The Eldest Son Part 15

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 Sat.u.r.day. 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 d.i.c.k."

"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. d.i.c.k 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. n.o.body 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. d.i.c.k tackled me about it yesterday and said that n.o.body 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 suppose _I'm_ the 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 I _can_ stop 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 att.i.tude 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 gra.s.s-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 Meads.h.i.+re 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 Meads.h.i.+re 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 Leicesters.h.i.+re, 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 gra.s.s field in which, many years before, although it seemed like yesterday, hounds had pulled their fox down, and d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k'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, d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k were to be kept apart by what had come between them, they would perhaps never drive together again up the Apthorpe Hill. The hoa.r.s.e 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 Meads.h.i.+re himself, who waved to him as he pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s 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 Masters.h.i.+p of the South Meads.h.i.+re 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, 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 Meads.h.i.+re, 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.a.m.ned 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. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k coldly, and turning his back on him, trotted off again.

CHAPTER XI

d.i.c.k LEAVES KENCOTE AND MAKES A DISCOVERY

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 Meads.h.i.+re 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Meads.h.i.+re country to head the South Meads.h.i.+re 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 gra.s.s 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.