Dick went out of the room angry with himself, angry with his father, and still more angry with his brother. He wanted to meet Humphrey and have it out with him, and he knew that Humphrey at that hour—about seven o'clock—would be in the smoking-room. But he went upstairs, not because he wanted a bath before dinner as he had told his father, and certainly not because he was stiff after trotting a dozen miles or so along the roads, but because he knew that it was not wise to have anything out with anybody unless you had complete command over yourself. So he went into his big comfortable bedroom, where a bright fire was burning, lit some candles, and threw himself into an easy-chair to think matters out.
That his father would give way, that he was already in process of giving way, he was well assured. He knew how to work that all right, and he had taken no false step, as far as he could remember, in dealing with him. But that little fact of Virginia's having once danced on the stage, of which she had told him in the early days of their friendship, as she had told him everything else about her varied, unhappy life, he had never thought that he—and she—would have to face. If it had not been for that, his father, so he told himself, would have given way already. Knowing it, it was surprising that he had left anything to be said on the subject at all. He need never have known it; so few people did know it, even in London, where Virginia was beginning to be well known, or in Leicestershire, where she was very well known indeed. Of course, Humphrey knew it—he knew all that sort of gossip about everybody—and Dick's anger against him began to burn as he imagined the way in which he would have let it out. He was like a spiteful old woman, fiddling about in drawing-rooms, whispering scandal into other old women's ears and receiving it into his own in return.
At this point Humphrey came into the room. "Hullo, old chap!" he said. "What on earth are you doing up here? It isn't time to dress yet."
Dick got up quickly out of his chair and faced him. He had better have gone to him in the smoking-room at once before he had begun to think things over. "What the devil do you mean by meddling with my affairs?" he said angrily.
Humphrey stopped short and stared as if he had held a pistol to his head. He and Dick and Walter had been closer friends than most brothers are. Their ways for some time had begun to diverge, but they had remained friends, and since their boyhood they had never quarrelled. Such a speech as Dick's was in effect more than a pistol held to his head. It was a pistol shot.
"I suppose you mean what I told them downstairs about Virginia Dubec," he said.
"Virginia Dubec? Who gave you the right to call her Virginia?" said Dick hotly, and could have bitten out his tongue for saying it the moment after, for of course it told Humphrey everything.
But Humphrey was too deeply astonished at the moment to take in anything. He thought he knew his brother; he had always rather admired him, and above all for his coolness. But if this was Dick, passionate and indiscreet, he did not know him at all, and it was difficult to tell how to deal with him.
But Humphrey was cool too, in his own way, hating the discomfort of passion, and he certainly did not want to have a row with his elder brother. "I don't know why you're up against me like this," he said. "I should have thought we knew each other well enough by this time to talk over anything that wants talking over, sensibly. I'm quite ready to talk over anything with you, but hadn't we better go and do it downstairs? They'll be up here putting out your clothes directly."
"We'll go down to the smoking-room," said Dick, not sorry to have a minute or two in which to pull himself together.
So they went downstairs without a word, and along a stone passage to a big room which had been given over to them as boys, because it was right away from the other rooms, and in which they knew no one would disturb them.
Neither of them spoke at once, but both took cigarettes from a box on a table, and Humphrey offered Dick a match, which he refused, lighting one for himself.
"Lady George Dubec," said Dick—"Virginia Dubec, if you like to call her so—I've no objection—is a friend of mine, as you know. She wanted a quiet place to hunt from for a month or two, and I said I would try to find her a house here. Of course I told her that they would make friends with her from here. I went to see her this afternoon, and I come back to find you have been talking scandal about her, and giving the governor the impression that she's an impossible sort of creature for respectable people to know. Upon my word, Humphrey, you ought to be kicked."
Humphrey grew a shade paler, but he asked quietly, "What scandal do you accuse me of spreading about her?"
"Well, it isn't scandal in the sense that it's untrue; but I don't suppose a dozen people know that she was ever on the stage. It was only for a few months, and the circumstances of it did her credit. But if it gets about, it will do her harm. As far as the governor goes, of course, it puts him up on his hind legs at once, and here am I in the position of getting this quite charming lady, against whom nobody can say a word, down here, and my own people refusing to go near her. It's too bad. If you happened to know that about her, which, of course, is just the sort of thing you would find out and remember and talk about, out of all the other things you might say about a woman like that, you ought to have kept it to yourself. And you would have done if you had had a spark of decent feeling."
"Ishouldhave kept it to myself if I had had any idea it was through you she came here."
"You ought to have kept it to yourself in any case. You know her, you know what she is, and the first thing you find to blurt out about her when you hear she has come down here is the very thing that you know will put everybody against her!"
"Look here, Dick, there's no sense in you going on blackguarding me like this. I hadn't a ghost of a notion she was anywhere near here when I told them what I did. The moment I came into the room the governor said, 'We've been talking about Lady George Dubec. Do you know her?' I said, 'Yes, she's a very charming lady.' That was the very first thing I said. Then I said, 'She was an actress once upon a time.' There's nothing in that. You say very few people know it. You're quite wrong. Lots of people know it. Why, even Mrs. Graham knew it, and had seen her. Nobody thinks anything the worse of her for it. Why should they? And anyhow it wasn't until afterwards that they told me that she had come down here. Then I said, 'Dick knows her better than I do; he'll tell you all you want to know.' Really, old chap, you're a bit unreasonable."
Both of them had been standing so far, but now Humphrey, feeling perhaps that the crisis had been disposed of, threw himself into a chair.
So it was, on the surface. Dick stood for a time looking down on the floor. If it was as Humphrey had said, and he had not known that Virginia Dubec was in the neighbourhood until after he had let out that fact about her, it was impossible to carry the attack further. But Dick was no more satisfied with him than before. The hostility he had felt remained, and was destined to grow. From that moment the common ground of easy, tolerant brotherhood upon which they had both stood for so long was left behind. Dick had begun to criticise, to find cause for dislike; Humphrey had received an affront, and he did not easily forgive an affront.
But the cement of their years of frictionless companionship still held, and could not be broken in a moment. Dick also took a chair. "Well, if you didn't know——" he said rather grudgingly.
"No, I didn't know, and I'm sorry," said Humphrey; "the governor won't hold out, Dick; he's only got to see her."
It was the best thing he could have said. Dick was inwardly gratified, and some of his resentment departed. "You needn't say anything unless he opens the subject," he said. "But——"
"Oh, I know what to say if he does," said Humphrey. "I say, Dick, old chap, is it a case?"
Dick was not at all ready for this—from Humphrey, although if Walter had asked him he might have admitted how much of a case it was, and gained some contentment by talking it over. "I like her, of course," he said, somewhat impatiently; "I've never disguised it. I suppose one is permitted to make friendship with women occasionally?"
"Oh yes," said Humphrey, with rather elaborate unconcern. Then Dick said he was going up to dress, and left the room without further word, while Humphrey sat a while longer looking at the fire and turning things over in his mind.
Over the dinner-table that evening there was talk of the forthcoming Hunt Ball, and the one or two others which made the week after Christmas a short season of gaiety in South Meadshire. The Birketts were coming to stay for them, the Judge and his wife and unmarried daughter, and his other daughter, Lady Senhouse, with her husband. These were the only guests invited so far, and the Squire, who liked a little bustle of gaiety about him now and again, said that they must ask one or two more people.
