"I don't think I should have thought of doing such a thing," the Squire admitted. "It gives me more pain to take a course like that than anything else could have done. It was Humphrey who suggested it. He said, quite truly, that none of them could marry unless I saw them through. And I won't see Dick through this. I'll do anything to stop it, however much I suffer by what I have to do. Don't you think I'm right, Nina?"
This was more what Mrs. Clinton was accustomed to. She could not say that she thought he was right, nor that he was wrong. She could only say, as she did, that such a proceeding would be distressing to him.
"I know that," said the Squire, with a new simplicity. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of Dick. I love the boy, Nina. He's got himself into trouble and I've got to help him out of it."
"Do you think this is the best way?" was all that she could find to say.
"It's the only way. If there were any other I would take it. If it doesn't bring him to his senses at once, I shall keep the money for him till it does. God knowsIdon't want to touch it."
"He will have to give up the Guards," said Mrs. Clinton.
The Squire had not thought of this, and he digested the statement. "He's not an absolute fool," he said, "although he has lost his head over this. As far as the service goes, I shouldn't mind if he did give it up. I never meant him to go on soldiering so long. Still, if he does give it up, what's he to do, poor fellow, till he comes round? He wouldn't have a penny. I shall tell him that I will continue his allowance as long as he remains unmarried." He brightened up as this idea struck him. "Yes," he said, "that will be the best way, and just as effective. I couldn't bear to think of Dick hard up. I'll write now."
He sat down to his table, muddy boots, spurs, and all, and Mrs. Clinton left him, a little relieved in her mind that he saw a gleam of light, but otherwise solicitous for his sake and unhappy on her own. She loved her firstborn too, although it was very long since she had been able to show it. She would have liked to have helped him now, but he had not asked for her help, had told her nothing, and had left her with scarcely more than a formal word of farewell.
The Squire, left to himself, wrote quickly, and sealed up his letter after he had read it over once, as if first thoughts were best, and he was uncertain to what second would lead him.
"My dear Dick" [his note ran],
"I can only repeat that nothing will induce me to give my consent to the marriage you propose. If you marry in a way to please me I shall provide for you handsomely, as I have always intended to do, but if you persist in the course you have begun on I shall withdraw your allowance entirely. It will be paid to you for the present, but only as long as you remain unmarried. I am very sorry to have to take this course, but you leave me nothing else to do.
"Your affectionate father,"EDWARD CLINTON."
When he had closed and directed the envelope an unpleasant thought struck him, and he leant back in his chair and looked out of the window while he considered it. "I suppose she must havesomemoney," he said to himself; and then after a time, "But Dick would never do that."
The note was taken over to Blaythorn, as all notes were that were despatched from Kencote, by a groom on horseback. The Squire was impatient of the workings of the penny post, except for distances impossible for a horse, and he would not ask if Dick's soldier-servant had yet left the house with his master's belongings. "Tell one of the grooms to take that over," were his curt instructions, and so well was the letter of his orders always obeyed that a groom rode off with it within a quarter of an hour, although another one was already harnessing a horse to the cart that was to take Dick's servant to Blaythorn as soon as he should be ready. But having got safely outside the park gates he dawdled till his fellow caught him up, and the three of them then continued the journey together and discussed the situation.
Dick's servant was loyal to his master, but it was not in human nature that he should have refrained from speculating upon what was doing, and between them they managed to attain to a fairly clear idea of what that was, their unanimous conclusion being that if the Captain had made up his mind to marry the lady the Squire might take what steps he liked, but he would not stop him. In this way began the rumours that presently spread all over the county and thence all over England, or to such of its inhabitants as are interested in the affairs of its Captain Clintons and Lady Georges.
Dick and Virginia were alone together when the note was brought in, the mounted groom having ridden on when he got within a mile of his destination. "That means war," said Dick, laconically, when he had read it; "but I didn't think he would use those tactics quite so soon. I wonder who put him up to it." He thought for a moment. "Humphrey wouldn't have done it, I suppose," he said reflectively.
Virginia's eyes were serious as she looked up from the note written in the Squire's big, rather sprawling hand on the thick white paper. "I wonder why he hates me so," she said a little plaintively. "Is it because I headed the fox, Dick?"
Dick took her chin between his thumb and finger and his face grew tender as he looked into her eyes. "You were a very foolish girl to do that, Virginia," he said. "I should have thought you would have known better."
"I didn't know there was such a sharp turn," she said. "I pulled up the moment I got round the corner."
"Oh, well! never mind about that," said Dick. "It was unfortunate, but it wouldn't have made him want to disinherit me. He can't disinherit me, you know. It's just like him to go blundering into a course like this, which he hasn't got the firmness to keep up."
"That letter doesn't look as if he lacked firmness," Virginia said. "Dick dear, what shall you do?"
Dick did not answer this question directly. He had his father's habit of following out his own train of thought and ignoring, or rather not noticing, interruption. "He must know perfectly well," he said, "that I can raise money quite easily on my prospects. I dare say he hasn't thought of that, though. He never does think a thing thoroughly out. He wouldn't be happy if I threatened to do it."
"Oh, Dick, Dick!" exclaimed Virginia, "why do you want to worry about money? I have plenty for both of us."
"My dear, I've told you that's impossible," said Dick a little impatiently. "Don't keep harping on it."
It gave her a thrill of delight to be spoken to in that way—by him. She had been used to being ordered to do something or not to do something by a man, but not by the man she loved. She kept obedient silence, but gave Dick's arm a little squeeze.
"I'm not going to do it, though," he went on. "I should hate it as much as he would. Let's sit down, Virginia. I'll tell you what I'm going to do."
They sat down on the sofa, and Dick took a cigarette out of his case. Virginia held it open. "Couldn't I have just one?" she pleaded.
"No," said Dick, taking it from her. "You promised you would give it up when you came down here."
"So I have," she said. "I think you are very cruel."
Dick put the case back into his pocket. "Of course I'm not unprepared for this," he said, "though I hoped it wouldn't come to it. I shall have to give up the service and get some work."
"Oh, Dick!" she said. "You don't want to give up the service."
"No, I don't want to. I should have got my majority next year, and I wanted to go on till I commanded the regiment, though I never toldhimso. But it's got to be done, and it's no use grizzling about it."
"And you're doing this for me!" she said softly.
"I am doing a great deal more than that for you," he said. "I'm giving up Kencote, at least for a time."
"Do you think I'm worth it?" she asked drily.
He looked down at her, and then took her hand in his. "You must get used to my little ways," he said, with a kind smile. "I must be able to say to you what is in my mind."
"Oh, I know," she said repentantly. "It was horrid of me. But I do know what you're giving up, and I love you for it. I hope it won't be for long—Kencote, I mean. I suppose if you give up the army you won't be able to go back to it. I hate to think of that because it's your career. And what else can you work at, dear Dick? Fancy you in an office!"
"The idea of me in an office needn't disturb you," said Dick. "I don't intend to go into an office. There are two things I know about. One is soldiering, the other is estate management. If I'm to be prevented from managing the estate that's going to be my own some day, then I'll manage somebody else's in the meantime. There are lots of landowners who would be only too glad to give me a job."
"Tell me what it means exactly, Dick. Have you got to be a sort of steward to some rich person? I don't think I should like that."
