Ever After (14 page)

“Oh, rot, no horse can kill me. Not for years yet,” said Lord Enstone cheerfully. “Ever hunt in wall country, Mr. Murray?”

Bracken said yes, as a matter of fact, he had had a rattling good day with the Duke of Beaufort’s bitch pack two years ago. His stock shot up at once.

“Did you really, what day was that?” asked Alwyn keenly. He had a fantastic memory for such things and carried in his head every meet and every run and every covert he had ever heard about.

Bracken said it was early in November, so far as he could recall, and the whole place was hopping with foxes after a dry,
bad-scenting
spell. They accounted for a brace and a half before noon, he said, and the very first run was a four-mile point after a quick find in Bailey’s Wood.

“I heard about that run!” said Alwyn. “Racing pace the whole way, what? Killed handsomely roundabout Jackament’s Bottom, what? Heard about it from Michael Trent. He was staying with the Duke at the time. You know Trent, by any chance?”

Bracken knew him quite well.

“Extraordinary,” said Lord Enstone. “Small world, what, what?”

“I like a bitch pack, myself,” Archie remarked. “Just that little bit more drive and dash that makes all the difference on a poor scent.”

“I say,” said Lord Enstone. “These automobiles. They’ll be the ruin of good scent, what?”

The Danes and the setter had finished their polite inspection of Bracken’s riding-boots and retired to their respective masters’ heels. Archie was handing round the cups for Clare, so his spaniel was unable to settle, and camped beside Bracken’s chair. Bracken scratched its neck with a knowing finger-tip, just in the spot no dog can reach, while the talk ran on over the hunting season just past, which had been full of rough weather with too much frost and hard ground. Archie had gone out with the Tiverton, which was a
Devonshire
hunt, last Boxing Day. “It’s terrible country,” he said with a reminiscent shudder. “Banks. With
trees
planted on top And
bogs
! Only eight of us saw the finish, besides the Hunt staff. And only sixteen out of twenty-one and a half couples, mixed pack. Stout foxes, though. One of them scrambled right up the ivy to the roof of a brew-house—nobody believes this, but I was there!—he lay up on the roof-tree with his nose between his paws and giggled at us. And what did the Master do? Whipped ’em off, of course! That fox deserved another day.”

Lord Enstone then inquired, because he couldn’t stand it any longer not to, if Bracken had ever ridden point-to-point. Well, yes, he had, said Bracken, the last time being two years ago at the Pytchley course, which had nasty big gorse-faced fences

“Lord, yes, I know that course!” said Alwyn. “Wait a minute, I was there!” He snapped his fingers at his obedient memory.

“Wasn’t that the day an American won the cup? Was that
you
?”

Bracken admitted that it was.

“Well, I’m damned!” said Alwyn, and they all stared at their guest with steadily increasing respect. “I remember now! I saw you win it! But I say, old boy, you do ride short for jumping, you know! I thought you were one of those Newport johnnies, what?”

Bracken said he had learned to ride in Virginia, but managed to get a season in England now and then.

“Well, I must say I like an old-fashioned hunting seat myself,” insisted Alwyn, who was very heavy in the shoulders. “I remember saying at the time, ‘That fellow’s riding damn’ short,’ I said.”

“I’m long-legged,” Bracken pointed out defensively.

“Oh, jolly good leg for a boot!” Alwyn agreed generously. “But do let ’em out a couple of holes, old boy, you can’t possibly stay on like that, you know!”

“But he did stay on!” Clare reminded him amusedly, running a shameless glance over Bracken’s legs.

“Only just,” said Bracken, and grinned. “I was all over the saddle at the first water-jump, I don’t deny! Thought I was a goner. Had a good horse, though, he saved me. One of the Master’s.”

They all said what a pity it was that he was too late for
Cheltenham
this year, and how he must be sure to come out with them when cubbing began, and the conversation ran on about local coverts and recent runs, and the new Whipper-in, and the merits of coffee as a remedy for distemper, and the idiocy of the foot-people and the chaps who only thought of getting home to their tea, and Alwyn said he had been perfectly sure that Bracken was a useful man on a horse when he first walked into the stable-yard leading Thunderbolt.