"We shall be unusually gay this year," he said, "with the ball for Grace at Kemsale, which is sure to be well done. We must take a good party over from Kencote. Who can we ask?"
It was a somewhat extraordinary thing that a question like that could not easily be answered at Kencote. The Squire very seldom left home, Mrs. Clinton practically never, and in the course of years the families from whom they could draw for visitors had dwindled down to those of relations and county neighbours. The Squire was quite satisfied with this state of things. There were plenty of people about him with whom he could shoot, and who would shoot with him; and an occasional dinner party was all or more than he wanted in the way of indoor sociability—that, and this yearly little group of balls, the Hunt Ball, the Bathgate Ball, and whatever might be added to them from one or other of the big houses round. Kencote had never been one of those houses. Its women had never been considered of enough importance to make the trouble and expense of ball-giving worth while, and the men could get all the balls they wanted elsewhere. Before Cicely was married her brothers had generally brought a few men down for these local gaieties, but for the past two years there had been no party from Kencote.
"I think Lady Aldeburgh would bring Susan Clinton if you were to ask her," said Humphrey. "In fact, I'm pretty sure she would."
Now the Countess of Aldeburgh was a person of some importance in the social world, and her husband was sprung from the same race as the Squire, sprung, in fact, some distance back, from Kencote, and represented, as the Squire not infrequently pointed out, a junior branch of the family of which he himself was the head. He was accustomed to speak rather patronisingly of the Aldeburgh Clintons on that account, although not to them, for he did not know them, the present Lord Aldeburgh having been a small boy at school at that period of the Squire's life when he had been about London and known everybody.
"Are they friends of yours?" he asked, not displeased at the idea.
"Yes," said Humphrey. "I told Susan Clinton that she ought to see the home of her ancestors—I was lunching with them—and Lady Aldeburgh said they couldn't see it unless they were asked."
"No difficulty about asking them," said the Squire. "Very pleased to see them, and show them what there is, although I dare say they won't think much of it after the sort of thing they're accustomed to. They must take us as they find us. Did you say anything about these balls?"
"Well, yes, I did—threw out feelers, you know. I think they would come if mother were to ask them."
"Oh, write by all means, Nina," said the Squire. "Include Aldeburgh, of course."
"Oh,hewon't come," said Humphrey. "He never goes where they do. He doesn't like them."
The Squire frowned. He knew there were people like that, but he didn't want to hear about them. According to his old-fashioned ideas, husbands and wives, if they went visiting at all, ought to go visiting together. Of course it was different where a man might have to go up to London for a day or two. There was no necessity always to take his wife along with him. Or he might perhaps go to a house to shoot. That was all right. But for women to make a point of going about by themselves—why, they had much better stop at home and look after their household duties. "Well, ask him, of course," he said. "He can refuse if he likes. We can do very well without him. Are either of you boys going to ask any men?"
Dick had thought of bringing a friend, Captain Vernon, who had been to Kencote before and would be very welcome. And Humphrey was going to ask Lord Edgeware.
"What, that young fool who lost all his money racing?" asked the Squire.
"He didn't lose it all," said Humphrey, "and he's had a lot more left to him."
"We don't want that sort of person here," said the Squire decisively.
"All right," said Humphrey. "But he's a very good chap all the same, and has finished sowing his wild oats."
"He's an absolute rotter," said Dick. "I quite agree; we don't want that sort of fellow here."
Humphrey threw a glance at him and flushed with annoyance, but he said lightly, "I beg to withdraw his candidature. Is there any objection to Bobby Trench? He hasn't spent money racing because he has never had any to spend."
Dick was silent. The Squire enquired if Mr. Trench was one of Lord So-and-so's sons, and being informed that he was, said that he had known his father and should be pleased to see him at Kencote. So the party was made up, and the men went on to talk about pheasants and hounds, until the twins came in for dessert, when they went on talking about pheasants and hounds.
The Squire and Dick went into the library to go over their farm papers together almost immediately after dinner, leaving Humphrey with his mother and the girls in the morning-room. When they had finished they betook themselves to easy-chairs to talk, as their custom was in the evening. They were very good friends, and had enough in common to make their conversation mutually agreeable. Neither of them read much, and when Dick was at Kencote they usually spent their evenings talking. But Dick was rather silent to-night, and the Squire was uneasily conscious of the shadow that had fallen on their intercourse. And when he was uneasy about anything his uneasiness always found expression.
"I say, my boy, I hope you don't take it amiss what I said about this Lady George Dubec this afternoon," he said. "You see my point all right, don't you?"
"I see your point well enough," said Dick. "Only I don't think it's much of a point."
He was accustomed thus to address his father on equal terms, and the Squire liked to have it so. He was now only anxious, while having his own way, to avoid the unpleasantness of leaving a grudge against himself in Dick's mind.
"Well, we needn't go all over it again," he said. "I haven't made up my mind yet. I don't say your mother shan't call and I don't say she shall. I must think it over. Of course it's a bit awkward for you."
"It's more than a bit awkward for me," said Dick uncompromisingly. "When you do think it over you might consider how particularly awkward it is, after having helped this lady to a house here, to have to tell her that my people don't consider her respectable enough to know."
"H'm! Ha!" grunted the Squire, at a loss how to meet this. Then he made a clutch at his authority. "Well, I think you ought to have asked me first, Dick," he said, "and not taken things for granted. If I'm putting you in an awkward position now, it's because you have put me in an awkward position first."
There was reason in this, perhaps more than the Squire usually displayed in discussing a subject in which his feelings were already engaged, and Dick did not want to go over the ground again until matters had advanced themselves a stage.
"She will be at the meet on Monday—driving," he said. "You will see what she is like, and that she isn't in the least like what you probably think she is. I should like to introduce you to her, but that shall be as you please."
The Squire did not reply to this. He sat looking at the fire with a puzzled frown on his face. Then he turned to his son and said, "There's nothing between you and this lady, Dick, is there? You hadn't got her in your mind last night when you said that you did not want to marry a young girl?"
Dick cursed himself inwardly for having made that unlucky speech. He was not cut out for however mild a conspiracy, and he hated to have to fence and parry. But he must answer quickly if suspicion, which would be disastrous at the present stage, were not to rest on him. He gave a little laugh. "Is that what you have been thinking of?" he asked. "Is that why you don't want mother to call on Lady George?"
