The Eldest Son Part 14

d.i.c.k was not best pleased, when he drove up to the door of Blaythorn Rectory, to hear that her ladyship had gone for a walk with Miss Dexter, and would not be back for an hour or more. He had not told her that he was coming over, and had not intended to do so. Horses were not taken out of the Kencote stables on Sundays without necessity. He said he would wait, and went into the drawing-room to get what consolation he could out of his own thoughts until Virginia should return.

He had been there about half an hour, sometimes walking up and down the room, sometimes reading a few pages of a book and throwing it impatiently on one side, sometimes sitting staring moodily into the fire, when he heard voices in the hall. A look of relief came over his face and he got up, prepared to greet Virginia, when the door was opened and Mrs. Graham was shown into the room. She was dressed in her usual serviceable walking clothes and had a dog-whip in her hand, although she had left her dogs for the time being outside.

"Good gracious, d.i.c.k!" she exclaimed. "They told me there was n.o.body here."

"The other maid let me in," said d.i.c.k. He could not for the life of him prevent himself feeling and looking shamefaced.

Mrs. Graham took no notice of it. She walked straight to a little writing-table in the corner of the room and sat down. "As I suppose you are wondering what on earth I am doing here," she said, "I'll tell you. I had a letter this morning from Anne Conyers, who asked me to come and see Lady George, as she didn't know a soul in the county. I'm only too pleased to; we're such a set of rustics here that it does us good to get somebody new, if they're not nincomp.o.o.ps like those people we've just got rid of at Mountfield. I thought I would drop in this afternoon. If she's sensible she won't mind my coming in these clothes. If she isn't I don't want to know her. You know her; you don't think she'll mind, eh?"

"Oh, of course not."

"I'm just going to write her a note asking her to dine to-morrow. Jim and Muriel are coming, and Roddy Buckstone. Will you and Humphrey come, d.i.c.k? We don't want too many women."

"I don't know about Humphrey. I shall be pleased to."

"Well, that's all right. You might take a message from me to Humphrey."

"I'd rather you wrote a note to him--and posted it."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Graham in a voice that invited explanation.

But d.i.c.k gave none.

"Lady George has a friend staying with her--Miss Dexter," he said.

"You'd better ask her too, I think."

"Oh, of course. Thank you for telling me. Miss Dexter."

She wrote her note, fastened and directed it, dwelling rather deliberately on the process as she neared its completion. She seemed as if she were turning over in her mind something to say, but finally rose, and said, "Well, I suppose she'll get that when she comes in.

I'll take myself and the dogs back to Mountfield now."

"Why don't you wait and see her?" asked d.i.c.k, rather grudgingly, for he didn't want Mrs. Graham to stay. "She can't be long now."

Mrs. Graham looked at him shrewdly. "I don't think I will," she said.

"She'll be out with the hounds to-morrow, I suppose. Look here, d.i.c.k, I don't know whether I'm a fool to say anything or not, and I don't want to mix myself up in other people's business, but Anne Conyers told me that Lady George was a friend of yours, and that you had got her this house. We'll see that she gets on here all right."

She gave him a knowing nod which made him reply--

"Oh, you mean that there's likely to be trouble at Kencote. Well, I don't mind telling you that there _is_ trouble. My father announced to-day before Tom and Grace and the whole family that Lady George Dubec might be good enough for me to know in London, but she wasn't good enough for him or anybody to know at Kencote." He spoke bitterly, and as Mrs. Graham, who knew him well, had never heard him speak of his father.

"Did he?" she said. "Well, that's what, if I were a man, I should call rather thick. Still, he'll probably come round, and if he doesn't he is not the only person in South Meadshire, though he sometimes behaves as if he thought he was. Good-bye, d.i.c.k; to-morrow at eight o'clock, then. I'll write to Humphrey, though I shan't break my heart if he doesn't come."

d.i.c.k let her out at the front door, where she was vociferously greeted by her pack, and then returned to the drawing-room. "And I wonder what _she'll_ be thinking as she goes home," he said to himself.

Virginia came into the room alone when she and Miss Dexter returned.

d.i.c.k could hear her glad little cry of surprise outside when she was told he was there, and it made him catch his breath with a queer mixture of sensations. She brought a cool fresh fragrance into the room with her, and he thought he had never seen her look sweeter, with her rather frail beauty warmed into sparkling life by the exercise she had taken in the sharp winter air and her pleasure at finding him there on her return.

Sitting by her side on the sofa he told her what had happened, and she took the news thoughtfully and sadly. "He must be rather terrible, your father," she said, "and cleverer than you thought too, d.i.c.k, if he suspects already what is between us."

"Oh, I suppose it's I who am not so clever as I thought myself," he said. "When he asked me point-blank I couldn't tell him a lie. But I own I never thought he would ask me. It was from something I had said to him the night before, about not wanting to marry a youngster. I don't know why on earth I was fool enough to say it, and put him on the scent. I suppose I was thinking such a lot of you, my girl. I can't get you out of my head, you know. But the fact is I'm not cut out for a conspirator, Virginia, and now that all my carefully laid plans have come to nothing, I'm not sure that I'm not rather relieved."

"You think they have quite come to nothing, d.i.c.k?"

"It looks like it. We shall know to-morrow. I still think--what I've always thought and built upon--that if he once sees you----"

"Dear d.i.c.k! But it's rather late for that now, if he has heard all about me, and has made a picture of me in his mind."

"Well, it's such a preposterous picture, that the reality can't help striking him. We won't do anything until after we know what has happened at the meet. And by the by, there's a dinner invitation for you for to-morrow evening." He told her about Mrs. Graham and gave her her note.

"That is very kind of Mrs. Graham," she said. "I forgot to tell you that I knew her sister-in-law. I'm afraid we shan't have much opportunity of talking there, d.i.c.k."

So they talked where they were for a long time, until the dusk fell and the maid came in with the lights and the tea, and Miss Dexter after her, and the result of their talk was that they felt things were not as bad as they looked. d.i.c.k's father would relent some day, and until he did they had each other.

CHAPTER X

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.

d.i.c.k came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted silk smoking-coat, and both had linen ap.r.o.ns 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.

"d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k had gone off alone without a word, and his heart was sore within him. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k could support this sort of estrangement better than he could. d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k. She was to be there, spoiling for him even the pursuit he liked best. And d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k.

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 circ.u.mstances.

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. d.i.c.k is going. It is to meet Lady George Dubec."'