THE MEET AT APTHORPE COMMON
The meet on Monday was at Apthorpe Common, a distance of nine miles
from Kencote, and the three men appeared at breakfast in boots and
breeches. The Squire always did so, and donned his red coat, with the
yellow collar of the South Meadshire Hunt, when he dressed for the day.
Dick came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted
silk smoking-coat, and both had linen aprons tied round their waists to
preserve their well pipe-clayed breeches. But the Squire belonged to
an older generation, having been born when boots and breeches still
lingered as the normal dress of country gentlemen, and a red coat was
as easy in the wearing as any other coat. He looked a fine figure of a
man, as he stood up at the end of the table to read prayers to his
household, and ready to go with the best if he got a horse up to his
weight.
At a quarter to ten punctually the Squire stood at the front door
enveloped in a heavy ulster, a serviceable but not very shiny hat on
his head, a cigar in his mouth, drawing on his gloves, and looking over
the handsome pair of greys in his phaeton. Humphrey, whose hat lacked
nothing in polish, stood by him in a fur coat. As the stable clock
chimed the quarter, the Squire turned to the butler, who stood behind
him with a rug, and asked where Captain Clinton was.
"Dick is driving himself," said Humphrey. "He started five minutes
ago."
The Squire's face darkened, but he climbed up to his seat and took the
reins. Humphrey got up by his side, and with a clatter and jingle they
started, while the groom swung himself into his seat behind.
If Humphrey's thoughts had not been taken up with his own affairs he
might have felt sorry for his father. It was an unfailing custom at
Kencote that when there were only three to go to a meet far enough off
to necessitate a drive, they should go in the phaeton. The Squire
enjoyed these drives, with his eldest son sitting by his side,
especially on such a morning as this, soft and mild, and holding out
every prospect of a good day at the sport that he loved. Now he drove
along at his usual steady pace without saying a word. The brightness
had gone out of his day's pleasure before it had begun, and he would
just as soon as not have turned his horses' heads and gone home again.
There had been constraint between him and Dick since the day before,
but not unfriendliness, and he had thought that perhaps they might have
come as closely together as usual during this drive, or at any rate
have buried for a time the thought of what lay between them in the
prospect of the day's sport. But Dick had gone off alone without a
word, and his heart was sore within him. Dick might have spared him
this, he thought. It meant, as nothing else he could have done would
have meant, that their pleasant, almost brotherly, intimacy was to
cease. Each was to go his own way, until one or the other of them gave
in. And the Squire knew, although he may not have said as much to
himself, that Dick could support this sort of estrangement better than
he could. Dick had his friends, scores of them, and when he came down
to Kencote he was only leaving them behind him; while to him,
surrounded by his family, but very much alone as far as the society of
men of his own interests was concerned, Dick's visits to his home were
the brightest times in his life, when everything that was to be done
seemed better worth the doing, because so much of it was done in his
company, and the pleasures of life were redoubled in value because they
shared them and could talk about them, beforehand and afterwards.
His mind too was turned to what lay before him, which he had thought
about as little as possible. He was going to where he could see this
woman who had enslaved Dick. She was to be there, spoiling for him
even the pursuit he liked best. And Dick no doubt would be at her
side, piloting her, making himself conspicuous by his attentions to the
whole county, providing food for gossip, perhaps for scandal. If this
creature was to be hanging to his coat-tails, his son, who had followed
hounds since his childhood, and whom he had always taken a pride in
seeing well mounted and going with the best of them, would be pointed
at as a man who had always been in the first flight until he had been
caught by a woman, but was now of no account in the field. The Squire
had seen that happen before, and it covered him with shame and anger to
think that it would happen to Dick.
His anger was directed against Virginia alone. He felt none against
his son, but only a kind of thwarted tenderness, which would have led
him to do anything, short of allowing him to throw himself away and
spoil his life, to bring back the old happy state of feeling between
them. It crossed his mind that he might even be obliged to let him
have his way in this matter. He knew that he would be sorely tried if
he were to hold out, and that he might not have the power to do so. He
thought that perhaps he would do as Tom had advised and see this woman
first, see if there were any saving grace in her which would enable him
to give way, and comfort himself with the idea that things might have
been worse. At any rate, he was bound to see her shortly, and without
making any decision he could dismiss the subject from his mind now and
prepare to enjoy himself as much as possible under the circumstances.
He sat up straighter, drew the reins more firmly and laid his whip
lightly across the flanks of the greys. "Well, Humphrey," he said as
the horses quickened their pace, "I think we shall have a good day.