The Squire had only to push his question, and he would have learnt everything, for Dick would not have denied Virginia. But he did not do so. "No, of course not," he said. "But if it were so—if that's how the land lay——"
Dick did not tell him that that was not how the land lay. He said nothing, and the Squire relinquished the subject, not to open it up again until he was alone with his wife that night. Then his disquietude came out, for Dick's reply to his question had not satisfied him, and putting two and two together, as he said, and impelled towards dreadful conclusions by his habit of making the most of vague fears, he had now fully convinced himself that the land did indeed lie in the direction of Lady George Dubec, now settled within a mile or two, at Blaythorn, and that, unless he could do something to stop it, a most dreadful catastrophe was about to overtake the house of Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton could do little to calm his fears. Privately she thought that he was making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and that Dick was as little likely as the Squire himself to marry such a woman as she imagined Lady George Dubec to be. For she knew how much alike her husband and her son were in all the essential aims and ambitions of their lives, although she knew also that Dick had a far cooler head and a better brain than his father's. For that very reason he was the less likely to make a marriage which would be beneath the dignity of his family. She said what she could to persuade her husband that Dick might be trusted in a matter of this sort, but he was in that stage of alarm when however much a man may desire to find himself mistaken he resists all attempts to prove him so. "I tell you, Nina," he said, "that he told me himself that when he did marry it would be a middle-aged woman, or words to that effect. And he gets this woman down here without saying a word to us about it, and they say she's good-looking—you heard Humphrey say that yourself, and Mrs. Graham too—and he goes over there this afternoon without mentioning it.—By Jove! didn't he say he wanted to go and see Jim at Mountfield? Yes, he did,—you remember—at luncheon. Nina, I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. Can't youseewhat a dreadful thing it would be, and that wemuststop it at any cost?"
"I hope it will not come about," said Mrs. Clinton. "Dick is level-headed, and he sees questions of this sort in much the same light as you do, Edward."
"It would be intolerable," wailed the poor Squire. "And Dick of all people! I'd have trusted him anywhere. And now I shall have to stand up against him, and it will be one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. But I won't let him throw himself away and drag the old name in the dust if I can possibly prevent it. And, God helping me, I will prevent it, whatever it costs me. Nina, you are not to go near this woman. The only way is to keep her at arm's-length. If we stand firm the affair will fade out, and Dick will forget all about it. He has always been a good boy. I've been proud of my son. He will thank me some day for saving him from himself. Good-night, Nina, God bless you. There's a difficult time coming for us at Kencote, I'm afraid."
So night and silence fell on the great house. Its master, always healthily tired after his day, spent mostly in the open, soon forgot his troubles in sleep; its mistress lay awake for a long time, wondering if trouble were really going to befall her first-born, who had gone so far from her since she had first hugged him to her breast. And in other rooms in the house there were those who lay awake and wearied themselves with the troubles of life or slept soundly without a care, some of them of account in the daily comings and goings, some of very little, but one and all acting and reacting on one another, concerned in some degree in a common life.
It did not take Dick long to find out on that next (Sunday) morning that his diplomacy had failed, that his father, urged by his fears, had discovered what he would have hidden from him for a time, or thought he had discovered it, which came to the same thing, since it was true, and that he might just as well have announced his intention of marrying Virginia Dubec, and entered at once upon the struggle which was now bound to come in any case.
Nothing was said on either side, and the Squire did his best to behave as usual. But the attempt was too much for him, and there was no one who did not know before breakfast was over that there was a disturbance in the air. He would enter upon a course of conversation with gaiety, and relinquish it immediately to frown upon his plate. He grumbled at everything upon the table, and testily rebuked the twins for fidgeting. They took the rebuke calmly, knowing quite well what it portended, and were only anxious to discover the cause of the upset.
"It's this Lady George Dubec," said Joan, when they were alone together. "There's something fishy about her; it must have come out after we were sent away yesterday. Father thinks he's Emperor of this part of Meadshire, and he doesn't like her coming here without his being consulted."
"I don't think it's that at all," said Nancy. "I believe it's Humphrey's debts. Father has got pots of money, but he hates shelling it out. He was snappy with Humphrey this morning."
"So he was with everybody but Dick. That proves nothing. A week's pocket-money that it's this Lady George."
"Dick said we weren't to bet."
"Oh, well, perhaps we'd better not, then. He was a brick about the camera. I don't suppose he's concerned in it, whatever it is. With father, Dick does no wrong."
"I'm not sure. Joan, supposing Dick has fallen in love with Lady George and father is upset about it!"
"Oh, my dear, do talk sense. Dick in love with a widow!"
"Stranger things have happened. Anyhow, we'll leave no stone unturned to find out what it is."
"Oh, we'll ferret it out all right. It will add to the interest of life."
There was one thing that the Squire always did on the rare occasions on which he found himself in a dilemma, and that was to consult his half-brother, the Rector. Consequently when, after church, meeting Mrs. Beach, the Rector's wife, in the churchyard, he asked her if she and Tom would come up to luncheon, Dick, overhearing him, smiled inwardly and a little ruefully, and pictured to himself the sitting that would be held in the afternoon, when the Rector would be invited into the library and the Squire would unbosom himself of his difficulties. Dick himself had often joined in these conclaves. "Let's see what Tom has to say about it," his father would say. "He has a good head, Tom." Dick would be left out of this conclave, but as he thought of the line that his uncle was likely to take, he half wished that he had had a conclave with him himself beforehand. The Rector was a man of peace, a lovable man, who hated to see any one uncomfortable, and perhaps, for a churchman, hated a little too much to run the risk of discomfort himself. Probably he would have sympathised. Certainly he would have brought no hard judgment to bear on Virginia, whatever she had done and whatever she had been. However, it was too late to think of that now, and when Joan asked him at luncheon if he would go for a walk with them in the afternoon, he took the bull by the horns and said that he was going to drive over to Blaythorn.
"By the by," said Mrs. Beach, not noticing the Squire's sudden frown, "have you heard that Mr. Marsh has let his rectory to a hunting lady?"
"Yes," said Dick, "Lady George Dubec. She is a friend of mine, and I'm going over to see her."
Never had the Squire spoken with more difficulty. But it behoved him to speak, and to speak at once. "I am very sorry she has come," he said. "She is a friend of Dick's in London, but we can't recognise her here at Kencote."
Except that the servants were not in the room it was a public throwing down of the gage of battle. It amounted on the Squire's part to an affront of his son, the being beloved best in the world, and he would have put it on him if the whole household had been present. But what it cost him to do so could be told from his moody fits of silence during the rest of the meal, his half-emptied plate and his twice-emptied glass.
Dick took the blow without flinching, although he was inwardly consumed with anger, not at the affront to himself, but to Virginia. "We are a little behind the times at Kencote," he said lightly. "But we shall probably fall into line by and by."
The Squire made no answer. He had shot his bolt and had none of the ammunition of repartee at hand. The awkward moment was covered by the immediate flow of conversation, but he took little or no part in it, and it was a relief when the meal was over.
When the Squire had led the way into the library and shut the door upon himself and the Rector, he broke out at once. "Tom, you heard what happened. Dick is out of his mind about this woman. Unless something can be done to stop it, a dreadful day is coming to Kencote."
The Rector, tall, fleshy, slow in movement, mild of speech, was astonished. "My dear Edward!" he exclaimed. "I did not gather from what passed that—that this meant anything serious."
"Oh, serious!" echoed the Squire, half distraught. "It's as serious as it can be, Tom." And he told him in his own decisive manner exactly how serious it seemed to him to be. "A hunting woman!" he ended up. "I could have forgiven that. I can't deny that women do hunt, now, who wouldn't have done in our young days. An American! Well, people do marry them nowadays—but an American at Kencote after all these generations! Think of it, Tom! And if that were only the worst! But a stage dancer! A woman who has shown herself before the public—for money! And a widow!—a woman who has been married to one of the worst blackguards in England. You remember him, Tom—at Eton."
