I suddenly remembered, with remorse, that I had been for some time too deeply interested in the stupidity of it to think about the person whom it might most affect, and looked hastily about for Graham. Lady Doleford—we were in the tapestried organroom—encountered my wandering gaze.
“Are you looking for your brother?” she said. “He has just gone back to the library with Barbara to see the Philip Sidney manuscript—it is only a fragment, but he wrote it in the room. They will rejoin us presently. It has been quite a delight to show all our old treasures to Mr. Trent. He is so sincerely interested in them.”
“Yes, isn’t he?” chimed in Lady Lippington. “There is something very real about Mr. Trent. You feel that he is not just saying what he thinks you would like him to say.”
“What I feel about your brother,” said the Duchess handsomely, “is that he’s not a foreigner.”
Evelyn, where I alone could see, made a little face at the broad back of Her Grace. “I sometimes wish,” she murmured, “that I’d struck this village before the Duchess did.”
CHAPTER XIX
TWO long tables occupied the hall when we descended next morning; and the whole establishment seemed taken up in furnishing and furbishing them, from the page-boy, who elaborately arranged the chairs, to Lady Lippington herself, who hovered over the silver bowls with willow catkins of England and yellow tulips of France. The tables groaned with all kinds of things besides bowls of flowers; beef and mutton and pasties were there, and champagne in bottles and ale in jugs, and at one end of the principal table, pink and smiling and decorated in a very fetching way, that dish of all the legends, that support of all baronial enterprise, the boar’s head. A feeling of deep concern and responsibility was plainly in everybody; I am sure Lady Lippington would have entertained ambassadors with less anxiety than she showed on this occasion. Lord Lippington himself walked through more than once with an eye on the arrangements; Billy Milliken seemed to be making himself useful in some obscure way; even Captain Pedlington, though he only stood about, had an air cf function. The very portraits on the walls, especially the full-length ones, seemed to look down with interest at the proceedings, as if they would say: “Now this is something we know about.” I fancied in some of them a critical reserve, which amounted, regarding the French tulips, to positive disapproval, and seemed to suggest that in the authentic days of hunt breakfasts, pink and white were not thought becoming to boars.
“Do you really think, Wimble, there’s enough?” Lady Lippington asked the butler, and hung upon his assurance that there was at least double what would be “required.” It was more than double what anyone could possibly require, it was prodigious to think of sitting down to at that or any hour of the morning, though one felt that by undisturbed contemplation of the boar’s head one could in time coerce an appetite.
“I’m so glad you think it looks nice,” said Lady Lippington. “And presently when you hear a solid chump, chump, you needn’t be alarmed—it’s only that the dear farmers do so enjoy it.”
“They save up for it,” said Miss Pedlington, laughing. “They really do; they never take anything till they come.” As if it were a bucolic habit anywhere to have tea and toast in bed!
“All good trencher-men, the fellows about these parts,” said Lord Lippington heartily, and led the way to the dining-room, where, to my surprise, breakfast was ready as usual.
“I don’t know,” I said, when Billy demanded what he should get me from the sideboard, “I feel very scornful of ordinary breakfast.”
“So do I,” said Graham. “My imagination asks for cold beef and boar’s head. Must I decline upon a poached egg?” So he had expected, too, that the hunt breakfast was a democratic old survival where everybody would sit down together with due respect but no distinction of platters or places. But apparently it was not to interfere with grilled things at nine o’clock. I looked across at Graham.
“Another Colonial illusion shattered,” said he, sadly helping himself to toast; and then we were compelled to explain frankly. It is always better, in England, to explain frankly. They will make any amount of allowance for the disadvantage of having always lived out of England; but it is very unwise to pretend you know.
“Well, of course,” Lord Lippington said seriously, “here in the house we hardly want it, do we? We haven’t ridden ten or twelve miles already, like some of the people who come. And it’s the tenants mostly, who make a square meal of it. But it’s here, of course, for everybody; and I’ve had a good tuck-in myself before now, after riding some distance to a meet.”