He laughed and patted her hand. "You must get rid of some of your American ideas," he said. "The 'rich person' wouldn't want to treat me as a servant. And it isn't necessary that he should be very rich. I might not be able to get a big agency all at once. I don't know that I should want to, as long as there was enough work to do. As far as your money goes, Virginia, I shouldn't have any feeling about using it to help run the show. What I won't do is to live on it and do nothing. There ought not to be any difficulty in finding a place that would give us a good house, and enough money to run the stables on, and for my personal expenses, which wouldn't be heavy, as we would stick there and do our job. It would be just what I hoped we should be doing at Kencote from the dower-house. With luck, if there happened to be a vacancy anywhere, I could do better than that. But that much, at any rate, it won't be difficult to get, with a month or so to look round in."
"Then all our difficulties are done away with!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Dick, why didn't you tell me before? I thought, if your father held out, we should have a terrible time, and you would be as obstinate as possible about my money. I'll tell you what I have. I have——"
"I don't want to know what you have—yet," he interrupted her. "I didn't tell you before because I hoped it wouldn't come to that. I didn't want to face the necessity of giving up the service, and still less of having to give up Kencote. But now there's no help for it; well, we must just let all that slide and make the best of things."
She still thought his scruples about using her money to do what he wanted to do, and his absence of scruples about using it to do what he didn't want, needed more explanation. But she gave up that point as being only one more of the inexplicable tortuosities of a man's sense of honour. She was only too glad that the question could be settled as easily as that. But Dick must have felt also that it needed more explanation, for he said, "When I said that I had no feeling about letting you help run the house—of course, I really hate it like poison. But there is just the difference."
"Oh, of course there is—all the difference in the world," she made haste to reply, terrified lest they should be going to split, after all, on this wretched simulacrum of a rock. Then she had a bright thought. "But, Dick dear, you told me once how lucky your ancestors had been in marrying heiresses—not that I'm much of an heiress!"
"You're not an heiress at all," he said impatiently. "I suppose everything you've got comes from—from that fellow. Can't you see the difference? I hate touching his beastly money. And I won't, longer than I can help."
"But, Dick!" she exclaimed wonderingly. "Didn't you know? He never left me a cent. He hadn't a cent to leave."
He stared at her. "Then wheredidit come from?" he asked.
"Why, from pigs—from Chicago," she said, laughing. "My father was of an old family, my mother wasn't, and one of her brothers made a fortune in a bacon factory. Unfortunately, he did not make it until after she was dead and I was married, or it might have stopped—oh, many things. But he left it to me—the bacon factory—and I sold it for—— But you won't let me tell you how much."
"Oh, you can tell me if it's yours," he said.
"Well, they told me I had been cheated. But what was I to do with a bacon factory? And I sold it for as much as I wanted to live comfortably on. I sold it for a quarter of a million dollars."
Dick's stare was still in evidence. "A quarter of a million! Dollars!" he repeated. "That's—what? Fifty thousand pounds. By the Lord, Virginia, you're an heiress after all."
"My dear Emmeline," said the Judge, "if I hadn't such a profound contempt for Edward's intellect and for everything represented or misrepresented by him, I could feel it in my heart to be very sorry for him."
"My dear Herbert," replied Lady Birkett, "if you weren't as deeply sorry for him as you actually are, you wouldn't be your own kind, sympathetic, would-be-cynical self."
Sir Herbert and Lady Birkett with their two daughters and their son-in-law had arrived at Kencote that afternoon to make part of the company gathered there for the South Meadshire Hunt Ball. Other guests had arrived by a later train, but there had been an interval during which the Judge had been closeted with his brother-in-law, the Squire, and heard from him everything that had taken place within the past month, which was the interval that had elapsed since Dick had abruptly left Kencote. He had now come into his wife's bedroom, where she was in the later stages of dressing for dinner, although dinner was as yet half an hour off.
"I know you want to tell me everything," she said, "and although the lady who is doing my hair does not understand a word of English as yet, you will probably be able to talk more freely if she is not present. If you will come back in five minutes she will have gone to Angela."
So the Judge went into his dressing-room and, finding his clothes already laid out, dressed and repaired again to his wife, not quite in five minutes, but in little more than ten.
"I suppose you have heard all about it from Nina?" he said, taking up the conversation where he had left it. "Have you seen this Lady George Dubec?"
"Yes," said Lady Birkett. "She is not in the least what Edward pictures her, according to Nina. As far as her looks tell one anything, I should say she was a charming woman."
"Edward paints her as a voluptuous siren of the ballet. I suppose one may put that down as one of his usual excursions of imagination."
"She certainly isn't that, and it was news to me that she had ever been on the stage. Poor Nina is very distressed about it. She says that they have had no word from Dick since he left the house, that Edward has only heard through Humphrey that he has sent in his papers, but even Humphrey doesn't know where he is or what he is doing."
"I had the same news from Edward, with the additions which might be expected of him. He takes it hard that after all he has done for Dick he should be treated in that way, and I don't know that I shouldn't take it hard in his place. It makes me increasingly thankful that I haven't any sons."
This was a polite little fiction on the Judge's part which his wife respected. It was the chief regret of his life that he had no son.
"Nina says he is fretting himself into a fever," said Lady Birkett, "lest Dick should be raising money on his expectations."
"Fretting himself into a fever," replied the Judge, "is not the expression I should use of Edward. But he certainly feels deep annoyance, and expresses it. He had not thought of that when he delivered his ultimatum, and, as he says, it would be the easiest possible thing for Dick to do. But I was mercifully able to relieve his mind on that point. I did not exactly tell him that Dick, although he has more brains in his little finger than his father has in his head, is so much like him that he would shrink from taking so sensible a step as much as Edward himself would; but I gave him the gist of it. My dear Emmeline, to men like Edward and Dick, land—landed property—is sacrosanct. Dick would give upanywoman rather than embarrass an acre of Kencote. Kencote is his religion, just as much as it is Edward's. Edward gained comfort from my assuring him of the fact. He said that Dick was behaving so badly that right and wrong seemed to have no distinction for him for the time being, but probably there were crimes that he would not commit, and this might be one of them."
"I am glad you told him that," said Lady Birkett. "I should think it is probably true. But what is he doing, or thinking of doing?"
"He may be thinking of doing a little honest work," said the Judge, who had sat for some time in the House of Commons as a wicked Radical. "I put the suggestion to Edward for what it was worth, but he scouted it. As he indicated, there is nothing that a man who has been through a public school and university training, and has been for ten or fifteen years in a position of responsibility in His Majesty's army, can do. He has no money value whatever. I did not contradict him."
"Shehas money, I suppose," said Lady Birkett.
"She must have some. But there again I felt able to reassure Edward. I know the Dicks of the world pretty well. They are not without their merits, and there are certain things they don't do. Of course, if he were working, and making some sort of an income, with his prospects it would be different."
Lady Birkett let this go by. "Will Edward hold out, do you think?" she asked.
"Well," said the Judge reflectively, "I'm bound to say it surprises me, but there is every sign of his holding out till Doomsday, or, which puts a more likely period to it, till something unforeseen happens."
"Till he hears that Dick has married her, for instance."