"No," said the Rector. "He was before my time."
"Before your time—yes, and three or four years older than I am. He'd have been an old man if he'd been alive now. And it's the widow of that man my son wants to marry. Isn't it too shameful, Tom? What can have come over him? He has never acted in this sort of way before. My boy Dick! In everything that has ever happened to annoy me, he has always behaved just exactly as I would have my son behave. And now he brings this trouble on me. Oh, Tom, tell me what on earth I'm to do."
The poor gentleman was so overcome with distress that it was pitiful to witness. The Rector knew how he took things—hard at first, and bringing his heaviest weight of resistance to bear upon the lightest obstacles, but calming down after he had been humoured a bit, accepting the inevitable like a sensible man, and making the best of it. But this was beyond the point at which he could be humoured. It struck at all that he held dearest in life, the welfare of his son, the dignity of his house. He would not give way here, whatever distress it cost him to hold out.
"Have you seen this lady, Edward?" asked the Rector.
"Oh, seen her! No," replied the Squire. "Why should I want to see her? She may be good-looking. They say she is. I suppose Dick wouldn't have fallen in love with her if she were not, and at any rate women who are not good-looking don't become pets of the stage, as I'm told this woman was. Pah! It's beyond everything I could have believed of Dick. I would rather he had married the daughter of a farm-labourer—a girl of clean healthy English stock. To bring a creature from behind the footlights and make her mistress of Kencote—a soiled woman—that's what she is, even if she has never sold herself—and who knows that she hasn't? Shedidsell herself—to a broken-downroué, a man old enough to be her father—for his wretched title, I suppose. And now she wants to buy Kencote, and my son, Dick, the straightest, finest fellow a father ever had reason to be proud of. I tell you, Tom, the world ought to be delivered of these harpies. They ought to be locked up, Tom, locked up, and the wickedness whipped out of them."
"Has Dick said that he wanted to marry her?" asked the Rector, anxious to bring this tirade, which was gathering in intensity, to an end.
"It's as plain as it can be. He has brought her down here, and he wants us to take her up."
"Well, but is that all, Edward? Surely you have more to go on than that, if you have made up your mind that he wants to marry her."
"Ihavemore to go on. He told me only two nights ago that he was quite ready to marry, and that he wouldn't marry a girl. That's plain English, isn't it? And this comes just on top of it. Why, he had her down here—fixed it all up for her—and never said a word to us till after we'd heard from outside that she was there. There are a lot of things. I can put two and two together as well as anybody, and I haven't a doubt of it. And I asked him definitely, yesterday, and he didn't deny it."
"He didn't acknowledge it, I suppose."
"I tell you he didn't deny it. He gave me an evasive answer. That isn't like Dick. She has had a bad influence on him already. Don't waste time in trying to persuade me that black is white, Tom. Tell me how I am to stop this."
The Rector could not tell him how to stop it. He knew very well that Dick was a stronger man than his father, and that if he had made up his mind to do a thing he would do it. But he still doubted whether he had made up his mind to do this particular thing. He thought that the Squire was probably alarming himself needlessly, and with all the art that lay in his power he tried to persuade him that it was so. "Young men," he ended, "do make friends with women they wouldn't want to marry. You know that is so, Edward. It is no use shutting your eyes to facts."
"Yes, but they don't bring them down to their homes for their mothers and sisters to make friends with," retorted the Squire. "It's the last thing Dick would do, and I'd rather he did what he's doing now, bad as it is, than do a thing like that. He's hypnotised—that's what it is—he thinks she's a good woman—everything she ought to be——"
"And perhaps sheisa good woman, Edward, and everything she ought to be," interrupted the Rector, speaking more emphatically than was his wont, for in his simple unworldliness it had not occurred to him that his last words could bear the interpretation the Squire had put upon them, and he was rather scandalised. "I say that you ought to hold your judgment until you have seen her, and know something of her at first hand. I do not believe that Dick would expect his family to make friends with a lady who was not above reproach, and I certainly never meant for a moment to imply that he would do such a thing as make love to a woman he did not intend to marry. When I said that men make friends with women, I meant no more than I said."
"Well, you're a parson," said his brother, "and you've got to keep your eyes shut to certain things that go on, I suppose."
"No, Edward, that is not the duty of a parson," returned the Rector. "I shut my eyes to nothing. It seems to me that you do. It seems to me that you shut your eyes to what you know of Dick's character. You picture to yourself a vulgar, scheming adventuress. I say that if Dick is in love with this lady, as you say he is, she is not that, but something very different, and I say again that you ought to withhold your judgment until you have seen her."
"As far as seeing her goes," grumbled the Squire, "there's nothing easier than that. I shall see her at the covert-side, and I dare say I shall see her scampering all over the county covered with mud, and getting in the way of the hounds. Women are an infernal nuisance in the hunting-field. Well, you don't give me much comfort, Tom. Still, it does one some good to talk over one's troubles. I'm afraid this is going to be a big trouble—the biggest I've ever had in my life."
"Then don't meet it half-way," said the Rector. "You don't know for certain that Dick wants to marry her, and if he does she can't be anything like you have imagined her. I'm afraid I must go now, Edward. I have to look in at the Sunday-school."
"Well, good-bye, Tom, my dear fellow. Tell 'em in the Sunday-school to obey their parents. Yes, for this isright, by George! the Bible says. And so it is; if children would obey their parents, half the trouble in the world would disappear."
Dick was not best pleased, when he drove up to the door of Blaythorn Rectory, to hear that her ladyship had gone for a walk with Miss Dexter, and would not be back for an hour or more. He had not told her that he was coming over, and had not intended to do so. Horses were not taken out of the Kencote stables on Sundays without necessity. He said he would wait, and went into the drawing-room to get what consolation he could out of his own thoughts until Virginia should return.
He had been there about half an hour, sometimes walking up and down the room, sometimes reading a few pages of a book and throwing it impatiently on one side, sometimes sitting staring moodily into the fire, when he heard voices in the hall. A look of relief came over his face and he got up, prepared to greet Virginia, when the door was opened and Mrs. Graham was shown into the room. She was dressed in her usual serviceable walking clothes and had a dog-whip in her hand, although she had left her dogs for the time being outside.
"Good gracious, Dick!" she exclaimed. "They told me there was nobody here."
"The other maid let me in," said Dick. He could not for the life of him prevent himself feeling and looking shamefaced.
Mrs. Graham took no notice of it. She walked straight to a little writing-table in the corner of the room and sat down. "As I suppose you are wondering what on earth I am doing here," she said, "I'll tell you. I had a letter this morning from Anne Conyers, who asked me to come and see Lady George, as she didn't know a soul in the county. I'm only too pleased to; we're such a set of rustics here that it does us good to get somebody new, if they're not nincompoops like those people we've just got rid of at Mountfield. I thought I would drop in this afternoon. If she's sensible she won't mind my coming in these clothes. If she isn't I don't want to know her. You know her; you don't think she'll mind, eh?"
"Oh, of course not."