I saw in Graham’s eyes that affectionate, acquisitive look with which he often contemplated the nobleman whom he hoped so much we were going to get as a headpiece for the Dominion.
“But how disappointing for you,” cried Lady Lippington, “when that was what you were looking forward to! Do have some boar’s head, Mr. Trent. Wimble will be delighted to cut you some. Ring, Billy.”
“No,” said Graham sorrowfully. “Dear Lady Lippington, the boar’s head would be nothing, believe me, or a great deal too much, without the occasion, of which I have been for ever bereft. You can’t make it up to me with anything on a plate. Pray don’t ring, Billy.”
Graham was in excellent spirits. A kind of happiness was shining in him that I knew very well. Certain sorts of beautiful things, with which, I suppose, he had some kind of natural relationship, would always kindle it in him, and then he would behave as if nothing in the world existed except his own private kingdom of heaven. I had often reflected, lately, that Graham would find a very special felicity in being in love; and anyone who knew him well enough to recognise his states of mind might have thought, at that moment, of Barbara. But I knew it wasn’t Barbara; it was Pavis Court. I confess, with his interests at heart, I approved—as between them—of the object his affections had chosen. It seemed to me the more likely of the two to return them. It was better, I argued—I don’t know how rightly, but it was very much borne in upon me—since Barbara did not love him, that he should not love Barbara; and better still, if he seriously and definitely contemplated marriage, that there should be something for him to marry. It was a barren conclusion, no doubt, but nobody could call the situation a very fertile one. And anything was more fruitful, it seemed to me, than an oasis fed by unrequited springs. I thought very poorly of that.
It would not be doing justice to the Lippingtons if I omitted to say that we had prayers, at which persons appeared and sat in a long line with a look of subdued gratification, who were never again visible during the day. Lord Lippington read prayers to his people as the deputy of Providence for that purpose, with dignity and authority, and yet with a reticence on the personal side that almost amounted to humility. I kept thinking that that, no doubt, was the way he would do it for the King, and saw the members of His Majesty’s far households sitting in rows in the same gratified and receptive attitude … and I thoroughly agreed with Graham, who by this time was losing no opportunity of saying that little word, and getting more important people than himself to say it, to which everybody concerned with the future of the Lippingtons and the Empire seemed to attach such weight.
By ten it was pouring, and by eleven, when we gathered again, it had not cleared. Batchford seemed to think that it would be advisable, nevertheless, to get ready, but I went down with slender anticipations. Nothing, however, had been abandoned; there was the same stir, and one strange lady, planted in front of the fire with her hands clasped behind her, was cheerfully steaming from all the upper part of her person.
“You don’t look at all damped,” I said to Captain Pedlington and our host.
“Why should we?” said Lord Lippington; “we’ve been in the house. But I am afraid plenty of people will presently.”
“But will anybody come?”
“Oh, dear, yes. It isn’t a garden-party, you know,” said he, and left us to welcome another dripping arrival.
It wasn’t a garden-party, that was clear at once in the appe
arance of Miss Pedlington, who came down trussed at all points against the weather. None of the farmers, who were now lining the long tables with concentrated attention to the business in hand, could compete, it seemed to me, with Miss Pedlington in this matter of dressing down to the inclemency of the occasion, accustomed as they must have been to such chances. She was quite splendid, a Diana without a flaw; you could not discover anywhere about her an unnecessary wrinkle or a rebellious hair. Mrs. Jerome Jarvis was just as callous to all but the hunting appearance, but wore her indifference with a touch of originality; she appeared, if I remember, in a bright red stock. It was red, because it comes back to me that Billy, who took almost as many liberties as his mother did, asked her if she had a sore throat.