Scent ought to lie well, and we're sure to find a fox in that spinney
of Antill's. I've never known it draw blank yet."
"Yes, we ought to get off pretty quick," said Humphrey, also rousing
himself. "I say, I'm in rather a quandary."
"Well, what is it?" asked the Squire rather shortly. Humphrey's
quandaries were generally of a financial nature, and he had no wish to
add one of them to his present troubles.
"Mrs. Graham has asked me to dine to-night."
"Well, why not? You can have something to take you over."
"Oh yes. Dick is going. It is to meet Lady George Dubec."'
The Squire's face darkened instantly. Here he was, plunged straight
into it again, when he wanted to free his mind for the time being of
Lady George Dubec and anything that had to do with her.
"Mrs. Graham seems to have lost no time," he said. "She hadn't called
on her on Saturday. I suppose she must have done so yesterday. And
she knows perfectly well that I don't want to have anything to do with
the woman. Are Jim and Cicely going?"
"I don't know. She only mentions Dick."
"If she mixes Cicely up with--with this lady, I shall be very much
annoyed. Not that I can say anything, I suppose, now she's married,
but I think Mrs. Graham might respect my wishes a little more. Well,
you can do as you like. I suppose the modern way is to disregard the
wishes of the head of the house entirely."
"I don't want to disregard your wishes," said Humphrey. "I think as
long as one remains at home one ought to respect them."
The Squire was mollified at this, but he only said rather gruffly,
"Well, if you can put up with eating your dinner at home this evening,
I'd rather you should. Dick has taken the bit between his teeth, and
he certainly doesn't think that my wishes should be respected.
Apparently nothing that I can say will influence him. He seems to me
to be heading straight for the nastiest kind of fall. What sort of a
woman is this, Humphrey? You said you knew her, didn't you?"
"Oh, I've met her," said Humphrey. "She's a very pretty woman. Nobody
can deny that."
"People who have made a success on the stage generally are," said the
Squire; "at least, they used to be in my time. Is she--well, is she a
lady?"
"Oh Lord, yes," said Humphrey. "I'm sorry I let out that about her
having been on the stage. You couldn't possibly guess it to look at
her. Dick tackled me about it yesterday and said that nobody knew it.
People do know it, but there's no necessity to spread it all over the
place."
The Squire thought for a moment. Then he put his question point-blank.
"Does Dick want to marry this woman, or doesn't he?"
"If you had asked me that two days ago," replied Humphrey glibly, "I
should have smiled at the idea. Now, I believe he does."
"What has made you change your mind, then?"
"Well, his getting her down here, for one thing. Then, as I told you,
he was furious with me for letting out what I did about her. In fact,
if I hadn't kept my head we should have had a devil of a row about it;
and Dick and I have never had a row since we were kids."
The Squire digested this information. It confirmed his worst fears and
made his heart the heavier. "Can't you help to stop it?" he asked
shortly. "You and he have always been pretty good friends."
"I can't do any more than the twins could," replied Humphrey. "As I
told you, we nearly had a row about it as it is. If I tried to
interfere we should have one without a doubt."
"I suppose you don't want a thing like that to happen in the family?"
asked the Squire, throwing him a side glance.
"Of course I don't want it," said Humphrey. "I've nothing against the
lady as she is, but I don't want her for a sister-in-law."
"I should think not," said the Squire emphatically. "Well, I 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 attitude towards his eldest son was such that, through all
his anxiety and all his cogitations, he had never yet thought of this.
He was a rich man, and he gave all his sons good allowances and Dick a
very handsome one. He did this as a matter of course, and never looked
upon it otherwise than as rightly due from him. And, equally of
course, he was prepared largely to increase the allowance when Dick
should marry. But it was quite true that there was nothing to prevent
him from stopping it altogether. If the worst came to the worst he
could exercise the power of the purse, but it would be extremely
repugnant to him to do it, and the suggestion struck him like a
temptation to act unworthily. "What on earth put that into your head?"
he asked.
Humphrey was a little taken aback by his tone. He was annoyed with
Dick, as he had never been annoyed with him since their childhood,
although he had often been jealous of his seniority. But they had been
on such good terms together that he could not feel quite comfortable in
putting a spoke in his wheel, as he felt he was now doing.
"It doesn't want much putting there," he said. "The idea of marriage
does cross one's mind occasionally, and one naturally wonders what you
would do to make it possible. It wouldn't be possible at all without
you."