"I'm just going to write her a note asking her to dine to-morrow. Jim and Muriel are coming, and Roddy Buckstone. Will you and Humphrey come, Dick? We don't want too many women."
"I don't know about Humphrey. I shall be pleased to."
"Well, that's all right. You might take a message from me to Humphrey."
"I'd rather you wrote a note to him—and posted it."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Graham in a voice that invited explanation.
But Dick gave none.
"Lady George has a friend staying with her—Miss Dexter," he said. "You'd better ask her too, I think."
"Oh, of course. Thank you for telling me. Miss Dexter."
She wrote her note, fastened and directed it, dwelling rather deliberately on the process as she neared its completion. She seemed as if she were turning over in her mind something to say, but finally rose, and said, "Well, I suppose she'll get that when she comes in. I'll take myself and the dogs back to Mountfield now."
"Why don't you wait and see her?" asked Dick, rather grudgingly, for he didn't want Mrs. Graham to stay. "She can't be long now."
Mrs. Graham looked at him shrewdly. "I don't think I will," she said. "She'll be out with the hounds to-morrow, I suppose. Look here, Dick, I don't know whether I'm a fool to say anything or not, and I don't want to mix myself up in other people's business, but Anne Conyers told me that Lady George was a friend of yours, and that you had got her this house. We'll see that she gets on here all right."
She gave him a knowing nod which made him reply—
"Oh, you mean that there's likely to be trouble at Kencote. Well, I don't mind telling you that thereistrouble. My father announced to-day before Tom and Grace and the whole family that Lady George Dubec might be good enough for me to know in London, but she wasn't good enough for him or anybody to know at Kencote." He spoke bitterly, and as Mrs. Graham, who knew him well, had never heard him speak of his father.
"Did he?" she said. "Well, that's what, if I were a man, I should call rather thick. Still, he'll probably come round, and if he doesn't he is not the only person in South Meadshire, though he sometimes behaves as if he thought he was. Good-bye, Dick; to-morrow at eight o'clock, then. I'll write to Humphrey, though I shan't break my heart if he doesn't come."
Dick let her out at the front door, where she was vociferously greeted by her pack, and then returned to the drawing-room. "And I wonder whatshe'llbe thinking as she goes home," he said to himself.
Virginia came into the room alone when she and Miss Dexter returned. Dick could hear her glad little cry of surprise outside when she was told he was there, and it made him catch his breath with a queer mixture of sensations. She brought a cool fresh fragrance into the room with her, and he thought he had never seen her look sweeter, with her rather frail beauty warmed into sparkling life by the exercise she had taken in the sharp winter air and her pleasure at finding him there on her return.
Sitting by her side on the sofa he told her what had happened, and she took the news thoughtfully and sadly. "He must be rather terrible, your father," she said, "and cleverer than you thought too, Dick, if he suspects already what is between us."
"Oh, I suppose it's I who am not so clever as I thought myself," he said. "When he asked me point-blank I couldn't tell him a lie. But I own I never thought he would ask me. It was from something I had said to him the night before, about not wanting to marry a youngster. I don't know why on earth I was fool enough to say it, and put him on the scent. I suppose I was thinking such a lot of you, my girl. I can't get you out of my head, you know. But the fact is I'm not cut out for a conspirator, Virginia, and now that all my carefully laid plans have come to nothing, I'm not sure that I'm not rather relieved."
"You think they have quite come to nothing, Dick?"
"It looks like it. We shall know to-morrow. I still think—what I've always thought and built upon—that if he once sees you——"
"Dear Dick! But it's rather late for that now, if he has heard all about me, and has made a picture of me in his mind."
"Well, it's such a preposterous picture, that the reality can't help striking him. We won't do anything until after we know what has happened at the meet. And by the by, there's a dinner invitation for you for to-morrow evening." He told her about Mrs. Graham and gave her her note.
"That is very kind of Mrs. Graham," she said. "I forgot to tell you that I knew her sister-in-law. I'm afraid we shan't have much opportunity of talking there, Dick."
So they talked where they were for a long time, until the dusk fell and the maid came in with the lights and the tea, and Miss Dexter after her, and the result of their talk was that they felt things were not as bad as they looked. Dick's father would relent some day, and until he did they had each other.
The meet on Monday was at Apthorpe Common, a distance of nine miles from Kencote, and the three men appeared at breakfast in boots and breeches. The Squire always did so, and donned his red coat, with the yellow collar of the South Meadshire Hunt, when he dressed for the day. Dick came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted silk smoking-coat, and both had linen aprons tied round their waists to preserve their well pipe-clayed breeches. But the Squire belonged to an older generation, having been born when boots and breeches still lingered as the normal dress of country gentlemen, and a red coat was as easy in the wearing as any other coat. He looked a fine figure of a man, as he stood up at the end of the table to read prayers to his household, and ready to go with the best if he got a horse up to his weight.
At a quarter to ten punctually the Squire stood at the front door enveloped in a heavy ulster, a serviceable but not very shiny hat on his head, a cigar in his mouth, drawing on his gloves, and looking over the handsome pair of greys in his phaeton. Humphrey, whose hat lacked nothing in polish, stood by him in a fur coat. As the stable clock chimed the quarter, the Squire turned to the butler, who stood behind him with a rug, and asked where Captain Clinton was.
"Dick is driving himself," said Humphrey. "He started five minutes ago."
The Squire's face darkened, but he climbed up to his seat and took the reins. Humphrey got up by his side, and with a clatter and jingle they started, while the groom swung himself into his seat behind.
If Humphrey's thoughts had not been taken up with his own affairs he might have felt sorry for his father. It was an unfailing custom at Kencote that when there were only three to go to a meet far enough off to necessitate a drive, they should go in the phaeton. The Squire enjoyed these drives, with his eldest son sitting by his side, especially on such a morning as this, soft and mild, and holding out every prospect of a good day at the sport that he loved. Now he drove along at his usual steady pace without saying a word. The brightness had gone out of his day's pleasure before it had begun, and he would just as soon as not have turned his horses' heads and gone home again. There had been constraint between him and Dick since the day before, but not unfriendliness, and he had thought that perhaps they might have come as closely together as usual during this drive, or at any rate have buried for a time the thought of what lay between them in the prospect of the day's sport. But Dick had gone off alone without a word, and his heart was sore within him. Dick might have spared him this, he thought. It meant, as nothing else he could have done would have meant, that their pleasant, almost brotherly, intimacy was to cease. Each was to go his own way, until one or the other of them gave in. And the Squire knew, although he may not have said as much to himself, that Dick could support this sort of estrangement better than he could. Dick had his friends, scores of them, and when he came down to Kencote he was only leaving them behind him; while to him, surrounded by his family, but very much alone as far as the society of men of his own interests was concerned, Dick's visits to his home were the brightest times in his life, when everything that was to be done seemed better worth the doing, because so much of it was done in his company, and the pleasures of life were redoubled in value because they shared them and could talk about them, beforehand and afterwards.
