WHAT MISS PHIPP SAW
Miss Phipp lay quite still on her bed for half an hour with her eyes
closed, while the pain in her head grew and became almost
insupportable, as she had known it would, and then, under the influence
of the drug, slowly ebbed away until, exhausted as she was, her state
was one of such relief as to amount to bliss. She could not afford to
be angry, if she was to escape the punishment of these short-lived but
agonising bursts of pain, and she had been very angry. Now she told
herself that she had been foolish to upset herself about nothing. Her
friend's words had borne fruit in her robust and sensible mind. It was
quite true that she could not expect to exercise the same undivided
authority in a private house as in a school, and she must find
compensations elsewhere, which she very speedily did. At the school
she had herself been under authority, and had not been able to carry
out unchecked her favourite theories of education. Here she would be
free of that check, for she did not suppose that Mrs. Clinton would
desire to interfere with her in her teaching. And the children were
bright enough. Surely there was opportunity here for doing something
in a small way, which she had never been able to do at all as yet!
They were nice children too, with some character. They had not given
in to her, but they had held out without being in the least rude, and
it was good of them, after what had happened, to want her to go with
them to see their odious animals.
At this point Mrs. Clinton, who had been told of her bad headache,
knocked at her door and asked if she wanted anything. She thanked her
and said "No," and Mrs. Clinton further asked if she would like to
drive with her, for, if she was well enough, it might do her good.
She got off her bed and opened the door, and when Mrs. Clinton saw the
dark circles under her eyes she exclaimed in sympathy, and insisted
upon fetching eau-de-Cologne, and performing various little services
for her, which, although she now scarcely needed them, made her feel
that she was cared for. She was instructed to lie still for a while
longer, and something should presently be sent up to her. Then she was
to lunch quietly by herself, and in the afternoon, if she was well
enough, to take a short walk in the park. "It is so fine," said Mrs.
Clinton, "that I expect we shall be out all day, and you will have the
whole house to yourself, and can be as quiet as you like. And mind you
ask Garnett--my maid, you know--for anything you want. I will tell her
to keep an eye on you."
Then she went away, and left Miss Phipp in a more comfortable frame of
mind and body than before. She was not used to being looked after in
illness, for she had lived a lonely life, and her near relations were
long since dead. She felt extraordinarily grateful to this kind,
thoughtful, sensible woman, who treated her as if she were a human
being and not like a mere teaching machine, and the thought began to
dawn upon her, that perhaps she might come to look upon Kencote as a
home, such as she had never hitherto had, and in the days of her health
had scarcely missed.
Her bedroom was in the front of the house, and she had heard, without
much heeding them, the wheels and the beat of horse-hoofs and the
voices outside. Now she began to be a little curious as to what was
going on, and rose and drew up her blind and looked out.
The scene was quite new to her, and in spite of herself she exclaimed
at it. Immediately beyond the wide gravel sweep in front of the house
was the grass of the park, where the whole brave show of the South
Meadshire Hunt was collected. It is doubtful if she had ever seen a
pack of hounds in her life, and she watched them as if fascinated.
Presently, at some signal which she had not discerned, the huntsman and
the whips turned and trotted off with them, and behind them streamed
all the horsemen and horsewomen, the carriages and carts, and the
people on foot, until the whole scene which had been so full of life
and colour was entirely empty of all human occupation, and there was
only the damp grass of the park and the big bare trees under the pearly
grey of the winter sky. She saw the Squire ride off on his powerful
horse, and admired his sturdy erect carriage, and she saw Dick and
Virginia, side by side, Humphrey, the pink of sartorial hunting
perfection, Mrs. Clinton in her carriage, with Miss Dexter by her side
and the twins opposite to her, and for a moment wished she had accepted
her invitation to make one of the party, although she did not in the
least understand where they were going to, or what they were going to
do when they got there. All this concourse of apparently well-to-do
and completely leisured people going seriously about a business so
remote from any of the interests in life that she had known struck her
as entirely strange and inexplicable. She might have been in the midst
of some odd rites in an unexplored land. The very look of the country
in its winter dress was strange to her, for she was a lifelong
Londoner, and the country to her only meant a place where one spent
summer holidays. Decidedly it would be interesting--more interesting
than she had thought--to gain some insight into a life lived apparently
by a very large number of people in England, if this one little corner
could produce so many exponents of it, but curiously unlike any life
that she had lived herself or seen other people living.