Billy himself was beautiful in a brand-new pink coat. He was not a member of the Famine, but showed me modestly his own button, and as more and more figures emerged from the landscape at the open door, the buttons, varying in glory, of other people. Most of them had the imprint of the Famine, but there were other members of neighbouring Hunts besides Billy, and one or two mandarins without any decoration at all. This was clearly explained to me by Mr. Milliken; at least it was clear at the time, though I hesitate after this lapse to say exactly upon what grounds the button was conferred or withheld. Some day, perhaps, I shall get it up again. But I still feel that not in China, not in Thibet, could more solemnity be attached to it.
Billy, in this connection, showed himself anxious to be a real friend. He clung closely to me, and told me low in my ear that I mustn’t say anything about “dogs.” Nor, as I loved my life, he said, must I mention their tails, nor imagine that any sound proceeding from them could be properly described as a bark. He drilled me patiently, as we watched the gathering crowd in the hall and the dining-room, in the substitute for the childish idea that hunting was done with dogs who had tails and barked; and many other things he told me upon which my reputation depended, all with the cleverest imitation of merely talking about the weather. He took so much trouble that I was quite sorry for him when Lady Lippington began introducing me right and left as a young lady from Canada who had never seen a hunt before in her life. Billy looked as if she were making his position unnecessarily trying, but stuck to it gallantly, and never let me get quite out of ear-shot.
“’Xtraordinary country we are,” he observed profoundly, as Mrs. Jack Yilke, in all the distinction of her peaked cap, dismounted at the door. “We won’t let a woman vote and yet we make her an M.F.H. I’m not at all sure, you know, after seeing Mrs. Jack’s management of kennels, that I won’t go in for female suffrage after all.”
Mrs. Yilke certainly seemed to have an idea of management. People crowded round her almost as the hounds outside were crowding round the huntsman, making much the same demonstration, which I suppose it would be even more iniquitous to ascribe to them. She had a business-like, pleasant, or disciplinary word for everybody.
“Not got it back yet?” she said pointedly to Captain Pedlington, who was in ordinary riding things; and Billy murmured with enthusiasm: “Look at that, now! This is the second time Peddle’s appeared without the pink—last time he said he’d lent his coat to a friend. You saw how neatly she dropped on him. He’ll have it on next time.”
“Plucky little woman, too!” he continued. “Under water for three minutes last week, with her horse on top of her. Rode home all the same, when we brought her round.”
“Oh,” I said, “there’s—there’s Barbara! I began to think she wasn’t coming. I wonder where Evelyn is?”
“I don’t fancy we shall see her. Doesn’t ride, you know. But here’s Doleford. He’ll tell us. I see people are beginning to mount. By-the-way, as you’re a bit of a novice at this game, better stick to me when we get off. Don’t ride in my pocket, you know, and don’t over-ride hounds whatever you do, but ”
“Cerberus is all ready, Miss Trent,” said Lord Doleford, who had crossed over to us. “You might as well get up now, I think, in case he fidgets a bit at starting. Good morning, Milliken.”
What happened to Milliken I don’t quite know, he seemed to be in some way temporarily blotted out. I saw him again as we went through the hall. He was following me with an anxious eye, and was speculating, I am sure, in his kind-hearted way, upon the solecisms I might commit in the scandalised hearing of Lord Doleford.
As we went down the steps, Peter and I, a motor came up the drive, Evelyn’s motor. Inside sat Evelyn herself, very beautifully dressed; and she was not alone. I have spoken of Evelyn’s magnanimity; I have now to mention her hospitality. On the cushions beside her, more formidable than ever in veil and goggles, sat the Duchess.
“You are just in time,” I cried thoughtlessly, “to wish us good luck!” and Evelyn, looking at me rather hard, said:
“I believe we are.”
Cerberus was all ready, standing with his groom a little apart from the field. I got up rather clumsily. Lord Doleford had something in his hand which made me a little uncertain of my spring from it, something I was afraid of crushing. When I was in the saddle he showed it to me—it was a bunch of rather small, rather pinched and ragged violets.
