Part 47 (1/2)
He smiled.
”I am not so sure,” he confessed, ”that I should consider England quite so much of a sporting country as she thinks herself.”
”What heresy!” the Marquis exclaimed, leaning forward.
”Of course, I didn't know that I was going to be overheard,” David said good-humouredly, ”but I must stick to it. I mean, of course, sport as apart from games.”
”Shooting?” the Marquis queried.
”I am afraid I don't consider that shooting at birds, half of them hand-reared, is much of a sport,” David continued. ”Have you ever tried pig-sticking, or lying on the edge of a mountain after three hours' tramp, watching for the snout of a bear?”
Let.i.tia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was leaning a little forward. The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
”Hunting, then?”
David smiled.
”You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a pack of a.s.sistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature,”
he said. ”Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real, intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the rounding up of a herd of wild elephants.”
”Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage,” the d.u.c.h.ess observed, as she sipped her wine. ”Perhaps he may be right.
Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport.”
”The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded,” the Marquis pointed out, ”are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman. Most of our younger generation--those whose careers permitted of it--have tried their hand at big game shooting. I myself,” he continued reminiscently, ”have never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants, since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in India.--I see that Let.i.tia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline.”
The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost into indistinctness as they pa.s.sed out of the lighted zone. David's eyes followed Let.i.tia until she had disappeared. Then he was conscious that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.
”This has been sent down from Broomleys, sir,” the man explained.
David took it and felt a sudden sinking of the heart. The envelope was thin, square and of common type, the writing was painstaking but irregular. There was a smudge on one corner, a blot on another. David glanced at the Marquis, who nodded and immediately commenced a conversation with Grantham. He tore open his message and read it:
”The time has arrived. I wait for you here.”
He crushed the half-sheet of notepaper in his fingers and then dropped it into his pocket.
”There is no answer,” he told the servant.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
Grantham, who had been unusually silent throughout the service of dinner, slipped away from the room a few minutes before the other men.
He found Let.i.tia arranging a bridge table, and drew her a little on one side.
”Let.i.tia,” he said, ”I am annoyed.”
”My dear Charles,” she replied, ”was anything ever more obvious!”