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The Eldest Son

by Archibald Marshall · English · Gutenberg #38646 · 662,179 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Eldest Son

Author: Archibald Marshall


        
Release date: January 23, 2012 [eBook #38646]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38646

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELDEST SON ***




Produced by Al Haines










THE ELDEST SON



BY

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

Author of "Exton Manor"




NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1919




COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

Published September, 1911




To

KATHLEEN




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I  The Squire Is Infernally Worried
     II  A Question of Matrimony
    III  Exit Miss Bird
     IV  The Dower-House
      V  Lady George
     VI  Blaythorn Rectory
    VII  The Squire Puts His Foot Down
   VIII  The Squire Feels Trouble Coming
     IX  Dick Pays a Sunday Visit
      X  The Meet at Apthorpe Common
     XI  Dick Leaves Kencote and Makes a Discovery
    XII  The House Party
   XIII  The Hunt Ball
    XIV  A Shoot
     XV  The Guns and the Ladies
    XVI  The Money Question
   XVII  Sunday and Monday
  XVIII  Mrs. Clinton Chooses a Governess
    XIX  Mrs. Clinton In Jermyn Street
     XX  Aunt Laura Intervenes
    XXI  An Engagement
   XXII  Dick Comes Home
  XXIII  Humphrey Counts His Chickens
   XXIV  Virginia Goes to Kencote
    XXV  A Lawn Meet
   XXVI  What Miss Phipp Saw
  XXVII  The Run of the Season
 XXVIII  Property
   XXIX  Brothers
    XXX  Miss Bird Hears All About It




CHAPTER I

THE SQUIRE IS INFERNALLY WORRIED

"Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried."  He was sitting
in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire.  In front of
him was a table set for tea for one--himself.  There were buttered
toast and dry toast and preserves, a massive silver teapot, milk jug,
cream jug, and sugar basin, a breakfast cup of China tea, and two
boiled eggs, one of which he was attacking, sitting forward in his
chair with his legs bent.  He had come in from hunting a few minutes
before, at about six o'clock, and it was his habit thus to consume
viands which most men of his age and bulk might have been afraid of, as
likely to spoil their dinner.  But he was an active man, in spite of
his fifty-nine years and his tendency to put on flesh, and it would
have taken more than a tea that was almost a meal to reduce his
appetite for dinner at eight, after a day in the saddle and a lunch off
sandwiches and a flask of sherry.  When his tea was over he would
indulge himself in half an hour's nap, with the _Times_ open at the
leader page on his knee, and go up to dress, feeling every inch of him
a sportsman and an English country gentleman.

His tea was generally brought to him in his library.  This evening a
footman had followed him into that room immediately upon his entering
the house, as usual, had unbuckled his spurs, pulled off his boots for
him, and put on in their place a pair of velvet slippers worked in
silk, which had been warming in front of the fire.  Only when his coat
was wet or much splashed with mud did the Squire change that.  He
considered smoking-jackets rather effeminate, and slippers, on ordinary
occasions, "sloppy."  It was only in his dressing-room or on these
evenings after hunting that he wore them.  Otherwise, if he had to
change his boots during the daytime he put on another pair.  He was
particular on little points like this.  All his rules were kept
precisely, by himself and those about him.

This evening he had told the footman, and the butler who had followed
him into the room with the tray, that he would have his tea in Mrs.
Clinton's room, and he had marched across the hall with a firm and
decisive step, in his red coat and buckskin breeches, between which and
his hand-knitted heather-mixture socks showed a white expanse of
under-drawers round a muscular calf.

Mrs. Clinton sat opposite to him in another low chair, at work on a
woollen waistcoat.  He always wore waistcoats made by her, thick for
the winter, light for the summer, and she knitted his socks for him, of
which he required a large number, for he hated them to be darned.  He
liked to see her working for him like this.  He was a rich man, but a
woman ought to work with her hands for her husband, whether he was rich
or poor.  It was her wifely duty, and incidentally it kept her out of
mischief.  Mrs. Clinton, at the age of fifty-four, with her smooth
yellow-grey hair and her quiet and composed face, did not look as if
she would be up to serious mischief, even if this and other
restrictions were removed from her.  She looked up when her husband
addressed her, and marked the furrow between his heavy eyebrows.  Then
she looked down again at her work and waited for him to unbosom himself
further.

"How old is Dick?" asked the Squire, leaning forward to put a spoonful
of yolk of egg into his mouth with one hand, while he shielded his grey
beard with the other.

She knew then the subject upon which he had expressed himself as
infernally worried, for he was not accustomed to keep the first
stirrings of discontent to himself.

"He was thirty-four last April," she said.

"Thirty-four," he repeated.  "Yes; and I was _twenty_-four when I
married you.  That's early.  I shouldn't advise any young man to marry
at that age, unless, perhaps, he was the only one to keep a name
going--as I was, of course--at least in my immediate family.  But
thirty-four!  It's really time Dick thought about it.  He's the eldest
son.  It's his duty.  And as far as I can see he never gives the matter
a thought.  Eh?"

"As far as I can see he is not thinking about it," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Well, if _I_ couldn't see _you_ couldn't see.  I say it is time that
he did begin thinking about it.  I'm getting on now--good for another
twenty years, I should hope, but I want to see the succession assured.
Walter is the only one of the boys that's married, and he's only got
two girls.  Of course, he may have a son--they're coming pretty
quick--but I've never got over that doctoring business.  I shouldn't
like the heir of Kencote to be brought up in a place like Melbury Park,
and I say so freely--to you."

This was the echo of an old disturbance.  The Squire's third son had
refused to take Orders, with a view of occupying the family living, but
had studied medicine, and was now practising in a suburb of London, and
not one of the most genteel suburbs either.  That furrow always
appeared faintly in the Squire's brow when he was forced to mention the
distasteful words Melbury Park.

"I think it would be a good thing if Dick were to marry," said Mrs.
Clinton.

"Good thing?  Of course it would be a good thing.  That's just what I'm
saying.  There's Humphrey; he doesn't look much like marrying, either.
In fact, if he doesn't pick up a wife with a pot of money, I'd rather
he didn't.  He spends quite enough as it is.  I've no opinion of that
London life, except for a bit when a man's young and before he settles
down.  Dick has been in the Guards now for--what?--twelve years.  I
never meant that he should take up soldiering as a profession.  Just a
few years spent with a good regiment--as I had myself, in the
Blues--that's all right for a young fellow who has a good property to
succeed to.  But an eldest son ought to settle down, _on_ the property,
and get married, and have sons to succeed _him_."

"Dick comes here a good deal," said Mrs. Clinton, "and he takes an
interest in the property."

"Well, I should hope he did," responded the Squire.  "The property will
belong to him when my time's over.  What do you mean?"

"I only mean that Dick is not wrapped up in London life and all that
goes with it, as Humphrey seems to be."

"Oh, Humphrey!  I've no patience with Humphrey.  If Kencote isn't good
enough for him let him stay away.  Only I won't pay any more bills for
him.  He has a good allowance and he must keep within it.  I've told
him so.  Now if I'd put _him_ into the army, instead of the Foreign
Office, he might have stuck to it and made a profession of it.  I wish
I had--into a working regiment.  It would have done him all the good in
the world.  However, I don't want to talk about Humphrey.  I don't
expect an heir to come from him; and Frank is too young to marry yet.
Besides--a sailor!  It's better for him to marry later.  Dick _ought_
to marry, and there's an end of it.  And when he comes down to-morrow I
shall tell him so."

Mrs. Clinton made no immediate reply, but after a pause, during which
the Squire came to the end of his eggs and began to attack the buttered
toast, she said, "I have to tell you something, Edward, which I am
afraid will disturb you."

"Besides," pursued the Squire in his loud, resolute voice, "there's the
dower-house standing empty now.  If Dick were to get married soon I
need not bother about finding a tenant for it.  I don't _want_ to let
it; it's too near here.  If we got people there we didn't like it would
be an infernal nuisance.  Eh, Nina?  What were you saying?"

"I am sorry to say," said Mrs. Clinton, "that Miss Bird is going to
leave us."

The Squire was just about to put a piece of toast into his mouth, which
was half open for its reception.  It remained half open while he looked
at his wife, the toast arrested halfway.  "Miss Bird!  Leave us!" he
exclaimed when he had found his voice.  He could hardly have been more
astounded if his wife had announced that _she_ was going to leave him,
and indeed Miss Bird had lived at Kencote nearly as long as Mrs.
Clinton, and had initiated into the mysteries of learning all the young
Clintons, from Dick, who was now thirty-four, down to the twins, Joan
and Nancy, who were fifteen.

"She has talked about it for some time," said Mrs. Clinton.  "She has
felt that the children were getting beyond her, and ought to have
better teaching than she can give them."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire.  "I don't want the
children turned into blue-stockings.  I'm quite satisfied with what
Miss Bird is doing for them, and if she wants telling so, for goodness'
sake tell her, and let's have no more of such rubbish.  Miss Bird
indeed!  Who's she to upset the whole house?"

"I am afraid she has determined to go, Edward," said Mrs. Clinton in
her equable voice.  "Her invalid sister, you know, has lost her
husband, and there is no one else to look after her."

The Squire grunted.  "Well, if that's the reason," he said, rather
grudgingly, "I suppose we can't complain, although it's a most infernal
nuisance.  I've got used to Miss Bird.  She's a silly old creature in
some respects, but she's faithful and honest.  Now we shall have to get
used to somebody else.  Really, when one thing goes wrong, everything
goes wrong.  Life is hardly worth living with all these worries.  One
never seems to get a moment's peace.  I'm going into my room now, Nina,
to read the paper for a bit."

"I should like to talk to you for a few minutes longer about the
children," said Mrs. Clinton.  "As a change has to be made, I want to
make a thorough one.  It is quite true that they are beyond Miss Bird,
even if she could have stayed.  I should like to send them to a good
school for two or three years, and then to France or Germany for a
year."

The Squire bent his brows in an amazed frown.  "What on earth can you
be thinking of, Nina?" he exclaimed.  "France or Germany?  Nice healthy
English girls--teach 'em to eat frogs and horse-sausage--pick up a lot
of affected nonsense!  You can put that idea out of your head at once."

Mrs. Clinton's calm face flushed.  "There is no need to talk of that
for two or three years," she said.  "I should like them now--when Miss
Bird leaves us--to go to a really good school in England, where they
can learn something."

"Learn something?  What do you mean--learn something?  Haven't they
been learning something all their lives--at least since Miss Bird began
to teach them?  What does a girl want to learn, except how to read and
write a good hand and add up accounts?  I don't want any spectacled,
short-haired, flat-chested females in _my_ house, thank you.  The
children are very well as they are.  They're naughty sometimes, I've no
doubt, but they're good girls on the whole.  Girls ought to be brought
up at home under their mother's eye.  I can't think what you want to
send them away from you for, Nina.  It isn't like you.  I should have
thought you would have missed them.  I know _I_ should, and they're not
going to school."

"I should miss them very much," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Very well, then, let them stop at home.  It's quite simple."

Mrs. Clinton was silent, bending her head over her work.

"You would miss them and _I_ should miss them," pursued the Squire,
after a pause.  "No, there's no sense in it."

There was another pause, and then the Squire asked, "Why do you want to
send them to school?"

Mrs. Clinton laid down her work and looked at him.  "I should be
satisfied," she said, "if they could get the teaching they ought to
have at home.  Perhaps I should prefer it.  But it would mean a
first-class governess living here, and----"

"Well, there's no objection to that," interrupted the Squire.  "I dare
say old Miss Bird is a little out of date.  Get a good governess by all
means; only not a blue-stocking, mind you."

Mrs. Clinton smiled.  "I'm afraid she would have to be what you would
call a blue-stocking," she said.  "But she needn't show it.  Clever
girls don't wear spectacles and short hair necessarily nowadays."

"Oh, don't they?" said the Squire good-humouredly.  He was leaning back
in his chair now, looking at the fire.  "How are you going to set about
getting one?"

"I should ask Emmeline to help me."  Emmeline was Lady Birkett, the
wife of Mrs. Clinton's brother, the judge.

"Not a bad idea," said the Squire.  "But I won't have any of your
suffragettes.  Herbert is a very good fellow, but he's a most pestilent
Radical."

"You would let me offer a good salary, I suppose."

"What do we pay Miss Bird?"

"Only thirty pounds a year.  She has never asked for more."

"She's a good old creature.  I'm sorry for her sister.  Is she well
off, do you know?"

"I'm afraid very badly off."

"Then how will they get on?  I suppose Miss Bird has saved a bit.
She's had no expenses here except her clothes for many years."

"She told me she had saved about four hundred pounds."

"_Has she_?  Out of thirty pounds a year!  It's extraordinary.  Still,
that won't give her much, capitalised, poor old creature.  I'll tell
you what, Nina, I'll talk it over with Dick and see if we can't fix up
a little annuity for her.  She's served us well and faithfully all
these years, and we ought to do something for her."

"Oh, Edward, I am so glad," said Mrs. Clinton.  "I hoped you might see
your way to helping her.  She will be so very grateful."

The Squire lifted himself out of his chair.  "Oh yes, we'll do
something or other," he said.  "Well, get another governess then, Nina,
and pay her--what do you want to pay her?--forty?"

Mrs. Clinton hesitated a moment.  "I want to get the best I can," she
said.  "I want to pay her eighty at least."

The Squire, in his moods of good humour, was proof against all
annoyance over other people's follies.  He laughed.  "Oh, I should make
it a hundred if I were you," he said.

"When the boys had Mr. Blake in their holidays," said Mrs. Clinton, "he
had five pounds a week, and only had to teach them for an hour a day."

"That's a very different thing," said the Squire.  "Blake was a
University man and a gentleman.  You have to pay a private tutor well."

"I want to get a lady," said Mrs. Clinton, "and I should like one who
had been to a University."

"Oh, my dear girl," said the Squire, moving off down the room, "have it
your own way and pay her what you like.  Now is there anything else I
can do for you before I go and write a few letters?"

"You are very kind, Edward, in letting me have my way about this.
There is one more thing.  If the children went to school they would
have extra lessons for music and drawing or anything else that they
might show talent in.  Joan and Nancy have both got talent.  I want to
be able to have masters for them, from Bathgate--or perhaps even from
London--for anything special that their governess cannot teach them."

The Squire was at the door.  "Well, upon my word!" he said, nodding his
head at her.  Then he went out of the room.




CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF MATRIMONY

Dick Clinton, the eldest son, arrived at Kencote at a quarter to eight,
and went straight up to his room to dress.  This young man--for, with
his spare, upright frame, sleek head, and well-fitting clothes, he
looked less than his thirty-four years--was as well served as his
father, although he did not get his will by the same means; and the
little wrongs of life, each of which the Squire, as they came along,
dealt with as "a most infernal nuisance," he took more equably.  He had
brought his own servant with him, but had no need of him for the time,
for his evening clothes were laid out for him, his shirt, with studs in
and a collar attached, was hung over the back of a chair in front of
the piled-up fire, and he had only to slip out of one suit and into
another as if he had been in the house all day instead of having just
reached the end of a journey of over three hours.  These things were
all a matter of course to him.  The warm bright room, red-curtained,
and quiet from the deep stillness of the country, gave him no
particular sensation of pleasure when he entered it, except that he was
cold from his journey and there was a good fire; nor, consciously, did
the fact that this was his home, which he liked better than any other
place, although he was more often than not away from it.  He was
thinking, as he began immediately in his quick neat way to change his
clothes, that there was no apparent sign of the frost yielding, and
fighting off his annoyance--for he hated to feel annoyed--at the
stoppage of the morrow's hunting.  He had very much wanted to hunt on
the morrow, more than he usually wanted anything.

And yet he was, though he hardly knew it, pleased to be at home, and in
this room, which had been his ever since he had left the nursery.  The
little iron bedstead was the one on which he had slept as a boy; the
flat tin bath, standing against a wall with the bath-mat hung over it,
was only rather the worse for wear since those days; the worn carpet,
now more worn, was the same; and the nondescript paper on the walls,
which were hung with photographs of his "house" at Eton, showing him
amongst the rest in five stages, from the little fair-haired boy in his
broad collar sitting cross-legged on the grass, to the young man with
folded arms in a place of honour by his tutor.  There were later
Cambridge groups too, exhibiting him as Master of the Drag, in the
eighteenth-century dress of the True Blue Club, and in other
conjunctures of pursuits and companions, but nothing to mark a later
date than his University days, unless it were the big photographs in
silver or tortoise-shell frames on the mantelpiece and writing-table.
Probably nothing had been added to the decoration of the room for a
dozen years, only a few things for use--a larger wardrobe and
dressing-table from another room in the house, a big easy-chair, a fur
rug by the bed.  The room contained everything he needed in such a
room, and since he needed nothing there to please the eye, it had
received nothing all these years, and would receive nothing until he
should leave it for good, when he should be no longer the eldest son,
but in his turn the head of the house.

He had nearly finished dressing when there was a knock at the door, and
a voice, "Are you there, Dick?  Can we come in?"

His rather expressionless face changed a little, pleasantly.  "Yes,
come along," he called out, and his young sisters came in in their
fresh muslin frocks, their masses of fair hair tied back with big blue
ribbons.  They had that prim air of being dressed, which is different
in the case of girls not quite grown up from that of their elder
sisters.  They were remarkably alike and remarkably pretty, and Dick,
who stood at the dressing-table in his shirt sleeves tying his tie,
although he did not turn round to greet them, noticed their appearance
with approval through the glass.

"Well, Twankies," he said affably, as they went up to the mantelpiece
and stood one on either side of the fire, "what's the news with you?"

"We are to have a new preceptress," said Joan, the elder, "_vice_ the
old Starling, seconded for service elsewhere."

Dick turned and stared at her.  "Old Miss Bird leaving!" he exclaimed.
"Surely not!"

"You can't be more surprised than we were," said Nancy--the twins
generally spoke alternately.  "She broke it to us in floods of tears
this afternoon.  Joan cried too."

"So did you," retorted Joan.  "You blubbered like a seal."

"And it did me credit," said Nancy, accepting the charge with complete
equanimity.

"What is she going for?" asked Dick.

"She has to go and look after her sister, poor old thing!" said Joan.
"And she doesn't think she knows enough to take us on any further."

"We denied it hotly, to comfort her," continued Nancy.  "But it's quite
true.  We have the brains of the family, and are now going to leave
childish things behind us.  I wish you'd make your watch ring, Dick."

Dick pressed the spring of his repeater, and the twins listened to its
tinkle in silence.  Nancy sighed when he put it into his pocket.  "Even
that isn't the treat that it used to be," she said.  "We are getting
too old for these simple pleasures.  Joan is beginning to take an
interest in dress, and I am often to be seen absorbed in a book.  Dick,
shall you kiss Miss Bird when you say good-bye?  There's nothing she
would love better."

"When is she going?" asked Dick, ignoring the question.

"In about a week," Joan replied.  "Dick, I think you ought to kiss her,
if you possibly can.  You are the eldest, and nearer her heart than any
of us.  She told us so."

"I'll give you both a kiss and you can pass it on," said Dick, with an
arm round each.  "Come along down."

They went down to the morning-room, and on the stroke of eight Dick led
his mother into dinner, the Squire following.

The twins settled themselves each in a corner of the big sofa in front
of the fire.  They usually read during the half-hour before they were
summoned to dessert, but this evening they had something to talk about.

"I wonder what she'll be like," Nancy began.

"If Aunt Emmeline chooses her I should think she would be all right,"
said Joan.

Nancy considered this.  "Yes," she said.  "But she will have to be kept
in her place.  Of course we have always been able to do exactly as we
like with the old Starling.  Joan, we must conserve our liberties."

"Oh, I think we shall be able to do that," said Joan.  "We must remain
calm and polite."