"There wouldn't be much object in his holding out after that. But there is seldom much object in Edward's divagations. He is swayed by his prejudices and by the impulses of the moment. Still, I'll do him justice: he is acting as sensibly as he knows how in this crisis. I believe he loves Dick better than any being upon earth, with the possible exception of himself. I really believe he loves him better than himself. Of course Dick represents Kencote, and the family, and the line, and all the whole clamjamphrie, which partly accounts for it. At any rate he is causing his stupid old self an infinity of worry and annoyance, and all for the sake of what he considers a principle. I should say that Dick is acting foolishly in holding off altogether. I dare say Nina told you he has not answered a single letter. It has always struck me that he had Edward completely under his thumb, and I should have said that he had only to hang on here and play his cards well and Edward would have given way. Now he is stiffening himself up."
"I suppose they are both stiffening themselves up."
"You put it in a nutshell. Fancy Edward giving up his season's hunting so that he shan't be obliged to set eyes on his aversion! That impresses me. He is in dead earnest. He will stop this marriage if he can."
"But Dick is just as obstinate."
"It is the case of the irresistible body and the immovable force."
"Didn't you make any suggestion?"
"Yes, I did. I suggested that he should stipulate for a year's delay. I pointed out that if the lady was the bad character he supposes her to be, Dick, with the sense he has inherited from his father—I said that, God forgive me—would come to see it in that time."
"Did he take to the idea?"
"Not at all. When did Edward ever take to any idea at first sight? But it will sink in, and I shall give Tom Beach a hint to follow it up."
"I believe it will be the best way, and Nina is going to try and see Dick when she comes up with me next week."
The Judge stroked his chin. "H'm!" he said. "I'm afraid Nina has very little power to help matters."
"I am much more sorry for Nina than I am for Edward."
"Oh, so am I," interpolated the Judge.
"It is the thing I can least forgive Dick—his treating his mother practically in the same way as Edward treats her—as if she were of no account. It doesn't promise well for the happiness of this Lady George, or whoever he does come to marry."
"Let's hope for her own sake that she won't make Nina's mistake."
"You mean——"
"Oh, Nina laid herself down to be trampled on from the very first. She had plenty of character. She could have stood out. Now, whatever character she has has been buried under a mountain weight of stolid stupidity. She can't call her soul her own."
"I think she would act—and against Edward—if she saw her way to act effectively."
"She would be laying up a pretty bad time for herself if she did act against Edward in any way."
"Oh, but she wouldn't mind that if she thought it was her duty."
"Well, she can try. And she might put that idea of mine to Dick. Let him promise not to marry the lady for a year. He has been a bachelor for thirty-five or so, and he can stand another. I believe it might be the solution. I suppose we had better be going down now."
It was an unusually large party for Kencote that assembled at dinner. The Squire took in Lady Aldeburgh, who must have been five-and-forty if a day, but either by a special dispensation of Providence, or by mysterious arts marvellously concealed, was still enabled to present herself to the world as eight-and-twenty. The Squire did not quite approve of this, but the illusion was so complete that he found himself talking to her as if she were a girl. She was beautifully gowned in blue and silver, and wore the Aldeburgh diamonds, which sparkled on the clear white skin of her neck, on her corsage, and in the smooth ripples of her hair. She was attractive enough to the eye to make it possible for her to indulge in moods for the heightening of her charm. Sometimes she was all childish gaiety and innocence; sometimes the deep melancholy of her soul looked out of her violet eyes, which were so good that they had to be given their chance; sometimes she was ice. This evening she had begun on a pouting note, which she had often found effective with elderly gentlemen, but finding the Squire impervious to its appeal and plainly puzzled by it, remembering also that she had on her diamonds, she had exchanged it for the air of agrande dame, humanised by maternal instinct.
"Mother is telling Mr. Clinton how she has devoted herself to my bringing-up," whispered Lady Susan to Humphrey. "Is he likely to be impressed at all, do you think?"
"He is likely to be bowled over by the result," replied Humphrey gallantly, and Lady Susan, who was not so pretty as her mother, and only slightly more sensible, told him not to be an idiot.
Of Lady Birkett's two daughters, Beatrice, the elder, had been accompanied by her husband, Sir George Senhouse, the rising young politician, whose handsome, intellectual head would have made him remarked anywhere, but whose bent shoulders, grey temples, and carelessness of dress made him seem older than his years. The younger, Angela, sat by the man she was going to marry, Hammond-Watt, the youngest K.C. at the Bar. The inclusion of these two men in the party had caused Bobby Trench, Humphrey's friend, to ask if he had come to Kencote for a ball or a political meeting, and to suggest the advisability of clearing out again before he should be asked for a speech. This young gentleman, to whom the accident of birth had brought the privilege of taking in his hostess, and whose other neighbour had been Beatrice Birkett, asked himself before dinner was over what he had come for, ball or no ball. He was accustomed to shine in smart country houses, and Kencote was not at all smart. He had found Mrs. Clinton unresponsive to his light chatter, and Angela Birkett so taken up with the conversation of her K.C. that she had little attention to spare for him. George Senhouse, who sat opposite to him, made no effort to follow his lead, and, in fact, ignored him as far as possible, which secretly annoyed him. Lady Aldeburgh, who would have permitted him to flirt with her, was beyond his reach, and her daughter was too much taken up with Humphrey to do more than exchange a light sally or two with him. He was reduced to eating his dinner, which was a very good one, and, in large intervals of silence, to gazing around upon the company and inwardly ejaculating, "Never again!"
When the ladies had left the room the Squire, with old-fashioned courtesy, brought the decanters down to his end of the table and engaged him in conversation about his father.
"I recollect very well," said the Squire, in his loud, confident tones, "when Cane Chair won the Derby at thirty-to-one, by George!—dear me, I should be afraid to say how many years ago. He belonged to your grandfather, and of course we were all on him. Your father and I——"
"Oh yes, he's told me that story dozens of times," said Bobby Trench.
"Oh!" said the Squire, somewhat disconcerted. "Yes, I suppose he has."
"We haven't heard it dozens of times," said George Senhouse. "What was the story, Mr. Clinton?"
The Squire turned towards him and his face lightened. "I haven't thought about it for years," he said. "It's just come back to me. Jim Trench and I made up our minds we would go and see the horse run, so we got out of a window at four o'clock in the morning—did I say it was when we were at Cambridge together?—and drove tandem to Hitchin, where we got a train to London. I recollect we had sent on a change of horses to—to some place half-way. We slunk about amongst the crowd, as Jim's father was particular—wouldn't bet even on his own horses and all that sort of thing, and I don't blame him; I haven't had a bet on a horse since I was in the Blues;—and he wouldn't have taken it well to see Jim at Epsom when he ought to have been at Cambridge. Well, we saw the horse win, and, by George! I should be afraid to say how much money your father"—here he turned again towards Bobby Trench—"took off the bookies."
"Pots," said Bobby laconically. "But he lost it all over the Leger."
