CHAPTER XVI
SHARSLEY, its spreading park, and somewhat neglected gardens, had been partly closed for years; the owner merely visiting it spasmodically, with lively parties for shooting or hunting. The situation was isolated with regard to other seats: it being the one great house of a poor and insignificant neighbourhood. When Blagdon married, people hoped that a new era was about to dawn; a pretty girl of good family would be warmly welcomed as the social queen, and the immediate residents hastened to wait upon the bride.
First, came those known as ‘the small fry’ or the village; these included the two Miss Jessops—maiden ladies of gentle birth, churchy, poor, and kindly; Captain and Mrs. Howard, retired Army people, agreeable and middle-aged—who had seen the world; Mr. Byng, an Indian Civilian and keen politician, with two pretty daughters who bicycled after the hounds and kept prize poultry, and others of the same standing. But these were not the class of visitors that Blagdon desired to entertain, and his rudeness was insufferable and undisguised.
When the Jessops, in their best bonnets, arrived to make a first and formal call, and were ceremoniouslyconducted into the grounds, where tea was laid in the shade, the instant Blagdon beheld these ladies approaching, he sprang to his feet and hastily departed in the opposite direction. Truly this was a bad moment for the bride! However, with many blushes and in halting sentences, she assured the Misses Jessop that her husband had suddenly remembered an important engagement; but Letty was a very poor liar, and her embarrassment, and her explanations, merely aggravated the situation.
With a lofty air the ladies declined tea. Blagdon’s snub had been too gross, and what, after all, washe? The grandson of a collier, and they the granddaughters of an Archbishop! They were sorry for the poor child, his wife, talked to her condescendingly of flowers and the weather, and presently effected a stately departure.
When Captain Howard drove up with his wife to make their first call at Sharsley, the windows being open, they heard a beautiful soprano singing ‘Love Not.’
“Ah, she’s in,” said Mrs. Howard. “I’msoglad!”
But an impassive footman who received their cards uttered a sonorous and decisive ‘Not at home,’ and they drove away, deeply mortified—the fate of many.
Later, as Blagdon stood turning over the card-tray one afternoon, Letty adventured a timid expostulation.
“Now look here,” he said impatiently, “I’m not going to have gossiping women, and sponging old men, running in and out of this house, sniffing about for what they can get—amusement, shootin’, and gooddinners. I have my own friends, and I don’t want their society. You can just send round your cards by a footman,—and let that end it. Of course, the County is another affair,” still examining the cards as he spoke. “Viscount and Viscountess Lyndham, Sir Cosmo and Lady Alice Danvers—yes, these sort of people are all right. By the way, I see the Duchess hasn’t honoured you yet—she’s taking her time. The old girl wanted to saddlemewith one of her ugly daughters, so she won’t be very keen upon you, Mrs. Blagdon!”
The expected ‘County’ now came day after day rolling up the Avenue to visit Sharsley; and the shy bride, seated alone in a magnificent new landau, drove about the country, returning calls, and inwardly praying that her hostesses might be out! being secretly afraid of the solid, important matrons, among whom she now took rank—as Mrs. Blagdon of Sharsley. She noted the merry bicyclists who sped by in couples, the happy good-looking pair, evidently lately married, driving in a high tax-cart, he with his arm round the girl’s waist, their faces radiant with smiles,—a sheep their fellow-passenger.
They stared with wide-eyed admiration at the lovely young lady in a beautiful dress, sitting so erect behind a pair of slashing steppers,—and little dreamt how she envied them!
Her husband made no secret of his disgust, and disillusion; scenes were frequent—when he scolded, blustered, and stormed, she wept; when they werealone, conversation was nil; to her timid questions, the answers were generally a grunt; and the miserable girl began to feel that her youth was paralysed and petrified. Often and often, she wished herself back once more in the little top-room at The Holt—could more be said? There, she was partly free; here, she was an abject slave; and at the beck and call of a man whom she heartily feared.
The newly married couple, were invited to formal dinners or to dine, and sleep, at various important places, and the general verdict on the bride was, that she was a pretty nonentity, dull as a kitchen-garden on a winter’s day, who looked positively ashamed of her French gowns and her superb diamonds; and it was no love match.
Hugo contradicted his wife flatly; he had been overheard to assure her that her hat was hideous, and she—worse still—“was a wooden-headed little fool.”