Dinah was not mentioned again, and it became ever plainer to Bracken that any further efforts by him on her behalf today would be regarded with honest bewilderment by her family. He had never before encountered obtuseness on such a scale, too genuine to be resented. Except for Archie. Archie had asked how she was
managing
. Archie’s dog had stayed by Bracken’s chair, and while he drank his scalding tea Bracken rubbed the spaniel’s back gently with the toe of his boot.

S
IR
G
RATIAN
F
ORBES
-C
ARPENTE
R
, meanwhile, was not making progress. He vacillated between a horrified realization of his own enslavement and the reckless abandonment to his madness. Poor Sue, who had been made self-conscious by having her attention called to her conquest, resisted the cowardly impulse to avoid her host, and treated him forgivingly, almost pityingly, which he could not account for and which only made him worse off because she was so sweet, and he attributed her attitude to a possible sympathy about his leg, which had finally begun to do nicely, though he was still limping and still unable to ride.

Sue was determined that he should have no opportunity to come to the point, in case he had any idea of such a thing, and ask her to marry him, because she couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings by refusing him. She was very sure that she would refuse him. And it seemed particularly unkind to take his house away from him and turn him down in the same breath, as it were.

The Major, who had never cared two pins about the house, now suddenly found it very attractive, adorned as it was by two charming
women who actually came down to breakfast in delightful tea-gowns and consulted him as to his plans for the day, his preferences in food, and his wishes and whims in general. It was a considerable novelty to a fellow whose only household equipment for years had consisted of a dour Scottish batman and a military kilt. He was becoming quite fascinated with the picture of himself as a family man.

They went to the village church on Easter Sunday, and found it decorated entirely in yellow, with primroses and daffodils, and they all said what a good idea it was, because one had white flowers for a funeral and Easter was just the opposite. The sunlight was yellow too, on the golden stone, and the effect was so singularly gay as to be almost unorthodox, some people thought, though goodness knows the sermon was dull enough to suit anybody—it didn’t last long, as Lord Enstone had years ago given the rector firmly to understand that fifteen minutes was the absolute limit.

The Farthingale party sat in Aunt Sophie’s pew, and Sir Gratian’s secretly religious soldier’s heart was immensely touched by having Sue beside him, sharing the same prayer-book and singing hymns. It was a mild, sunny day, and after lunch Sue found herself strolling down the yew walk with the Major. Bracken and Virginia, who had certainly left the house just behind them, had disappeared, and a bend in the grassy path hid the lawn and west front from view. Sue found herself making conversation rather fast.

“We shall never be able to thank you enough for letting us have this lovely house to live in this summer, Sir Gratian,” she heard
herself
saying. “You’ve no idea how large and oppressive London seems to someone like me, who isn’t used to living in the city. Down here I feel I can breathe again. In church this morning I really began to feel quite at home.”

“I wish,” he said, pacing thoughtfully beside her, so slowly that his limp was hardly noticeable, “I wish I could prevail on you on such a short acquaintance to use my Christian name.”

Sue did not quite follow, for they had all been calling him Sir Gratian for days now.

“You’ve no idea,” he went on after a pause, “how lonely it is to have almost no one in the world who addresses you informally. And I’m just a little bit tired if being called Carpers, I might add!”

“I can understand your being lonely,” Sue said gently. “I grew up in a large family myself, and we feel very hard done by if we can’t collect more than a dozen for holidays and anniversaries. I’m very sorry indeed for anyone who hasn’t got heaps of sisters and cousins and aunts.”

“I wonder if you could be sorry enough to take me in,” he said, and then, as Sue was speechless—“You haven’t known me long
enough, I realize that, but we soldiers are always in a hurry. I am asking you to marry me, my dear.’

Sue was enveloped in a wave of hot and then of cold, which left her knees weak and her hands unsteady. He had done it. Oh, how stupid of her not to have seen it coming and headed him off! Now he had done it, and she would have to say No.

“We coudn’t have this house, I’m afraid, much as I should like to offer it to you,” he was saying, limping along beside her. “But we might be able to find a smaller one, not so expensive to keep up, somewhere near by. And once this show in Egypt is over, I could think of retiring from the Army and raising dahlias, or something. Do you think you could bear to live with me like that, Susannah?”