"Ah, well, the best thing he could have done," said the Squire. "I had put on a tenner, and both of us had had a little ready-money transaction on the course after we'd seen the horse canter; so we went back to London with a pocketful each, and by George!"—here the Squire laughed his great laugh—"we'd dropped it all to a pack of card-sharpers before we got there. We were pretty green in those days, and it was all our own fault, so we didn't quarrel with the fellows—we'd tried to have them, and they'd had us instead. We made 'em show us how it was done, so that we shouldn't be had again, and I recollect they said we were a couple of good sportsmen and gave us a sovereign or two back to get us to Cambridge, or we should have had to walk there, by George!
"But that wasn't the end of it," proceeded the Squire after he had done justice to his youthful memories with a hearty laugh. "We celebrated the occasion with a supper of the True Blue Club, in your father's rooms—has he told you that?"
"I don't know whether he's ever told me the truth about it," admitted Bobby Trench.
"Weil, it's a long time ago," said the Squire, "and we were all young and foolish. It was a lively supper, and your father went out for a little fresh air. They used to keep the college buttery stores in barges on the river in those days, and after wandering about a bit and climbing a few fences and gates for purposes of his own he found himself on the St. John's barge. Then he thought he'd like a bath, and it didn't somehow occur to him to go in over the side, so he knocked a hole in the bottom of the barge and sank her, by George!"
Here the Squire interrupted himself to laugh again. "He had all the bath he wanted, and the wonder is he wasn't drowned," he concluded. "Well, we had some pretty lively times in those days, and it doesn't do you any harm to recall them occasionally. I should like to see your father again. It must be thirty years since I set eyes on him. Wonder if he'd care to come and shoot one of these days?"
Bobby Trench said he was sure he would be delighted, and undertook to deliver a message, which he fulfilled later on by informing his father that his one-time friend had developed into a regular old turnip-hoer, and if he wanted to sit and listen to long-winded yarns about nothing Kencote was the place to go to.
The Assembly Room of the Royal Hotel at Bathgate had been the scene of many fashionable gatherings in days gone by, when London had not been so easy of access, and the rank and fashion of South Meadshire had been wont to meet there for their mutual enjoyment, on nights when the moon was round and roads not too deep in mire. The Regent had once shown his resplendent presence there, having been entertained at Kencote by Beau Clinton, who hated the place and spent its revenues in London, but had furbished it up at rare expense—to the tradesmen who did the work—for the reception of his royal patron. The Prince had expressed himself pleased with what had been done, and told his host that it was surprising what you could do with a damned dull hole like that when you tried; but he had not repeated his visit, and Beau Clinton's extravagance had soon after been redeemed by his brother the merchant, who succeeded him as Squire of Kencote, and just in time, or there would have been nothing to succeed to.
The royal visit to the Assembly at Bathgate was still to be recalled by the lustre chandelier in the middle of the room which was surmounted by the Prince of Wales's feathers. The landlord of those days had followed the example of Beau Clinton, except in the matter of forgetting to pay his tradespeople, and spent a large sum in decorating the room; and he thought himself well repaid when the princely patron of the arts had remarked that it was "devilish chaste." It had hardly been touched since. The red silk panels on the walls were faded, and here and there frayed, and the white paint which surrounded them was much the worse for wear. Of the Sheraton settees that had once surrounded the walls only one remained, on the daïs at the end of the room. It was that on which the royal form had reposed, and the present landlord had refused, it was reported, a large sum for it. There was a musicians' gallery at the opposite end of the room, and sconces for candles between the panels. It was still a handsome room, and on the annual occasion of the South Meadshire Hunt Ball, its shabbiness disguised with flowers, it had quite an air. But it was small for these latter days, and, for the dancers, apt to be inconveniently crowded. Bobby Trench, after he had had his toes trodden on and his shirt-front crumpled, inwardly repeated his ejaculations of dinner-time, "Never again!"
But he was, fortunately, in a minority. The bulk of the healthy open-air-looking young men and the pretty country-bred girls who footed it to the strains of a brisk and enlivening string band were not so particular as he. They smiled at the mishaps of others and laughed at their own, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly, as young men and women do who are not surfeited with pleasure. Their elders looked on from the rout seats placed round the room, or from their place of vantage on the daïs, and in the intervals of the babel of talk—for nearly all of them knew one another and had a great deal to say—thought of their own young days and were pleased to see their pleasure repeated by their sons and daughters. There is no ball like a country ball, not too overwhelmingly invaded from London or elsewhere. It has the essence of sociability, where people meet who do not meet too often, and there is something for the young ones to do and the old ones to look on at. If the Bobby Trenches who happen upon it compare it unfavourably with more splendid entertainments, it is to be doubted if those entertainments are so much enjoyed by those who take part in them, except perhaps by the novices, to whom all gaiety is glamour.
The Squire, sitting on the daïs as became a man of his position in the county, scanned the assembly after having conducted Lady Aldeburgh through the mazes of the opening quadrille, and the frown which had left his face for the past few hours, but had sat there almost invariably during the past month, appeared again. Lady Aldeburgh was talking to old Lord Meadshire, his kinsman, who in spite of age and chronic asthma was still an inveterate frequenter of local festivities, and he had a moment's interval in which his trouble rolled back upon him. He had had a dim hope that Dick, who for the first time in his life, except when he was in South Africa, had not come home for Christmas, might show up at Bathgate for this occasion. It had been a very small hope, for nothing had been heard from him, and he had even left them to take it for granted that he had put off Captain Vernon, the friend whom he had asked to stay at Kencote for the balls. And, furthermore, if he should be there it would be as a guest of Lady George Dubec, who was known still to be at Blaythorn. But even that disagreeable condition did not entirely do away with the Squire's desire to set eyes on his son, for whose presence he longed more and more as the days went on. But there was no Dick to be seen amongst the red-coated men in the room, and as yet there was no Lady George Dubec.
But as he looked over the moving crowd of dancers, and the bordering rows of men and matrons sitting and standing, his bushy brows contracted still more, for he saw her come in beneath the musicians' gallery at the other end of the hall with Miss Dexter, and, which caused him still further disquietude, saw her instantly surrounded by a crowd of men. He turned his head away with an impatient shrug and broke into the conversation between Lady Aldeburgh and Lord Meadshire. But this did not save him, for Lord Meadshire, whose old twinkling eyes were everywhere, said in his low husky voice, "There's the lady I met driving yesterday. Tell me who she is, my dear Edward, and relieve my curiosity."
The Squire, mumbling inaudibly, got up from his seat and, turning his back upon the hall, entered into a conversation with the wife of the Master of the South Meadshire, whom he disliked, but who happened to be the only lady disengaged at the moment. But she said, when she had answered his first remark, "There is Lady George. She looks handsomer than ever"; and turning his back again he went out into a room where there was a buffet and swallowed a glass of champagne, although he knew that a tablespoonful would have brought him discomfort.
Virginia was dressed in a gown of shimmering blue green which had the effect of moonlight. She had a row of turquoises round her slim neck. Her colour was higher than usual and her eyes sparkled. No one of those who pressed round her admiring her beauty and gay charm could have guessed that it was excitement of no pleasurable sort that brought the light to her eyes and the laughter to her lips. But Miss Dexter, standing demurely by her side, dressed in black, her light hair combed unbecomingly back from her broad forehead, and receiving with equanimity the crumbs of invitation that fell from her friend's richly spread table, knew with what shrinking Virginia had brought herself to make her appearance here. Both of them knew very well why the Squire had no more been seen in the hunting field since that first day; both of them had been aware of him the moment they had entered the room, had seen his movements, and interpreted them correctly.