“Look here,” he said—“I wondered if—if you’d care to wear these. They’re not up to much, I know—there are practically no men about the place now—but I found them this morning in the Pheasant Court. I remembered you said you liked that part.”
“And—did you think of a pin?” was all I found to thank him with.
“Yes—I thought of a pin,” he said, and produced it.
I am afraid it is only too likely to be thought that I have not done justice to a meet of English foxhounds; but nobody will ever know how badly I have described those violets. It was said that Cerberus carried me very well, over everything, across everything and always well to the fore. I know I wore the violets. We killed after what I agree to have been an exciting run of I can’t in the least say how many hours; and they so manipulated matters that I was given the honour of the brush on my saddle. But the thing I possessed was the violets.
CHAPTER XX
NEXT morning it seemed to me that the air still had an excited feeling, although all traces of the celebration of the day before had vanished. Only the trampled hoof-marks in the open space between the drive and the park remained to speak of the great event. I happened to be out there before breakfast, and easily found the deep prints of Cerberus where the dear beast lifted a little in starting; I could even follow them a short distance, and those of the black mare Lord Doleford was riding. She was only a hireling from Wofford, but she seemed to make a point of showing the way to Cerberus everywhere. Peter said he was very much inclined to buy her and take her back to India with him as a charger. I remembered this and a number of other interesting things he told me. I reviewed the whole day, standing, as it were, in the prints of Cerberus; and if I do not describe it at length it is because of the impossibility of making other people understand what a heavenly thing it is to ride to hounds.
“What are you doing out here?” suddenly said Billy Milliken behind me.
“Oh, I just dashed out,” I said, “to see—to see if it had stopped raining.”
“Well,” said Billy, “it has, hasn’t it? It’s a ripping morning. And I say, just as it happens, you know, I was thinkin’ about you. I’ve been round to the stables to have a look at my animal—got rather scratched going through that bullfinch yesterday, but nothing to signify. I noticed you didn’t tackle it—very wise, too. So this is luck, you know.”
“So it is,” I replied. “It must be nearly breakfast-time, too, which is more luck,” and we moved towards the house.
“I say, Miss Trent, I say, Mary—have you any objection to my calling you Mary?—I’ve been thinking things over pretty thoroughly the last day or two, and I’ve decided that we get on uncommonly well together. What do you say?”
“I can’t very well mind your calling me Mary,” I said, “because I always call you Billy. It is impossible to help it. Everybo
dy does. Yes, of course we do. Shall we get on a little faster now? Aren’t you hungry?”
“Oh, now you’re chaffing!” said Mr. Milliken.
“Indeed I’m not,” I told him; “I’m starving!”
“Oh, come on, then!” said Billy with the concern that this kind of urgency produces in England, “but I don’t know whether you’re an admirer of Shakespeare, Miss Trent. There’s one certain Shakespeare quotation I haven’t been able to get out of my head ever since I met you. There is a tide in the affairs of men which if you’re on the spot, don’t you know, is as good as the ace. Favourite quotation of my mother’s, too. Some awfully true things that old boy said, I consider. I think in that case he meant ‘If you admire anybody, tell her so—don’t be a dumb idiot!’ Don’t you?”
“I think that’s rather a free translation, you know, Billy,” I said.
Billy pondered for a moment. “Well,” he said, “what I was going to ask you, only you put me off, was this. Have you any objection to Englishmen?”
“Not the least in the world,” I assured him. “I am nearly always very pleased with them.”
“Then the point is,” said Billy—“I yield to no one in my admiration for our Colonies.”
“That’s right. Don’t!” I said. We had almost reached the steps.
“I’d uncommonly like to see them,” said Billy feebly.
“Well,” I said, “if you’d only do your lessons and get your degree you could run across, I should think, any time, couldn’t you?”
“There’s this infernal business of the House.”
“To be sure. I had forgotten that. That can’t elect you, I suppose, in your absence,” I suggested.
“Absolutely impossible!”
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