"Well, I should be very sorry to have to take a step like that," said
the Squire after further consideration. "And I don't want to talk
about it."
Now they came to the foot of a long hill, bounded on one side by a deep
wood, on the other by open grass-land, which fell away gradually, and
some distance off swelled again into a long undulating rise, dotted
with pieces of woodland, arable fields, and farms here and there, and
ended in the far distance in a range of hills lying mistily under
parallels of soft grey clouds. It was the best bit of country the
South Meadshire could boast, and to the Squire surveying it largely, as
he walked his horses up the hill, every square mile within reach of the
eye spoke of some remembered episode in the long course of years during
which he had enjoyed his best-loved sport.
There--a line of grey at the bottom of the green valley--was the brook
into which he and his pony had soused head over ears when as a small
boy he had thought to follow his grandfather over a place which that
redoubtable sportsman himself had felt some qualms about taking. The
old man, warned by the shouts, had looked round and trotted back to the
brook, where he must have made up his mind that neither the small boy
nor the small pony was in danger of drowning, for he had said, "Well,
if you're such a fool as to get in, let's hope you're not too much of a
fool to get out," and had turned his horse's head and galloped off
without further ado. There was the covert from which a cunning old dog
fox had been hunted three times in two seasons, and had given them
three separate runs, which were talked of still when the old stagers of
the South Meadshire got together at one end of the table over the port,
although it was nearly thirty years ago. There was the fence over
which, as a hard-riding subaltern, at the end of a season during which
he had hunted for the most part in Leicestershire, he had broken the
back of the best mare he had ever owned, through over-anxiety to show
his neighbours what riding straight to hounds really meant, and nearly
broken his own neck into the bargain. There was the grass field in
which, many years before, although it seemed like yesterday, hounds had
pulled their fox down, and Dick, riding his first pony, had been in at
the death, had won his first brush, and had been duly blooded. He
smiled within himself and remembered how his little boy had ridden home
at his side with the smears on his face and shown himself proudly to
his mother, and how, forgetting his new-found manhood, he had howled
when it was proposed to wash them off.
There were other exploits of Dick's and of his other sons', who had all
taken to the sport as he would have had sons of his take to it, which
this wide stretch of country recalled. In fact, Dick and he, driving
up this long hill to a meet at Apthorpe, or beyond it, had been wont to
recall episodes which they both remembered, pointing out this and that
spot, near or far. He liked best to recall the doings of his boys,
although his own and those of his hard-bitten, redoubtable old
grandfather had not been forgotten in the long tale. It was as if a
sudden chill had struck him when the thought came to him, that if he
and Dick were to be kept apart by what had come between them, they
would perhaps never drive together again up the Apthorpe Hill. The
hoarse note of a motor-horn behind him, and the necessity of drawing to
the side of the road as the machine swirled by, enabled him to relieve
his feelings by an expression of abhorrence stronger than he usually
allowed himself, although his ordinary language on the use of
motor-cars in connection with hunting did not lack vigour. And this
particular motor-car contained the Master of the South Meadshire
himself, who waved to him as he passed, and received no very warm
greeting in return. The Squire had had a grudge against Mr. Warner
during the greater part of his life. His grandfather had kept the
hounds for forty years, hunted them himself, and spent money lavishly
on the upkeep of kennels and general equipment. When he had died the
Squire had been too young to follow him, and Mr. Warner, who had made
his money in trade as the Squire averred, although he had actually
inherited it, and was but recently come into the county, had taken
them. He was now an old man getting on for eighty, and had kept them
ever since, hunting with them as regularly and riding as straight as he
had ever done--a wonderful old man, already beginning, in his lifetime,
to pass into a proverb, as the Squire's grandfather, Colonel Thomas
Clinton, had done. But the Squire had never had a good word for him.
Of all the positions in life which he might have filled, he felt it
hard that the Mastership of the South Meadshire should have been kept
out of his hands. And that was his grudge against Mr. Warner,
carefully nourished by that gentleman's late acceptance of mechanical
traffic, and sundry other causes which need not be enquired into.
Other motor-cars passed them before they got to the top of the hill,
and the Squire had a word or two of condemnation to spare for each, as
they forced him to draw aside and control his horses, which shared his
dislike of the new-fangled things.