"And keep up our reputation for eccentricity," added Nancy.  Then they
both giggled.

"You know, Joan, I think it's rather fun," Nancy proceeded.  "I shan't
a bit mind learning things now.  I should have hated it a year or two
ago.  But you can't deny that it is rather slow at home."

"That's why Cicely ran away," said Joan.  "She simply couldn't stand it
any longer.  But it doesn't worry me like that.  We have a pretty good
time on the whole."

"Yes, we see to that.  But, of course, Cicely was much older.  And
after all, she didn't run very far--only to London, to see Walter and
Muriel.  And she soon came back."

"She had to.  I believe there was more in that than we knew about."

Nancy looked up sharply.  "Do you?  Why?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know.  I believe it had something to do with her
engagement to Jim.  She was married pretty soon after, anyhow, and
there was no talk of it at the time."

"I wonder if we could find out."

"What's the good?  And it's over two years ago now.  I wonder if Dick
would drive us over to Mountfield to see the babies to-morrow.  He
won't be able to hunt."

"He won't want to see the babies.  Men are so silly in that way.  They
pretend they don't care for them."

"Father doesn't.  He's just as silly about them as we are."

"It isn't silliness in us.  We are women, and we understand.  If a man
does like a baby it's just as a toy."

"All the same, I think it does father credit liking his grandchildren.
I should hardly have expected it of him."

"He's getting softer in his old age.  Nancy, I wonder how mother
persuaded him to let us have a really good governess.  He'd think it
quite absurd that girls should want to learn anything."

"My dear child, you could get anything you wanted out of father if you
tackled him in the right way."

"Only some things."

"Anything, I said."

"I'll bet you four weeks' pocket-money that you couldn't get him to let
us hunt."

"Oh, well! that's part of his religion.  'I may be old-fashioned--I
dare say I am--but to see a pack of women scampering about the country
and riding over the hounds--eh, what?  No, thank you!'  I didn't mean I
could make him become a Roman Catholic, or anything of that sort.  But
I'll bet you what you like I'll get him to let us have a pony."

"Four shillings?"

"Right."

"Do you think you really can, Nancy?  It would be jolly."

"I don't see why he shouldn't.  Cicely always rode old Tommy, and so
did we till he died."

"Only surreptitiously, and bare-backed.  We should have to have habits
and all that, now."

"Mother would see to that.  Anyhow, I'll tackle him."

"How shall you manage it?"

"I shall think out a scheme."

"Dick might help.  Nancy, I'll bet you eight weeks' pocket-money you
can't get two ponies."

"I'll begin with one, and see how I get on.  Now I think I'll immerse
myself in a book."

Presently they were called into the dining-room and sat, one on each
side of their father, cracking and peeling walnuts for him and eating
grapes on their own account, demure and submissively responsive to his
affectionate jocularity.  "What big girls you're both getting!" he
said.  "And going to be turned into blue-stockings, eh, what!  Have to
buy you a pair of spectacles each next time I go to Bathgate."  He
laughed his big laugh, drank half a glass of port, and beamed on them.
He thought they were the prettiest pair of young feminine creatures he
had ever seen, and so little trouble too!  It was a good thing for a
man to have sons to carry on his name, but young girls were an
attractive addition to a family, and to the pleasures of a big house.
He had thought it rather ridiculous of his wife to present him with the
twins fifteen years before, and seven years after his youngest son was
born, but he had long since forgiven her, and would not now have been
without them for anything.

When he and Dick were left alone over their wine there was a short
pause, and then he cleared his throat and began: "I want to talk to you
about something, Dick."

Dick threw a glance at him and took a puff at his cigarette, but made
no reply.

The Squire seemed a little nervous, which was not usual with him.  "Of
course I don't want to interfere with you in any way," he said.  "I've
always given you a pretty free hand, even with the property, and all
that sort of thing.  I've consulted you, and you've had your way
sometimes when we've differed.  That's all right.  It will belong to
you some day, and you're--what?--thirty-four now."

"Yes," said Dick.  "Thirty-four.  Time to think of settling down, eh?"

The Squire brightened.  "Yes, that's just it," he said.  "Time to think
of settling down.  You've had enough soldiering--much more than I had.
I never expected you would stick to it so long."

"I don't want to leave the service yet," said Dick calmly.  "I'm down
here pretty often--almost all my leave."

"Yes, yes, I know," said the Squire.  "But if--if----  Well, look here,
Dick--no use beating about the bush--why can't you get married?"

Dick smiled.  "It wouldn't be a bad scheme," he said.

The Squire was pleased.  He was getting on splendidly.  "You feel
that," he said.  "Well, I haven't liked to say anything, but it's been
on my mind for a long time."  He then recapitulated the reasons why he
thought Dick should marry, as he had enunciated them to Mrs.
Clinton--his position as eldest son and heir to a fine property, his
advancing age, the inadvisability of looking to Melbury Park as the
cradle for a successor to the emoluments and amenities of Kencote, or
of leaving it to Humphrey, the second son, to provide an heir.  "The
fact is, you ought to do it for your own sake," he wound up, "as well
as for the sake of the place."

"Whom do you want me to marry?" asked Dick, with a shade of flippancy.

"Oh, well, I'd leave that to you," the Squire conceded handsomely.
"You've a lot to offer.  I should think you could pretty well take your
pick--must have had plenty of opportunities all these years.  You
needn't look for money, though it's always useful.  Any nice girl of
good birth--of course you wouldn't want to marry one who wasn't.  Good
heavens! there must be a score of them presented every year, and you
have been about London now for ten or twelve years.  Do you mean to say
you haven't got one in your mind?"

"Haven't you?" asked Dick.

"Well, if you like to consult me, why not Grace Ettien?  Old Humphrey
Meadshire would be delighted.  She is his favourite granddaughter, and
I'm sure he would like to see her married before he goes."

"Grace is a charming girl," replied Dick.  "But I don't want to marry
my cousin."

"Cousin!  My dear fellow, old Humphrey and your grandfather were first
cousins.  You're surely not going to let that stand in the way."

"I've known her ever since she was a baby.  She's a baby now.  It would
be like marrying one of the Twankies."

The Squire began to get fussed.  "You're talking nonsense, Dick," he
said.  "She must be at least twenty-one.  The fact is you have left it
so long that an ordinary girl of a marriageable age seems a child to
you.  You'll be taking up with a widow next."

There was an appreciable pause before Dick asked, "Well, should you
object so much to that?"

"Of course I should," said the Squire, "--for you.  I shouldn't mind in
the case of Humphrey, if she wasn't too old, and had enough money for
the pair of them.  I'm not going to pay any more of his debts.  I'm
sick of it."

Dick allowed the conversation to travel down this byroad for a time,
and when the Squire brought it back to the original track, said, "Well,
I'll think over what you say.  But I don't know that I should care,
now, about marrying a young girl."

The Squire turned this over in his mind, looking down on his plate, and
his brows came together.  "What do you mean?" he asked shortly.  "You
wouldn't want to marry an old woman."

Dick took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it.

"When I marry," he said decisively, "it will probably be a woman of
nearer thirty than twenty."

The Squire made the best of it.  "Oh, well--as long as she's not over
thirty," he said.  "Girls don't marry so young as they used to.
But--well, you must think of an heir, Dick."

Dick made no reply to this, and the conversation ended.




CHAPTER III

EXIT MISS BIRD

Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with
frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she
had lived for over thirty years that her first thought was, "No hunting
to-day"; although the deprivation could not be expected to hold any
disappointment for herself, or indeed to affect her in any way.

Her second thought marked a drop to the sombre uneasiness in which she
had spent wakeful hours during the night.  She would not rise many more
times in this familiar room, nor look out on to a scene which she had
come to know so well at all seasons of the year that she could not help
loving it.  She would have liked to see the trees of the park, for a
farewell, in their early June dress, the grass about them powdered with
the yellow of buttercups.  But she hoped so to see them again.  She had
been made to feel that she was parting from friends, that she was by
virtue of her long and faithful service part of the family, that she
would not lose them altogether.  The Squire had said the day before,
when he had made known to her that he had heard of her projected
departure, "You must come and see us, you know, Miss Bird.  The house
won't be like itself without you."

Could anything be more gratifying--and from such a man?  Mrs. Clinton,
of course, had been kindness itself, had said just the right things to
make a person feel herself valued, and said them as if she meant them,
as no doubt, dear lady, she did, for she was always sincere.  And the
darling children had cried--she should never forget that as long as she
lived--when she had told them that she was going.  Here the simple lady
found a tear trickling down her own sharp nose, and put a hairpin in
her mouth while she wiped it away.

It seemed impossible that she should really be going.  It was just upon
thirty years since she had first come to Kencote, and it seemed like
yesterday.  She summoned up a rueful little smile when she recalled, in
the light of her now assured position as "a member of the family," her
palpitating nervousness on her introduction to the great house, so
different from anything she had known.  She had never been "out"
before.  She had had a good education, for those days, in the day
school that her mother, the doctor's widow, and her elder sister had
carried on in a little town in which she had been born, and had taught
in it till she was twenty-eight.  Then, after deep consultation, she
had answered Mrs. Clinton's advertisement, and, her references having
proved satisfactory, had been engaged to impart the rudiments of
education to a child of five, which she had modestly thought she was as
capable of doing as anybody, and at a salary that seemed to her
munificent.

She remembered arriving at Kencote on a spring evening and being
received by Mrs. Clinton, the pretty young wife and mother, who had
been almost as shy as herself, but had been so anxious that everything
should be "nice" for her that she had soon lost her awe of the big
house and the many servants; and even the figure in the background from
which all the splendour around her emanated lost some of its
imaginative terror, since the lady of the house had proved so
accessibly human.  She had thought the little boy, whom she had been
taken to see in bed, a darling, and so quaint when he asked her
solemnly if she could jump a pony over a log, because he could.  She
had liked his quiet, elderly nurse, who had come to talk to her in her
schoolroom when he had gone to sleep.  She had called her "miss," and
shown that she had no wish to "presume," but only the wish to be
friendly, and they had, in fact, remained friends for years.  She had
been greatly pleased with the size and comfort of her schoolroom, which
she had entirely to herself, to read or write or play the piano in,
outside hours of lessons, which were at first as short as was
conceivably possible.  And she had not in the least expected that there
would be a maid for the schoolroom, who was, as she wrote to her
sister, practically her own maid, calling her in the morning and
bringing her a cup of tea, lighting a fire for her every evening in her
bedroom as a matter of course, and indeed treating her as if she might
be the mistress of the house.

She had been happy at Kencote from the first, although she had been a
good deal alone, for until her little pupil had grown bigger she had
had all her meals sent up to her in the schoolroom, except on Sundays,
when she lunched downstairs in charge of little Dick.  Those were
nervous occasions, for it took her a long time to get used to the
Squire--the young Squire, as he was then--with his loud laugh and
hearty ways, who used to chaff her at table in a way to cause her
uneasiness, although he was never anything but kind, and she was
assured, even when she blushed deepest, that his manner was only
intended to put her at her ease and make her feel "one of the family."

She had soon lost any awe she may have started with of Mrs. Clinton,
although her respect for that lady's character had only grown with the
passage of time.  Mrs. Clinton used to sit with her sometimes in the
schoolroom, and in the summer time they would work under the big lime
in the garden while little Dick played about on the lawn.  Miss Bird's
simple gaiety of heart had had play, and her rather breathless
volubility had never been checked by any stiffness on the part of Mrs.
Clinton.  Mr. Beach, the Rector of Kencote, and the Squire's
half-brother, had always treated her with consideration, and his wife
had made her feel at home in the rectory, and expected her to visit
there occasionally on her own account.  The Squire's six maiden aunts
at the dower-house, all but one of whom were now dead, had also treated
her kindly, but in a rather more patronising manner.  She had not
minded that.  She had quite agreed with the opinion which underlay
everything they said and did, though it was seldom expressed in words,
that the Clintons of Kencote were great people in the land, and her
native humility had led her to accept gratefully the attentions paid to
her by them and their neighbours, and to "presume" on it no more than
little Dick's nurse had presumed on her own mild gentility.

She had found little Dick rather a handful as he grew older, but she
had coped successfully with him, by the expenditure of much energy of
speech and action, and had courageously beaten the beginnings of
learning into his brain, so that he took a good place at his first
school, and she was not disgraced.  By that time Humphrey was ready for
her guiding hand, and then Walter, and a few years later, Cicely,
hailed with joy as a pupil whom she might train up to the fine finish;
for there could be no talk of school for a girl Clinton, and Miss
Bird's success with Dick had given her a high place as an instructress
in the Squire's estimate of her abilities, so that there was never any
idea of her being some day superseded, and the years at Kencote
stretched happily in front of her.

Cicely was nine, and Frank, the sailor, seven, when the twins arrived.
The day of their birth was a good day in Miss Bird's annals.  It meant
more years still at Kencote, and by this time the idea of living with
any other family would have been most distressing to her.  And yet she
would have had to seek another situation but for the arrival of the
twins, for when she should have finished with Cicely she would be fifty
only, and would not have put by enough money to enable her to retire.
These are the hardships of a governess's lot, and Miss Bird had them
fully in her mind, saving and skimping all through the fruitful years
for a time when not only the opulences of existence in a house like
Kencote should be hers no longer, but it might be difficult to make
ends meet at all.  The twins lifted a weight off her mind, which, with
all her daily cheerfulness and courage, had never been quite absent
from her; for another nine or ten years would just enable her to
provide for her old age, and she knew that those nine or ten years
would be hers if she could only keep her health, of which there seemed
no reasonable doubt.  "It is not many women in my position who are as
fortunate as I," she had written to her sister at the time.  "The
Squire, who _roared_ with laughter when he heard of the birth of the
darling babies, said to me the first time he saw me afterwards, 'Well,
that fixes _you_ for another twenty years, Miss Bird.'  And he added in
a way which you might think profane if you had not heard him say it,
'Thank God, eh?'"

Well, here was the end of those happy years, which seemed to have sped
like a week or two since the birth of the twins.  She had seen Walter
and Cicely married and had dandled their babies.  She had shared Mrs.
Clinton's daily anxiety during the long months Dick had served in South
Africa, and had taken his award of a D.S.O. almost as a personal
compliment.  She had been glad at all the joys of the family and
saddened with their sorrows.  She had seen the Squire grow from a
handsome young man to an elderly one, and Mrs. Clinton's hair turn
nearly white.  She had boxes and drawers full of the presents she had
received at Christmas and on her birthdays, which had never been
forgotten, and the photographs of Clintons of all ages from babyhood
upwards were displayed on every available standing place in her room.
They were more to her than her sister or her sister's children, but the
call had come to her to leave them and to go to a place where she would
have to work hard and anxiously for the rest of her life on a very
small pittance and in very narrow surroundings, and it had never
occurred to her to shirk it.  It had all fitted in--she felt that she
had been "guided."  The teaching which she had never doubted that she
was able to give to Cicely now seemed to her inadequate for the finish
of the twins' education, but she did doubt, now that her departure had
been settled for her on other grounds, whether she would have had the
strength to say so and cut herself adrift of her own accord.  Here was
matter for thankfulness--that she had been led to see what her duty
was, and to do it.  She would always have Kencote to look back to, and
she was indeed fortunate to have spent the best part of her life in
such a place, and with such people.

The twins came in as she was finishing her toilette, to take her down
to breakfast.  This was a reversal of the procedure of the past, when
it had been the first of her daily duties to hunt them out of whatever
spot out of doors or in to which their vagrant fancy had led them, and
see that they appeared to the public eye duly washed, combed, and
brushed.  They embraced her, enveloping her wizened form with their
exuberant youth, like flowers round a peastick, and she was moved to
the depths of her being, though all she said was, "Now, Joan 'n' Nancy,
don't be rough.  You can love a person without untidying her hair."

"Are your nails quite clean, Starling darling?" asked Joan, taking one
of her hands and examining it.

"And are you quite sure you've brushed your teeth properly?" enquired
Nancy.

"Now don't _tease_, Joan 'n' Nancy," said Miss Bird, disengaging
herself.  "I shall only be here another week and you must try and be
_good_ girls and let me go away remembering that."

"Joan was saying this morning as we were dressing," said Nancy, "that
she was very sorry now to think of all the trouble she had given you,
Starling darling, and if she could have the time over again she would
behave very differently."

"Idiot!" retorted Joan.  "It's you who have given the trouble.
Starling has often said that if it weren't for your example I should be
a very good girl, haven't you, Starling darling?"

"You would _both_ be good girls if it wasn't for the other's example,"
replied Miss Bird.  "And you can be dear good girls as good as gold and
I hope you will when the new governess comes to teach you."

"I hope we shall, but I doubt it," said Joan.

"You see, Starling darling, what we would do for you we couldn't be
expected to do for a stranger whom we didn't love, could we?" said
Nancy.

Miss Bird was moved by this, and would have liked to embrace the
speaker, with words of endearment.  But she had grown rather wary of
exhibiting affection towards her pupils, who were apt to respond so
voluminously as to leave her crumpled, if not actually dishevelled.

"Well, if you love me as much as you say you do," she said, "you will
remember all the things I have told you; now are you _quite_ ready for
breakfast, because it is time to go down?"

"We told Dick you would like him to kiss you before you went, and I
think he will," said Joan innocently, as they went down the broad
staircase all three abreast.

"Now, Joan, if you _really_ said a thing like that--oh, take care! take
care!"  Miss Bird had tried to stop on the stairs and withdraw her arm
from Joan's, who, assisted by Nancy on the other side, had led her on
so that she tripped over the next step, and would have fallen but for
the firm grasp of the twins.  She was led into the dining-room,
protesting volubly, until she saw that Mrs. Clinton and Dick were
there, when the episode ended.

When breakfast was over the Squire surprised her by asking her
immediate attendance in his room, to which she followed him across the
hall in a flutter of apprehension.  It would not be quite true to say
that she had never been into this room during the thirty years of her
sojourn at Kencote, but it was certainly the first time she had entered
it on the Squire's invitation.  He did not ask her to take a seat, nor
did he take one himself, but stood in front of the fire with his coat
tails over his arm and his hands in his pockets.

"There's a little matter of business I should like to settle with you,
Miss Bird," he said.  "You've lived here a considerable number of
years, and you've done remarkably well by us and the children.  If
everybody did their duty in life as well as you, Miss Bird, the world
'ud be a better place than it is, by George!  Now I want to do a little
something for you, as you've done so much for us, and I've talked it
over with Dick, and we are going to buy you a little annuity of fifty
pounds a year, which with what my wife tells me you've saved will put
you out of anxiety for the future; and I'll tell you this, Miss Bird,
that I never--Eh, what!  Oh, my good woman ... God's sake ... here,
don't take on like that ... Gobblessme, what's to be done?"

For Miss Bird, overcome by this last great mark of esteem, had broken
down and was now sobbing into her handkerchief.  Knowing, however, the
Squire's dislike of a scene she succeeded in controlling herself, and
addressed him with no more than an occasional hiccup.  "I beg your
pardon, Mr. Clinton; I couldn't help it and it's too much and I thank
you from the bottom of my heart and shall never forget it as long as I
live and it's just like all the rest of the kindness I've received in
this house which I could never repay if I lived to be a hundred."

"Well, I'm very glad it meets your views, Miss Bird," said the Squire,
greatly relieved at the subsidence of emotion, and anxious to escape
further thanks.  "And I assure you the obligation's still on our side.
Now, I must write some letters, and I dare say you've got something to
do, too."

Miss Bird retired to her bedroom where, unrebuked, she shed her tears
of thankfulness, then wiped her eyes and sponged her face and went
about the duties of the day.

These did not, this morning, include lessons for the twins, for it was
Saturday, which was for them a holiday, when complete freedom was
tempered only by the necessity of "practising."  Dick had refused to
drive them over to Mountfield to see their sister and her babies, but
had offered them a walk to the dower-house during the course of the
morning.