Virginia was soon dancing with Bobby Trench, who had drawn her impatiently away from her suitors, telling her that the valse was half over and that she could fill up her card later.
"Jove!" he said, when they had danced once round the room in silence, "it's a relief to come across a friend amongst all these clodhoppers. How on earth do you find yourself here?"
"I'm living near here at present," she said. "How do you?"
"Oh, I'm a visitor—a non-paying guest in a house like a Hydropathic Establishment, or what I imagine one to be like. Fine house, but mixed company."
"Then if you are a guest you ought not to say so," said Virginia, whose thoughts so ran on Kencote that it was the first house that occurred to her as possibly affording him hospitality.
"Oh, they're all right, really," he said, "only they're the sort of people who take root in the country and grow there, like cabbages—except the chap who asked me. He's one of the sons, and he'd smarten 'em up if he had his way. Humphrey Clinton! Do you know him?"
"No," said Virginia. "Well, yes, I've met him in London. I don't like him."
"Eh? Why not? I'll tell him."
"Very well. Let's go and sit down. The room is too crowded."
But Bobby Trench, who saw the end of the dance in sight, and knew that directly Virginia sat down other men would come up to her, continued to dance. "I haven't bumped you yet," he said. "We'll steer through somehow. Are you going to Kemsale on Monday?"
"No," said Virginia, and left off dancing, having come to the end of the room, where Miss Dexter was still standing. As her partner had foreseen, she was immediately besieged again, and as for some, to him, unaccountable reason, she refused to book another engagement with him, he went away and left her in a huff.
He came across Humphrey, who was partnerless for the moment. "Let's go and get a drink," he said. "I'm dry. I say, you didn't tell me that Virginia Dubec lived in these parts."
"She doesn't," replied Humphrey as they made their way towards the room with the buffet. "She has taken a house here for a few months. My brother Dick got it for her."
"Oh, I thought she said she didn't know your people. Where is your brother, by the by?"
Humphrey considered for a moment as to whether he should enlighten him as to the state of the case, and decided not to, but wished almost immediately that he had, for as they went into the refreshment-room they met his father coming out, and Bobby Trench, who always spoke what was passing through his mind to the nearest available person, said, "I've found a friend, Mr. Clinton—Lady George Dubec. Didn't know she was in your part of the country."
The Squire scowled at him, and went out of the room without a word.
"Nice manners!" commented Bobby Trench to himself.
"The fact is," said Humphrey, "that the governor won't know the lady."
"Why not? What's the matter with her?" asked his friend. "I should have thought she'd have been a godsend in a place like this. I thought you said your brother got her down here."
"So he did," said Humphrey, making a clean breast of it. "That's what the row's about. Governor wouldn't have anything to do with her, and so Dick has retired from the scene for a time. But don't say anything about it, old chap. Little family disturbance we don't want to go any further."
"Course not," said Bobby Trench, delighted to get hold of the end of a piece of gossip and determined to draw out the rest as soon as possible. "So that's how the land lies, is it? Now I see why she didn't want to have any more truck with this engaging youth. Well, your brother's taste is to be commended. Why does your father object to her?"
"Oh, I don't know. Old-fashioned prejudice, I suppose; and he knew George Dubec."
"And he was a daisy, from all accounts. Come on, we'd better be getting back."
Old Lord Meadshire, who had been Lord-Lieutenant of the county from which his title came for over forty years, and took an almost fatherly interest in its inhabitants, learnt from Mrs. Graham who the unknown lady was.
"Oh, I can tell you all about her," she said. "She's making a fine disturbance in this little duck-pond."
"Well, she's pretty enough to make a disturbance anywhere," said the old lord, whose kindly eye for youth and beauty was not dimmed by his eighty years. "And if there is anything going on, I know I can trust you to tell me all about it."
"There it is again," replied Mrs. Graham. "I'm getting the reputation of a tale-bearer, and there's nothing I hate more. Still, I thinkyouought to know." And she told him who Virginia was, and what was happening because she was what she was.
The old man grew rather serious as the story was unfolded to him. "Edward Clinton was always headstrong," he said, "but it's unlike him to quarrel with Dick. I think he ought to have waited to see what she was like first."
"Of course he ought," said Mrs. Graham. "I've no patience with him. He had the impudence to take me to task for asking her to dinner, and Jim and Cicely to meet her. But he didn't get much change out of me."
"You told him what you thought about him—what?"
"I told him what I thought about her, and left him to infer the rest. There's nothing wrong about her, if she did marry Lord George Dubec, and all the rest of it. I like her, and I told him so. And if I can't ask my own son and daughter-in-law to meet whom I like in my own house without being hauled over the coals by Mr. Clinton—well, he'll be expecting me to ask him what I'm to wear next."
"He couldn't improve on that," said Lord Meadshire, with an appreciative glance at her pretty gown of pale blue silk under brown net.
"Thank you," returned Mrs. Graham. "I hate clothes, but I can get myself up if I'm flattered enough beforehand. Cicely does that for me. I've no complaint to make of her as a daughter-in-law."
"Well, you had better introduce me to Lady George," said Lord Meadshire. "She must be asked to Kemsale on Monday. And I'll find an opportunity of dropping a word of common sense into Edward's ear, eh?"
"It will go out at the other. There's nothing to stop it," said Mrs. Graham. "But it will be a good thing to show him he's not going to have it all his own way."
The introduction was duly made, and Virginia, palpitating under her air of assured ease, talked to him for some little time, sitting with him on the daïs. She knew that this kind old man who chatted pleasantly with her, making feeble little jokes in his asthmatic voice, which his eyes, plainly admiring her, asked her to smile at, was the most important of all Dick's relations, besides being the most important man in the county, and that if she could win him to like her his influence might well avail to ease her lover's path. That he did like her and was prepared to accept her in friendly wise as a neighbour was plain. But she had a moment of fright when he said, "We are dancing at Kemsale on Monday night. You must come. Where is Eleanor, I wonder?" And he looked round for Lady Kemsale, his widowed daughter-in-law, who kept house for him.
"I am not sure," she said hurriedly. She did not know in the least how much he knew, or whether he knew anything. "Captain Clinton found me my house here, but——" She did not know how to go on, and feared she had already said too much in her confusion, but he turned towards her.
"Oh, I know, I know," he said kindly, and then beckoned to his daughter-in-law, a stout, rather severe-looking lady in steely grey, who greeted Virginia without smiling and gave the required invitation rather coldly.
"I will send you a card," she said, "and please bring any friends you may have with you."
Lady Kemsale had just heard the story of his troubles from the Squire, who had found in her a sympathetic listener, and she had heard that Virginia had once danced on the stage. She would have preferred to have ignored her, but Lord Meadshire's commands must be obeyed, and even as she obeyed them and gave the invitation her sympathy with the Squire's troubles began to wane and she said to herself that he must have made a mistake. There was nothing of the stage-charmer about this woman, and Lady Kemsale thought she knew all about that class of temptress, for her own nephew had recently married one of them. She preserved her stately, unsmiling air as she turned away, but she was already softened, if Virginia had only known it.