His mind too was turned to what lay before him, which he had thought about as little as possible. He was going to where he could see this woman who had enslaved Dick. She was to be there, spoiling for him even the pursuit he liked best. And Dick no doubt would be at her side, piloting her, making himself conspicuous by his attentions to the whole county, providing food for gossip, perhaps for scandal. If this creature was to be hanging to his coat-tails, his son, who had followed hounds since his childhood, and whom he had always taken a pride in seeing well mounted and going with the best of them, would be pointed at as a man who had always been in the first flight until he had been caught by a woman, but was now of no account in the field. The Squire had seen that happen before, and it covered him with shame and anger to think that it would happen to Dick.
His anger was directed against Virginia alone. He felt none against his son, but only a kind of thwarted tenderness, which would have led him to do anything, short of allowing him to throw himself away and spoil his life, to bring back the old happy state of feeling between them. It crossed his mind that he might even be obliged to let him have his way in this matter. He knew that he would be sorely tried if he were to hold out, and that he might not have the power to do so. He thought that perhaps he would do as Tom had advised and see this woman first, see if there were any saving grace in her which would enable him to give way, and comfort himself with the idea that things might have been worse. At any rate, he was bound to see her shortly, and without making any decision he could dismiss the subject from his mind now and prepare to enjoy himself as much as possible under the circumstances. He sat up straighter, drew the reins more firmly and laid his whip lightly across the flanks of the greys. "Well, Humphrey," he said as the horses quickened their pace, "I think we shall have a good day. Scent ought to lie well, and we're sure to find a fox in that spinney of Antill's. I've never known it draw blank yet."
"Yes, we ought to get off pretty quick," said Humphrey, also rousing himself. "I say, I'm in rather a quandary."
"Well, what is it?" asked the Squire rather shortly. Humphrey's quandaries were generally of a financial nature, and he had no wish to add one of them to his present troubles.
"Mrs. Graham has asked me to dine to-night."
"Well, why not? You can have something to take you over."
"Oh yes. Dick is going. It is to meet Lady George Dubec."'
The Squire's face darkened instantly. Here he was, plunged straight into it again, when he wanted to free his mind for the time being of Lady George Dubec and anything that had to do with her.
"Mrs. Graham seems to have lost no time," he said. "She hadn't called on her on Saturday. I suppose she must have done so yesterday. And she knows perfectly well that I don't want to have anything to do with the woman. Are Jim and Cicely going?"
"I don't know. She only mentions Dick."
"If she mixes Cicely up with—with this lady, I shall be very much annoyed. Not that I can say anything, I suppose, now she's married, but I think Mrs. Graham might respect my wishes a little more. Well, you can do as you like. I suppose the modern way is to disregard the wishes of the head of the house entirely."
"I don't want to disregard your wishes," said Humphrey. "I think as long as one remains at home one ought to respect them."
The Squire was mollified at this, but he only said rather gruffly, "Well, if you can put up with eating your dinner at home this evening, I'd rather you should. Dick has taken the bit between his teeth, and he certainly doesn't think that my wishes should be respected. Apparently nothing that I can say will influence him. He seems to me to be heading straight for the nastiest kind of fall. What sort of a woman is this, Humphrey? You said you knew her, didn't you?"
"Oh, I've met her," said Humphrey. "She's a very pretty woman. Nobody can deny that."
"People who have made a success on the stage generally are," said the Squire; "at least, they used to be in my time. Is she—well, is she a lady?"
"Oh Lord, yes," said Humphrey. "I'm sorry I let out that about her having been on the stage. You couldn't possibly guess it to look at her. Dick tackled me about it yesterday and said that nobody knew it. People do know it, but there's no necessity to spread it all over the place."
The Squire thought for a moment. Then he put his question point-blank. "Does Dick want to marry this woman, or doesn't he?"
"If you had asked me that two days ago," replied Humphrey glibly, "I should have smiled at the idea. Now, I believe he does."
"What has made you change your mind, then?"
"Well, his getting her down here, for one thing. Then, as I told you, he was furious with me for letting out what I did about her. In fact, if I hadn't kept my head we should have had a devil of a row about it; and Dick and I have never had a row since we were kids."
The Squire digested this information. It confirmed his worst fears and made his heart the heavier. "Can't you help to stop it?" he asked shortly. "You and he have always been pretty good friends."
"I can't do any more than the twins could," replied Humphrey. "As I told you, we nearly had a row about it as it is. If I tried to interfere we should have one without a doubt."
"I suppose you don't want a thing like that to happen in the family?" asked the Squire, throwing him a side glance.
"Of course I don't want it," said Humphrey. "I've nothing against the lady as she is, but I don't want her for a sister-in-law."
"I should think not," said the Squire emphatically. "Well, I supposeI'mthe only person who can stop it, and by George! I will."
Again he stroked the greys with his whip, and their pace quickened. "Look here, Humphrey," he said, "tell me how on earth Icanstop it."
Humphrey smiled into his thick fur collar. It was so like his father, to issue a bold statement of his intentions and then immediately to ask for advice as to how to act. But he had not been accustomed to ask advice of Humphrey.
"Well, it doesn't seem to be a very difficult matter," he said.
"What do you mean?" asked the Squire shortly. "He's not paying much regard to my wishes now."
"I dare say you can't stop him amusing himself with the lady," said Humphrey. "I don't know why you should want to. If you make it awkward for him he'll be all the keener; if you give him his head he's quite likely to come to his senses. But it will be a different thing if it comes to marrying."
"Why?"
"Well, what's he to marry on—his pay as a captain in the Guards? What can any of us marry on if you don't see us through?"
The Squire's attitude towards his eldest son was such that, through all his anxiety and all his cogitations, he had never yet thought of this. He was a rich man, and he gave all his sons good allowances and Dick a very handsome one. He did this as a matter of course, and never looked upon it otherwise than as rightly due from him. And, equally of course, he was prepared largely to increase the allowance when Dick should marry. But it was quite true that there was nothing to prevent him from stopping it altogether. If the worst came to the worst he could exercise the power of the purse, but it would be extremely repugnant to him to do it, and the suggestion struck him like a temptation to act unworthily. "What on earth put that into your head?" he asked.
Humphrey was a little taken aback by his tone. He was annoyed with Dick, as he had never been annoyed with him since their childhood, although he had often been jealous of his seniority. But they had been on such good terms together that he could not feel quite comfortable in putting a spoke in his wheel, as he felt he was now doing.
"It doesn't want much putting there," he said. "The idea of marriage does cross one's mind occasionally, and one naturally wonders what you would do to make it possible. It wouldn't be possible at all without you."
"Well, I should be very sorry to have to take a step like that," said the Squire after further consideration. "And I don't want to talk about it."
Now they came to the foot of a long hill, bounded on one side by a deep wood, on the other by open grass-land, which fell away gradually, and some distance off swelled again into a long undulating rise, dotted with pieces of woodland, arable fields, and farms here and there, and ended in the far distance in a range of hills lying mistily under parallels of soft grey clouds. It was the best bit of country the South Meadshire could boast, and to the Squire surveying it largely, as he walked his horses up the hill, every square mile within reach of the eye spoke of some remembered episode in the long course of years during which he had enjoyed his best-loved sport.