"I wonder what he wants to go there for?" said Joan, as they went
upstairs.

"There's more in this," said Nancy, "than meets the eye."

There did not, however, seem to be more in it than a natural desire to
see a house empty which one has always known occupied, and this desire
the twins shared.  They found Dick in an affable mood as they walked
across the park together--the sort of affectionately jovial mood of
which they had occasionally taken advantage to secure a temporary
addition to their income.  Indeed, it seemed to have brought Dick
himself a reminder of his young sisters' financial requirements, for he
asked them, "Have you saved up enough money for your camera yet,
Twankies?"

Neither of them replied for the moment, then Joan said rather stiffly,
"We shan't be able to buy that for some time."

"Why, you only wanted twenty-five shillings to make it up a month ago,
and I gave you a sovereign towards it," said Dick.

Another short pause, and then Nancy said, "You gave it us!"

"Yes," said Dick, "to buy a camera.  I'm not certain you didn't screw
it out of me.  I never quite know whether it's my idea or yours when I
tip you Twankies.  Come now, what have you done with that sovereign?"

"We have spent it on a good object," said Joan.  "But we do want the
camera most frightfully badly, and if you would like to contribute to
the fund again it would save us many weary months of waiting."

"To say nothing of a severe economy painful to our generous natures,"
added Nancy.

"Not till I know what you spent the last contribution on," said Dick.
"You're getting regular young spendthrifts.  I shall have to look into
this, or you'll be ruining me by and by."

"Won't you give us anything more unless we tell you?" enquired Joan;
and Nancy amended the question: "Will you give us something more if we
do tell you?"

"I'll see," said Dick.  "Come, out with it!"

"Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of," said Joan.  "We wanted to buy
the old Starling a really good present, and out of our own money."

"It took the form of a pair of silver-backed brushes with cupids' heads
on them, and cost three pounds seventeen and sixpence," added Nancy.

"They are not cupids, but angels," said Joan, "which are much more
adapted to Starling's tastes."

"Well--cupids or angels--it cleaned us entirely out," concluded Nancy.

Dick put an arm round the shoulders of each and gave them a squeeze as
they walked.  "You're a pair of topping good Twankies," he said.  "I'll
start your new camera fund.  I'll give it you now."

"Thanks awfully, Dick," said Joan, as he took out his sovereign purse,
"but I think we'd rather you didn't.  You see, it's rather a special
occasion--the poor old Starling going away--and we wanted to give her
something that would really cost us something."

"I agree with my sister," said Nancy.  "But thanks awfully all the
same, Dick.  You're always a brick."

"Well, I respect the delicacy of your feelings, Twanks," said Dick.
"But isn't anybody ever going to be allowed to contribute to the camera
fund?  How long does the embargo last?"

"There's a good deal in that," said Joan thoughtfully.  "Of course we
can't refuse tips for ever, can we, Nancy?"

Nancy thought not.  "Let's say in a month from to-day," she suggested.
"If Dick likes to give us something then and happens to remember it--of
course, we shan't remind him--then I think we might accept without
feeling pigs."

"I'll make a note of that," said Dick gravely, "when I get home."




CHAPTER IV

THE DOWER-HOUSE

Surrounded by its winter woods and an over-thick growth of evergreens,
the little Jacobean hall, which had for centuries been the second home
of the Clintons of Kencote, had an air slightly depressing as Dick and
the twins came to it through the yew-enclosed garden at the back.
White blinds were down behind all the leaded mullioned windows, only
one thin thread of smoke rose into the sky from the carved and twisted
chimney-stacks.

Forty years before, when the Squire had succeeded his grandfather, his
six spinster aunts had left him in undisturbed possession of the great
house and taken up their abode here, very seldom to leave, until one by
one they had been carried off to their grave in Kencote churchyard.
Aunt Ellen, the eldest of them all, had died at a great age a few
months before, and Aunt Laura, the youngest, who was now seventy-eight,
had removed herself and her belongings to a smaller house in the
village.  Neither Dick nor, of course, the twins had ever known the
dower-house unassociated with the quiet lives of the old ladies, and
they shared in their different degree the same feeling of strangeness
as they stood under the porch and listened to the bell echoing in the
empty house.  It was like a human body from which life had departed,
but with its age and many memories it still kept a soul of its own
which could be revivified by fresh occupancy.

They went through all the rooms.  There was a great deal of fine old
furniture in them, things which Clintons of past centuries had bought
new, never thinking that they would some day acquire merit as
antiquities.  There were few such things in the great house, which had
been rebuilt after a fire in the reign of Queen Anne and refurnished
later still, in the reign of Queen Victoria.  Nor had the beautiful
things of which the dower-house was full been valued in the least by
their owners until long after the six maiden aunts had gone to live
there.  They had been simply old-fashioned in the eyes of the Squire,
their owner, and were so still, for he had no knowledge of such things,
and no appreciation of them.  Dick knew a little more, and as he looked
at one fine old piece of furniture after another, standing forlorn on
the carpetless floors, or against the dark panelling of the walls, he
said, "By Jove!  Twankies, there's some good stuff in this old shanty."

"Who is going to live in it?" asked Joan.

"Ah, that's the question!" replied Dick.  "Tell you what, Twankies,
let's play a game.  Supposing I ever got married, _I_ should live here,
you know.  Let's see how the rooms would pan out."

The twins were quite ready to play this or any other game, although it
did not promise much excitement, because there were only quite a
limited number of rooms, and most of them were more or less obviously
labelled.  It seemed, however, that Dick was prepared to play the game
seriously, for after they had fixed the dining-room, drawing-room,
morning-room, and smoking-room, and a tiny oak parlour which the aunts
had used for garden chairs and implements and Dick said would do for
his guns if a baize-lined glass cupboard were put up in a recess by the
fireplace, he inspected the kitchen premises with some thoroughness.

"I say, Dick, _are_ you going to get married and come and live here?"
asked Joan, as he began to make notes on the back of an envelope.

"There's more in this than meets the eye," observed Nancy.

"Small Twankies mustn't ask impertinent questions," replied Dick.  "But
I'll tell you exactly how it stands, and you mustn't let it go any
further."

"Oh, rather not," said Joan.

"Our ears are all agog," said Nancy.

"You see, Twankies, _some_body has got to live in this house, haven't
they?  Well, then, it must be done up, eh?  And if _I_ come and live in
it some day, I don't want to have to do it up again--see?  So there you
have it all in a nutshell."

"Yes, I see," said Joan; "but it's a little disappointing."

"It all sounds very reasonable," said Nancy, "but I still think there's
more in it than meets the eye."

They were in the great stone-floored kitchen, which still retained its
cavernous hearth and open chimney.

"You could roast an ox here," said Dick.  "We'll turn this into a
servants' hall, Twankies, and rig up the other place for cooking.  The
cellar's all right, so is the pantry--and big enough for two.  We'll
divide it up, eh? and one part will do for a brushing-room.  There's
nowhere at present where a servant can brush your clothes."

"What wonderful domestic knowledge you display, Dick!"' observed Nancy.
"Where are the maids to brush their mistresses' clothes?  In here with
the valets?"

"Yes, of course," said Dick.  "This isn't a palace.  People who come to
stay must expect some inconveniences.  I don't see any place for a game
larder.  We must see about that outside.  Now we'll go upstairs."

They went up the broad shallow stairs of age-worn oak, and through the
hive of rooms, which opened into one another, and led out into little
passages, closets, and stairways in the most confusing way, and made
you wonder what scheme of daily life the old builder had in mind when
he planned them.  He had certainly wasted a great deal of room.  The
main corridor opened out here and there into broad spaces, where there
was perhaps a bookcase, or a low seat under a latticed window, or only
the rich emptiness of the square of oak panelling, the polished floor,
and the plastered ceiling.  Whatever his aims, he had gained his effect
of gracious ease and warm shelter.  However varied might be the needs
of its occupants through the succeeding years, the dower-house would be
as much of a home as on the day it was first built.

"A man might make himself very comfortable here, Mr. Copperfield,"
quoted Nancy, as they stood at a window of the biggest bedroom, which
had panels of linen pattern, with a plastered frieze and an oak-beamed
ceiling.  There was also a heavy carved oak bed, in which Aunt Ellen
had recently looked her last upon surroundings that had continually
reminded her of the age and importance of the family of which she was a
member.

"I shall have all these beastly laurels grubbed up, and some of the
trees cut down," said Dick.  "The place is like a family vault.  And
I'm not sure that I won't have this woodwork painted white."

Joan looked doubtfully round her.  She knew nothing of the value of old
good things, but she felt dimly that the carved panelling, dark with
age, ought to remain as it was.  Nancy felt so still more strongly.
"It would be wicked to do that," she said.  "This is a lovely room, and
tells you stories.  If you like I'll give you a rhapsody."

Joan grinned.  "Have you ever heard one of Nancy's rhapsodies, Dick?"
she asked.  "They're awfully good."

Dick had not, but expressed himself willing to listen to whatever
foolishness might be in store for him for the space of one minute
precisely.  Nancy stood against the dark woodwork on the other side of
the room.  Her pretty, mischievous face was framed in the thick fall of
her fair hair and the fur round her throat.  She wore a little fur cap
and a red coat, and a big muff hung from her shoulders.  Dick, always
affectionately disposed towards his young sisters, thought he had never
seen a girl of her age look prettier, and put his arm vicariously round
Joan, who was exactly like her, as they sat on the window-seat.

"In this old house," began Nancy, using her right hand for
gesticulation and keeping the other in her muff, "lots of old Clintons
have died, and lots of new Clintons have been born.  Think, my
children, of the people who have come here to live.  Some of them were
gallant young men Clintons who had just taken to themselves fair young
brides, and they were full of hope for the future, and pleasure in
having such a jolly house to live in with her they loved best in the
world.  A few years would pass and the rooms would echo with the voices
and steps of little children, and all would be gaiety and mirth.  Then
a change would come over the spirit of the scene.  The young couple
would go with their family to the great house, and in their stead would
come a sad-faced figure in deep black, a Clinton widow, who had had her
day of glory, and would now spend the rest of her years here in peace
and seclusion.  But all would not be dark to her.  She would have great
fun in suiting the dear old house to her taste, she would be cheered by
the constant visits of the younger members of her family, and she could
do a good deal more what she liked than she had done before."

"Well, upon my word!" interposed Dick.

Nancy held up her hand.  "Hear, all ye Clintons!" she concluded.  "Old
men and women, young men and maidens, and especially the gallant
warrior knight and the sweet young maiden I see before me--ye belong to
a race which has its roots far back in history, and has been
distinguished for many things, but not particularly for brains, as far
as I can make out from my recent researches.  But at last there has
arisen one who will make up for that deficiency.  You now behold her in
the person of Nancy Caroline Clinton, who addresses you.  See that ye
cherish her and tip her well, or ye will be eternally disgraced in the
eyes of posterity."

She ended with a ripple of laughter, shaking back her hair.

"Well, you're the limit," said Dick, with a grin.  "Come on, let's go
and look at the stables.  Is it true that you suddenly find yourself
possessed of brains, Twanky?  I never suspected it of you."

"My dear Dick," said Joan, as they went down the stairs, "she has been
talking about nothing but her brains for the last month, ever since
Uncle Herbert last came here to shoot."

"They were always there," explained Nancy, "but he put the match to the
tinder.  I'm going to write books when I get a little older.  But of
course I must be properly educated first.  I suppose you know we're
going to have a really up-to-date, top-hole governess, Dick?"

"Yes, I've heard that," said Dick, "although I don't admire your way of
describing her.  Lord, what a place to put a horse!"

"If it is the expression 'top-hole' you object to, I learnt it from
you," said Nancy.  "My ears are receptive."

"Two loose-boxes and three stalls," said Dick.  "We can make that do,
but they're all on the slant.  We'd better begin by altering this at
once; the house can wait for a bit."

"Of course the stables are more important than the house," said Joan.
"I say, Dick, there is something we want to ask you.  Do be a brick and
say, yes."

Dick was pursuing his investigations.  "Coach-house isn't bad," he
said.  "Harness-room wants refurnishing.  Let's see what the rooms
upstairs are like."

They climbed up the steep staircase.  "Dick, will you persuade father
to do something?" asked Joan.

"What?" asked Dick.  "This would be all right for an unmarried groom."

"We want a pony.  We've never had anything to ride since poor old Tommy
died."

They were clattering down the stairs again.  "You want--you want--you
want everything," said Dick.  "You'll want a four-in-hand next.  I
don't know whether you want a pig-stye, by any chance.  I'll give you
this one if you do--ridiculous place to put it!  This is where we'll
build the game larder.  Come on, Twankies, we'll go and look up old
Aunt Laura.  I want to see what she's taken away from here."

He set off at a smart pace, the twins on either side of him.  "I don't
know why _you_ want to go putting your oar in about the pony," said
Nancy.  "I was to tackle father about that."

"Tackle father!" repeated Dick.  "Look here! that's not the way to talk
about the governor, Nancy."

"Oh, Dick darling, don't call me Nancy.  I feel that I'm trembling
under the weight of your displeasure."

Joan hastened to her relief.  "When she said 'tackle,' she only meant
that I betted her four weeks' pocket-money that father wouldn't let us
have a pony," she said.

"You mean well, but you've done it now," said Nancy.

"Really, it's about time that you two had somebody to look after you,"
said Dick.  "Who on earth taught you to bet, I should like to know?"

"Humphrey," replied Nancy promptly.  "We were standing by him, and he
betted us a shilling each that he would bring down the next bird that
came over.  He didn't, and he paid up promptly."

"We wanted him to bet again, but he refused," said Joan.

"But it gave us a taste for speculation which we shall probably never
overcome," said Nancy.

Dick grunted.  "Humphrey oughtn't to have done it," he said.  "You are
not to bet with each other, you two.  And that bet about the
pony--which was infernal cheek to make, anyhow--is off.  Do you hear?"

"Yes, Dick dear," said Joan obediently.  "But what does a bet being
'off' mean, exactly?"

"Is it the same as hedging?" asked Nancy.

"It means--well, it means it's off.  You know what it means as well as
I do.  And I don't like your arranging with each other to get things
out of the governor, either--or anybody else.  You get plenty given
you, and it isn't nice for girls of your age to be always on the make."

"But, Dick darling," expostulated Joan, "there are such lots of horses
about the place.  I think we might be allowed to ride now.  Of course,
we didn't mean a pony, really.  We are big enough to stick on a horse,
and father wouldn't have to buy another one for us."

"We are about to embark on an arduous course of study," said Nancy,
"and horse exercise would be the best possible thing for us."

"You stick to your golf," said Dick.  "We spent a lot of money making
those links in the park, and you get more fun out of them than anybody."

"Then you won't help us about riding?" asked Joan.

"No," said Dick.  "All the nags are wanted for hunting, and I'm not
going to advise the governor to increase the stables."

Nancy breathed a deep sigh.  "It's all your fault, Joan," she said.
"You don't know how to treat a man.  You must never blurt things out
that you want.  You must remember women are a subject race."

"But you won't mind our asking father, Dick, will you?" pleaded Joan.

Dick gave his ultimatum.  "You'd better give up the idea," he said.
"And remember what I told you about being on the make.  You're nice
kids, but you want keeping in order.  I hope the new lady will do it."

"I hope she will," said Nancy; "but she's got a hard row to hoe.  I
can't help feeling a little sorry for her."

Aunt Laura had taken up her abode in a little old house on the village
street, with a square, brick-walled garden behind it.  The agent had
occupied it before the death of Aunt Ellen, but had now removed to a
farm which was in hand.

They found the old lady sitting by the fire in her parlour, knitting.
She was frail and shrunken, and looked as if she might not long survive
her transplantation.  Mrs. Clinton or the twins came to see her every
day, but a visit from the Squire or one of his sons, and especially
Dick, was an honour which never failed mildly to excite her.  She was
now in a flurry, and told the elderly maid who had shown her visitors
in to bring wine and cake, in the fashion of an earlier day.  The men
of the family never refused this entertainment, either because they
were averse to wounding Aunt Laura's susceptibilities, or because they
liked it.

"Well, I hope you've made yourself pretty comfortable, Aunt Laura,"
said Dick in a loud, clear voice, for the old lady was rather deaf,
although she did not like to acknowledge it.  He was looking round the
room as he spoke.  Its panelled walls were painted light green, and
were hung with coloured prints.  A recessed cupboard was full of
beautiful old china; but there was nothing else of much value in the
room, which was furnished with a Victorian drawing-room suite and a
round rosewood table.  The old lady had a pretty modern French table by
her side with conveniences for her work and her books.  She had also
her old cottage piano, with a front of fluted red silk, upon which she
sometimes played.  A canary hung in the window, which faced south and
let in, between the curtains, a stream of wintry sunshine.

"It is a bright little house," said Aunt Laura.  "I sometimes wish that
your dear Aunt Ellen had spent the last few years of her life here
after your dear Aunt Anne died.  The dower-house was a very dear home
to us, and we were greatly attached to it, but in the winter it was
dark, and this is much more cheerful.  It is cold to-day, and I am
sitting over the fire, as you see.  But I often sit by the window and
see the people going by.  You could not do that in the dower-house, for
nobody did go by."

"Did you bring all the furniture you wanted to make you comfortable,
Aunt Laura?" asked Dick.

Aunt Laura looked up over her spectacles.  "I am quite comfortable, I
thank you, Dick," she replied, "although I have not got quite used to
things yet.  It is not to be expected that I should, all at once, at my
age, and after having lived with the same things round me for close
upon forty years.  But your dear father has been kindness itself, as he
always is, and allowed me to have all my bedroom furniture brought
here, so that in my room upstairs I feel quite at home.  And for the
downstairs rooms he told me that any pictures or china and so forth
that I had a fancy for I might have, and I hope I have not taken
advantage of his generosity.  I shall not want the things for very
long, and they are being well taken care of.  He did not want me to
take any of the furniture, as he said this house was furnished already,
but he wanted me to feel at home here."

Dick seemed to consider for a moment.  "If there's anything special you
want in the way of furniture, Aunt Laura," he said, "anything you've
got attached to and like to use, we'll see if we can't get it brought
down for you."

"Well, of course, I got attached to it all," replied Aunt Laura.  "But
I can't expect to have it all, and what is here will do for me very
well.  Hannah is making some pretty loose chintz covers for the chairs
and sofa in this room, which will give it a more home-like appearance.
I do not like the carpet, which is much worn, as you see, and was never
a very good one, but I have half formed a plan of going over to
Bathgate when the spring comes and seeing if I can get one something
after the pattern of that in the morning-room at the dower-house, which
your aunts and I used much to admire.  It was old and somewhat faded,
but its colours were well blended, and I have heard that it was brought
straight from Persia, where they have always made excellent carpets,
for my grandfather, who was in business in the city of London.  He
would be your great-great-grandfather, and they used to call him
'Merchant Jack,' even after he succeeded to Kencote."

If Dick had known the true value of the carpet in question he might not
have offered to have it sent down for Aunt Laura's use, but he
immediately did so, and the old lady's gratitude ought sufficiently to
have rewarded him.  "Now is there anything else, Aunt Laura?" he asked.

"Well, as you are so extremely kind, Dick," she said, "--and I hope
your dear father will not mind, or think that I have been grasping,
which I should not like after all his generosity--I think if I might
have the use of the old bureau upon which your aunts and I used to
write our letters and in which we used to keep our few business
papers--for there was a very good lock--not that there was any
necessity to lock things up at the dower-house, for everything was
under Hannah's charge, and, although she is apt to be a little flighty
in her dress, and your dear Aunt Ellen sometimes rebuked her for that,
but always kindly, she was quite reliable, and _anything_ might have
been left about in perfect safety.--As I was saying, if I might have
the use of the old bureau for as long as I live--I should not want it
longer--I do not think I should regret anything, except of course that
your dear aunts are all gone now, and I am the last of them left."

