Part 6 (1/2)
”Rather slow, sir, the weather is so bad.”
”But talking of fire, Burnes, I find that I can insure at a much cheaper rate at Lloyds' than at most of the offices. I find that I shall make a saving of 20 a-year.”
”That's worth thinking about, sir.”
While the young squire talked to his bailiff Kitty fed her rooks. They cawed, and flew to her hand for the sc.r.a.ps of meat. The coachman came to speak about oats and straw. They went to the stables. Kitty adored horses, it amused John to see her pat them, and her vivacity and light-heartedness rather pleased him than otherwise.
Nevertheless, during the whole of the following week the ladies held little communication with John. He lived apart from them. In the mornings he went out with his bailiffs to inspect farms and consult about possible improvement and necessary repairs. He had appointments with his solicitor. There were accounts to be gone through. He never paid a bill without verifying every item. It was difficult to say what should be done with a farm for which a tenant could not be found even at a reduced rent. At four o'clock he came into tea, his head full of calculations of such a complex character that even his mother could not follow the different statements to his satisfaction. When she disagreed with him, he took up the ”Epistles of St Columban of Bangor,” the ”Epistola ad Sethum,” or the celebrated poem, ”Epistola ad Fedolium,”
written when the saint was seventy-two, and continued his reading, making copious notes in a pocket-book. To do so he drew his chair close to the library fire, and when Kitty came quickly into the room with a flutter of skirts and a sound of laughter, he awoke from contemplation, and her singing as she ascended the stairs jarred the dreams of cloister and choir which mounted from the pages to his brain in clear and intoxicating rhapsody.
On the third of November Mrs Norton announced that the meet of the hounds had been fixed for the fifteenth, and that there would be a hunt breakfast.
”Oh, my dear mother! you don't mean that they are coming here to lunch!”
”For the last twenty years all our side of the county has been in the habit of coming here to lunch, but of course you can shut your doors to all your friends and acquaintances. No doubt they will think you have come down here on purpose to insult them.”
”Insult them! why should I insult them? I haven't seen them since I was a boy. I remember that the hunt breakfast used to go on all day long.
Every woman in the county used to come, and they used to stay to tea, and you used to insist on a great number remaining to supper.”
”Well, you can put a stop to all that now that you have consented to come to Thornby Place, only I hope you don't expect me to remain here to see my friends insulted.”
”But just think of the expense! and in these bad times. You know I cannot find a tenant for the Woreington farm. I am afraid I shall have to provide the capital and farm it myself. Now, in the face of such losses, don't you think that we should retrench?”
”Retrench! A few fowls and rounds of beef! You don't think of retrenching when you present Stanton College with a stained gla.s.s window that costs five hundred pounds.”
”Of course, if you like it, mother...”
”I like nothing but what you like, but I really think that for you to put down the hunt breakfast the first time you honour us with a visit, would look very much as if you intended to insult the whole county.”
”It will be a day of misery for me!” replied John, laughing; ”but I daresay I shall live through it.”
”I think you will like it very much,” said Kitty. ”There will be a lot of pretty girls here: the Misses Green are coming from Worthing; the eldest is such a pretty girl, you are sure to admire her. And the hounds and horses look so beautiful.”
Mrs Norton and Kitty spoke daily of invitations, and later on of cooking and the various things that were wanted. John continued to go through his accounts in the morning, and to read monkish Latin in the evening; but he was secretly nervous, and he dreaded the approaching day.
He was called an hour earlier--eight o'clock; he drank a cup of cold tea and ate a piece of dry toast in a back room. The dining-room was full of servants, who laid out a long table rich with comestibles and glittering with gla.s.s. Mrs Norton and Kitty were upstairs dressing.
He wandered into the drawing-room and viewed the dead, c.u.mbrous furniture; the two cabinets bright with bra.s.s and veneer. He stood at the window staring. It was raining. The yellow of the falling leaves was hidden in the grey mist. It ceased to rain. ”This weather will keep many away; so much the better; there will be too many as it is. I wonder who this can be.” A melancholy brougham pa.s.sed up the drive. There were three old maids, all looking sweetly alike; one was a cripple who walked with crutches, and her smile was the best and the gayest imaginable smile.
”How little material welfare has to do with our happiness,” thought John. ”There is one whose path is the narrowest, and she is happier and better than I.” And then the three sweet old maids talked with their cousin of the weather; and they all wondered--a sweet feminine wonderment--if he would see a girl that day whom he would marry.
Presently the house was full of people. The pa.s.sage was full of girls; a few men sat at breakfast at the end of the long table. Some red coats pa.s.sed across the green glare of the park, and the hounds trotted about a single horseman. Voices. ”Oh! how sweet they look! oh, the dear dogs!”
The huntsman stopped in front of the house, the hounds sniffed here and there, the whips trotted their horses and drove them back. ”Get together, get together; get back there; Woodland, Beauty, come up here.”
The hounds rolled on the gra.s.s, and leaned their fore-paws on the railings, willing to be caressed.
”How sweet they are, look at their soft eyes,” cried an old lady whose deity was a pug, and whose back garden reeked of the tropics. ”Look how good and kind they are; they would not hurt anything; it is only wicked men who teach them to be ...” The old lady hesitated before the word ”bad,” and murmured something about killing.
There was a lady with melting eyes, many children, and a long sealskin, and she availed herself of the excuse of seeing the hounds to rejoin a young man in whom she was interested. There was an old sportsman of seventy winters, as hale and as hearty as an oak, standing on the door-step, and he made John promise to come over and see him. The girls strolled about in groups. As usual young men were lacking. Looking at his watch, the huntsman pressed the sides of his horse, and rode to draw the covers at the end of the park. The ladies followed to see the start, although the mud was inches deep under foot. ”Hu in, hu in,” cried the huntsman. The whips trotted round cracking their long whips. Not a sound was heard. Suddenly there was a whimper, ”Hark to Woodland,” cried the huntsman. The hounds rallied to the point, but nothing came of it.
Apparently the old b.i.t.c.h was at fault. The huntsman muttered something inaudible. But some few hundred yards further on, in an outlying clump where no one would expect to find, a fox broke clean away.