She went through the course prescribed for her by Mrs. Clinton, and
enjoyed the quiet of the big house and the warm airy seclusion of the
schoolroom, where she read a book and wrote a little, and after lunch
went to sleep on the sofa before the fire. Then at about half-past
three, although she hated all forms of exercise and would have much
preferred to stay indoors, she went out for a little walk.
She went down the drive and through the village, and was struck by the
absence of humanity. If she had to take a walk on a winter afternoon
she would have wished to take it on pavements and to feel herself one
of a crowd. Here everybody she did meet stared at her, wondering,
obviously, who she was, which rather annoyed her. But when she got out
on to the country road and met nobody at all, she liked it still less,
and walked on from a sheer sense of duty. She had no eyes for the mild
beauty of the winter evening, nor ears for the breathing of the
sleeping earth. She plodded doggedly on, hating the mud, and only
longing to get back again to her book by the fireside. When she met a
slow farm cart jogging homewards, she made no reply to the touch of the
hat accorded her by the carter, but showed unfeigned terror at the
friendly inquisitiveness of his dog. In her soft felt hat, black
skirt, and braided jacket, she was as much out of place in the wide
brooding landscape as if she had been in the desert of Sahara, and
disliked the one as much as she would have disliked the other.
As she was going up the drive on her return, she felt a little glow at
the sight of the lighted windows of the house. If she had thought of
it she would have known that it was her first experience of the
pleasures of the country in winter, for a house in a city does not
arouse exactly that feeling of expectant warmth, however much one may
desire to get inside it. But, even if she had been prepared to examine
the causes of the impulse, she would not have been able to, for it was
immediately ejected from her mind by one of terror. It was caused by
the sudden sharp trot of a horse on the gravel immediately behind her.
She turned round, terribly startled and prepared for instant
annihilation. But the horse had only crossed the drive, and was now
cantering across the turf away from her. It was riderless, the
stirrups swinging against its flanks, the reins broken and trailing.
At first she did not, so entirely ignorant was she of such things,
attach any meaning at all to the empty saddle. For all she knew,
horses without riders might roam the wilds of the country, adding
greatly to its dangers, as a matter of recognised habit. But when she
had recovered from her shock, some connection between what she had just
seen and something she had read or heard of or seen in a picture formed
itself in her mind, and it occurred to her that probably the horse had
got rid of its rider, and there might conceivably have been an
unpleasant accident. Then she made a further rapid and brilliant
induction, and came to the conclusion that a riderless horse which made
his way home to his stable at Kencote had probably set out from Kencote
with some one on his back, and, as his saddle had no pommels, that
either the Squire or Dick or Humphrey had been thrown. She knew
nothing about grooms and second horses, and narrowed her convictions
still further by the recollection of Dick's having ridden a grey. The
riderless horse was brown--it was really a bright bay, but it was brown
to her. Therefore either the Squire or Humphrey must have been thrown
from his horse in the hunting-field, and from scraps of recollection of
old novels in which hunting scenes had occurred the outcome of such
accidents presented itself to her alarmed mind as probably fatal.
She stood at the door after having rung the bell--it did not occur to
her to open it and walk in--a prey to the liveliest fears, and when she
had waited for some time and rung again and then waited some time more,
she was not at all relieved by the face of the servant who opened it to
her. "The horse!" she said quickly. "Whose horse?"
"I'm afraid it's Mr. Clinton's, miss," said the man. "Mrs. Clinton and
the young ladies are in the morning-room and nobody's told 'em yet. We
don't know what to do."
It was not the grave and decorous butler who had answered the bell, but
the same young footman who had omitted to see to the smoking-room fire
a week or so before, or Miss Phipp would not have had the unpleasant
duty thrust upon her of breaking the news to Mrs. Clinton. But she
accepted it at once, and went straight into the morning-room, where
Mrs. Clinton, still in her furs, and Miss Dexter and the twins were
drinking tea.
"Oh, Miss Phipp, I do hope you are better," said Mrs. Clinton. "Sit
down and have some tea and tell me how you have been getting on."