But Virginia's sensibilities had already taken renewed fright at her manner, and in a way the exhibition of which now somewhat disturbed old Lord Meadshire. She rose to her feet, and her air was no less stately than that of Lady Kemsale. "It is very kind of you to ask me to your house," she said, "but I think under the present circumstances I would rather not come." Then she made him a bow and stepped off the daïs, and was immediately seized by her partner of the dance that was then in progress. She was angry, but did not speak to him until they had circled the room twice. She was willing to pay court to the people amongst whom she was going to marry if they treated her properly. She was willing to do even more than that for Dick's sake, and to run the risk of slights, and she had done so by staying at Blaythorn, as he had asked her to do, and by coming here to-night. But she was not going to put up with slights from women who chose to treat her as of no account and as if she were anxious at all costs to obtain their countenance. There might be women who would be glad to gain entrance to a house like Kemsale even after such an invitation as Lady Kemsale had given her, but she was not one of them. The invitation, if it came after what she had said to Lord Meadshire, should be refused. The woman whom Dick was going to marry would not be recognised on those terms. She would wait until she could go to Kemsale as an equal, and if that time never came she would not go at all. In the meantime she was spending a very wearing evening, and had an impulse to cut it all short and summon Miss Dexter to accompany her home. But the thought that she was going through it for Dick's sake sustained her, and she said to herself that since she had wrought up her courage to come she would not run away.
The person who did run away, before the dancing was half over, was the Squire. He could stand it no longer. He could not remain in the refreshment-room all the evening, and, as he hated cards, the solace of the tables, set out quite in old Assembly-room style in another room, did not avail him. If he led out a dowager to take his part in a square dance there was always the haunting fear that Virginia might be brought into the same set, and if he sat and looked on at the round dances the hateful sight of her dark head and slender form was always before him. Moreover, he had not yet talked to any one who had not either made some remark about her or asked him why Dick was not there, or, worse still, maintained an ominous silence on the subject of both of them, showing plainly that he or she was aware of the disturbance in his household, which galled him exceedingly, although to sympathetic and assumedly secret ears like those of Lady Kemsale he was ready to talk his fill, and gain relief from doing so. He could not keep what he felt out of his face, and he saw people looking at him with furtive amusement as he sat there glowering at the assembly, or trying his best to talk as if he had nothing on his mind. He felt instinctively that the story was being put all about the room, as indeed it was, for rumour was already in the air, and had gained impulse by Dick's absence and his own behaviour.
And then Lord Meadshire—Cousin Humphrey, as he had called him ever since he was a child, and called him still—had talked to him about Dick and about Virginia, coupling their names together, as he disgustedly said to himself, showing plainly that he knew what was on foot, and inviting confidences if the Squire felt disposed to give them. He did not feel so disposed. He was angry with his kinsman for so publicly giving his countenance to Virginia, flouting him in the face—so he felt it—making it appear as if he, in the place where he had all his life cut a distinguished figure, and his wishes, were not worth regarding. "I don't know the lady and don't want to," he said, one might say petulantly. "And as for Dick—she wanted to come here and he told her of a house. Considering he has scarcely been near the place since she came, it's most annoying to hear him talked about as if there was something between them. I hope you'll do what you can to contradict that report. You can do a lot if you want to."
Lord Meadshire glanced at him quizzically. He knew well enough his ostrich-like habit of burying one fact in a Sahara of words and leaving a dozen for all the world to see. "Come now, my dear Edward," he said persuasively, "why not make friends with the lady? You will find her everything she ought to be, and a charming woman into the bargain. If Dick is a little struck with her charms, I don't wonder at it, and there's nothing to be alarmed at. The best thing you can do is to keep your eye on her while he is away."
But this was a little too much. Cousin Humphrey had been his boyhood's idol, and was the only member left of an older generation of his family with the exception of Aunt Laura, but if he thought that he could treat him as an obstinate child who was to be coaxed into good behaviour, he was mistaken. "Nothing will induce me to make friends with her or to recognise her in any way," he said, with decision. "Where's Nina? I'm going home. I can't stand this any longer."
Mrs. Clinton, who was enjoying herself in a quiet way, talking to people whom she seldom saw, and infinitely relieved in her mind to find Virginia what she was, and not what she had feared she might be, even a little fascinated by her grace and beauty, and watching her all the time even when she was talking, was disagreeably surprised at the curt request of her lord and master that she should instantly accompany him home. "But, Edward!" she exclaimed, "we have not ordered the carriage until one o'clock, and it is not yet eleven. Aren't you well?"
"We can get a fly," snapped the Squire. "Yes, I'm quite well. But I can't put up with any more of this."
Still she hesitated. There were her guests to think of. How could she go off and leave them?
"If you like I will go home with Uncle Edward," said Angela Senhouse, to whom she had been talking. "I think it would make people uneasy if you were to go." She looked at the Squire with her calm, rather cold eyes, and he suddenly grew ashamed of himself. "I'll get a fly and go by myself. You had better stay here, Nina." And he took himself off without further ado.
On the morning after the Hunt Ball the Clinton twins rose, as usual with them in the winter, about half-past eight o'clock. In the summer they were up and out of doors at all sorts of unorthodox hours, but in the cold long nights they slept like young hibernating animals, snuggling amongst their warm coverings, and occasionally having to be extricated by all the powers of persuasion, moral and physical, possessed by Miss Bird. Miss Bird had now departed and the new governess had not yet arrived, so they were their own mistresses within limits, and responsible for their own tidy and punctual appearance at the breakfast-table.
Hannah, the schoolroom maid, brought in their tea and bread and butter at eight o'clock, drew up their blinds, set out their bath (for there were no bathrooms at Kencote), and then applied herself to the task of arousing them. "Now, Miss Joan and Miss Nancy," she said in a loud, confident voice, as if she had only to tell them to get up and they would get up immediately. "I've brought your 'ot water. Miss Joan! Miss Nancy! Eight o'clock! Time to get up! Miss Joan! Miss Nancy!"
Joan stirred, opened her eyes, closed them again, turned over and buried herself in the bedclothes again. "Now, Miss Joan," said Hannah, quick to pursue her advantage, "don't go dropping off to sleep again. 'Ere's yer tea all ready and yer 'ot water gitting cold. Miss Nancy! Time to get up!"
"Go away," said Joan in a sleepy voice. "I'm awake."
"Yes, and you'll be asleep again in a minute if you don't set up and drink yer tea. Now, Miss Joan, you don't want me to stand 'ere all the morning wasting me time with the whole 'ouse full and me wanted to 'elp."
"Then go and 'elp, and don't bother," replied Joan sleepily.
"Miss Nancy!" cried Hannah. "I know you ain't asleep. Set up and drink yer tea. Miss Nancy! Lor'! the trouble I 'ave now Miss Bird's gone, and only me to see that everything's right up 'ere and you ain't late downstairs, which you know I should be blamed and not you if you wasn't down in time."
This roused Joan, who opened her eyes again and said, "It's nothing to do with you whether we're late or not. You're always full of your own importance. I'm quite awake now and you can clear out," and she sat up in bed, and took her cup from the table between the two beds.
