thrown away. I hope Lanty is somewhere about.”

Stubbs was immense—very check, very baggy, and very red in the face. His side-whiskers bristled aggressively, and there was a vicious gleam in his eye. He was riding a boring chestnut with weak quarters and the action of a schoolboy in clogs. Harriet dug the person in front of her with the gamp by way of relieving her feelings. Hamer and Dandy tried to think of things to say, but she cut them short.

“Oh, it won’t be the first time he’s made fools of us both in public! I can’t help feeling a bit grubbed, but I suppose I can stick it out. Anyhow, I’ve got to stop and see him through. Save them hunting me up, if he goes and breaks his neck.”

She thrust her hands in her pockets and scowled. Lapwing had already collided with the brown, and Stubbs, ripe for fight, was beginning to explode. The quiet little boy on Seaman stared in astonishment until Lancaster, coming up, laid a palm on Lapwing’s poking nose and drew him out of range. He had some tale ready, peculiarly adapted to Stubbs’ appreciation, and Harriet caught her father’s guffaw as he rode to his place. She sighed sharply—with relief, Dandy judged—and addressed herself to shouting “Good lad!” or “Good lass!” with supreme and delightful unconsciousness of self.

The sleepy Flyer led off, and left everything in ruins behind him, after which there was a lengthy pause, while rails and bricks were replaced and furze-tops refixed. Griselda gave a charming illustration of the so-called feminine temperament, refusing to look at any jump until forced upon it, and then flying it with a complete trust in Providence and an absolute disregard of economy. After these, the performance of the Bluecaster warrior ranked high, in spite of the roaring and waving accompaniment, and a suggestion of clanking chains as she rocked past. Carrying her proud head at the noble angle affected by some ladies much engaged in good works, she yet contrived, by dint of squinting down her nose at the last moment, to view a jump in time to clear it, and thundered on to the next in an atmosphere of escaped earthquakes. In spite of her size and weight, she tackled the trap quite neatly, and roared down the field to the water. Here she was superb! On the wings of sound she came, gathered herself into a mighty bunch, plunged and was over, leaving mingled impressions of trumpets, bazaar-bunting and a motor-exhaust.

Chipmunk did quite a good round, thanks to a continuous shower of hats, sticks and ear-splitting yells; but Grace’s tight-rope effects were unsuccessful, except with the pole, on which she managed to do quite a delicate little bit of work. Lucifera, the black, was greeted warmly by the crowd, to whom she was well known, and responded by putting her back into things, like any other popular clown. Nothing grudging, she gave them all her tricks, from the preliminary, vicious, white-eyed sidle and spin to the last terrific bound with which she caught the bit in her teeth and rushed the obstacle. She missed the water, however, by trying to do a circle on the back outside edge too far up the field, but made up for it by leathering off into the crowd with a splendid impersonation of a mad runaway.

Little Seaman had only one mannerism, a circular trot like the weaving of a spell that seemed to wind him up for the first hurdle. Dandy’s heart went out to the sensible, eager, square little horse with the box-legs. He might have been a machine measured to each length and lift, so obviously did he spare unnecessary effort, had it not been for clear evidence of mind behind, of humanly-patient intelligence and endeavour. At the water, his customary check drew a groan of disappointment, changing to applause as it was seen that he was safely across. Certain ladies were so ear-piercingly enraptured that he had to drop on his knees and bow his little box-head before trotting soberly back to his place.

And, at last—Stubbs.

It was perfectly clear that Nature had never intended Lapwing to “lep”; clearer still that Lapwing was entirely of Nature’s opinion. He was born tired; his foolish head had a weary droop; his heavy hoofs were in curious contrast with his weedy frame. What he could not walk through, he sat on behind. When driven to rise, he hit the swing-gate with such force that he nearly looped the loop along with it. He bundled into the trap like a sack of old clothes, utterly abolished the stone wall, and plumped slick into the water, where he stayed determinedly, in spite of the volcanic eruption in the saddle. Lancaster removed the pair once more, this time with difficulty. Harriet flushed a little under the joy of the crowd, but she said nothing, only gave the same sharp little sigh as she watched the retreating figures and the soothing hand on the check knee.

The second round brought its own disasters. Flyer had finally gone to sleep for the afternoon, and was withdrawn. Chipmunk missed the gate, owing to there being no hat handy. Griselda and Grace both foozled the wall, the one from temper and the other from silliness, and Flossie was so busy being noble that she forgot to squint at the trap and was caught. Lucifera, excited by the crowd, began to overact, tried to sit on the shilling stand and broke a stirrup-leather. Only Seaman steadily kept his form—and Stubbs.

Lapwing came out as if he were going to be hanged. At the first hurdle he manifested pained surprise, stopped dead and began to nibble the furze. Blows and curses brought him to the straw-bound pole, where he again paused to munch. The gate being uneatable, however, he cleared it, pecking heavily, broke the trap into matchwood, and jammed his rider’s knee against the wall. Then, evincing a sudden passion for the water, tore up to it con amore, only to swerve aside at the wing, leaving Stubbs to go on in the main direction; and as splash, roar and oath ascended to heaven, returned to his nibbling.

The Committee appeared on the spot like mushrooms. Stubbs was fished out, set right end up, condoled with, and, being close in front of the Grand Stand, requested to hush. But Stubbs did not hush, had no intention of hushing. Stamping and shouting, he informed them what he thought of shows in general and this show in particular. Then he was requested to leave, but he wouldn’t do that, either, and by way of reply ran a coil of lurid language round every member of the association. Men climbed down from the stands and joined the happy party, until presently it seemed as if the whole Agricultural Society was helping in the suppression and ejection of Stubbs.