"May I speak to you for a moment?" said Miss Phipp, standing at the
door, and Mrs. Clinton rose from her seat and came out into the hall
with her, where some of the servants were beginning to collect. Their
scared faces did not reassure her, and she put her hand to her heart as
she turned to Miss Phipp for an explanation.
"I saw Mr. Clinton's horse galloping across the park," said Miss Phipp.
"I am afraid he must have had an accident."
Mrs. Clinton showed no further signs of weakness, but asked at once for
Porter, the butler; and when it was explained to her that he was in his
cottage in the park, but had been sent for, she asked for Probyn, the
head coachman, who came pushing through the group by the service door
as she spoke. He had already done what she would have ordered, sent
out grooms on horseback, and got a carriage ready to go to any point on
the receipt of further news.
"Then there is nothing more to do," said Mrs. Clinton after a moment's
consideration, "and we must wait. Send Garnett to me upstairs."
She asked a few more questions and then made a step towards the
staircase, but turned again towards the morning-room. "I must tell the
children," she said. "Please come in and have some tea."
Miss Phipp followed her, in admiration of her calm self-control. Mrs.
Clinton said, "I am afraid your father has had a fall, as Bay Laurel
has come back to the stable without him. But he has fallen before and
not hurt himself, so there is no need to be frightened. I am just
going upstairs for a minute and then I will come down again."
The twins looked at one another and at their two elders with frightened
eyes. "Bay Laurel was father's second horse," said Joan. "He rode
Kenilworth this morning and we passed him coming home, so it can't have
been the groom."
Nancy got up from her chair. "Oh, I wish mother would come down," she
said.
"Sit down, dear," said Miss Dexter. "Your mother told you not to be
frightened."
But Nancy went to the window, and Joan followed her. They drew aside
the curtains and looked out on the park, lying still and empty in the
now fading light. "Isn't that something near the gate?" asked Joan.
"No, it is only a tree. Bay Laurel is as quiet as any horse in the
stable, Nancy. He must have fallen at a fence."
"I should have thought he would have stood until father got up," said
Nancy.
"It looks as if he had been too much hurt to get up," said Joan, and
then began to cry.
Miss Dexter came over to them and drew the curtains again firmly.
"Don't make a fuss," she said, "or you will make your mother anxious.
Pull yourselves together and come and sit down. Joan, give Miss Phipp
some tea."
Joan did as she was told, still crying softly. Nancy said, "Father has
never had a bad fall, and he has been hunting all his life. He knows
how to take a toss. Don't be a fool, Joan. I expect it will be all
right."
"Don't talk like that," said Miss Phipp sharply, her nerves on edge,
"and, Joan, stop crying at once."
Upon which Joan cried the more. "I'm sure he's badly hurt," she said,
"and he's lying out in the c-cold, or they'll b-bring him home on a
shutter."
Mrs. Clinton came in, looking much the same as usual, except that she
was paler. She sat down at the tea-table and said, "Don't cry, Joan
dear. Probyn says that there are no signs of Bay Laurel's having come
down, so it was probably not a bad fall, and I expect father will be
home soon."
But Joan knew too much to be comforted in this way, and her imagination
was working. She threw herself on her mother and sobbed, "If f-father
had fallen and B-bay Laurel hadn't, he'd have kept hold of the reins,
unless he was too b-badly hurt."
Mrs. Clinton said nothing, but drew her to her, and they sat, for the
most part in silence, and waited, for a long time.
Presently Joan, who had been sitting with her head on Mrs. Clinton's
shoulder, started up and said, "There! there! I heard wheels." Then
she began to sob uncontrollably.
Mrs. Clinton got up. The sound of wheels was now plain outside. Joan
clung to her, and cried, "Oh, don't go, mother. You don't know what
you may see. Oh, please don't go."
Her cries frightened the rest. They heard the clang of the heavy bell
in the back regions and voices and steps in the hall outside. None of
them knew what would be brought into it. Even Mrs. Clinton was
paralysed in her movements for a moment, and did not know what to do
with the terrified child clinging to her. The door opened and Joan
shrieked. Then the Squire walked into the room with his hat on and his
arm bound up in a black sling over his red coat. "Hulloa! What's
this?" he exclaimed in a voice not quite so strong as ordinary.
"Nothing to make a fuss about. I took a nasty toss, and I've broken my
collar-bone."