At the top of the rise the wood curved away to the right, and there was
nothing before them but the wide gorse-speckled common, with the broad
highroad running through it. They drove on for a mile and came to a
high-lying inn by the roadside, appropriately named the "Fox and
Hounds," with a sign-post and a water-trough in front of it, and a
broad piece of grass, which was now the centre of the best of all
English country sights in the winter. The hounds were grouped about
their huntsman, George Winch, a grey-whiskered, weather-tanned man
sitting upright on his tall bay horse, the two of them quiet and
unmoved, ready for what was to come, but not unduly excited over it,
and his three young Whips, two of them his sons and the other his
nephew. The Master had already hoisted himself on to his horse and sat
as straight as his huntsman, although he was twenty years his senior.
And all round were the faithful followers of the South Meadshire, some
of whom had ridden with those hounds for as long as, or longer than,
the Squire himself, some of whom had only begun that season. The men
were mostly in pink, with the yellow collar, and dressed for work and
not for show, their breeches spotless, their boots well polished and
their tops of the right mellow shade, but their coats not of the
newest, and their hats lacking the mirror-like shine which was imparted
to those of the young bloods such as Humphrey. There was a sprinkling
of ladies, amongst whom was Mrs. Graham, in a workmanlike habit that
had seen better days, but many more of them had come on wheels than on
horseback. There were boys on ponies, their round hats jammed on to
their heads, their round legs in wrinkled cloth gaiters, and the
Master's two little granddaughters riding astride. On the outskirts of
the loosely knit crowd was a good sprinkling of farmers, solid elderly
men in hard felt hats, drab coats, corduroys and brown gaiters, and
slim, active young men in smarter editions of the same attire, but not
always so well mounted.
The Squire drove up to the front of the inn, where his horse and
Humphrey's were being walked up and down by their grooms, and climbed
down from his seat with a side-look that was half a frown at the crowd.
Amongst the women on horseback he saw none that he did not know, and
hoped that the dreaded lady had not come; but immediately he had
satisfied himself that she was not riding he caught sight of Dick,
already mounted, standing by a smart little pony-cart which contained
two women, and his frown deepened. When he was on his horse and had
seen that his flask and sandwich-case were in place, he had another
moment of indecision. Through all his discomfort and annoyance, his
heart yearned towards his son, and he was alternately and from minute
to minute swayed by opposite impulses, to hold out firmly for Dick's
sake or to give way for his own. As he walked his horse on to the
green it was in his mind to cross over to where Dick was standing by
the pony-cart and, with what graciousness he could, end it all.
But he was stopped by one of his old friends, who had something quite
unnecessary to say about the weather and the prospect of the day's
sport, and before he could disengage himself he saw Dick leave the
pony-carriage and the two ladies, and come towards him. He did not pay
much attention to his friend, but sat on his horse facing his son. He
saw Dick also stopped, and waited impatiently, hoping that he was
coming to speak to him. Then he saw a very smartly attired young man
trot up to the pony-carriage, arms and legs akimbo, to be greeted, as
it seemed to him, with complete cordiality by the lady who held the
reins, but not so effusively by the lady by her side. This young man
was his pet abomination, the vacuous, actress-hunting, spendthrift son
of a rich father, already notorious for his "goings-on," and likely to
be more so if he continued as he had begun. He heard his loud foolish
laugh over something he had said to the lady, or something she had said
to him, and saw, although he could not hear, her laugh in reply. Then
he saw him take out his cigarette-case and offer it to her, and at that
he wrenched round his horse's head and exclaimed, apparently in answer
to a question which he had not heard addressed to him, much to his
friend's surprise, "No, I'm damned if I do."
He had seen enough. If that vicious young fool was the sort of person
the woman was on terms of intimacy with, then she was just what he had
pictured, and there was no saving grace in her. A cigarette-smoking,
loose-tongued, kind-to-everybody creature of the stage! He would
rather be at enmity with his son all his days, he would rather see him
dead, than married to such a woman.
He walked his horse, not knowing where he was going to, except that he
wanted to get as far as possible away from Lady George Dubec, to the
outskirts of the crowd and beyond them, his mind in a ferment of
disgust. He heard the creak of saddlery and the thud of a horse's
hoofs on the hard turf behind him. Dick trotted up to him, and said,
as he reined up his horse, "I wish you'd let me introduce you to Lady
George." He spoke as if there had been no controversy between them on
the subject. He knew his father, and he was giving him his chance.
Two minutes earlier and the Squire would have taken it. Now he turned
round sharply, his face red. "I have no wish to be introduced to Lady
George, now or at any time," he said.
"Oh, all right!" said Dick coldly, and turning his back on him, trotted
off again.