The Eldest Son Part 44

So Aunt Laura was helped out of her Bath chair, and they went into the house together slowly, and arm in arm.

The Squire hastened to meet them and find chairs for them, rather uncomfortably near the fire. He was loud in his expressions of pleasure at seeing his kinsman there, and not unmindful, either, of the comfort of Aunt Laura. He would have been beyond measure scandalised at the charge of treating her with increased consideration since he had learnt of her wealth, and indeed he had shown himself, as has been said, indifferent to the possibility of her being wealthy, but there was no doubt that she had increased in importance in his eyes during the last week or two, and she was accordingly treated more as a personage at Kencote than she had ever been before in her life.

Lord Meadshire accepted a gla.s.s of champagne. It was a festive occasion, and he loved festive occasions of all sorts. Everybody in the room came up and talked to him, and he was pleased to talk to everybody and said the right thing to each. But presently he found the opportunity of a word apart with the Squire.

"So you've given in, Edward--eh, what?" he remarked, with a mischievous look in his old face, and before he could be answered, said, more seriously, "Well, you were right to stick out if you thought it wouldn't do--to stick out as long as you could--but you must be glad all the bother's over now, and I feel sure you'll come to think it isn't so bad as you thought it would be. Come now, weren't all the rest of us right? Isn't she a dear creature?"

"I haven't given in," said the Squire shortly. "I don't know yet what I'm going to do. Of course, if d.i.c.k has made up his mind, I'm not going to keep him at arm's length all the rest of my life, however much I may object to what he's doing. That's why he's here, and why she's here."

"Ah!" said Lord Meadshire wisely. "That's the way to talk. When you say that you're nearly at the end of your troubles."

As he drove off a little later with Lady Kemsale he told her that Edward was conquered, although he wouldn't acknowledge it. "He's an obstinate fellow," said Lord Meadshire, "and from what Nina told me I should say that he's having hard work to hold out against the dear lady. Well, she's only got to keep on being herself and he'll be at her feet like all the rest of us."

"Dear papa," said Lady Kemsale, "Lady George has bewitched you."

"My dear," said Lord Meadshire, "I admit it fully. And if she can bewitch me she can bewitch Edward. She's half-way on the road already."

CHAPTER XXVI

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 gra.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 gra.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy erect carriage, and she saw d.i.c.k 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 n.o.body 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 d.i.c.k or Humphrey had been thrown. She knew nothing about grooms and second horses, and narrowed her convictions still further by the recollection of d.i.c.k'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 sc.r.a.ps 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 n.o.body'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 rea.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed 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.