"Not till Miss Nancy sets up I won't," said Hannah. "I know she's awake and it's only contrariness as makes her pretend not to be."
"Nancy, do sit up and let her go," entreated Joan, "or she'll go on jabbering like a monkey for hours. My nerves won't stand it at this time of the morning."
Nancy sat up suddenly and reached for her cup. "Depart, minion!" she commanded.
"Now you won't go to sleep again after you've 'ad yer tea," said Hannah. "I shall come back in 'alf an hour to do yer 'airs, and if you ain't up and ready for me, I shall acquaint Mrs. Clinton, for reelly the trouble I 'ave in this very room every morning as sure as the sun rises, no young ladies as calls theirselves young ladies wouldn't be'ave so."
"Parse that sentence," said Nancy, and Hannah, with a toss of the head, left the room.
"Hannah's getting above herself," said Joan. "She seems to think now Starling's gone she's been promoted to her place."
"We'll let her go a little further," said Nancy, "and then we'll pull her off her perch. What's the weather like? Not raining, is it? I say, we ought to have some fun to-day, Joan. Who shall you stand with?"
The Kencote coverts were to be shot over that day, and the twins were allowed to accompany the guns on such occasions as these.
"I don't know; Uncle Herbert, I think. He's the most amusing."
"Joan, you know quite well I bagged Uncle Herbert in the schoolroom yesterday," said Nancy.
"Did you? I'd forgotten. You can have him in the morning and I'll go with him in the afternoon. I think I shall go with Bobby Trench, and see if he's as clever as he thinks he is."
"You can't, my dear; you're too old. It would be considered forward. Besides, he's an awful little ass."
"That's what I wanted to convey to him. But I think I'll go with Humphrey. He hasn't tipped us for ages, andoneof us must attend to business."
"You can't do that either. He'll want that simpering Lady Susan. Joan, I believe there's more in that than meets the eye."
"Penny, please," said Joan, holding out her hand. "You said you would if I caught you saying that again."
"All right, when I get up. I forgot. Why don't you go with George Senhouse?"
"He's too serious, and this is a holiday. Besides, he doesn't hit them. I hate bloodshed, but I like to seesomethingdone. I wish dear old Dick were here. He'd bowl them over all right."
"I wonder," said Nancy, "when all that bother is going to stop. Dear papa will have to give way in the end, you know. He might just as well do it now and save time."
"If I were Dick I should just marry her and let him make the best of it. I wish he'd do something. Father has really been too tiresome for words for the last month. If you and I behaved like he does we should be sent to bed, and serve us right. I wonder what happened last night. I expect she was at the ball."
"He wouldn't take any notice of her if she was. I wish we could set eyes on her. I should like to see what she's really like."
"Cicely says she's very pretty."
"Well, I suppose she'd have to be that if Dick wants to marry her. Aren't men funny about women, Joan? Now I suppose you'd call that silly little Bobby Trench good-looking, but I should no more want to marry him than the ugliest man in the world."
"That isn't much of a discovery. You needn't have lived very long to find out that women are much more sensible than men."
With this aphorism Joan rose and proceeded to her toilette, and Nancy, after indulging in another short nap, followed her example.
The Squire, refreshed by his night's slumber, rose determined to do his duty by his guests and put from him for the day all thoughts of Lady George Dubec and, what was more difficult, of his son Dick. Mrs. Clinton, when she had returned from the ball, very late, had found him in a deep sleep in the great canopied bed which she had shared with him for so many years. He had not awakened during her long muffled process of undressing, nor when she slipped, careful to make no noise and as little movement as possible, into bed by his side. But before she slept he had turned over and, half asleep still, murmured, "Good-night, Nina. God bless you." It had been his nightly farewell of her for nearly forty years, uttered often with no special meaning, sometimes even without interval at the end of some unreasonable expression of annoyance. But last night the words had come softly and affectionately, as if, returning for a moment from the pleasant land of oblivion, where he had been wandering and to which he was immediately returning, he had been glad to find her waiting for him, his close companion, valued above others. She had put her hand softly on to his, and lain for a long time, in the deep silence of the night, in that light contact.
The common life of the household at Kencote began with family prayers at a quarter-past nine, at which, on this Saturday morning, Lady Aldeburgh and her daughter, Sir Herbert Birkett, Bobby Trench, and Humphrey failed to put in an appearance. The Judge had been up at seven, reading in his bedroom, and appeared with the breakfast dishes, but Humphrey did not arrive until five minutes later, and the presence of guests did not avert from him the invariable rebuke of unpunctuality. "I wish you'd manage to get up in decent time when you're here," said the Squire. "Where's young Trench?"
"In his bedroom, I suppose," replied Humphrey coolly, inspecting the dishes on the side-table.
The Squire said nothing further, but when he, with most of the party, was leaving the room half an hour later, and met Bobby Trench, to whom the morning light had apparently brought a renewal of self-content, entering it, he greeted him with an earnest enquiry after his health.
"Oh, I'm as bobbish as possible, thank you," replied Bobby Trench brightly.
"I'm glad of that," said the Squire, passing on. "I thought as you didn't come down at the proper time you must have been feeling poorly."
Bobby Trench stared at his broad retreating back in amazement. "Lor'! What a house!" was his inward exclamation, as he went on into the dining-room.
Humphrey, who was deliberate in his meals, was still at the table, and Joan was leaning on the back of his chair. She was making some suggestion as to pecuniary profit to herself and Nancy from the day's sport, which yet should not amount to a bet.
"Hullo, old man!" said Humphrey. "Joan, ring the bell. Everything must be cold by this time."
Joan hesitated. Such a proceeding was unheard of at Kencote, where, if people came down late for breakfast, they must expect it to be cold. But Bobby Trench politely anticipated her. "Don't you trouble, Miss Joan," he said, going to the bell himself. "I say, are you going to stand with me to-day and see me shoot?"
If Nancy had been there to support her she would have asked innocently, "Can you shoot?" for although she liked being addressed as "Miss Joan," she did not like Bobby Trench's free and easy air. But maiden modesty replied for her, "I think I'm going with Humphrey."
"She wants me to give her a shilling for every bird I miss, and she'll give me sixpence for every one I knock over. How does that strike you for a soft thing?"
A footman came in at that moment, and looked surprised at the order that was given him.
"Do you want heverythink cooked, sir, or only some fresh tea?" he asked, with a glance at the table where the lamps were still sizzling under the hot dishes.
"We live a life of rigid punctuality in this house," Humphrey apologised, when he had retired with his order. "They don't understand renewing the supplies."
"Sorry to give so much trouble," replied Bobby Trench, "but I'm pretty peckish, to tell you the truth. Dancing always gives me a twist. Look here, Miss Joan, I'll bet you half a dozen pair of gloves I kill more birds than Humphrey."
"Take him, Joan; it's a certainty," said Humphrey.
Joan was secretly enchanted at being treated as of a glovable age, but she answered primly, "Thank you, Mr. Trench, I'm not allowed to bet."
"Oh, ho!" jeered Humphrey. "What about that shilling you and Nancy got from me?"
"Dick said we ought not to have done it, and we weren't to do it any more," said Joan.