Harriet, white to the lips, observed “Rotter! Low-down rotter!” between her teeth and got to her feet; but when she would have made her way down, Hamer caught her by the arm.

“This isn’t your job, my girl!” he said cheerfully, pressing her back into her seat. “You stick to Dandy there, and grit your teeth a minute longer. I’ll have things straightened out in two twos.”

He dropped into the ring with extraordinary lightness, while his daughter slipped a hand round Harriet’s unreceptive elbow, by way of conveying sympathy and keeping her quiet at the same time. Helwise fussed down to them, dropping things and repeating the bath-theme ad lib. The people near began to discuss hats and servants with feverish politeness, bringing a faint smile even to the victim’s rigid lips. The Member stood up and tried to see something at the back of the stand that wasn’t there, and of course all the grinders followed his example.

Hamer broke a path through the crush with his own pleasant directness of purpose. Everybody was trying to make Stubbs behave, and nobody was succeeding: neither Bluecaster, tongue-tied and ashamed, nor Lancaster, soothing and propelling, nor the High Sheriff, the Chief Constable, the Judges, the Secretary and Treasurer, the Referee in All Classes, nor the Police. It was a case of carrying Stubbs off bodily, and nobody liked to do it, for, in spite of language and check and abominable conduct, he was yet One of Us, and moreover his daughter watched from the stand. To them came Hamer the Outsider.

“Sir,” he observed to Stubbs, with the simple grace of touch that gave his every action charm, “I understand you to be an authority upon Rotifera. I should like your advice upon the mounting of certain specimens of Bdelloidaceæ that I have just obtained!”

Stubbs broke off half-way in a stream of adjectives beginning with the second and fourth letters of the alphabet, and stared; and everybody round, after a momentary impression that Hamer was drunk, too, wagged their heads and repeated “Bdelloidaceæ!” in a loud chorus, as if it were some kind of charm, until Stubbs himself began to say any bits of it that came foremost, without in the least meaning to.

“I have also some fine samples of Pedalionidæ,” Hamer continued in his comforting tones, motioning Lancaster to call up his car as he engineered the offender towards the rope. “A remarkable species—most remarkable!—but perfectly familiar to you, I’ve no doubt. The Flosculariaceæ, too, not to speak of the Philodinaceæ—here we are, and mind the step!”

Stubbs made one last attempt to get up steam, but was throttled with a fresh animalculæ, hustled into the car and driven off. Lanty came back to the girls.

“I’m to drive you home, if you’ll allow me,” he said to Dandy; and “Can I find your bicycle?” to Harriet. “The third round will be through in a few minutes, but I’ll hand my job over to somebody, and we’ll clear off at once, if you like. Your man has the horse, so he’s all right. You’ve done well, to-day, haven’t you? How many firsts did you get? You and Wild Duck are bad to beat!”

Harriet grunted, but her face relaxed. It hardened again, however, as she stood up and took a last defiant look round before walking off the field. She cycled home behind the dog-cart, counting the times Lancaster’s eyes were turned to Dandy’s face. She was a trifle cheered when it began to rain heavily, and she was able to hand over the carriage-umbrella with an air of patronage, and splash along bravely in Burberry and K.; but, in spite of the “firsts,” in spite of having been proved infallible, her cup of bitterness, that day, was full.

Helwise chattered all the way as blithely as if erring fathers and shamed daughters did not exist. Bluecaster, it seemed, had promised the bath.

“He was quite agreeable about it, Lancelot—porcelain on legs, nickel-plated hot and cold, you know! I really hadn’t to hint more than twice! That led on, of course, to the Perils to Plumbers—my dear boy, how often have I told you that I never ask? He’s sending the cheque to-night. You don’t think, Miss Shaw, that your charming father——? Really, Lancelot, you needn’t bite my head off! You’re not a bit grateful about the bath, and I don’t agree with you that the old one was all right. I knew I should get a present to-day, because I put on my skirt wrong side out. That always means luck! It was rather awkward, because the wrong side of the stuff doesn’t go with the coat, and the picoted seams looked rather queer—I saw people staring, on the stand—but I’m glad I stuck to it! If I’d changed, I shouldn’t have got the bath.”

Dandy listened vaguely to the chattering voice, thinking of her father, happily mounted on his favourite hobby. He would love looking after Stubbs, and they would spend the evening forming plans for his regeneration. She had a touch of tenderness for the impossible Stubbs; he had unintentionally given her this blissful ride in the rain. When Helwise stopped for a second, she listened to the hoofs and to Lanty’s little clicks and calls of encouragement. She had heard him define horse-travelling as “company and music.” She remembered it now, and had music in her heart to match. And so, in hearing it, forgot to listen to Helwise altogether.

And for a whole week the County talked of Hamer, and went about prating of Bdelloidaceæ as if they bred them, and looked up rotiferous information on the quiet, in order to confound each other’s ignorance. The wives called at Watters and filled the card-tray, and the postman staggered under letters of invitation. Hamer became known as “sound,” “useful,” “a man at a pinch,” “a dashed good sort all round, don’t you know!” and every club in the district fought to own him. He was quite pleased about it all, and never guessed that his impulsive piece of “tramming” had worked the transformation. Somebody in a hole needing pulling out was all that Hamer wanted to make him happy, and he was seldom out of a job. He welcomed the new friends as he had welcomed the grinders and leeches, and opened to them his heart and his pocket.

That was how Hamer became “county.”