There—a line of grey at the bottom of the green valley—was the brook into which he and his pony had soused head over ears when as a small boy he had thought to follow his grandfather over a place which that redoubtable sportsman himself had felt some qualms about taking. The old man, warned by the shouts, had looked round and trotted back to the brook, where he must have made up his mind that neither the small boy nor the small pony was in danger of drowning, for he had said, "Well, if you're such a fool as to get in, let's hope you're not too much of a fool to get out," and had turned his horse's head and galloped off without further ado. There was the covert from which a cunning old dog fox had been hunted three times in two seasons, and had given them three separate runs, which were talked of still when the old stagers of the South Meadshire got together at one end of the table over the port, although it was nearly thirty years ago. There was the fence over which, as a hard-riding subaltern, at the end of a season during which he had hunted for the most part in Leicestershire, he had broken the back of the best mare he had ever owned, through over-anxiety to show his neighbours what riding straight to hounds really meant, and nearly broken his own neck into the bargain. There was the grass field in which, many years before, although it seemed like yesterday, hounds had pulled their fox down, and Dick, riding his first pony, had been in at the death, had won his first brush, and had been duly blooded. He smiled within himself and remembered how his little boy had ridden home at his side with the smears on his face and shown himself proudly to his mother, and how, forgetting his new-found manhood, he had howled when it was proposed to wash them off.
There were other exploits of Dick's and of his other sons', who had all taken to the sport as he would have had sons of his take to it, which this wide stretch of country recalled. In fact, Dick and he, driving up this long hill to a meet at Apthorpe, or beyond it, had been wont to recall episodes which they both remembered, pointing out this and that spot, near or far. He liked best to recall the doings of his boys, although his own and those of his hard-bitten, redoubtable old grandfather had not been forgotten in the long tale. It was as if a sudden chill had struck him when the thought came to him, that if he and Dick were to be kept apart by what had come between them, they would perhaps never drive together again up the Apthorpe Hill. The hoarse note of a motor-horn behind him, and the necessity of drawing to the side of the road as the machine swirled by, enabled him to relieve his feelings by an expression of abhorrence stronger than he usually allowed himself, although his ordinary language on the use of motor-cars in connection with hunting did not lack vigour. And this particular motor-car contained the Master of the South Meadshire himself, who waved to him as he passed, and received no very warm greeting in return. The Squire had had a grudge against Mr. Warner during the greater part of his life. His grandfather had kept the hounds for forty years, hunted them himself, and spent money lavishly on the upkeep of kennels and general equipment. When he had died the Squire had been too young to follow him, and Mr. Warner, who had made his money in trade as the Squire averred, although he had actually inherited it, and was but recently come into the county, had taken them. He was now an old man getting on for eighty, and had kept them ever since, hunting with them as regularly and riding as straight as he had ever done—a wonderful old man, already beginning, in his lifetime, to pass into a proverb, as the Squire's grandfather, Colonel Thomas Clinton, had done. But the Squire had never had a good word for him. Of all the positions in life which he might have filled, he felt it hard that the Mastership of the South Meadshire should have been kept out of his hands. And that was his grudge against Mr. Warner, carefully nourished by that gentleman's late acceptance of mechanical traffic, and sundry other causes which need not be enquired into.
Other motor-cars passed them before they got to the top of the hill, and the Squire had a word or two of condemnation to spare for each, as they forced him to draw aside and control his horses, which shared his dislike of the new-fangled things.
At the top of the rise the wood curved away to the right, and there was nothing before them but the wide gorse-speckled common, with the broad highroad running through it. They drove on for a mile and came to a high-lying inn by the roadside, appropriately named the "Fox and Hounds," with a sign-post and a water-trough in front of it, and a broad piece of grass, which was now the centre of the best of all English country sights in the winter. The hounds were grouped about their huntsman, George Winch, a grey-whiskered, weather-tanned man sitting upright on his tall bay horse, the two of them quiet and unmoved, ready for what was to come, but not unduly excited over it, and his three young Whips, two of them his sons and the other his nephew. The Master had already hoisted himself on to his horse and sat as straight as his huntsman, although he was twenty years his senior. And all round were the faithful followers of the South Meadshire, some of whom had ridden with those hounds for as long as, or longer than, the Squire himself, some of whom had only begun that season. The men were mostly in pink, with the yellow collar, and dressed for work and not for show, their breeches spotless, their boots well polished and their tops of the right mellow shade, but their coats not of the newest, and their hats lacking the mirror-like shine which was imparted to those of the young bloods such as Humphrey. There was a sprinkling of ladies, amongst whom was Mrs. Graham, in a workmanlike habit that had seen better days, but many more of them had come on wheels than on horseback. There were boys on ponies, their round hats jammed on to their heads, their round legs in wrinkled cloth gaiters, and the Master's two little granddaughters riding astride. On the outskirts of the loosely knit crowd was a good sprinkling of farmers, solid elderly men in hard felt hats, drab coats, corduroys and brown gaiters, and slim, active young men in smarter editions of the same attire, but not always so well mounted.
The Squire drove up to the front of the inn, where his horse and Humphrey's were being walked up and down by their grooms, and climbed down from his seat with a side-look that was half a frown at the crowd. Amongst the women on horseback he saw none that he did not know, and hoped that the dreaded lady had not come; but immediately he had satisfied himself that she was not riding he caught sight of Dick, already mounted, standing by a smart little pony-cart which contained two women, and his frown deepened. When he was on his horse and had seen that his flask and sandwich-case were in place, he had another moment of indecision. Through all his discomfort and annoyance, his heart yearned towards his son, and he was alternately and from minute to minute swayed by opposite impulses, to hold out firmly for Dick's sake or to give way for his own. As he walked his horse on to the green it was in his mind to cross over to where Dick was standing by the pony-cart and, with what graciousness he could, end it all.
But he was stopped by one of his old friends, who had something quite unnecessary to say about the weather and the prospect of the day's sport, and before he could disengage himself he saw Dick leave the pony-carriage and the two ladies, and come towards him. He did not pay much attention to his friend, but sat on his horse facing his son. He saw Dick also stopped, and waited impatiently, hoping that he was coming to speak to him. Then he saw a very smartly attired young man trot up to the pony-carriage, arms and legs akimbo, to be greeted, as it seemed to him, with complete cordiality by the lady who held the reins, but not so effusively by the lady by her side. This young man was his pet abomination, the vacuous, actress-hunting, spendthrift son of a rich father, already notorious for his "goings-on," and likely to be more so if he continued as he had begun. He heard his loud foolish laugh over something he had said to the lady, or something she had said to him, and saw, although he could not hear, her laugh in reply. Then he saw him take out his cigarette-case and offer it to her, and at that he wrenched round his horse's head and exclaimed, apparently in answer to a question which he had not heard addressed to him, much to his friend's surprise, "No, I'm damned if I do."
He had seen enough. If that vicious young fool was the sort of person the woman was on terms of intimacy with, then she was just what he had pictured, and there was no saving grace in her. A cigarette-smoking, loose-tongued, kind-to-everybody creature of the stage! He would rather be at enmity with his son all his days, he would rather see him dead, than married to such a woman.