Dick had prepared himself, during the foregoing speech, to promise,
immediately it came to an end, that Aunt Laura should have the old
bureau, although it was a very fine specimen of Dutch marquetry, and
the piece of furniture that had struck him as the most desirable of all
he had just seen in the dower-house.  "Oh, of course, Aunt Laura," he
said.  "You shall have the bureau and the carpet sent down this
afternoon.  Then you'll feel quite at home, eh?"

"Well, perhaps not this afternoon, Dick," replied Aunt Laura.  "It
might upset the house for Sunday to make a change, and I should not be
quite ready to superintend it.  But on Monday, or even Tuesday--I am
not particular--I could make ready.  There is no immediate hurry.  It
is enough for me to know that I am to have the things here, and I shall
think upon them with very great pleasure.  I'm sure I cannot thank you
enough, dear Dick, for your kindness.  It is of a piece with all the
rest.  Why, I do not believe you have yet seen my beautiful table.
Children dear, see here!  Is it not convenient?  I can place my
favourite book here by my side, and when I am tired of reading, without
moving from my seat, I can lay it down, and there is my work ready for
me underneath, and in this pocket, as you see, are all sorts of
conveniences, such as scissors, little tape-measure in the form of a
silver pig, and so on; and here an ivory paper-knife.  It is indeed a
handsome present, is it not?"

"It's lovely, Aunt Laura," said Joan.  "Who did it come from?"

"On Thursday," replied Aunt Laura.  "Thursday morning.  No, I am
telling you a story.  It was Thursday afternoon, for Hannah was just
about to bring in the tea."

"Who gave it you, Aunt Laura?" asked Joan again.

"Did I not tell you?" said Aunt Laura.  "It was dear Humphrey.  He sent
it down from London.  He came in to see me when he was last at Kencote
and described to me such a table as this, which I admit I _did_ say I
should like to possess, but certainly with no idea that he would
purchase one for me.  But there! all you dear boys and girls are full
of kind thoughts for your old aunt, and I am sure it makes me very
happy in my loss of your dear Aunt Ellen to think I have so much left
to be thankful for."

When the twins were in their bedroom getting ready for luncheon Joan
said, "I wonder why Humphrey is so attentive all of a sudden to Aunt
Laura."

"There's more in it than meets the eye," said Nancy.  "Did you notice
how surprised Dick looked when she said Humphrey gave it her?  And then
he frowned."

"I expect Dick thinks Humphrey is too extravagant.  It must have been
an expensive table.  And I know Humphrey has debts, because he asked me
to open a tailor's bill that came for him and tell him the 'demnition
total,' as he was afraid to do it himself.  It was more than a hundred
pounds, and he said, 'I wish that was the only one, but if it was I
couldn't pay it.'"

"Poor old Humphrey!" said Nancy.  "I say, Joan, do you think he is
making up to Aunt Laura, so that she will pay his bills for him?"

"What a beastly thing to say, Nancy!" replied Joan.  "Of course, none
of the boys would do a thing like that.  Besides, Aunt Laura hasn't got
any money."

"No, I don't suppose so," said Nancy reflectively.  "I expect father
gives her an allowance, poor old darling!"

But Aunt Laura had money.  She had the thirty-six thousand pounds which
her father had left to her and her sisters, and she had, besides, the
savings of all six ladies through a considerable number of years.




CHAPTER V

LADY GEORGE

The Squire had a touch of rheumatism, and was annoyed about it, but
also inclined to give Providence due credit for so visiting him, if he
must be visited at all, at a time of hard frost.  "If I coddle myself
up to-day and perhaps to-morrow," he said over the luncheon table, "I
shall be able to hunt all right on Monday, if the frost breaks.  I
suppose you wouldn't care to go over those Deepdene Farm figures this
afternoon, Dick, eh?"

"We might have an hour with them before dinner," replied Dick.  "I
thought of riding over to Mountfield to see Jim this afternoon.  I want
a little exercise."

"I don't know whether you will find Jim in," said Mrs. Clinton.
"Muriel, and I think Mrs. Graham, are coming over here this afternoon."

"I'll take my chance," said Dick.

The twins saw him off from the hall door.  He rode a tall bay horse,
which danced with impatience on the hard gravel of the drive as he
looked him over, drawing on his gloves.

"Dear old Cicero! doesn't he look a beauty?" said Nancy.  "What was his
figure, Dick?"

"You will never be able to get on him," said Joan.  "Shall I bring a
chair?"

But Dick was up and cantering over the crisp grass of the park,
managing his nervous powerful mount as if he and the horse were of one
frame and as if nothing could separate them.

"He does look jolly," said Joan admiringly.

"He's a good man on a horse," acquiesced Nancy.

"All the boys are.  So they ought to be.  They think about nothing
else."

"You know, I think Dick is just the sort of man a girl might fall in
love with," said Joan.  "He's very good-looking, and he has just that
sort of way with him, as if he didn't care for anybody."

"I expect lots of girls have fallen in love with him.  The question is
whether he is ever going to fall in love with them.  I'm inclined to
think he's turning it over in his mind.  I dare say you were blinded by
all that business at the dower-house this morning.  I wasn't.  You mark
my word, Joan, Dick is going to get married."

"I shouldn't wonder.  He's grown softer somehow.  See how interested he
was in the kitchen.  Who do you think it is, Nancy?"

"My dear!  Don't you know that?  It's Grace Ettien.  Didn't you notice
what a fuss father made of her when she last come over?  Took her all
round, and almost _gave_ her the place.  He doesn't treat girls like
that as a rule."

"You didn't say so at the time."

"No; but I've put two and two together since.  You see if I'm not
right.  By this time next year the dower-house will be occupied by
Captain and Lady Grace Clinton--and oh, Joan! perhaps there'll be
another baby in the family!"

The ecstasy of the twins at this prospect was broken into by Miss Bird,
who appeared behind them in the doorway and promised them their deaths
of cold if they did not come indoors _at once_.

In the meantime Dick was trotting along the hard country lanes, between
the silent silvered winter woods and the frozen fields, always with an
eye about him to see what things of fur and feather might share with
him the winter solitude, what was doing in the hard-bound soil, and
what in the clear spaces of the air.  He had the eye of the countryman,
trained from boyhood to observe and assimilate.  He had lived for years
the life of court and camp, had adapted himself as readily to the
turmoil of London gaieties as to regimental duties in other stations at
home and abroad, or to months of campaigning in Egypt and South Africa.
He had skimmed the cream of all such experiences as had come in his
way, but here in the depths of the English country, just here where his
ancestors had lived for generation after generation, were placed the
foundations of his life.  Here he was at home, as nowhere else in the
world.  All the rest was mere accident of time and place, of no account
as compared with this one spot of English soil.  Here alone he was
based and firmly rooted.

Mountfield lay about four miles from Kencote, and the two estates
marched, although the one was small as compared with the other.  Two
years before, Jim Graham, the owner of Mountfield, had married Cicely
Clinton, and his only sister just before that had married Walter
Clinton, the doctor of Melbury Park, where the Squire was so averse to
looking for an heir.  So the Clintons and the Grahams were bound
together by close ties, and there was much coming and going between the
two houses.

Cicely's carriage was before the door as Dick rode up, and she herself
came out as he dismounted.  She looked very pretty in her thick furs,
young and fresh, and matronly at the same time.

"Oh, Dick, I'm so glad to see you," she said.  "Have you come to see
Jim?  I'm afraid he's gone over to Bathgate, and won't be back for some
time."

"H'm!  That's a bore," said Dick.  "You're going over to Kencote,
aren't you, Siskin?"

"Yes.  I'm going to fetch Mrs. Graham and drive her over.  But do come
in for a minute or two."

"Oughtn't to keep the horses long in this weather," said Dick.  "Drive
'em about for a few minutes, Carter.  I'll just come in and throw my
eye over the babies, Siskin."

Cicely's face brightened.  She led the way into her morning-room, and
turned to kiss her brother, her hands on his shoulders.  "Dear old
Dick!" she said.  "Do you really want to see the babies?"

"Of course I do," he replied.  "You've given us the taste for them over
at Kencote.  The Twankies foam at the mouth with pleasure whenever the
babies are mentioned, and even the governor looks as if a light were
switched on in his face when anything is said about them."

Cicely rang the bell.  "He is a doting grandfather," she said, with a
smile.  "I would take them over this afternoon, but it's too cold."

"Nice room, this!" said Dick, looking round him.  "Are you glad to be
settled down in the country again, Sis?"

"Yes.  Awfully glad," she said.  "I hated London, really.  At least, I
liked meeting the people, but you can only feel at home in the country."

"There was a time," said Dick.

She blushed.  "Oh, don't talk about that, Dick," she said, in some
distress.  "I was all wrong.  I didn't know what I wanted.  I know now.
I want just this, and Jim, and the babies.  I was overjoyed when our
two years in London were up, and Jim said we could come back here if we
kept quiet and lived carefully.  Here they are--the darlings!"

The tiny morsels of lace and silk-clad humanity--Dick, the boy, Nina,
the baby girl--who were brought into the room in charge of a staid
elderly smiling nurse, looked as happy babies ought to look--as if they
belonged to the house and the house belonged to them.  Dick took up his
namesake and godson in his arms and his keen face softened.  "He's
getting a great little man," he said.  "When are you going to cut his
hair, Cicely?"

Cicely scouted the idea.  "Men are always in such a hurry," she said.
"Dick, you ought to marry and have babies of your own."

"Ah, well! perhaps I shall some day," said Dick.  "Now I must be
pushing on, and you oughtn't to keep the horses waiting, Sis.
Good-bye, little chap."

"Aren't you coming back to Kencote?" Cicely asked.

"Not just yet.  Going to hack a few more miles.  I haven't been on a
horse for three weeks."

So Cicely got into her carriage and Dick's horse was brought round, and
they went off in different directions.

Cicely picked up her mother-in-law at her house just outside the park.
Mrs. Graham was waiting for her at her garden gate, in company with a
deerhound, a spaniel, and an Irish terrier.  She had on a coat and
skirt of thick tweed, and a cloth hat with a cock's feather.

"I suppose there won't be a tea-party," she said, as she got into the
carriage.  "I did intend to put on smart clothes, but I found I
couldn't be bothered when the time came.  They must take me in my rags
or not at all.  _You_ look smart enough, my girl."

"If I had your figure," said Cicely, "I should never want to wear
anything but country clothes."

"Ah! now that's very nice of you," said Mrs. Graham.  "I do wear well
for fifty-three, and I'm not going to deny it.  My face is a bit
battered, of course.  I must expect that, riding and tramping about in
all weathers.  But I'm as fit as if I were thirty years younger, and I
don't know what more you can ask of life--unless it's to have your own
people round you instead of a pack of molly-coddles."

Cicely laughed.  Jim Graham had let Mountfield for two years after
their marriage to a rich and childless couple, who spent most of their
time in working at embroidery, and motoring about the country in a
closed-in car, for neither of which pursuits Mrs. Graham had found it
in her heart to forgive them.

"Well, _they're_ gone," she said.  "And thank goodness for it.  I
should have let the Lodge and gone away myself if they had stayed here
any longer.  Cumberers of the ground, I call them, and what they wanted
with a country house beats me.  But you never know who you're going to
get for neighbours nowadays.  By the by, have you heard that old Parson
Marsh has let Blaythorn Rectory for the hunting season?"

Blaythorn was about three miles from Mountfield, on the opposite side
to Kencote.  Cicely had not heard this piece of news.

"Yes," said Mrs. Graham, "and to a lady of title, my dear--Lady George
Dubec--no less.  I haven't the ghost of an idea who she is.  But no
doubt your father will know.  He is a regular walking peerage--knows
who everybody is and whom everybody has married to the third and fourth
generation.  What accommodation poor old Parson Marsh has for hunters I
don't know.  I should think the lady must have been done in the eye.
And as for the house--the last time I was in it it smelt so of dogs and
tobacco-smoke that even I couldn't put up with it, and Lord knows I'm
not particular."

"Where is Mr. Marsh going to live?" asked Cicely.

"Oh, I believe he has sacked his curate on the strength of it, and has
taken his rooms.  I don't know why he should have wanted a curate at
all, except that he's so bone-idle, and I'm sure he can't afford one.
He owes Joynes the butcher over forty pounds.  But, good gracious,
Cicely, don't encourage me to gossip.  I'm getting a regular old hag.
It's the influence of your late tenants, my dear.  They _loved_ village
tittle-tattle, and I had to join in with it whenever we met, because
there was nothing else in the wide world I could talk to them about.
The worst of it is I was acquiring quite a taste for scandal.  But I've
turned over a new leaf.  So has old Marsh I suppose, and is going to
pay up all his debts.  I wish him well over his difficulties."

With such sprightly talk did Mrs. Graham pass away the time till they
reached Kencote, when she began all over again with Mrs. Clinton as
audience.  Cicely had gone upstairs to see the twins and Miss Bird, and
Mrs. Graham asked point-blank that Mr. Clinton might be informed of her
arrival.  "I have lots to tell him," she said, "and I want to ask him
some questions besides."

Mrs. Clinton rang the bell, without saying anything, and a footman was
sent with a message to the Squire, who presently came in, bluff and
hearty, but walking with a slight list.

"Ah, Mrs. Graham!" he said as he shook hands.  "Come to cheer us up
with a little gossip--what?  But where are the grandchildren?"

"Dear me!  I forgot to ask," said Mrs. Graham.  "I suppose it is too
cold for them.  But I've brought the dogs, Mr. Clinton."

"Oh, the dogs!" said the Squire, with his loud laugh.  "No dogs in
_this_ house."

"I know," said Mrs. Graham.  "And it's such a mistake.  Kencote is the
only country house I know where there isn't a dog indoors.  I never
feel that it's properly inhabited."

"It was swarming with them in my grandfather's time," said the Squire,
"and I dare say would be now if that mongrel hadn't gone for Dick when
he was a little fellow.  Always kept 'em outside since.  Outside is the
place for a dog."

"I don't agree with you," said Mrs. Graham.  "And it isn't like a
sportsman to say so.  However, we needn't quarrel about that.  Who is
Lady George Dubec, Mr. Clinton?"

"Lady George Dubec?" repeated the Squire.  "I suppose she's the
wife--or the widow rather--of George Dubec, the Duke of Queenstown's
brother, and a pretty good rascal _he_ was.  Got killed in a railway
accident in America two or three years ago, and it was the best thing
that could have happened to him.  Wish they'd kill off a few more like
him.  I didn't know he was married.  Why do you ask?"

"She has taken Blaythorn Rectory to hunt from.  She came down yesterday
or the day before."

"Blaythorn Rectory!  To hunt from!'" exclaimed the Squire.  "Well,
that's the most extraordinary thing!  Are there any stables there?  I
never heard of Marsh keeping anything but an old pony, and the whole
place must be in the depths of dilapidation."

"Well, I don't know.  But there she is.  And you don't know _who_ she
is.  I thought you knew who everybody was, Mr. Clinton."

"Wait a minute," said the Squire, and he went over to a table where
there were books of reference.  "No, there's no marriage here," he
said, turning over the pages of one of them, "except his first marriage
thirty years ago.  Poor Lady Bertha Grange that was, and he drove her
into her grave within five years.  The fellow was a brute and a
blackleg.  I was at school with him, and he was sacked.  And I was at
Cambridge with him and he was sent down, for some disgraceful business,
I forget what.  Then he was in the Guards, and had to clear out of the
service within a year for some precious shady racing transaction.  The
fellow had every possible chance, and he _couldn't_ run straight.  He
went abroad after that, but used to turn up occasionally.  Nobody would
have anything to do with him.  I believe he settled down in America, if
he could ever be said to settle down anywhere.  I know he was in some
scandalous divorce case.  One used to hear his name come up
occasionally, and always in an unsavoury sort of way.  He was a wrong
'un, through and through, but a good-looking blackguard in his young
days, and women used to stick up for him."

"Well, he seems to be better out of the world than in it," said Mrs.
Graham.  "But what about his widow?  You say she isn't down there."

"No, but this book is out of date.  I've got a later one in my room.
I'll send for it."

The new book gave the information required.  Lord George Dubec had
married five years before Miss Virginia Vanreden, of Philadelphia.

"Oh, an American!" said Mrs. Graham.  "Well, I suppose I must go and
call on her.  Even if I don't like her I shall be doing my duty to my
neighbours in providing them with gossip.  Not that I like gossip--I
detest it.  Still, one must find _some_thing to talk about.  Shall you
call on her, Mrs. Clinton?"

The Squire answered.  "Oh, I think not," he said.  "I don't like
hunting--er! hum! ha!"

"You don't like hunting women," said Mrs. Graham imperturbably.  "I
know you don't, Mr. Clinton.  That's another point between us.  But
we're very good friends all the same."

"Oh, of course, of course," said the Squire.  "Nearly put my foot in it
that time, Mrs. Graham, eh?  Ha! ha!  Well, with such old friends one
can afford to make a mistake or two.  No, I think we'll leave Lady
George Dubec alone.  She won't be here long, and I've no wish to be
mixed up with anybody belonging to George Dubec--alive or dead.  I had
the utmost contempt for the fellow.  Besides, I don't like Americans,
and any woman who would have married him after the life he'd led ...
well, she may be all right, but I don't want to know her--that's all.
I _should_ like to know, though, how she got hold of Blaythorn Rectory,
of all places, or why she has come to Meadshire to hunt.  The country
pleases _us_ all right, and we're quite content with our sport, but
we're not generally honoured by strangers in that way."

"I dare say I can find out all about it," said Mrs. Graham.  "And when
I do I'll let you know."

Cicely was sitting on the great roomy shabby sofa in the schoolroom,
with a twin on either side of her, and Miss Bird upright in the corner,
alternately tatting feverishly a pattern of lace thread and dabbing her
eyes with her handkerchief.  For the subject of conversation was her
approaching departure, and, as she said, with all the kindness that had
been showered on her and the affection that she felt she never would
lose, it was no use pretending that she was glad she was going away,
for she was not, but, on the contrary, very sorry.

"Nancy and I are going to write to her once a week regularly," said
Joan.  "We did think of writing every day at first, but we probably
shouldn't keep it up."

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh might be weak," said Nancy.  "And
there's no sense in overdoing things.  Anyhow, we have promised that we
will never love Miss Prim half as much as we love our darling Starling,
and she is pleased at that, aren't you, Starling darling?"

"Of course I am pleased to be loved," replied Miss Bird; "but indeed,
Nancy, I should not like you to set yourself against your new governess
on my account; it is not necessary and you can love one person without
visiting it on another and I do not like you to call her Miss Prim."

"She is sure to be," said Nancy elliptically.  "We must call her
something, and that's as good a name as any till we see what she is
like."

"If you don't treat her respectfully she won't stay," said Cicely.

"We haven't treated Starling respectfully, but _she_ has stayed all
right," said Joan.  "I suppose you know we are going to have lessons
besides, Sis--drawing, and music, and deportment, and all sorts of
things."

"Oh, we're going to be well finished off while we're about it," said
Nancy.  "We shall be ready to fill _any_ position, from the highest to
the lowest."

"We shall be the ornament of every drawing-room to which we are
introduced," said Joan.  "I think we're worth polishing off handsomely,
don't you, Sis?  Have you noticed how awfully pretty we're getting?"

"Now that is a thing," broke in Miss Bird, "that no well-brought-up
girl ought to say of herself, Joan."

"But, Starling darling, it's true, and you can't deny it," replied
Joan.  "We must tell the truth, mustn't we?"

"The new booking-clerk at the station casts admiring glances at us,"
said Nancy.  "At first it made us uncomfortable; we thought we must
have smuts on our noses.  But at last we tumbled to it.  Cicely, we are
loved, not only for our worth, but our beauty."