And one couldn’t say a flat No to that, she thought, one had to—to find some way of—breaking it gently—

“Perhaps,” said Sir Gratian, keeping a tight rein of himself while a vein beat in his temple and his eyes looked very fierce, “Perhaps you would like to think it over and tell me tomorrow.”

“Oh,
no
!” cried Sue involuntarily, for a day and a night of suspense would never do. “No, I—I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

“I was afraid so too,” he said gravely after a moment. “It was asking too much, of course. You have your life, your friends and your family, on the other side of the water. It was just a little idea I had—thought I might as well mention it.” He glanced sidewise at her with his squinting, boyish smile. “Don’t let it depress you, my dear. It can’t be the first time you’ve sent some poor fellow packing. Nor it won’t be the last, if I’m any judge.”

“Oh,
please
—!” Sue entreated, her eyes full of tears. “It’s not like that at all, you see, I—” She stopped. She couldn’t tell Sir Gratian right out about Sedgwick all those years ago, she didn’t know him very well. Besides, nobody but Eden and Dabney knew about Sedgwick any more, and of course her father. She had begun to hope they might all have forgotten it. Besides—she had no right to speak of it without Sedgwick’s permission. And after all, would Sir Gratian feel any better if he knew? She hated to have him think she went about refusing people right and left, though. “You see, my father is very old,” she faltered. “I—it was a risk for me to leave him even for this summer, but it was a sort of family
emergency
. You see, he counts on me, because all the others are either married or—or dead. I couldn’t possibly leave him.”

“I see.” And in spite of him his heart lifted a little. Elderly fathers die. Sometimes a whole lifetime of sacrifice is not required of even the most devoted daughter. Sometimes, too, some other arrangements can be made, if one is determined enough. If Susannah really wanted to stay in England some solution might be found for her father’s care. And more than two months’ leave remained. He
had until July to make her want to stay…. “But at least you will call me Gratian,” he stipulated, and Sue, grateful to him for taking it so nicely, promised.

When the four of them set out in the carriage for the Hall on Monday at lunch-time, the Major looked round complacently at his ready-made family and said, “I feel rather like somebody in Jane Austen’s books.”

“Not enough daughters,” said Bracken, and Sue, who knew exactly what Sir Gratian meant, smiled at him in a way to make his heart turn clean over.

The carriage swept in at the tall wrought iron gates and drove through acres of park where fallow deer lifted their heads to see it pass.

“Golly!” said Virginia irreverently as the colonnaded front of the Hall came into view through the trees. “What
is
this place, one of Vanbrugh’s off days?”

The Major snorted with laughter, and Bracken said, “The terrace is nice, in a big way, and there is some good Adam inside. They get lost in it, of course, and wander about looking for meals!”

“I was lost for hours at Knole, once,” Virginia recalled. “Mother got really frightened before they found me again, and all I’d done was take the wrong turning on the way to my room. I saw a lot of things they don’t usually show.”

“This isn’t as bad as Knole,” said Bracken as they drew up under the portico. “I think you’d always be heard here if you hollered.”

“Not with that row going on!” said Virginia, for the peacocks on the terrace were just then having a screaming match which was clearly audible at the front of the house.

The door opened into a high white-pillared entrance hall from which the grand staircase rose past a riot of rococo plasterwork on the walls. They were shown into the white dining room where the family was sitting. Bracken had been in to the village and bought a large gaudy box of chocolates for Dinah and he asked Lord Enstone if he might take Virginia up to say Hello before lunch. The Earl looked surprised, and then said Yes, yes, of course, why not, and rang for a footman to show them the way.

Bracken and Virginia followed their guide along the
endless-seeming
upper corridors to the nursery floor. They found Dinah dressed in an unbecoming brown blouse and skirt, still lying on the sofa with her leg up. Miss French sat near by with a book, reading aloud, and Bracken inspected her carefully as Dinah introduced them—a thin, gentle-faced woman, no longer young, with soft grey hair above level blue eyes, and a grave smile. It was with Miss French that Dinah spent her meagre schoolgirl days and to her that she must look for affection and companionship. Not like most
governesses, Dinah had said, and Bracken thought not, for he liked what he saw. And so did Miss French.