He walked his horse, not knowing where he was going to, except that he wanted to get as far as possible away from Lady George Dubec, to the outskirts of the crowd and beyond them, his mind in a ferment of disgust. He heard the creak of saddlery and the thud of a horse's hoofs on the hard turf behind him. Dick trotted up to him, and said, as he reined up his horse, "I wish you'd let me introduce you to Lady George." He spoke as if there had been no controversy between them on the subject. He knew his father, and he was giving him his chance. Two minutes earlier and the Squire would have taken it. Now he turned round sharply, his face red. "I have no wish to be introduced to Lady George, now or at any time," he said.
"Oh, all right!" said Dick coldly, and turning his back on him, trotted off again.
There was not much pleasure for the Squire that day, although they found a fox without delay, and with one check hunted him across the best of the South Meadshire country and killed him in the open after a fast run of forty minutes. The hounds got him out of the spinney where he was known to reside, in no time, but he immediately took refuge in another and a larger one half a mile or so off. The hunt straggled after him, those who had been on the wrong side of the covert when the music of the hounds first announced their prompt discovery riding hard to make up for lost time, the carts and carriages streaming along the road. Then there was a pause while the hounds worked to and fro through the wood, and the groups formed again and waited for what should happen. The Squire, more by instinct than design, for his thoughts were on far other matters, edged down the skirts of the wood to where he could see the fox break cover if he behaved as his experience told him most foxes would behave in like circumstances, and keeping well under cover he soon saw the cunning nose poking out of the brushwood and the furtive red form steal out to cross the road and make a bold bid for freedom. Just at that moment, as he was preparing to give the view-hulloa when my gentleman should have taken irrevocably to the open, a cart drove smartly round the opposite corner of the wood and pulled up, but not before the fox had seen it and slunk cautiously back into shelter. The Squire smothered a strong exclamation of disgust, but gave it vent and added something to it when he recognised the cart and its driver. If Lady George Dubec had come into the South Meadshire country to head the South Meadshire foxes, as well as to annoy him grossly in other ways, then good-bye to everything. But she should be told what she had done. With rage in his heart and a black scowl on his face he cantered along the strip of grass by the roadside, and lifting his hat and looking the offending lady straight in the face, said in an angry voice, "Would you mind keeping behind the hounds, madam? You have just turned the fox back into covert." Then he turned his back and rode off, leaving Virginia and Miss Dexter looking at each other with horrified faces.
However, Reynard's caution did not save him long. He was bustled out of shelter again within ten minutes, and realising that his only chance of escape was to run for it, run he did and gave the hounds all they knew to catch him. The Squire was away with the first, and, riding hard and straight, did for what would have been otherwise a blissful forty minutes succeed in losing the sharp sense of his unhappiness, although black care was perched all the time behind him, and when the fox had been killed, seized on him with claws so sharp that he had no heart left for anything further, and leaving the hounds to draw a gorsy common for another fox turned his horse's head round and rode off home.
Humphrey, not far away at the start, had been in at the finish, with half a dozen more, but he had seen nothing of Dick, and no one who had set out to follow on wheels had been anywhere within sight for the last half-hour. The Squire felt a grim satisfaction in the thought of Lady George Dubec left hopelessly out of it, but he also thought of Dick missing the best run, so far, of the season to keep behind with her, and his satisfaction turned into sad disgust. His long ride home was the most miserable he had ever taken, and he wished before it was ended that he had seen out the day, on the chance of another burst of excitement which for the time would have eased his pain.
He reached Kencote about three o'clock, and expected to find the house empty, for he knew that Mrs. Clinton had been going to lunch at Mountfield and he did not expect her to be back yet. But she met him in the hall and said, "I thought you might be home early, Edward, so I did not go out."
Now the Squire was never home early. He always saw out the day's sport, however bad it might be, and the number of times he had returned from hunting before dark during the last thirty years might have been counted on his ten fingers. He looked at his wife apprehensively and followed her into the morning-room, where she turned to him.
"Dick has gone," she said.
He stared at her, not understanding.
"He came back about twelve," she went on, "and changed his clothes. His servant was out, but he left word for him to pack and follow him to Blaythorn. He wrote you a letter before he went."
"Where is it?" asked the Squire. "Didn't you see him before he went? Didn't you speak to him?" He went out of the room and into his own, and Mrs. Clinton followed him.
"I did see him," she said, as the Squire went to his writing-table where an envelope was lying on the silver-mounted blotting-pad. "He said that you had made it impossible for him to remain at home, and he bade me good-bye, but he did not tell me anything more."
But the Squire was not listening to her. He turned the page of the letter and then put it into her hand. "Read that," he said.
"Dear Father" [it ran],
"I had hoped at least that you would have consented to meet the woman I am going to marry. If you had you would have seen how unlike she is to your ideas of her and that I am doing myself honour by my choice. You have made the situation impossible now, and I cannot return to Kencote until you consent to receive my affianced wife with the respect due to her.
"Your affectionate son,"RICHARD CLINTON."
The Squire's face was purple, but he controlled the violent expression of his anger. "His affianced wife!" he exclaimed scornfully. "So now we have it all, and I was right from the beginning. Well, if he waits till I receive her he may wait till I'm in my coffin. I told him this morning I would not recognise her, now or at any time, and I'll stick to my word. He has chosen to fight me, and he will find that I'm ready." He spoke bitterly, but firmly, and as if he meant everything that he said.
Mrs. Clinton laid the letter on the table. Her face was serious, and paler than its wont. "Have you seen her, Edward?" she asked. "Is she so impossible?"
"Seen her! Impossible!" echoed the Squire, with a return to the unbridled violence he usually showed when he was disturbed. "Yes, I've seen her, and she's as impossible as a wife for the heir of Kencote as any woman on the face of the earth—a painted hussy, hand in glove with the worst sort of vicious loafer, puffing cigarettes in the face of a whole crowd of respectable people, shamelessly breaking up sport—oh, I've seen her, and seen enough of her. To my dying day I'll never willingly see her again, and if that means breaking with Dick I'll break with him till he comes to his senses. I mean it. If she is going to stay here to hunt with the South Meadshire, then I'll go and hunt somewhere else until she's gone; or I won't hunt at all. Yes, she's impossible. You've spoken the right word. I shouldn't be doing my duty if I left any stone unturned to put an end to Dick's unaccountable folly. He'll thank me for it some day, and I'll put up with all and every unhappiness until that day comes."
He had calmed down during the course of his speech, as he often did, beginning on a note of unreasonable violence and ending on one completely different. But he did not usually end on a note of strong determination, as now, and Mrs. Clinton looked at him as if she hardly recognised him, with lines of perplexity and trouble in her smooth, comely face. She did not ask him what he was going to do, such questions being apt to provoke him to impatient anger and seldom bringing a direct reply. She said hesitatingly, "If he says definitely that he is going to marry her——" and left him to supply the end of her sentence.
"I shall not let him marry her," he said quietly. "He can't marry on his pay, and I shall stop his allowance from to-day."
This statement, revolutionary of all fixed notions that had their rise in Kencote, affected Mrs. Clinton as nothing before in her married life had affected her. It showed her her husband as she had never known him, bent on a course of action, not ready to take advice about it, but prepared to turn his back on the most cherished principles of his life in order to carry it out. She had nothing to say. She could only look down and wonder apprehensively what her world was coming to.