Mrs. Fitz Part 26

This piece of criticism was hurled not merely at the Amazons, who had already negotiated the water, but also at the n.o.ble Master and his attendant satellites who were in the act of following their example.

"Reggie is quite right for once," said a voice from the near side, severe and magisterial in quality. "It is his duty to prevent, if he can, his hounds being overridden by those unspeakable women. If Irene belonged to me I should send her straight home to bed."

"Ought to be smacked," said the sportsman on the off side, cordially.

"Anybody'd think she'd had no upbringin'!"

Feeling in a sense responsible for the misbehaviour of my lawful property, I "lay low and said nuffin." Indeed, there was precious little to be said in defence of such conduct in the presence of the whole field.

On the strength of Jodey's p.r.o.nouncement we crossed the bridge at our leisure. As usual his wisdom hastened to justify itself. Reynard was tucked snugly under a haystack, doubtless with his pad to his nose. He was upon sacred earth, where, after a tremendous turn-up with Peter, the Crackanthorpe terrier, the Crackanthorpe hounds and the Crackanthorpe huntsman reluctantly left him.

A halt was called; flasks and sandwiches were produced; and the honourable company of the less enterprising, or the less fortunate, began to a.s.semble in force without the precincts of the Manor Farm stackyard. Conversation grew rife; and at least one fragment that penetrated to my ears was pungent.

"Look here, Mops," was its context, "when do you suppose you are goin'

to give over playing the goat?"

The rider of the three-hundred-guinea hunter was splashed with mud up to her green collar, her hair was coming down, her hat was anyhow, her cheeks were flame colour, and the sides of Malvolio were sobbing.

"_Mon enfant_," I ventured sadly to observe, "it may be magnificent, but it is not the art of chasing the fox, even as it is practised in the flying countries."

The light of battle flamed in the eyes of the star of my destiny.

"What nonsense you talk, Odo! Do you think that the circus woman----"

"Sssh! She will hear you."

"Hope she will!"

"Fact is, Mops," said her admonisher in chief, "as I've always said, you are only fit for a _provincial_ pack."

Having thus delivered himself Mrs. Arbuthnot's brother washed his hands of this "hard case" in the completest and most effectual manner. He turned about and bestowed his best bow upon the circus rider from Vienna. The act was certainly irrational. The behaviour of the lady in the scarlet coat was quite as much exposed to censure. To be sure her nationality was to be urged in her defence, but then, as the sorely tried Master confided to me in a pathetic aside, "she had been out quite often enough to learn the rules of the game."

"You can't expect Crown Princesses, my dear fellow, to trouble about rules," said I. "They make their own."

"Then I wish they would hunt hounds of their own and leave mine to me,"

said the long-suffering one tragically. "It turns me dizzy every time I see her among 'em. If Fitz had any sense of decency he would look after her."

"Fitz is the slave of circ.u.mstance. Bra.s.set, if you are a wise fellow and you are not above taking the advice of a friend, you will never marry the next in succession to an old-established and despotic monarchy."

"My G.o.d--no!" The voice of the n.o.ble Master vibrated with profound emotion.

In honour of this resolution we exchanged flasks.

CHAPTER XVII

A GLARE IN THE SKY

The Society for the Maintenance of the Public Decency has a record of long and distinguished usefulness, but never in its annals has it been moved to a more determined activity than during the week which followed this ill-starred run. The Ruling Dames or Past Grand Mistresses--I don't quite know what their true official t.i.tle is--of this august body met and conferred and drank tea continually. Those who were conversant with the Society's methods made dire prophecy of a public action of an unparalleled rigour. But beyond the fact that Mrs. Arbuthnot's china-blue eyes had an inscrutable glint, and that Mrs. Catesby's Minerva-like front was as lofty and menacing as became the daughter of Jove, nothing happened during this critical period which really aspires to the dignity of history.

Three times within that fateful s.p.a.ce the n.o.ble Master led forth his hounds; three times was it whispered confidently in my ear by my little friend Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins with a piquant suggestion in her accent of her old Kentucky home, which sometimes overtakes her very charmingly in moments of acute emotion, "that if the tenderfoot from the rotunda hit the trail, Reg would take the fox-dogs home"[1]; three times did the lady in the scarlet coat do her best to override the fox-dogs in question; three times, as the veracious historian is fain to confess, nothing happened whatever. It is true that more than once the n.o.ble Master looked at the offender "as no gentleman ought to look at a lady." More than once he cursed her by all his G.o.ds, but never within her hearing. Rumour had it that he also told Fitz that if he didn't look after his wife he should give the order for the kennels.

Unfortunately, Miss Laura Glendinning was the sole authority for this melodramatic statement.