Humphrey was silent. Bobby Trench, who was good-natured enough to take pleasure in the innocent conversation of extreme feminine youth, especially when it was allied to beauty, as in the case of the twins, said, "Well, of course, you must always do what you're told, mustn't you? But I'll tell you what, we won't call it a bet, but if I don't kill more birds than Humphrey I'll give you six pairs of gloves—see? Only you'll have to stand by me half the time and him half the time, to count."
"Oh, she doesn't want gloves," said Humphrey, with some approach to his father's manner. "Cut along upstairs, Joan, or you'll have Miss Bird after you."
"Miss Bird has departed," said Joan, but she went out of the room, somewhat relieved at the conclusion of what might have developed into an embarrassing episode.
At half-past ten the big shooting-brake appeared at the door, and the whole party, men and women, got into it, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, and Lady Aldeburgh and her daughter, who had not yet made an appearance. The Squire had been extremely annoyed at this. "She's as strong as a horse," he had said of his kinsman's wife, "and when she stays in other people's houses she ought to keep their hours. And as for the girl, if she can't get up to breakfast after a ball, she oughtn't to go to balls. I'll tell you what, Nina, I'm hanged if I'm going to keep the whole party waiting for them. We start at half-past ten sharp, and if you can't rout 'em out by then, you must wait and bring 'em on afterwards in the carriage."
Mrs. Clinton had not felt equal to the task of routing out her guests, and the brake had driven off, within three minutes of the half-hour, without them.
It was a deliciously mild morning. The sun, shining palely in a sky of misty blue, gave it an illusive air of spring; blackbirds whistled in the copses; the maze of tree-twigs in distant woods showed purple against the wet green of the meadows; the air was virginally fresh, and had the fragrance of rich moist earth and a hint of wood smoke. Brown beech leaves still clung to the hedges on either side of the deep muddy country lanes, and blackberries, saturated with dew, on the brambles.
Servants and dogs and guns had been sent on a quarter of an hour before. The Squire, on these important occasions, when he took the cream of his preserves and began at an outlying wood, to finish up just before dark with the home coverts, liked to drive up to the place appointed and find everything ready for an immediate start. Beaters must be in place ready for the whistle on the instant. Guns must be posted for the first drive with no delay whatever. There was a lot to get through before dusk, and no time must be wasted. If those who were asked to shoot at Kencote on the big days did their parts, he—and Dick—and the keepers would do theirs and show them as pretty a succession of drives, with an occasional walk over stubble or a field of roots to vary the proceedings, as they would get anywhere in England. Only there must be no dawdling, and the women who were permitted to look on must subordinate their uncontrolled natures to the business in hand.
All the arrangements necessary to make the machinery run without a hitch, so that none of the full day's programme should be hurried, meant a great deal of preliminary consultation and adjustment. Bunch, the head-keeper, admirable in his capacity for generalling his little army of beaters and for faithfully carrying out instructions, had no initiative of his own, and the Squire had always relied upon Dick—and relied on him much more than he knew—for arranging the plan of campaign. This time he had had to do it alone, with much consequent irritation to himself and bewilderment and head-scratching to honest, velveteen-clad Bunch. And he had relied on Dick's coolness—also much more than he knew—to get the guns posted expeditiously and with as little friction of talk and enquiry as possible. To-day he would have to rely on Humphrey to help him, and Humphrey was as yet untried in this capacity. He was anxious and worried as he drove, sitting on the high box-seat beside his coachman, and itching to handle his horses himself as he always did except on shooting days, when he wanted to save his hands. Usually he sat behind, but this morning he felt he could not take his part in the talk and laughter that went on in the body of the brake. He was not at all sure how the day would turn out. There were several points at which a hitch might occur. Following a light suggestion of Dick's, he had arranged to take High Beach Wood the opposite way to that in which it had always been taken, and he was not at all sure that Bunch had fully understood his testily given instructions—or, indeed, that he fully understood them himself. Nor was he quite certain of his guns, and he wanted to kill a respectable head of game. The two local notabilities whom he had invited, old Mr. Wilkinson, of Birfield, and Colonel Stacey, who lived in a villa in Bathgate, and shot steadily through the season within a radius of forty miles, he could rely on. Humphrey was a good shot, though not so good as Dick. Sir Herbert Birkett was surprisingly good, for a Londoner, on his day, but when it wasn't his day he was surprisingly bad, and didn't even care enough about it to make the usual lamentations. George Senhouse enjoyed it thoroughly, but never touched a feather. Hammond-Watt and Bobby Trench he knew nothing whatever about, but it was unlikely that either of them would turn out above the average. He could only hope that they would not turn out very much worse. At any rate, at the best, it was not a team that could be expected to create a record in the Kencote preserves, and at the worst might bring disgrace on them.
He could not help thinking of these things and worrying about them. If Dick had been there he would have calmed those uneasy tremors. He would have told him that the birds would show up well, even if the guns didn't, that the experts were at least equal to the duffers and the doubtfuls, putting everything in a hopeful light, not anticipating any possible hitch, but quite ready to deal with it if it should come. Dick never lost sight of the fact that they were out for a day's sport; the Squire fussed and worried so about trifles that all such sense of pleasure was apt to leave him. He had an uneasy, half-defined feeling that his temperament caused him to err in this way, and it made him want Dick, who could relieve him of the weight of small anxieties, all the more. He was learning how much he had been wont to depend on his son. One of the impulses of appeal and affection, which continually shot across the stiff web of his obstinate determination, came to him now, and if Dick could have appeared at that moment he would have welcomed him with open arms, and given way in everything. But Dick was away, he did not know where, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the prospect of a day of anxiety.
They came to an open gate by the roadside and drove in through a strip of wood until they came to an open space in front of a keeper's cottage. It stood, backed by trees, facing a wide sloping meadow, which was completely surrounded by a wood of oak and beech, intermixed with spruce and some firs. The little group of loaders with their masters' guns and cartridge-bags stood ready by the palings, the glossy coated retrievers waved welcoming tails as the brake drove up, the hoof-beats of the horses muffled on the thick grass. The beaters were already in line at the other end of the wood, far out of sight, waiting for Bunch's signal. There was nothing to do but place the guns and prepare for the stream of pheasants which would presently begin to fly over them. Except that neither Mr. Wilkinson nor Colonel Stacey had yet arrived.
It was the first check to the prompt orderly proceedings of the day. The Squire, taking his gun from the hands of an under-keeper and filling the pockets of his wide shooting-jacket with cartridges, gave vent to a forcible expression of irritation. "Now there we are, held back at the very start!" he exclaimed. "'Pon my word, it's too bad of those fellows. I told 'em eleven o'clock sharp, and they've shot here dozens of times before and know the place as well as I do."
"It's only just five minutes to eleven," said Humphrey, and as he spoke Mr. Wilkinson's dog-cart drove in from the wood, bringing himself and Colonel Stacey, all ready for immediate business. Before eleven o'clock struck from the cuckoo-clock in the keeper's kitchen the whole party was walking down the meadow to line the borders of the wood and do what execution they might.
Humphrey showed himself efficient in translating the Squire's intentions as to the placing of the guns, from the notes he had jotted down on a sheet of letter paper. He knew that inextricable confusion would arise later if those notes were to be followed literally, but trusted to be able to arrange things by word of mouth when the time came, as most people were content to do.