Part of August and September found the Blagdons in Scotland; by the time they had returned home, they had drifted almost entirely apart.
It was true, that Blagdon had his own friends and was superbly independent of his neighbours; numerous guests came from London for pheasant-shooting and hunting, at Sharsley they were all thoroughly at home—indeed, considerably more so than the hostess herself! Lady Rashleigh, had her particular bedroom—this was natural—but why Mrs. Corbett should claim, and occupy, the best of all the stateapartments was another affair. Sir Tom and Lady Slater, Lord Robbie and the Baron, and a Colonel Shaddock, who knew everyone, went everywhere, and was a notorious gossip and an irresistible horse-dealer, and various others. There was no doubt, that the party stirred up sleepy old Sharsley, and made it lively, with early starts for cubbing, and late hours for nap and poker; the guests were well acquainted with the resources of the stable and the cellar, the best stands in the woods and coverts, even wise and self-seeking with respect to the most comfortable chairs, and told the bride many things about her home that she now learnt for the first time.
The new mistress made a rather scared and silent hostess; indeed, she was a mere figure-head and nonentity. Lady Rashleigh and Lola Corbett rode Hugo’s best horses, smoked his best cigarettes, lounged about on sofas, issued orders, and did what seemed good in their own eyes.
The great rooms rang with loud voices, and boisterous laughter, and the company talked incessantly of horses, racing, and scandal. Several of the party had brought their hunters; others were mounted by their host. Mrs. Corbett, who for all her langourous grace, rode admirably; she had nerves and muscles of iron—no day too long for her, provided she had a second horse. Lady Rashleigh rode a solid fourteen stone, and gave sore backs to some of her brother’s weight-carriers; whilst Lady Slater came out on wheels, and made no secret of the fact that she funked riding.
Letty, in a smart habit and mounted on a quiet cob, looked well in the saddle; nevertheless at the meets she was left a good deal to herself; as she was not acquainted with the hard-riding set, the intimates of her husband, and his friends, and the neighbours on horseback, or in governess cars, stared over her head with glassy eyes. Her husband’s ‘ukase’ had placed her in the middle of a social desert,—where her only associates were the Lumley family. Lancelot Lumley was home on leave, and when he was out—about once a week—Mrs. Blagdon had someone to ride with and talk to. Her husband’s sporting friends, granted her pretty face and frightened-looking blue eyes; but, as one of them declared, “She could not say boo to a gosling!”
In some ways, Letty enjoyed the hunting: the eager crowd of yokels at the meets, the splendid horses, the odd turns-out, and the general spirit ofcamaraderieand enjoyment. It was not bad fun galloping along grassy lanes, darting through convenient open gates, now and then getting over a small fence, and feeling absurdly proud and brave! Her prowess and improvement were remarked, and Lady Rashleigh said one day at dinner:
“Look here, Letty, we must promote you, especially as the cob is lame—he has a seedy toe. We cannot any longer allow you to go skirmishing about the roads, trying to see all you can,—and save your neck! You are to ride The Goat; he will carry you splendidly. I rode him last season.”
“The Goat, would be too much for you, Mrs. Blag,” volunteered Lord Robbie. “Take my tip, and don’t you ride him; he has only one side to his mouth.”
“Shut up, Robbie!” said Lady Rashleigh. “Letty can stick on all right, she’s got to learn. We shall see her in the first flight yet. By the way, what happened toyouin the second run? I saw old Sarsfield pirouetting on his head!”
“Only a rabbit hole; we both bit the earth—no harm done. If the cob is lame, Sarsfield would be a safe conveyance for Mrs. Blag much steadier than The Goat.”
Nevertheless it was The Goat, a raking chestnut 16·2 in hard condition, who proved to be Letty’s fate; in spite of her piteous, even agonised, protestations. Her husband, accustomed to such hard-riding women as his sister and friends, could not understand her nervousness; he set it down to affectation, assured her that “The Goat was as quiet as a lamb. All he wanted was to go; all she had to do, was to sit tight.”
Mounted on this tall, headstrong animal, a first-class hunter and mount for a muscular and resolute man, Letty looked as she felt, abjectly miserable,—whilst her sister-in-law and Lola, unkindly derided her fears. The Goat was so different to the nice, sedate, well-mannered cob; he fretted and shied, threw his head about, dragging the reins through her cold, stiff fingers; and became frightfully excited when the hounds, and the whips, streamed pleasantly through the village street; her futile efforts to quiet him were ridiculed byBlagdon, who audibly called her “a chicken-hearted little fool.” All she had to do was to let the brute alone; he couldn’t give her a fall if he tried!