However, on the evening of the seventh day the stars in their courses said their word in the matter. Doubtless the behaviour of the astral bodies was the outcome of a formally expressed wish of the Society; at least it is well known that certain of its members carry weight in heaven. Whether Mrs. Catesby and the Vicar's Wife headed a deputation to Jupiter I am not in a position to affirm. Be that as it may, on the evening of the seventh day fate issued a decree against "the circus rider from Vienna" and all her household.

Let this fell occurrence be recorded with detail. Myself and co-partner in life's felicities had had a tolerable if somewhat fatiguing day with the Crackanthorpe Hounds. We had a.s.sisted at the destruction of a couple of fur-coated members of society who had done us no harm whatever; and having exchanged the soaked, muddy and generally uncomfortable habiliments of the chase for the garb of peace, had fared _tete-a-tete_--Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther regaling his friends at the Hall with the light of his countenance and his post-prandial skill at snooker--with sumptuous decency upon baked meats and the good red wine.

We were in the most harmonious stage of all that this chequered existence has to offer; taking our ease in our inn while our nether limbs, whose stiffness was a not unpleasing reminiscence of the strenuous day we had spent in the saddle, toasted luxuriously before a good sea-coal fire; smoking the pipe of peace together, although this is by way of being a figure of speech, since Mrs. Arbuthnot affected a mild Turkish cigarette; comparing notes of our joint adventures by flood and field, with the natural and inevitable De Vere Vane-Anstruther note of condescension quite agreeably mitigated by one tiny liqueur gla.s.s of the 1820 brandy--a magic potion which ere now has caused the Magnificent Youth himself to abate a few feathers of his plumage. We were conducting an exhaustive inquiry into the respective merits of Pixie and Daydream, and I had been led with a charm that was irresistible into a concurrence with the sharer of my bliss that both were worth every penny of the price that had been paid for them, although I had not so much as thrown a leg over either of these quadrupeds of most distinguished ancestry.

"It is rather a lot to pay, but you can't call them dear, can you, because they _do_ fetch such prices nowadays, don't they? And Laura is perfectly green with envy."

"I'm glad of that," said I, with undefeated optimism. "If her greenness approximates to the right shade it will match the Hunt collar. How green is she?"

"Funny old thing!" Mrs. Arbuthnot's beam was of childlike benignity.

"She is not such a bad sort, really. Besides, plain people are always the nicest, aren't they, poor dears? Yes, Parkins, what is it?"

Parkins the peerless had entered the drawing-room after a discreet preliminary knock for which the circ.u.mstances really made no demand whatever. He had sidled up to his mistress, and in his mien natural reserve and a desire to dispense information were finely mingled.

"Beg pardon, ma'am, but have you seen the glare in the sky?"

"What sort of a glare, Parkins?" A lazy voice emerged from the seventh heaven of the hedonist. "Do you mean it's a what-do-you-call-it? A _planet_ I suppose you mean, Parkins?"

"It can hardly be a _comet_, ma'am," said Parkins, with his most encyclopaedic air. "It is so bright and so fixed, and it seems to be getting larger."

"So long as it isn't the end of the world," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, fondling her gold cigarette-case with a little sigh.

"It looks to me like the Castle, ma'am. It is over in that direction.

I remember when the west wing was burnt twelve years ago."

"You think the Castle is on fire?" said I.

I also was in the seventh heaven of the hedonist. But gathering my faculties as resolutely as I could, I rose from the good sea-coal fire and a.s.sisted Parkins to pull aside the curtains.

"By Jove, you're right. There is a blaze somewhere, But isn't it rather near for the Castle?"

"It might be the Grange," said Parkins.

I was fain to agree that the Grange it might be. Somehow that seemed a place excellently laid for disaster. The announcement that the Grange was on fire brought Mrs. Arbuthnot to the window. Born under Mars, the star of my destiny is nothing if not a woman of action. In spite of her present rather lymphatic state she ordered the car round immediately. Within five minutes we were braving a dark and stormy December night.

The beacon growing ever brighter as we went, it did not take long to convince us that the Grange would be our destination. It is to be feared that we broke the law, for in something considerably under half an hour we had come to the home of the Fitzwarens.

A heartrending scene it was. The beautiful but always rather desolate old house, which dates from John o' Gaunt, seemed already doomed. A portion of it was even now in ruins and on all sides the flames were leaping up fiercely to the sky. Engines had not yet had time to come from Middleham, and the progress of the fire was appalling.

A number of servants and villagers had devoted themselves to the task of retrieving the furniture. On a lawn at some distance from the house an incongruous collection of articles had been laid out: a picture by Rubens side by side with a trouser-press; a piece of Sevres cheek by jowl with a kitchen saucepan. Standing in their midst in the charge of a nurse was the small elf of four. Her eyes were sparkling and she was dancing and clapping her hands in delight at the spectacle. The nurse was in tears.

Mrs. Arbuthnot had not seen the creature before. But her instincts are swift and they are sure.