"You are a couple of donkeys," said Cicely, laughing.  "Well, I'm glad
you're going to apply yourselves to learning, although it's a dreadful
thing to be losing our dear old Starling.  Kencote will be quite
changed."

"There are many changes coming about at Kencote," said Nancy.  "Joan
and I can feel them in the air.  We'll let you know when there's
anything more to tell you, Cicely."

"Thank you very much," said Cicely.  "I think I had better go
downstairs now."

The twins went with her, and on the stairs Cicely said, "I didn't like
to say it before Starling, but I think you're awfully lucky children,
to be going to be taught things.  _I_ never was.  I do hope you'll take
advantage of it."

"Oh, I _do_ hope we shall," said Joan.  "It is such a chance for us.
We feel that."

"Deeply," acquiesced Nancy.  "If we don't we shall never forgive
ourselves--never."




CHAPTER VI

BLAYTHORN RECTORY

Dick, when he had left Mountfield, trotted on at a slightly faster pace
than he had hitherto come, in the direction of Blaythorn, and did not
draw rein until he came to that rectory concerning whose occupancy his
relations and connections were so exercised.  It was a dull house, with
a short, weed-grown drive behind a rather shabby brick wall and an
overgrown shrubbery, on the outskirts of the village.  He got off his
horse and rang the bell, which was presently answered by a smart
parlourmaid, who gave him a discreet smile of welcome, and whisked off
at his request, with a flourish of petticoats, to fetch a groom from
the stableyard hard by.  Then she showed him into the drawing-room,
where two women were sitting by the fire, one of whom rose to greet him
with an exclamation of pleasure, while the other gathered up her work
deliberately and prepared to leave the room.

Lady George Dubec was a tall, slender woman in the early thirties, or
possibly only in the late twenties.  Her face was a little worn, but
her eyes were deep and lustrous, and her features delicate.  When she
smiled she was beautiful.  Her dark hair was elaborately braided; her
slim figure looked well in a black gown of soft folds.  She had thin,
almost transparent hands, covered with jewels.  She moved gracefully,
and her voice was low, but clear and musical, with only the suspicion
of an un-English intonation.

"Oh, Dick, what a godsend you are," she said as she gave him both her
hands.  "Toby and I were wondering how on earth we were going to get
through the rest of the afternoon and evening."

"I wasn't wondering at all," said the other lady, who had now also
risen and shaken hands with the visitor.  "I knew you would come.  So
did Virginia, really.  We were talking about you.  I will now retire to
another apartment and leave you alone."

"Indeed you'll do no such thing," said Virginia Dubec, taking her by
the shoulders and pushing her back into her chair.  "We will have the
lights and tea--although it is early--and a talk of three together.
We're all friends, and you're not going to sit alone."

"Of course not," said Dick.  "A nice sort of state you'd work yourself
up into against me!  I know you, Miss Dexter."

She took her seat again and unrolled her work.  She was short and
rather plain, with sandy-coloured hair and square-tipped fingers.  She
had not smiled since Dick had entered the room.

"Oh, I don't deny that I'm jealous," she said.  "I've had her to myself
for three years, and you have come and stolen her away from me.  But
it's a harmless sort of jealousy.  It doesn't make me object to you.
It only makes me wonder sometimes."

"What do you wonder?" asked Dick, standing up before the fire and
looking down at her with a glance that immediately transferred itself
to her companion, on whom his eyes rested with an expression that had a
hint of hunger in it.

Virginia answered for her.  "She wonders what there is in a man for a
woman to cling to--and especially after _my_ experience.  She thinks a
woman's friendship ought to be enough.  _She_ wants no other.  We talk
over these things together, but we don't quarrel.  She knows that I
shall always love her, don't you, Toby?"

"Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't," said Miss Dexter.  "But we needn't
discuss these matters before Captain Dick.  I'll ring for the lights
and the tea."

Dick breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.  He was not at home in the
discussions of abstract questions.  "How do you find yourself here,
Virginia?" he asked, looking round him.  "You have made this room very
jolly, anyhow."

"That's what Mr. Marsh said, in his own particular way," she said, with
a smile.  "He said, 'If I'd known a woman could do this sort of thing
to a house, I'd have married a wife years ago.'"

"And of course Virginia immediately suggested he should marry me," said
Miss Dexter.  "She is so generous with her belongings."

"It made us very good friends," said Lady George.  "A joke of that sort
always does.  We shall carry it on till the end of my tenancy, and then
he will propose to Toby.  You'll see, Dick."

"I shouldn't blame him," said Dick.  "The stables aren't so very bad,
are they?"

"Oh, Wilson says they'll do.  But I wish you had been able to get me a
brighter house, Dick.  It is rather depressing, in spite of all my
furbishing and knick-knacks."

"My dear girl, it was absolutely the only one within reach.  We don't
let houses for hunting hereabouts.  You wait till you see the
dower-house.  I was there this morning, and really I'd no idea what a
jolly little place it is.  With the few alterations I'm going to make,
and all the jolly old furniture, it will be a topping place.  You'll
fall in love with it, Virginia."

She sighed.  "There are some fences to take before we land up there,"
she said.  "I'm rather frightened about it all, Dick.  When will your
mother come and see me?  Have you told her I am here yet?"

"No," he said shortly.  "I shall tell them this evening."

Miss Dexter dropped her work in her lap with a gesture of impatience,
and looked up at him.  "_Why_ haven't you told them?" she asked.  "Are
you ashamed of her?"

Dick's face flushed and his lips tightened.  "That isn't a proper
question to ask, Miss Dexter," he said.  "I know what I'm about, and so
does Virginia."

"My dear Toby, for goodness' sake don't make him angry," said Lady
George.  "I'm frightened of him when he looks like that."

Dick forced a smile.  "My father is a good sort, but he wants
managing," he said.  "I'll state the case quite plainly once more, as
Miss Dexter sees fit to question my action."

"Oh, good gracious!" put in that lady, "I'm not worth all these heavy
guns."

"Toby!  Toby!" expostulated her friend.

The maid came in at that moment with a lamp and stayed to draw curtains
and light candles.  Dick dislodged himself from his stand in front of
the fire and took a chair, but left it to the two women to carry on a
desultory conversation until they were left alone again.  Then he rose
once more.  "Look here," he said.  "We've got to have this out once for
all.  I'm not going to be twitted for my actions, Miss Dexter."

"Well, please have it out," she said.  "I'm listening."

"You are the most tiresome creature in the world," said Lady George.

"I don't want to say anything to hurt you, Virginia," Dick went on,
"but the name you bear would set my father against you--violently."

"Oh, my dear Dick!" she said, "you don't hurt me in the least, but why
go into all that?  We understand each other.  Toby, I feel as if I
could beat you."

"Well," said Dick.  "I won't say any more about that, but you have got
to remember it.  But there are prejudices to get over besides.  He
wants me to make the usual sort of marriage with a--oh, you know the
sort of female child fellows like me are supposed to marry--his mind is
running on it now, and he actually tackled me about it last night.
He's got the young person all ready--that's the sort of man he is--my
cousin, Grace Ettien.  I said, No, thank you, and I told him I didn't
want to marry a youngster--wouldn't, anyway.  It's no good beating
about the bush, Virginia--until he sees you--_until_ he sees you,
mind--you don't fill the bill."

"That's a pleasant way of putting it," said Miss Dexter.

"I won't have another word," said Lady George decisively.  "You two are
just annoying each other.  Dick, my dear, I think it's just sweet of
you to put all your faith in that seeing of me.  I adore you for it.
It eases all my spiritual aches and pains.  Toby, you irritating
creature, can't you see how lovely it is of him?  If he were all wrong
about having me come down here, I shouldn't care.  He has done it
because he believes in his heart of hearts that his people have only
got to set eyes on me and all their objections will vanish into thin
air."

"I don't say that quite--I don't know," said Dick.

"Well, you needn't go and spoil it," said Miss Dexter.  "I was just
going to say that it did make up for a good deal."

"Look here, Miss Dexter," said Dick.  "If I were to go and tell my
father straight off that I am going to marry Virginia he would be all
over bristles at once.  All the things that don't matter a hang beside
what she is, and what every one can see she is who knows her, would be
brought up, and he'd put himself into a frantic state about it.  He
wouldn't let me bring her to Kencote; he'd fight blindly with every
weapon he could use.  I'm heir to a fine property, and I'm as well off
as I need be, even while my father is alive, as long as I don't set
myself against all his dislikes and prejudices.  If I do, he can make
me a poor man, and he'd do it.  He'd do anything by which he thought he
could get his way.  I shouldn't even be able to marry, unless I lived
on my wife's money, which I won't do."

"No, you're too proud for that," said Miss Dexter.

"Put it how you like.  I won't do it.  I'll take all a wife can give me
except money.  That I'll give.  If there were no other way, I'd break
down his opposition.  I know how to treat him, and I could do it; but
it would take time; I should cut myself off from Kencote until I had
brought him under, and Virginia's name would be bandied about here, in
the place where we are going to live all our lives, in a way that would
affect us always, and in a way I won't subject her to.  He'd do that,
although he might be sorry for having done it afterwards, and I don't
think I should be able to put up with it.  We might quarrel in such a
way that we shouldn't be able to come together again, and the harm
would be done.  As I say, if there were no other way I would run the
risk.  But there is another way, and I'm taking it.  You asked me a
foolish question just now--if I was ashamed of Virginia.  It is because
I am so far from being ashamed of her--because I'm so proud of
her--that I asked her to come down here, where he can get to know her
before he has any idea that I'm going to marry her.  _She_ can make her
way, and make him forget all the rest.  Now, what have you got against
that?  Let's have it plainly."

"Dear Dick!" said Virginia softly.  "I have had many compliments paid
me, but that is the best of all.  Answer him, Toby, and don't keep up
this tiresome irritation any longer.  It spoils everything."

"Well, I'll give in," said Miss Dexter.  "But in my inmost soul I'm
against all this policy, and if your father isn't quite blind, Captain
Dick, he will see through it, and you will be worse off than before."

"My father can't see through anything," said Dick.  "Besides, there's
nothing to see through.  I shouldn't mind telling him--in fact, I
_shall_ tell him--that it was I who advised Virginia to come down here.
He knows I have heaps of friends all over the place that he doesn't
know of.  Virginia is one of them, for the present."

"I hope everything will turn out well," said Miss Dexter after a slight
pause.  "I won't say I think you're right, but I'll say you may be, and
I hope you are.  And I won't worry you with any more doubts."

Virginia Dubec rose from her chair impulsively and kissed her.  "My
darling old Toby!" she said.  "You are very annoying at times, but I
couldn't do without you."

After tea Miss Dexter went out of the room, and they did not try to
stop her.  When they were left alone Dick held Virginia in his arms and
looked into her eyes.  "What have you done to me," he asked her, with a
smile, "after all these years?"

"Am I really the first, Dick?" she asked him.

"You are the first, Virginia--and the only one.  You have changed
everything.  I have always thought I had everything I wanted.  Now I
know I've had nothing."

"And I have had nothing, either," she said.  "Every morning I wake up
wondering what has happened to me.  And when I remember I begin to
sing.  To think that at my age, and after my bitter experience, _this_
should come to me!  Oh, Dick, you don't know how much I love you."

"I know how much I love _you_," he said.  "If there were no other way I
would give up Kencote and everything else for you.  I love you enough
for that, Virginia, and the things I would give up for you are the only
things I have valued so far.  But we won't give up anything, my girl.
My good old obstinate old father will fall at your feet when he knows
you."

"Will he, Dick?"

"_I_ have fallen at your feet, Virginia, and I'm rather like my father,
although I think I can see a bit further into things, and I have a
little more control over my feelings--and my speech."

They had sat down side by side on a sofa, and Dick was holding her
slender hand in his brown one.

"I used to think you had so much control over yourself that it would be
impossible ever to get anything out of you," she said.  "You are so
frightfully and terrifyingly English."

He laughed.  "That gnat-like friend of yours has the power to make me
explain myself," he said.  "I've never tried to talk over any one to my
side as I do her.  I have always taken my own way and let people think
what they like."

"I think it is sweet of you to put yourself--and me--right with her,
Dick.  She has been the best friend that I ever had, except you, dear
Dick.  She stood by me in the worst days, and put up with untold
insults without flinching, so that she could stay with me.  Of course,
at first, she was terrified lest I should make another mistake.  She is
like a grim watch-dog over me.  But she likes you, and trusts you.  You
must put up with her little ways."

"Oh, I do, my dear, and I will.  She's a good sort."

"Dick, will your mother like me?  You have never told me very much
about her.  I think I feel more nervous about her than about your
father."

"You needn't, Virginia.  She is one of the best of women.  I think she
is perhaps a little difficult to know.  She is rather silent and keeps
her thoughts to herself; but I know we shall have her on our side.  She
has only to know you.  But in any case she wouldn't give us any
trouble."

"That sounds rather hard, Dick.  Don't you love your mother?  I loved
mine."

"Of course I do.  But she doesn't interfere with us.  She never did.
It was my father we had to consider, even when we were boys."

"Interfere with you!  I don't like the sound of it.  Dick, I don't
think I will talk to you about your mother.  I will wait until I have
seen her.  You don't help me to know what she is like.  I hope I shall
get on with her.  I shall know soon.  Will she be at the meet on
Monday, if there is one?"

"No.  But my father will.  I shall introduce him to you then.  I told
you he had a foolish prejudice against women hunting, didn't I?  It
won't be quite the most propitious of times.  But we can't help that."

"Well, I won't hunt on Monday, then.  I will drive Toby to the meet
instead, and follow on wheels."

"H'm.  Perhaps it would be better--just at the first go off.  And I
don't believe you really care as much about hunting as you think you
do, Virginia."

She looked into his face with her dark, sweet eyes.  "I don't care
about anything, except to please you, Dick," she said.  "As for
hunting--it was the excitement--to keep my mind off.  It was the only
thing he let me do, over here.  I believe he would have liked me to
kill myself, and sometimes I used to try to."

He put his hand before her mouth.  "You are not to talk about those bad
times," he said.

She kissed his hand, and removed it.  "I like to, sometimes," she said.
"It is such a blessed relief to think of them as quite gone--it is like
the cessation of bad neuralgia--just a sense of peace and bliss.
Perhaps I didn't really try to kill myself, but certainly I shouldn't
have cared if I had.  It was not caring that gave me my reputation, I
suppose, for I didn't mind where I went or what I did.  I do care now.
I don't think I should very much mind giving it up altogether."

"Well, you mustn't do that for this winter, at any rate.  You shall do
what you like afterwards.  And as for your reputation, my dear, I'm
afraid we are so out of the smart hunting world in South Meadshire that
you will find very few of us aware of it.  So you needn't run any risks
in trying to keep it up."

"Very well, Dick.  But I expect when the hounds begin to run I shall
forget that I have to be cautious.  Yes, I do love it.  I don't want to
give up hunting.  And there won't be much for me to do here outside
that, will there?"

"I'm afraid I am condemning you to a dull three months, my poor
Virginia.  But I want you to get to know the country, and love it, as I
do.  Kencote means a lot to me.  I want it to mean a lot to you too."

"So it shall.  I love it already, for your sake, and it seems a
wonderful thing to me that you and all the people you have sprung from
should have been settled down just in this little spot in the world for
all those centuries.  Dick dear, I know you are giving up a lot for me.
I know, although I wasn't brought up in all these traditions, that your
father is right, really, and that it is not a woman like me you ought
to choose for your wife."

Dick raised her hand and let it fall with his own.  "I have chosen you
for my wife, Virginia, out of all the women I have known.  I love and
honour you, and I wouldn't have you different--not in the smallest
particular.  No Clinton of Kencote has ever chosen a wife more worthy
to bear his name.  Let that be enough for you, and don't worry your
pretty head about anything, except to make love to my old father when
you meet him."

When Dick had ridden away, in the gloaming, and the two women were left
to themselves for the long evening, Virginia Dubec said to Miss Dexter,
"Toby, tell me the truth; don't you think I am the most fortunate woman
in the world?"

"If all goes well," said the other soberly and decisively, "I think you
will be happy.  But your Dick, Virginia, is the sort of man who will
want to rule, and to rule without question.  He is very much in love
with you now--that is quite plain, although he is one of those men who
hold themselves in.  But you won't get your way, my dear, when you are
married, unless it is his way too--any more than you did before."

"Oh, my own way!  What do I care about that?  My way shall be his way.
I love him and I can trust him.  He is a strong man, and tender too.
Toby, I adore him.  I will do everything in the world that I can to
make him happy.  He has raised me out of the dust, and given me to
myself again.  When I am married to him I shall forget all the pain and
misery.  It's a new life he is giving me, Toby, and the old unhappy
life will fall from me and be as if it had never been."

"You are expecting a great deal, Virginia," said Miss Dexter; "I hope
some part of it will be realised."




CHAPTER VII

THE SQUIRE PUTS HIS FOOT DOWN

Kencote was three hours' journey from London by a fast train, and it
had always been the custom of the sons of the family--those of them
whose avocations made it necessary for them at any time to live in
town--to come down whenever they pleased, to spend a night or a few
nights, without announcing their arrival.  Their rooms were there ready
for them.  Kencote was their home.  Dick or Humphrey, and, in the days
before he was married, Walter, would often walk into the house
unexpectedly and go upstairs and dress without any one but the servants
knowing they were there until dinner-time.  The Squire liked them to
come and go in that way.  It seemed to give him, in his retired,
bucolic life, a tie with the world.  He would always give them a hearty
welcome, even if he had to object to something they had done, or had
left undone, before they left again.

It was Humphrey who arrived on this Saturday afternoon, reaching
Kencote by the half-past four train, and walking up from the station
and into the morning-room, for his cup of tea.  The Squire's greeting
was a shade less hearty than it would have been in the case of his
other sons.  Humphrey had given him a good deal of trouble in the way
of money.  It is true that there had never been any big catastrophe, no
sudden demand for a large sum to meet a debt of honour, from racing or
cards, as fathers were sometimes confronted with by extravagant sons.
Humphrey was too cautious to run those sorts of risks.  The Squire,
perhaps, would have preferred that the demands upon him should have
come in that way rather than from the constant, rather cold-blooded
exceeding of an allowance which he told himself, and Humphrey, was as
large as any younger son had a right to expect, and a good deal larger
than most of them got.  Humphrey did not deny this.  He simply said,
whenever he did ask his father for more money, that he had not been
able to do on it, but if his father would clear off his debts for him
and give him a fresh start, he would try to do on it for the future.
He had made the endeavour three times, and each time with less success
than before, for the debts had been bigger.  And now the Squire was
getting angry about it.  It had always been the same.  Humphrey's debts
after he had left Cambridge had been about twice as large as Dick's,
although Dick had been Master of the Drag and had had expenses that
Humphrey had not.  Walter had left Oxford with no debts at all.  And
since their University days, Humphrey had actually had more money than
either of the others, although Dick was the eldest son and a
considerable sum had been paid to buy Walter his practice.

Now it was not the Squire's way to bear malice or to let any annoyance
rankle when once it had been met and dealt with.  In the ordinary
course he would have expressed himself very strongly and felt very
strongly on the subject when one of Humphrey's periodical crises of
debt was disclosed to him, but when he had so relieved his mind he
would have paid up and forgotten all about it.  He had done so the
first time, and even the second, after a rather stronger explosion.  It
was the third, now nearly two years ago, which had rankled; and the
reason was not only that Humphrey, as seemed quite obvious, was living
in just such a way as had brought him to exceed his income and get into
trouble before, with the consequence that a new crisis and a new demand
would probably arise before long.  It was so much in the air that the
Squire was continually calling the gods to witness that _he_ was not
going to pay any more of Humphrey's debts.  But he would not have felt
so sore, when he did think about it, if it had not been for Humphrey's
attitude towards him in particular, and towards Kencote and all that it
represented in general.