As the mass of riders and drivers jogged off in the wake of the hounds, Lumley, filled with burning indignation and compassion, joined the white-faced victim. To mount a nervous, inexperienced girl on this hard-mouthed, powerful brute, was, in his opinion, not far from a bold attempt at murder.
He, however, gave her confidence, and encouragement, and when the hounds were put into cover, piloted her away down a by-road, where he dismounted, and altered The Goat’s bit. Lumley was at home in this part of the world, he knew every fence and field like his A B C, and by merely sticking to roads and gates Letty and her escort, got over a respectable amount of the country, and actually made their appearance soon after the fox (a well-known veteran) was run to ground in a quarry pit.
Blagdon and his friends hailed the lady’s arrival, with boisterous shouts, and, after some hesitation and an anxious five minutes, her husband assented to her timid suggestion, ‘thatnowshe might go home.’
Unfortunately Lumley did not happen to be out on the memorable day when Mrs. Blagdon was overpowered by her mount, and The Goat, after plunging and rearing,—frantic at being held in, and stimulated by galloping horses, let himself go,—and, with a light weight on his back, carried his reluctant rider in the very first flight, for two triumphant miles. It was true shewas frozen with fear, her heart thumped like a turbine engine; but she passed Connie Rashleigh as an arrow from a bow, and cut down the Baron and the redoubtable Lola. Such was The Goat’s enthusiasm, such his passion for the chase, that he followed hard upon the hounds; vainly did the huntsman yell and swear, the lady was helpless—this was The Goat’s day out! It was also his last day. In negotiating a yawning fence (wired) he came down badly, and a thrill went through the spectators—Mrs. Blagdon was done for—she was killed! No, The Goat had broken his back, but the lady escaped with a fractured arm, and some bad bruises. Presently a carriage and a gun were borrowed, the former for the lady; and she was taken home by her husband, who, far from being concerned and sympathetic, was furious at the loss of a valuable hunter, and angrily assured her that “she was a little idiot to let the brute get away with her. Why, Connie could ride him on a thread!”
Letty was a good deal shaken, her fracture was excessively painful, and the doctor ordered her to keep her room for at least a fortnight, which command she was only too thankful to obey. Her nerves were completely shattered; she was visited by horrid dreams; dreams of flying over great ragged brown hedges, with the wind whistling past her ears, a fierce, implacable demon pulling her arms out of their sockets, whilst she and the runaway were pursued by frenzied shouts.
During these days of seclusion, the invalid saw but little of her guests—by whom the absence of the hostesswas not deplored. Now and then, Connie Rashleigh and Lola came to see her, and Hugo paid her a daily visit of a few minutes. One evening he stayed longer than usual, and strode up and down the room—a sure sign that he had something on his mind. His restlessness was accounted for by his suddenly asking her to “let him have a look at the necklace with the emeralds.”
“Tell your maid to get it,” he said. “The fact is, I bought that necklace for Lola Corbett, but we had a row, or rather she annoyed me, and so I gave it to you. All the same, she’s always looked upon the article as hers, and it has rankled in her mind, and she is so cracked about jewellery, and has ragged and nagged so much about this damned necklace, that I feel bound to give it to her. You’ll let me have it, won’t you, Letty?”
His manner was almost persuasive. He was saying to himself that if he had made a similar proposition to Lola she would have flown into a rage, that would have scared even him; but all his wife said was:
“Oh, of course! Desirée shall get it out at once, and I will send it to your room.”
“That’s a good little girl,” he remarked approvingly. (To himself, ‘She hadn’t the spirit of a mouse! He would really have enjoyed a little bit of a scrap!’) “All right,” he continued, “I will get you another, and just as good, the very next time I am in Paris.”
“No, no, Hugo,” she protested. “I really have more diamonds and things than I can wear. But there is something else—I—I—I wish you would give me.”
Blagdon, who was half-way to the door, halted.
“What’s that?” he demanded, turning sharply round.
“A little—a little——” She was about to say ‘love,’ but, with an effort, faltered the word “affection.”
“Whatrot!” he exclaimed, and looking her over from head to foot, with a derisive laugh, he went out of the room.