The fact was that Humphrey, from the serene heights of his career as a
very smart young man about town, patronised them.  It is to be supposed
that he could not help it, that it was an attitude which he would have
corrected if he had been aware of it, for it was quite certain that,
when once his father became aware of it, it would not help him in any
plan he might have to make for further pecuniary assistance.  The
Squire merely had a feeling of irritation against Humphrey, which
slumbered while he was away and always became sharper during his
somewhat rare visits to Kencote.  It was not yet formulated, but was
nearer to getting to a head every time they came together.  The young
man, if he had had an adviser, might have been told that if he acted in
such a way as to bring it to a head, it would be time for him to look
out.

Humphrey walked into the morning-room with a cool air, as if he had
come from another room in the house instead of from London.  He was the
only one of all the Clintons who was dark.  He was not so good-looking
as Dick, but he was well set up, and his clothes were always the
perfect expression of the requirements of the moment.  So were Dick's,
but Dick wore old clothes sometimes, Humphrey never.  He was a young
man of the highest fashion, whenever and wherever he appeared.

The Squire was standing in front of the fire, as his habit was, Mrs.
Clinton sitting behind her tea-table and Mrs. Graham near her.  The
twins were on the sofa on either side of Cicely.  Humphrey kissed his
mother, shook hands with his father and Mrs. Graham, and sat down by
his sisters.  "The frost is going to break," he said.

"Is it?" said the Squire.  "Well, that's the best news you could have
brought.  Look here, we were talking of Lady George Dubec.  Do you know
anything about her?"

"Virginia Dubec?" said Humphrey.  "She is a very beautiful lady."

"Well, but who is she?  Who _was_ she?  An American they say.  Is she
all right?"

"She was an actress.  Musical comedy, or something of the sort.  But
that was some years ago.  Old George Dubec married her in New York, and
led her an awful life.  She used to hunt with the Quorn.  Went like a
bird, and didn't care how she went or where she went.  People used to
say she wanted to break her neck and get away from George Dubec.  But
Dick knows her better than I do.  He'll tell you all about her."

Mrs. Clinton looked up from the teacups, Mrs. Graham arched her brows
and her mouth twitched, the twins caught the sense of surprise and
gazed open-eyed at their father.

"Dick knows her!" exclaimed the Squire.  "Then why on earth----!  Does
he know she has settled down here?"

"_Has_ she settled down here?" asked Humphrey.  "Where has she settled,
and what for?"

"Taken old Marsh's rectory at Blaythorn," said Mrs. Graham.  "Going to
hunt with the South Meadshire."

"That seems an odd proceeding for one of the brightest ornaments of the
Shires," said Humphrey.

The Squire knit his heavy brows.  "We can show her very good sport," he
said, "if that's what she wants.  But I should like to know why she
came here, all the same."

"There's more in this than meets the eye," said Nancy, very unwisely,
for she and Joan were instantly sent out of the room.

"What are you children doing here?" asked the Squire sharply.  "Why
aren't you with Miss Bird?  Run along now; you've got lessons to do, or
something."

"We don't have lessons on Saturday.  Can't we stay with Cicely,
father?" asked Joan.

"I must be going directly," said Cicely, rising.  "But I'll come with
you and pay a last farewell to the dear old Starling."

So the three of them retired, and directly they got out of the room
Joan fell upon Nancy.  "What an idiot you are!" she said.  "If you had
kept quiet we should have heard everything.  When you get hold of a new
speech you must always be poking it in.  We've had enough of 'There's
more in this than meets the eye.'  I wish you'd get hold of a new one."

"I own it was foolish of me," said Nancy.  "I'm at the mercy of a
phrase.  Still, it was quite true.  We know who Dick is in love with
now.  Of course he got her down here.  Humphrey said she was very
beautiful."

"You are not to talk like that, children," said Cicely.  "You know
nothing about these things."

"Darling!" said Joan, squeezing her arm.  "Don't be so frightfully
grown-up.  We are not children any longer, and we know a good deal more
than you think."

"We are a force to be reckoned with now," said Nancy, "and it's no use
trying to keep family secrets from us, sending us out of the room, and
all that.  It's too transparent, and makes us talk all the more."

There was a pause in the morning-room when the three sisters had left.
Humphrey's quick brain was adjusting many things.  He knew Dick admired
Virginia Dubec, although it had not hitherto occurred to him that that
admiration betokened anything serious.  He suspected also, that since
somebody must have suggested to the lady that she should spend a season
hunting in Meadshire instead of in Leicestershire, that somebody was
probably Dick.  But if his brother had not seen fit to disclose that
fact at Kencote, not even the fact of his acquaintanceship with Lady
George Dubec, it was not for him to do so.  Therefore, when his father
asked him whether Dick knew that she had come to Blaythorn, and why she
had come, he said, "I don't know in the least.  He'll tell you if you
ask him."

The Squire bent his brows on him.  "You said he knew her very well."

"I didn't say he knew her very well.  I said he knew her better than I
did.  Lots of people know her.  She goes about everywhere in London."

"She was an actress, you say?"

"Well, that's what I've heard.  It may not be true."

"It is true," said Mrs. Graham.  "Virginia Vanreden.  I remember quite
well now.  I saw her when I was in New York with my husband ten years
ago.  And a lovely creature she was.  I shall go and call on her at
once."

The Squire frowned again.  "What sort of an actress was she?" he asked.
"Was she a chorus girl?"

"It was a play called _The Flower of Florida_," replied Mrs. Graham, "a
very silly play with catchy music, only it didn't catch me, because I
hate music, and I was bored to tears.  No, she wasn't a chorus girl,
and she wasn't the Flower of Florida either--I remember the Flower, an
exuberant lady with gold teeth, who seemed to be very popular, but I
should have said she was past her job.  This girl danced--oh, I
remember her very well; she was the best of the bunch, and the Flower
grinned at her with her teeth and scowled at her with her eyes while
she was performing.  When we got back to New York on our way home she
had caught on, and all the richly gilded youth was crowding to see her.
The Flower had departed, mad with jealousy."

"A dancing girl!" said the Squire.  "Of course!  Just the sort that
George Dubec would have married.  Well, you may call on her if you
like, Mrs. Graham, but----"

"Oh, I shall," said Mrs. Graham.  "Perhaps she will dance for me.  I
liked her immensely.  She was certainly beautiful, and I like beauty.
She was quite young too.  She can't be very old now."

"What I want to know is what brings her to Blaythorn," said the Squire,
which closed the discussion, for Cicely's carriage was announced at
that moment, and the welfare of the Mountfield horses being of
paramount importance it was not many minutes before she and Mrs. Graham
had driven away.

Dick returned shortly after six o'clock, and when he had changed his
clothes, came into the library where his father was sitting at his big
writing-table looking over papers, his gold-rimmed glasses perched on
his straight nose.

"Oh, here you are," he said, looking over them at his son.  "I say,
what's this about Lady George Dubec taking the rectory at Blaythorn?"

Dick took a cigarette out of his case and went over to the
smoking-table by the fire to get a match.  "I've just been to see her,"
he said; "she's a friend of mine."

"Well, but----"  The Squire was puzzled, vaguely uneasy, though he
could not have told why.  "What on earth has she come _here_ for?  Who
brought her?  You didn't, I suppose?"

Dick sat down with rather elaborate unconcern in one of the big
easy-chairs facing his father, who had turned round sideways in his
seat.  "I suppose you may say I did bring her, in a way," he said.
"She wanted to do a bit of mild hunting somewhere, and I told her she'd
better try the South Meadshire."

"But they tell me she's well known with the Quorn and all that sort of
thing."

"Now I should like to know who told you that," said Dick to himself,
but he did not ask.  "She hasn't hunted there for two seasons," he
said.  "She wanted something a bit quieter.  I said I'd see if I could
find her a smallish house, and I wrote to Wylie, the agent at Bathgate.
Blaythorn Rectory was the only place he could get hold of, and the
stables there aren't much."

"I should think not."

"They are better than you'd think, though, and she has only brought
three horses."

"Why didn't you tell us you were springing this strange lady upon us?"
asked the Squire, as a beginning out of all the questions he wanted to
ask.

"I haven't been home for a month," said Dick, "and I'm not much of a
correspondent."

"You didn't say anything about it last night, and you didn't say you
were going over to see her this afternoon."  The Squire's uneasiness
was beginning to take shape, and Dick realised with annoyance that he
had given it something to feed on.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "But we were talking about other things.  The
poor lady had a brute of a husband--I expect you knew him, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, I knew him.  A pretty sort of rascal he was too."

"I've always heard so, though I never met him.  He behaved like a swine
to her, at any rate, and she's a very charming woman.  I think you'll
like her, father.  I want to ask the mater to go over and see her as
soon as she can.  She doesn't know any one hereabouts, and it's a bit
lonely for her."

He could not keep the note of appeal, rarely heard from him, out of his
voice, but it escaped the Squire, who only saw himself at issue with
his eldest son--a position he exceedingly disliked.

"Oh, my dear boy!" he said.  "A woman that blackguard George Dubec
picked up off the music-hall stage!  You can't be serious."

"That's not true," said Dick sharply.  "Who said she was on the
music-hall stage?"

"Well, on the stage, anyhow--dancing on the stage--it's the same thing."

"Who told you that?"

"Humphrey said she had been on the stage, and Mrs. Graham remembered
seeing her when she was in America."

"Is Humphrey here?"

"Yes, he came this afternoon.  An American dancer, you know, Dick, and
a woman who would marry George Dubec--really, you might have thought
twice before you brought a person of that sort here; and as for your
mother calling on her--that's out of the question.  Surely you can see
that."

The Squire's tone was conciliatory.  He would not have spoken in that
way, upon a subject on which he felt strongly, to any one else in the
world, and when he had spoken he threw a glance at his son, whose face
betokened nothing of all he was thinking at that moment.

Dick did not speak at once.  When he did he said quietly, "When I
suggested to Lady George, who has been a friend of mine for some time,
that she should spend a month or two in this part of the country, I
told her that my people would be glad to see her and do what they could
for her.  It never crossed my mind that you would refuse to acknowledge
a friend of mine.  It is not my habit to make friends of women I
couldn't introduce you or my mother to."

"But, my dear boy!" expostulated the Squire.  "A woman who has danced
on the stage, the widow of a notorious profligate and swindler--George
Dubec was a swindler, and he wasn't received latterly even in men's
society--decent men.  _I_ wouldn't have received him, for one."

"You can say what you like about George Dubec," replied Dick.  "It was
the way he had treated her that made me sorry for her, first of all.
Then I found she was a good woman, as well as a very charming one.
There isn't a soul who knows her--and lots of people know her--who
could have a word to say against her.  It isn't generally known that
she was on the stage--it was for a very short time--and I wish to
goodness Humphrey had minded his own business and kept that to himself.
Her father was a planter in the South, and lost everything he had in
the war.  She had to support her mother, and that was the only way.
She was very young.  I honour her for what she did."

"Yes, oh yes, that's all right," said the Squire, who was coming more
and more to feel that it was all wrong.  "But it's no good, Dick.
Plenty of people in their different lines of life do things that you
can honour them for, as you say, but you don't welcome them to houses
like Kencote.  We live a quiet enough life here, I know that.  We're
not one of the modern smart country houses, thank God, and never will
be as long as I'm alive.  But we're of some account in this part of the
world, and have been for generations.  And the long and the short of it
is, Dick, that if you want to make friends with ladies of that sort, I
can't stop you--I don't want to--it's your affair and you're old enough
to look after yourself--but I won't have them at Kencote."

Inwardly, Dick was raging, and it needed all his self-control to keep
his feelings from showing themselves in his face or in his speech.  But
he knew that if he did so everything was lost.  It had been no vain
boast that he had made to Virginia Dubec, that he could manage his
father.  He had the advantage over him that a man who controls his
speech and his temper always has over a man who habitually controls
neither.  For many years past the Squire, who pictured himself as the
wise but undisputed autocrat of his household, had gone to his eldest
son for advice upon any matter that bothered him, and had always taken
his advice.  In questions of estate management he had never taken a
step of any importance without consulting Dick, and Dick had been the
virtual ruler of the estate, although the Squire did not know it.  In
his father's eyes Dick was a model son.  He had never once had to
exercise his paternal authority over him since his schooldays.  He knew
that Kencote, which was the apple of his own eye, was also the apple of
Dick's, and that he would have as worthy a successor as any head of an
old-rooted family ever had.  In course of years he had come to treat
his eldest son with a respect and consideration which he gave to no
other being alive.  Except that none but an eldest son who was some day
to step into his place could have aroused the feelings he had towards
him, his attitude towards Dick was what he might have felt towards a
brother, almost, it might be said, towards an elder brother.

Now Dick was quite aware of all this, and he knew also that in his last
speech his father had crossed a line that had never yet been crossed
between them.  He had done what he did almost every day of his life
with some member or other of his family or household, but had never
done with him since he was a child, because he had never given him the
opportunity.  He called it putting his foot down, and although in
reference to other matters Dick had frequently, by the exercise of his
peculiar gift of cool tact, caused the taking up again of a foot that
was announced to have been put down, and by no means despaired of being
able to do so in this instance, he knew that this was not the time to
undertake the removal.  Something of his moral supremacy had already
disappeared if his father could take it into his hands to give an
ultimatum against his expressed wishes.  There was no knowing how much
further it would be damaged if he were encouraged, as he would be by
opposition now that he had once delivered himself, to back up his
revolt by strong speech.  It was what he always fortified himself with
either before or after the process of putting his foot down, and Dick
had no mind to undergo it.

"Very well," he said quietly.  "If you feel like that about it, there's
no more to be said.  It's damned awkward for me, but I suppose I took
too much on myself."

The Squire immediately recrossed the line, on the other side of which
only opposition could possibly make him wish to keep his footing.  "Oh,
well," he said, "of course I don't say--in this instance--what I mean
is--well, look here, Dick, I don't say anything one way or the other.
I'll say this, my boy, you've never given me the slightest trouble, and
we've always seen eye to eye in pretty well everything, and where we
haven't at first you have always come to see that I was right in the
end--eh?  Better let me think the question over--what?  I don't want
you to feel you can't ask your friends to this house, which will be
your own some day."

"I can hardly help feeling that, can I?" said Dick, with a short laugh.

"Eh?  Well, I must think it over, and talk it over with your mother.
You'd better think it over too, old boy.  I can't help thinking you'll
feel you haven't been very wise.  We're Clintons of Kencote, you know.
We owe something to ourselves."

But Dick could stand no more.  "All right," he said, rising.  "I think
I'll go up and have a bath before dinner.  I'm a bit stiff."




CHAPTER VIII

THE SQUIRE FEELS TROUBLE COMING

Dick went out of the room angry with himself, angry with his father,
and still more angry with his brother.  He wanted to meet Humphrey and
have it out with him, and he knew that Humphrey at that hour--about
seven o'clock--would be in the smoking-room.  But he went upstairs, not
because he wanted a bath before dinner as he had told his father, and
certainly not because he was stiff after trotting a dozen miles or so
along the roads, but because he knew that it was not wise to have
anything out with anybody unless you had complete command over
yourself.  So he went into his big comfortable bedroom, where a bright
fire was burning, lit some candles, and threw himself into an
easy-chair to think matters out.

That his father would give way, that he was already in process of
giving way, he was well assured.  He knew how to work that all right,
and he had taken no false step, as far as he could remember, in dealing
with him.  But that little fact of Virginia's having once danced on the
stage, of which she had told him in the early days of their friendship,
as she had told him everything else about her varied, unhappy life, he
had never thought that he--and she--would have to face.  If it had not
been for that, his father, so he told himself, would have given way
already.  Knowing it, it was surprising that he had left anything to be
said on the subject at all.  He need never have known it; so few people
did know it, even in London, where Virginia was beginning to be well
known, or in Leicestershire, where she was very well known indeed.  Of
course, Humphrey knew it--he knew all that sort of gossip about
everybody--and Dick's anger against him began to burn as he imagined
the way in which he would have let it out.  He was like a spiteful old
woman, fiddling about in drawing-rooms, whispering scandal into other
old women's ears and receiving it into his own in return.

At this point Humphrey came into the room.  "Hullo, old chap!" he said.
"What on earth are you doing up here?  It isn't time to dress yet."

Dick got up quickly out of his chair and faced him.  He had better have
gone to him in the smoking-room at once before he had begun to think
things over.  "What the devil do you mean by meddling with my affairs?"
he said angrily.

Humphrey stopped short and stared as if he had held a pistol to his
head.  He and Dick and Walter had been closer friends than most
brothers are.  Their ways for some time had begun to diverge, but they
had remained friends, and since their boyhood they had never
quarrelled.  Such a speech as Dick's was in effect more than a pistol
held to his head.  It was a pistol shot.

"I suppose you mean what I told them downstairs about Virginia Dubec,"
he said.

"Virginia Dubec?  Who gave you the right to call her Virginia?" said
Dick hotly, and could have bitten out his tongue for saying it the
moment after, for of course it told Humphrey everything.

But Humphrey was too deeply astonished at the moment to take in
anything.  He thought he knew his brother; he had always rather admired
him, and above all for his coolness.  But if this was Dick, passionate
and indiscreet, he did not know him at all, and it was difficult to
tell how to deal with him.

But Humphrey was cool too, in his own way, hating the discomfort of
passion, and he certainly did not want to have a row with his elder
brother.  "I don't know why you're up against me like this," he said.
"I should have thought we knew each other well enough by this time to
talk over anything that wants talking over, sensibly.  I'm quite ready
to talk over anything with you, but hadn't we better go and do it
downstairs?  They'll be up here putting out your clothes directly."

"We'll go down to the smoking-room," said Dick, not sorry to have a
minute or two in which to pull himself together.

So they went downstairs without a word, and along a stone passage to a
big room which had been given over to them as boys, because it was
right away from the other rooms, and in which they knew no one would
disturb them.

Neither of them spoke at once, but both took cigarettes from a box on a
table, and Humphrey offered Dick a match, which he refused, lighting
one for himself.

"Lady George Dubec," said Dick--"Virginia Dubec, if you like to call
her so--I've no objection--is a friend of mine, as you know.  She
wanted a quiet place to hunt from for a month or two, and I said I
would try to find her a house here.  Of course I told her that they
would make friends with her from here.  I went to see her this
afternoon, and I come back to find you have been talking scandal about
her, and giving the governor the impression that she's an impossible
sort of creature for respectable people to know.  Upon my word,
Humphrey, you ought to be kicked."

Humphrey grew a shade paler, but he asked quietly, "What scandal do you
accuse me of spreading about her?"

"Well, it isn't scandal in the sense that it's untrue; but I don't
suppose a dozen people know that she was ever on the stage.  It was
only for a few months, and the circumstances of it did her credit.  But
if it gets about, it will do her harm.  As far as the governor goes, of
course, it puts him up on his hind legs at once, and here am I in the
position of getting this quite charming lady, against whom nobody can
say a word, down here, and my own people refusing to go near her.  It's
too bad.  If you happened to know that about her, which, of course, is
just the sort of thing you would find out and remember and talk about,
out of all the other things you might say about a woman like that, you
ought to have kept it to yourself.  And you would have done if you had
had a spark of decent feeling."

"I _should_ have kept it to myself if I had had any idea it was through
you she came here."

"You ought to have kept it to yourself in any case.  You know her, you
know what she is, and the first thing you find to blurt out about her
when you hear she has come down here is the very thing that you know
will put everybody against her!"

"Look here, Dick, there's no sense in you going on blackguarding me
like this.  I hadn't a ghost of a notion she was anywhere near here
when I told them what I did.  The moment I came into the room the
governor said, 'We've been talking about Lady George Dubec.  Do you
know her?'  I said, 'Yes, she's a very charming lady.'  That was the
very first thing I said.  Then I said, 'She was an actress once upon a
time.'  There's nothing in that.  You say very few people know it.
You're quite wrong.  Lots of people know it.  Why, even Mrs. Graham
knew it, and had seen her.  Nobody thinks anything the worse of her for
it.  Why should they?  And anyhow it wasn't until afterwards that they
told me that she had come down here.  Then I said, 'Dick knows her
better than I do; he'll tell you all you want to know.'  Really, old
chap, you're a bit unreasonable."

Both of them had been standing so far, but now Humphrey, feeling
perhaps that the crisis had been disposed of, threw himself into a
chair.

So it was, on the surface.  Dick stood for a time looking down on the
floor.  If it was as Humphrey had said, and he had not known that
Virginia Dubec was in the neighbourhood until after he had let out that
fact about her, it was impossible to carry the attack further.  But
Dick was no more satisfied with him than before.  The hostility he had
felt remained, and was destined to grow.  From that moment the common
ground of easy, tolerant brotherhood upon which they had both stood for
so long was left behind.  Dick had begun to criticise, to find cause
for dislike; Humphrey had received an affront, and he did not easily
forgive an affront.

But the cement of their years of frictionless companionship still held,
and could not be broken in a moment.  Dick also took a chair.  "Well,
if you didn't know----" he said rather grudgingly.

"No, I didn't know, and I'm sorry," said Humphrey; "the governor won't
hold out, Dick; he's only got to see her."

It was the best thing he could have said.  Dick was inwardly gratified,
and some of his resentment departed.  "You needn't say anything unless
he opens the subject," he said.  "But----"

"Oh, I know what to say if he does," said Humphrey.  "I say, Dick, old
chap, is it a case?"

Dick was not at all ready for this--from Humphrey, although if Walter
had asked him he might have admitted how much of a case it was, and
gained some contentment by talking it over.  "I like her, of course,"
he said, somewhat impatiently; "I've never disguised it.  I suppose one
is permitted to make friendship with women occasionally?"

"Oh yes," said Humphrey, with rather elaborate unconcern.  Then Dick
said he was going up to dress, and left the room without further word,
while Humphrey sat a while longer looking at the fire and turning
things over in his mind.

Over the dinner-table that evening there was talk of the forthcoming
Hunt Ball, and the one or two others which made the week after
Christmas a short season of gaiety in South Meadshire.  The Birketts
were coming to stay for them, the Judge and his wife and unmarried
daughter, and his other daughter, Lady Senhouse, with her husband.
These were the only guests invited so far, and the Squire, who liked a
little bustle of gaiety about him now and again, said that they must
ask one or two more people.

"We shall be unusually gay this year," he said, "with the ball for
Grace at Kemsale, which is sure to be well done.  We must take a good
party over from Kencote.  Who can we ask?"

It was a somewhat extraordinary thing that a question like that could
not easily be answered at Kencote.  The Squire very seldom left home,
Mrs. Clinton practically never, and in the course of years the families
from whom they could draw for visitors had dwindled down to those of
relations and county neighbours.  The Squire was quite satisfied with
this state of things.  There were plenty of people about him with whom
he could shoot, and who would shoot with him; and an occasional dinner
party was all or more than he wanted in the way of indoor
sociability--that, and this yearly little group of balls, the Hunt
Ball, the Bathgate Ball, and whatever might be added to them from one
or other of the big houses round.  Kencote had never been one of those
houses.  Its women had never been considered of enough importance to
make the trouble and expense of ball-giving worth while, and the men
could get all the balls they wanted elsewhere.  Before Cicely was
married her brothers had generally brought a few men down for these
local gaieties, but for the past two years there had been no party from
Kencote.

"I think Lady Aldeburgh would bring Susan Clinton if you were to ask
her," said Humphrey.  "In fact, I'm pretty sure she would."

Now the Countess of Aldeburgh was a person of some importance in the
social world, and her husband was sprung from the same race as the
Squire, sprung, in fact, some distance back, from Kencote, and
represented, as the Squire not infrequently pointed out, a junior
branch of the family of which he himself was the head.  He was
accustomed to speak rather patronisingly of the Aldeburgh Clintons on
that account, although not to them, for he did not know them, the
present Lord Aldeburgh having been a small boy at school at that period
of the Squire's life when he had been about London and known everybody.

"Are they friends of yours?" he asked, not displeased at the idea.

"Yes," said Humphrey.  "I told Susan Clinton that she ought to see the
home of her ancestors--I was lunching with them--and Lady Aldeburgh
said they couldn't see it unless they were asked."

"No difficulty about asking them," said the Squire.  "Very pleased to
see them, and show them what there is, although I dare say they won't
think much of it after the sort of thing they're accustomed to.  They
must take us as they find us.  Did you say anything about these balls?"

"Well, yes, I did--threw out feelers, you know.  I think they would
come if mother were to ask them."

"Oh, write by all means, Nina," said the Squire.  "Include Aldeburgh,
of course."

"Oh, _he_ won't come," said Humphrey.  "He never goes where they do.
He doesn't like them."

The Squire frowned.  He knew there were people like that, but he didn't
want to hear about them.  According to his old-fashioned ideas,
husbands and wives, if they went visiting at all, ought to go visiting
together.  Of course it was different where a man might have to go up
to London for a day or two.  There was no necessity always to take his
wife along with him.  Or he might perhaps go to a house to shoot.  That
was all right.  But for women to make a point of going about by
themselves--why, they had much better stop at home and look after their
household duties.  "Well, ask him, of course," he said.  "He can refuse
if he likes.  We can do very well without him.  Are either of you boys
going to ask any men?"

Dick had thought of bringing a friend, Captain Vernon, who had been to
Kencote before and would be very welcome.  And Humphrey was going to
ask Lord Edgeware.

"What, that young fool who lost all his money racing?" asked the Squire.

"He didn't lose it all," said Humphrey, "and he's had a lot more left
to him."

"We don't want that sort of person here," said the Squire decisively.

"All right," said Humphrey.  "But he's a very good chap all the same,
and has finished sowing his wild oats."

"He's an absolute rotter," said Dick.  "I quite agree; we don't want
that sort of fellow here."

Humphrey threw a glance at him and flushed with annoyance, but he said
lightly, "I beg to withdraw his candidature.  Is there any objection to
Bobby Trench?  He hasn't spent money racing because he has never had
any to spend."

Dick was silent.  The Squire enquired if Mr. Trench was one of Lord
So-and-so's sons, and being informed that he was, said that he had
known his father and should be pleased to see him at Kencote.  So the
party was made up, and the men went on to talk about pheasants and
hounds, until the twins came in for dessert, when they went on talking
about pheasants and hounds.

The Squire and Dick went into the library to go over their farm papers
together almost immediately after dinner, leaving Humphrey with his
mother and the girls in the morning-room.  When they had finished they
betook themselves to easy-chairs to talk, as their custom was in the
evening.  They were very good friends, and had enough in common to make
their conversation mutually agreeable.  Neither of them read much, and
when Dick was at Kencote they usually spent their evenings talking.
But Dick was rather silent to-night, and the Squire was uneasily
conscious of the shadow that had fallen on their intercourse.  And when
he was uneasy about anything his uneasiness always found expression.

"I say, my boy, I hope you don't take it amiss what I said about this
Lady George Dubec this afternoon," he said.  "You see my point all
right, don't you?"

"I see your point well enough," said Dick.  "Only I don't think it's
much of a point."

He was accustomed thus to address his father on equal terms, and the
Squire liked to have it so.  He was now only anxious, while having his
own way, to avoid the unpleasantness of leaving a grudge against
himself in Dick's mind.

"Well, we needn't go all over it again," he said.  "I haven't made up
my mind yet.  I don't say your mother shan't call and I don't say she
shall.  I must think it over.  Of course it's a bit awkward for you."

"It's more than a bit awkward for me," said Dick uncompromisingly.
"When you do think it over you might consider how particularly awkward
it is, after having helped this lady to a house here, to have to tell
her that my people don't consider her respectable enough to know."

"H'm!  Ha!" grunted the Squire, at a loss how to meet this.  Then he
made a clutch at his authority.  "Well, I think you ought to have asked
me first, Dick," he said, "and not taken things for granted.  If I'm
putting you in an awkward position now, it's because you have put me in
an awkward position first."

There was reason in this, perhaps more than the Squire usually
displayed in discussing a subject in which his feelings were already
engaged, and Dick did not want to go over the ground again until
matters had advanced themselves a stage.

"She will be at the meet on Monday--driving," he said.  "You will see
what she is like, and that she isn't in the least like what you
probably think she is.  I should like to introduce you to her, but that
shall be as you please."

The Squire did not reply to this.  He sat looking at the fire with a
puzzled frown on his face.  Then he turned to his son and said,
"There's nothing between you and this lady, Dick, is there?  You hadn't
got her in your mind last night when you said that you did not want to
marry a young girl?"

Dick cursed himself inwardly for having made that unlucky speech.  He
was not cut out for however mild a conspiracy, and he hated to have to
fence and parry.  But he must answer quickly if suspicion, which would
be disastrous at the present stage, were not to rest on him.  He gave a
little laugh.  "Is that what you have been thinking of?" he asked.  "Is
that why you don't want mother to call on Lady George?"

The Squire had only to push his question, and he would have learnt
everything, for Dick would not have denied Virginia.  But he did not do
so.  "No, of course not," he said.  "But if it were so--if that's how
the land lay----"

Dick did not tell him that that was not how the land lay.  He said
nothing, and the Squire relinquished the subject, not to open it up
again until he was alone with his wife that night.  Then his
disquietude came out, for Dick's reply to his question had not
satisfied him, and putting two and two together, as he said, and
impelled towards dreadful conclusions by his habit of making the most
of vague fears, he had now fully convinced himself that the land did
indeed lie in the direction of Lady George Dubec, now settled within a
mile or two, at Blaythorn, and that, unless he could do something to
stop it, a most dreadful catastrophe was about to overtake the house of
Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton could do little to calm his fears.  Privately she thought
that he was making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and that Dick was as
little likely as the Squire himself to marry such a woman as she
imagined Lady George Dubec to be.  For she knew how much alike her
husband and her son were in all the essential aims and ambitions of
their lives, although she knew also that Dick had a far cooler head and
a better brain than his father's.  For that very reason he was the less
likely to make a marriage which would be beneath the dignity of his
family.  She said what she could to persuade her husband that Dick
might be trusted in a matter of this sort, but he was in that stage of
alarm when however much a man may desire to find himself mistaken he
resists all attempts to prove him so.  "I tell you, Nina," he said,
"that he told me himself that when he did marry it would be a
middle-aged woman, or words to that effect.  And he gets this woman
down here without saying a word to us about it, and they say she's
good-looking--you heard Humphrey say that yourself, and Mrs. Graham
too--and he goes over there this afternoon without mentioning it.--By
Jove! didn't he say he wanted to go and see Jim at Mountfield?  Yes, he
did,--you remember--at luncheon.  Nina, I'm afraid there's no doubt
about it.  Can't you _see_ what a dreadful thing it would be, and that
we _must_ stop it at any cost?"

"I hope it will not come about," said Mrs. Clinton.  "Dick is
level-headed, and he sees questions of this sort in much the same light
as you do, Edward."

"It would be intolerable," wailed the poor Squire.  "And Dick of all
people!  I'd have trusted him anywhere.  And now I shall have to stand
up against him, and it will be one of the hardest things I have ever
had to do.  But I won't let him throw himself away and drag the old
name in the dust if I can possibly prevent it.  And, God helping me, I
will prevent it, whatever it costs me.  Nina, you are not to go near
this woman.  The only way is to keep her at arm's-length.  If we stand
firm the affair will fade out, and Dick will forget all about it.  He
has always been a good boy.  I've been proud of my son.  He will thank
me some day for saving him from himself.  Good-night, Nina, God bless
you.  There's a difficult time coming for us at Kencote, I'm afraid."

So night and silence fell on the great house.  Its master, always
healthily tired after his day, spent mostly in the open, soon forgot
his troubles in sleep; its mistress lay awake for a long time,
wondering if trouble were really going to befall her first-born, who
had gone so far from her since she had first hugged him to her breast.
And in other rooms in the house there were those who lay awake and
wearied themselves with the troubles of life or slept soundly without a
care, some of them of account in the daily comings and goings, some of
very little, but one and all acting and reacting on one another,
concerned in some degree in a common life.




CHAPTER IX

DICK PAYS A SUNDAY VISIT

It did not take Dick long to find out on that next (Sunday) morning
that his diplomacy had failed, that his father, urged by his fears, had
discovered what he would have hidden from him for a time, or thought he
had discovered it, which came to the same thing, since it was true, and
that he might just as well have announced his intention of marrying
Virginia Dubec, and entered at once upon the struggle which was now
bound to come in any case.

Nothing was said on either side, and the Squire did his best to behave
as usual.  But the attempt was too much for him, and there was no one
who did not know before breakfast was over that there was a disturbance
in the air.  He would enter upon a course of conversation with gaiety,
and relinquish it immediately to frown upon his plate.  He grumbled at
everything upon the table, and testily rebuked the twins for fidgeting.
They took the rebuke calmly, knowing quite well what it portended, and
were only anxious to discover the cause of the upset.

"It's this Lady George Dubec," said Joan, when they were alone
together.  "There's something fishy about her; it must have come out
after we were sent away yesterday.  Father thinks he's Emperor of this
part of Meadshire, and he doesn't like her coming here without his
being consulted."

"I don't think it's that at all," said Nancy.  "I believe it's
Humphrey's debts.  Father has got pots of money, but he hates shelling
it out.  He was snappy with Humphrey this morning."

"So he was with everybody but Dick.  That proves nothing.  A week's
pocket-money that it's this Lady George."

"Dick said we weren't to bet."

"Oh, well, perhaps we'd better not, then.  He was a brick about the
camera.  I don't suppose he's concerned in it, whatever it is.  With
father, Dick does no wrong."

"I'm not sure.  Joan, supposing Dick has fallen in love with Lady
George and father is upset about it!"

"Oh, my dear, do talk sense.  Dick in love with a widow!"

"Stranger things have happened.  Anyhow, we'll leave no stone unturned
to find out what it is."

"Oh, we'll ferret it out all right.  It will add to the interest of
life."

There was one thing that the Squire always did on the rare occasions on
which he found himself in a dilemma, and that was to consult his
half-brother, the Rector.  Consequently when, after church, meeting
Mrs. Beach, the Rector's wife, in the churchyard, he asked her if she
and Tom would come up to luncheon, Dick, overhearing him, smiled
inwardly and a little ruefully, and pictured to himself the sitting
that would be held in the afternoon, when the Rector would be invited
into the library and the Squire would unbosom himself of his
difficulties.  Dick himself had often joined in these conclaves.
"Let's see what Tom has to say about it," his father would say.  "He
has a good head, Tom."  Dick would be left out of this conclave, but as
he thought of the line that his uncle was likely to take, he half
wished that he had had a conclave with him himself beforehand.  The
Rector was a man of peace, a lovable man, who hated to see any one
uncomfortable, and perhaps, for a churchman, hated a little too much to
run the risk of discomfort himself.  Probably he would have
sympathised.  Certainly he would have brought no hard judgment to bear
on Virginia, whatever she had done and whatever she had been.  However,
it was too late to think of that now, and when Joan asked him at
luncheon if he would go for a walk with them in the afternoon, he took
the bull by the horns and said that he was going to drive over to
Blaythorn.

"By the by," said Mrs. Beach, not noticing the Squire's sudden frown,
"have you heard that Mr. Marsh has let his rectory to a hunting lady?"

"Yes," said Dick, "Lady George Dubec.  She is a friend of mine, and I'm
going over to see her."

Never had the Squire spoken with more difficulty.  But it behoved him
to speak, and to speak at once.  "I am very sorry she has come," he
said.  "She is a friend of Dick's in London, but we can't recognise her
here at Kencote."

Except that the servants were not in the room it was a public throwing
down of the gage of battle.  It amounted on the Squire's part to an
affront of his son, the being beloved best in the world, and he would
have put it on him if the whole household had been present.  But what
it cost him to do so could be told from his moody fits of silence
during the rest of the meal, his half-emptied plate and his
twice-emptied glass.

Dick took the blow without flinching, although he was inwardly consumed
with anger, not at the affront to himself, but to Virginia.  "We are a
little behind the times at Kencote," he said lightly.  "But we shall
probably fall into line by and by."

The Squire made no answer.  He had shot his bolt and had none of the
ammunition of repartee at hand.  The awkward moment was covered by the
immediate flow of conversation, but he took little or no part in it,
and it was a relief when the meal was over.

When the Squire had led the way into the library and shut the door upon
himself and the Rector, he broke out at once.  "Tom, you heard what
happened.  Dick is out of his mind about this woman.  Unless something
can be done to stop it, a dreadful day is coming to Kencote."

The Rector, tall, fleshy, slow in movement, mild of speech, was
astonished.  "My dear Edward!" he exclaimed.  "I did not gather from
what passed that--that this meant anything serious."

"Oh, serious!" echoed the Squire, half distraught.  "It's as serious as
it can be, Tom."  And he told him in his own decisive manner exactly
how serious it seemed to him to be.  "A hunting woman!" he ended up.
"I could have forgiven that.  I can't deny that women do hunt, now, who
wouldn't have done in our young days.  An American!  Well, people do
marry them nowadays--but an American at Kencote after all these
generations!  Think of it, Tom!  And if that were only the worst!  But
a stage dancer!  A woman who has shown herself before the public--for
money!  And a widow!--a woman who has been married to one of the worst
blackguards in England.  You remember him, Tom--at Eton."

"No," said the Rector.  "He was before my time."

"Before your time--yes, and three or four years older than I am.  He'd
have been an old man if he'd been alive now.  And it's the widow of
that man my son wants to marry.  Isn't it too shameful, Tom?  What can
have come over him?  He has never acted in this sort of way before.  My
boy Dick!  In everything that has ever happened to annoy me, he has
always behaved just exactly as I would have my son behave.  And now he
brings this trouble on me.  Oh, Tom, tell me what on earth I'm to do."

The poor gentleman was so overcome with distress that it was pitiful to
witness.  The Rector knew how he took things--hard at first, and
bringing his heaviest weight of resistance to bear upon the lightest
obstacles, but calming down after he had been humoured a bit, accepting
the inevitable like a sensible man, and making the best of it.  But
this was beyond the point at which he could be humoured.  It struck at
all that he held dearest in life, the welfare of his son, the dignity
of his house.  He would not give way here, whatever distress it cost
him to hold out.

"Have you seen this lady, Edward?" asked the Rector.

"Oh, seen her!  No," replied the Squire.  "Why should I want to see
her?  She may be good-looking.  They say she is.  I suppose Dick
wouldn't have fallen in love with her if she were not, and at any rate
women who are not good-looking don't become pets of the stage, as I'm
told this woman was.  Pah!  It's beyond everything I could have
believed of Dick.  I would rather he had married the daughter of a
farm-labourer--a girl of clean healthy English stock.  To bring a
creature from behind the footlights and make her mistress of Kencote--a
soiled woman--that's what she is, even if she has never sold
herself--and who knows that she hasn't?  She _did_ sell herself--to a
broken-down _roue_, a man old enough to be her father--for his wretched
title, I suppose.  And now she wants to buy Kencote, and my son, Dick,
the straightest, finest fellow a father ever had reason to be proud of.
I tell you, Tom, the world ought to be delivered of these harpies.
They ought to be locked up, Tom, locked up, and the wickedness whipped
out of them."

"Has Dick said that he wanted to marry her?" asked the Rector, anxious
to bring this tirade, which was gathering in intensity, to an end.

"It's as plain as it can be.  He has brought her down here, and he
wants us to take her up."

"Well, but is that all, Edward?  Surely you have more to go on than
that, if you have made up your mind that he wants to marry her."

"I _have_ more to go on.  He told me only two nights ago that he was
quite ready to marry, and that he wouldn't marry a girl.  That's plain
English, isn't it?  And this comes just on top of it.  Why, he had her
down here--fixed it all up for her--and never said a word to us till
after we'd heard from outside that she was there.  There are a lot of
things.  I can put two and two together as well as anybody, and I
haven't a doubt of it.  And I asked him definitely, yesterday, and he
didn't deny it."

"He didn't acknowledge it, I suppose."

"I tell you he didn't deny it.  He gave me an evasive answer.  That
isn't like Dick.  She has had a bad influence on him already.  Don't
waste time in trying to persuade me that black is white, Tom.  Tell me
how I am to stop this."

The Rector could not tell him how to stop it.  He knew very well that
Dick was a stronger man than his father, and that if he had made up his
mind to do a thing he would do it.  But he still doubted whether he had
made up his mind to do this particular thing.  He thought that the
Squire was probably alarming himself needlessly, and with all the art
that lay in his power he tried to persuade him that it was so.  "Young
men," he ended, "do make friends with women they wouldn't want to
marry.  You know that is so, Edward.  It is no use shutting your eyes
to facts."

"Yes, but they don't bring them down to their homes for their mothers
and sisters to make friends with," retorted the Squire.  "It's the last
thing Dick would do, and I'd rather he did what he's doing now, bad as
it is, than do a thing like that.  He's hypnotised--that's what it
is--he thinks she's a good woman--everything she ought to be----"

"And perhaps she _is_ a good woman, Edward, and everything she ought to
be," interrupted the Rector, speaking more emphatically than was his
wont, for in his simple unworldliness it had not occurred to him that
his last words could bear the interpretation the Squire had put upon
them, and he was rather scandalised.  "I say that you ought to hold
your judgment until you have seen her, and know something of her at
first hand.  I do not believe that Dick would expect his family to make
friends with a lady who was not above reproach, and I certainly never
meant for a moment to imply that he would do such a thing as make love
to a woman he did not intend to marry.  When I said that men make
friends with women, I meant no more than I said."

"Well, you're a parson," said his brother, "and you've got to keep your
eyes shut to certain things that go on, I suppose."

"No, Edward, that is not the duty of a parson," returned the Rector.
"I shut my eyes to nothing.  It seems to me that you do.  It seems to
me that you shut your eyes to what you know of Dick's character.  You
picture to yourself a vulgar, scheming adventuress.  I say that if Dick
is in love with this lady, as you say he is, she is not that, but
something very different, and I say again that you ought to withhold
your judgment until you have seen her."

"As far as seeing her goes," grumbled the Squire, "there's nothing
easier than that.  I shall see her at the covert-side, and I dare say I
shall see her scampering all over the county covered with mud, and
getting in the way of the hounds.  Women are an infernal nuisance in
the hunting-field.  Well, you don't give me much comfort, Tom.  Still,
it does one some good to talk over one's troubles.  I'm afraid this is
going to be a big trouble--the biggest I've ever had in my life."

"Then don't meet it half-way," said the Rector.  "You don't know for
certain that Dick wants to marry her, and if he does she can't be
anything like you have imagined her.  I'm afraid I must go now, Edward.
I have to look in at the Sunday-school."

"Well, good-bye, Tom, my dear fellow.  Tell 'em in the Sunday-school to
obey their parents.  Yes, for this is _right_, by George! the Bible
says.  And so it is; if children would obey their parents, half the
trouble in the world would disappear."

Dick 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, Dick!" she exclaimed.  "They told me there was nobody
here."

"The other maid let me in," said Dick.  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 nincompoops 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, Dick?  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 Dick 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 Dick, 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, Dick,
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, Dick; to-morrow at eight o'clock,
then.  I'll write to Humphrey, though I shan't break my heart if he
doesn't come."

Dick 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.
Dick 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, Dick, 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, Dick?"

"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 Dick!  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, Dick."

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.  Dick'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.
Dick came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted
silk smoking-coat, and both had linen aprons 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.

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

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 circumstances.
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.  Dick is going.  It is to meet Lady George Dubec."'

The Squire's face darkened instantly.  Here he was, plunged straight
into it again, when he wanted to free his mind for the time being of
Lady George Dubec and anything that had to do with her.

"Mrs. Graham seems to have lost no time," he said.  "She hadn't called
on her on Saturday.  I suppose she must have done so yesterday.  And
she knows perfectly well that I don't want to have anything to do with
the woman.  Are Jim and Cicely going?"

"I don't know.  She only mentions Dick."

"If she mixes Cicely up with--with this lady, I shall be very much
annoyed.  Not that I can say anything, I suppose, now she's married,
but I think Mrs. Graham might respect my wishes a little more.  Well,
you can do as you like.  I suppose the modern way is to disregard the
wishes of the head of the house entirely."

"I don't want to disregard your wishes," said Humphrey.  "I think as
long as one remains at home one ought to respect them."

The Squire was mollified at this, but he only said rather gruffly,
"Well, if you can put up with eating your dinner at home this evening,
I'd rather you should.  Dick has taken the bit between his teeth, and
he certainly doesn't think that my wishes should be respected.
Apparently nothing that I can say will influence him.  He seems to me
to be heading straight for the nastiest kind of fall.  What sort of a
woman is this, Humphrey?  You said you knew her, didn't you?"

"Oh, I've met her," said Humphrey.  "She's a very pretty woman.  Nobody
can deny that."

"People who have made a success on the stage generally are," said the
Squire; "at least, they used to be in my time.  Is she--well, is she a
lady?"

"Oh Lord, yes," said Humphrey.  "I'm sorry I let out that about her
having been on the stage.  You couldn't possibly guess it to look at
her.  Dick tackled me about it yesterday and said that nobody knew it.
People do know it, but there's no necessity to spread it all over the
place."

The Squire thought for a moment.  Then he put his question point-blank.
"Does Dick want to marry this woman, or doesn't he?"

"If you had asked me that two days ago," replied Humphrey glibly, "I
should have smiled at the idea.  Now, I believe he does."

"What has made you change your mind, then?"

"Well, his getting her down here, for one thing.  Then, as I told you,
he was furious with me for letting out what I did about her.  In fact,
if I hadn't kept my head we should have had a devil of a row about it;
and Dick and I have never had a row since we were kids."

The Squire digested this information.  It confirmed his worst fears and
made his heart the heavier.  "Can't you help to stop it?" he asked
shortly.  "You and he have always been pretty good friends."

"I can't do any more than the twins could," replied Humphrey.  "As I
told you, we nearly had a row about it as it is.  If I tried to
interfere we should have one without a doubt."

"I suppose you don't want a thing like that to happen in the family?"
asked the Squire, throwing him a side glance.

"Of course I don't want it," said Humphrey.  "I've nothing against the
lady as she is, but I don't want her for a sister-in-law."

"I should think not," said the Squire emphatically.  "Well, I suppose
_I'm_ the only person who can stop it, and by George! I will."

Again he stroked the greys with his whip, and their pace quickened.
"Look here, Humphrey," he said, "tell me how on earth I _can_ stop it."

Humphrey smiled into his thick fur collar.  It was so like his father,
to issue a bold statement of his intentions and then immediately to ask
for advice as to how to act.  But he had not been accustomed to ask
advice of Humphrey.

"Well, it doesn't seem to be a very difficult matter," he said.

"What do you mean?" asked the Squire shortly.  "He's not paying much
regard to my wishes now."

"I dare say you can't stop him amusing himself with the lady," said
Humphrey.  "I don't know why you should want to.  If you make it
awkward for him he'll be all the keener; if you give him his head he's
quite likely to come to his senses.  But it will be a different thing
if it comes to marrying."

"Why?"

"Well, what's he to marry on--his pay as a captain in the Guards?  What
can any of us marry on if you don't see us through?"

The Squire's attitude towards his eldest son was such that, through all
his anxiety and all his cogitations, he had never yet thought of this.
He was a rich man, and he gave all his sons good allowances and Dick a
very handsome one.  He did this as a matter of course, and never looked
upon it otherwise than as rightly due from him.  And, equally of
course, he was prepared largely to increase the allowance when Dick
should marry.  But it was quite true that there was nothing to prevent
him from stopping it altogether.  If the worst came to the worst he
could exercise the power of the purse, but it would be extremely
repugnant to him to do it, and the suggestion struck him like a
temptation to act unworthily.  "What on earth put that into your head?"
he asked.

Humphrey was a little taken aback by his tone.  He was annoyed with
Dick, as he had never been annoyed with him since their childhood,
although he had often been jealous of his seniority.  But they had been
on such good terms together that he could not feel quite comfortable in
putting a spoke in his wheel, as he felt he was now doing.

"It doesn't want much putting there," he said.  "The idea of marriage
does cross one's mind occasionally, and one naturally wonders what you
would do to make it possible.  It wouldn't be possible at all without
you."

"Well, I should be very sorry to have to take a step like that," said
the Squire after further consideration.  "And I don't want to talk
about it."

Now they came to the foot of a long hill, bounded on one side by a deep
wood, on the other by open grass-land, which fell away gradually, and
some distance off swelled again into a long undulating rise, dotted
with pieces of woodland, arable fields, and farms here and there, and
ended in the far distance in a range of hills lying mistily under
parallels of soft grey clouds.  It was the best bit of country the
South Meadshire could boast, and to the Squire surveying it largely, as
he walked his horses up the hill, every square mile within reach of the
eye spoke of some remembered episode in the long course of years during
which he had enjoyed his best-loved sport.

There--a line of grey at the bottom of the green valley--was the brook
into which he and his pony had soused head over ears when as a small
boy he had thought to follow his grandfather over a place which that
redoubtable sportsman himself had felt some qualms about taking.  The
old man, warned by the shouts, had looked round and trotted back to the
brook, where he must have made up his mind that neither the small boy
nor the small pony was in danger of drowning, for he had said, "Well,
if you're such a fool as to get in, let's hope you're not too much of a
fool to get out," and had turned his horse's head and galloped off
without further ado.  There was the covert from which a cunning old dog
fox had been hunted three times in two seasons, and had given them
three separate runs, which were talked of still when the old stagers of
the South Meadshire got together at one end of the table over the port,
although it was nearly thirty years ago.  There was the fence over
which, as a hard-riding subaltern, at the end of a season during which
he had hunted for the most part in Leicestershire, he had broken the
back of the best mare he had ever owned, through over-anxiety to show
his neighbours what riding straight to hounds really meant, and nearly
broken his own neck into the bargain.  There was the grass field in
which, many years before, although it seemed like yesterday, hounds had
pulled their fox down, and Dick, riding his first pony, had been in at
the death, had won his first brush, and had been duly blooded.  He
smiled within himself and remembered how his little boy had ridden home
at his side with the smears on his face and shown himself proudly to
his mother, and how, forgetting his new-found manhood, he had howled
when it was proposed to wash them off.

There were other exploits of Dick's and of his other sons', who had all
taken to the sport as he would have had sons of his take to it, which
this wide stretch of country recalled.  In fact, Dick and he, driving
up this long hill to a meet at Apthorpe, or beyond it, had been wont to
recall episodes which they both remembered, pointing out this and that
spot, near or far.  He liked best to recall the doings of his boys,
although his own and those of his hard-bitten, redoubtable old
grandfather had not been forgotten in the long tale.  It was as if a
sudden chill had struck him when the thought came to him, that if he
and Dick were to be kept apart by what had come between them, they
would perhaps never drive together again up the Apthorpe Hill.  The
hoarse note of a motor-horn behind him, and the necessity of drawing to
the side of the road as the machine swirled by, enabled him to relieve
his feelings by an expression of abhorrence stronger than he usually
allowed himself, although his ordinary language on the use of
motor-cars in connection with hunting did not lack vigour.  And this
particular motor-car contained the Master of the South Meadshire
himself, who waved to him as he passed, and received no very warm
greeting in return.  The Squire had had a grudge against Mr. Warner
during the greater part of his life.  His grandfather had kept the
hounds for forty years, hunted them himself, and spent money lavishly
on the upkeep of kennels and general equipment.  When he had died the
Squire had been too young to follow him, and Mr. Warner, who had made
his money in trade as the Squire averred, although he had actually
inherited it, and was but recently come into the county, had taken
them.  He was now an old man getting on for eighty, and had kept them
ever since, hunting with them as regularly and riding as straight as he
had ever done--a wonderful old man, already beginning, in his lifetime,
to pass into a proverb, as the Squire's grandfather, Colonel Thomas
Clinton, had done.  But the Squire had never had a good word for him.
Of all the positions in life which he might have filled, he felt it
hard that the Mastership of the South Meadshire should have been kept
out of his hands.  And that was his grudge against Mr. Warner,
carefully nourished by that gentleman's late acceptance of mechanical
traffic, and sundry other causes which need not be enquired into.

Other motor-cars passed them before they got to the top of the hill,
and the Squire had a word or two of condemnation to spare for each, as
they forced him to draw aside and control his horses, which shared his
dislike of the new-fangled things.

At the top of the rise the wood curved away to the right, and there was
nothing before them but the wide gorse-speckled common, with the broad
highroad running through it.  They drove on for a mile and came to a
high-lying inn by the roadside, appropriately named the "Fox and
Hounds," with a sign-post and a water-trough in front of it, and a
broad piece of grass, which was now the centre of the best of all
English country sights in the winter.  The hounds were grouped about
their huntsman, George Winch, a grey-whiskered, weather-tanned man
sitting upright on his tall bay horse, the two of them quiet and
unmoved, ready for what was to come, but not unduly excited over it,
and his three young Whips, two of them his sons and the other his
nephew.  The Master had already hoisted himself on to his horse and sat
as straight as his huntsman, although he was twenty years his senior.
And all round were the faithful followers of the South Meadshire, some
of whom had ridden with those hounds for as long as, or longer than,
the Squire himself, some of whom had only begun that season.  The men
were mostly in pink, with the yellow collar, and dressed for work and
not for show, their breeches spotless, their boots well polished and
their tops of the right mellow shade, but their coats not of the
newest, and their hats lacking the mirror-like shine which was imparted
to those of the young bloods such as Humphrey.  There was a sprinkling
of ladies, amongst whom was Mrs. Graham, in a workmanlike habit that
had seen better days, but many more of them had come on wheels than on
horseback.  There were boys on ponies, their round hats jammed on to
their heads, their round legs in wrinkled cloth gaiters, and the
Master's two little granddaughters riding astride.  On the outskirts of
the loosely knit crowd was a good sprinkling of farmers, solid elderly
men in hard felt hats, drab coats, corduroys and brown gaiters, and
slim, active young men in smarter editions of the same attire, but not
always so well mounted.

The Squire drove up to the front of the inn, where his horse and
Humphrey's were being walked up and down by their grooms, and climbed
down from his seat with a side-look that was half a frown at the crowd.
Amongst the women on horseback he saw none that he did not know, and
hoped that the dreaded lady had not come; but immediately he had
satisfied himself that she was not riding he caught sight of Dick,
already mounted, standing by a smart little pony-cart which contained
two women, and his frown deepened.  When he was on his horse and had
seen that his flask and sandwich-case were in place, he had another
moment of indecision.  Through all his discomfort and annoyance, his
heart yearned towards his son, and he was alternately and from minute
to minute swayed by opposite impulses, to hold out firmly for Dick's
sake or to give way for his own.  As he walked his horse on to the
green it was in his mind to cross over to where Dick was standing by
the pony-cart and, with what graciousness he could, end it all.

But he was stopped by one of his old friends, who had something quite
unnecessary to say about the weather and the prospect of the day's
sport, and before he could disengage himself he saw Dick leave the
pony-carriage and the two ladies, and come towards him.  He did not pay
much attention to his friend, but sat on his horse facing his son.  He
saw Dick also stopped, and waited impatiently, hoping that he was
coming to speak to him.  Then he saw a very smartly attired young man
trot up to the pony-carriage, arms and legs akimbo, to be greeted, as
it seemed to him, with complete cordiality by the lady who held the
reins, but not so effusively by the lady by her side.  This young man
was his pet abomination, the vacuous, actress-hunting, spendthrift son
of a rich father, already notorious for his "goings-on," and likely to
be more so if he continued as he had begun.  He heard his loud foolish
laugh over something he had said to the lady, or something she had said
to him, and saw, although he could not hear, her laugh in reply.  Then
he saw him take out his cigarette-case and offer it to her, and at that
he wrenched round his horse's head and exclaimed, apparently in answer
to a question which he had not heard addressed to him, much to his
friend's surprise, "No, I'm damned if I do."

He had seen enough.  If that vicious young fool was the sort of person
the woman was on terms of intimacy with, then she was just what he had
pictured, and there was no saving grace in her.  A cigarette-smoking,
loose-tongued, kind-to-everybody creature of the stage!  He would
rather be at enmity with his son all his days, he would rather see him
dead, than married to such a woman.

He walked his horse, not knowing where he was going to, except that he
wanted to get as far as possible away from Lady George Dubec, to the
outskirts of the crowd and beyond them, his mind in a ferment of
disgust.  He heard the creak of saddlery and the thud of a horse's
hoofs on the hard turf behind him.  Dick trotted up to him, and said,
as he reined up his horse, "I wish you'd let me introduce you to Lady
George."  He spoke as if there had been no controversy between them on
the subject.  He knew his father, and he was giving him his chance.
Two minutes earlier and the Squire would have taken it.  Now he turned
round sharply, his face red.  "I have no wish to be introduced to Lady
George, now or at any time," he said.

"Oh, all right!" said Dick coldly, and turning his back on him, trotted
off again.




CHAPTER XI

DICK LEAVES KENCOTE AND MAKES A DISCOVERY

There was not much pleasure for the Squire that day, although they
found a fox without delay, and with one check hunted him across the
best of the South Meadshire country and killed him in the open after a
fast run of forty minutes.  The hounds got him out of the spinney where
he was known to reside, in no time, but he immediately took refuge in
another and a larger one half a mile or so off.  The hunt straggled
after him, those who had been on the wrong side of the covert when the
music of the hounds first announced their prompt discovery riding hard
to make up for lost time, the carts and carriages streaming along the
road.  Then there was a pause while the hounds worked to and fro
through the wood, and the groups formed again and waited for what
should happen.  The Squire, more by instinct than design, for his
thoughts were on far other matters, edged down the skirts of the wood
to where he could see the fox break cover if he behaved as his
experience told him most foxes would behave in like circumstances, and
keeping well under cover he soon saw the cunning nose poking out of the
brushwood and the furtive red form steal out to cross the road and make
a bold bid for freedom.  Just at that moment, as he was preparing to
give the view-hulloa when my gentleman should have taken irrevocably to
the open, a cart drove smartly round the opposite corner of the wood
and pulled up, but not before the fox had seen it and slunk cautiously
back into shelter.  The Squire smothered a strong exclamation of
disgust, but gave it vent and added something to it when he recognised
the cart and its driver.  If Lady George Dubec had come into the South
Meadshire country to head the South Meadshire foxes, as well as to
annoy him grossly in other ways, then good-bye to everything.  But she
should be told what she had done.  With rage in his heart and a black
scowl on his face he cantered along the strip of grass by the roadside,
and lifting his hat and looking the offending lady straight in the
face, said in an angry voice, "Would you mind keeping behind the
hounds, madam?  You have just turned the fox back into covert."  Then
he turned his back and rode off, leaving Virginia and Miss Dexter
looking at each other with horrified faces.

However, Reynard's caution did not save him long.  He was bustled out
of shelter again within ten minutes, and realising that his only chance
of escape was to run for it, run he did and gave the hounds all they
knew to catch him.  The Squire was away with the first, and, riding
hard and straight, did for what would have been otherwise a blissful
forty minutes succeed in losing the sharp sense of his unhappiness,
although black care was perched all the time behind him, and when the
fox had been k

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