Abington Abbey: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

A MEET AT WILBOROUGH

It was the first day of the Christmas holidays, and a fine hunting morning, with clouds that showed no immediate threat of rain, and a soft air that contained an illusive promise of spring. Young George, looking out of his bedroom window, found life very good. Previous Christmas holidays had held as their culmination visits to country houses in which he might, if he were lucky, get two or three days' hunting; but hunting was to be the staple amusement of these holidays, with a young horse all his own upon which his thoughts were set with an ardour almost lover-like. He was to shoot too, with the men. His first gun had been ordered from his father's gun-maker, and Barbara had told him that it had already come, and was lying snugly in its baize-lined case of new leather, with his initials stamped upon it, ready for the family present-giving on Christmas morning. Furthermore there would be a large and pleasant party at the Abbey for Christmas, and other parties to follow, with a ball in the week of New Year. Young George, under the maturing influence of Jimmy Beckley, had come to think that a grown-up ball might be rather good fun, especially in one's own house, and with country neighbours coming to it, most of whom one knew. There would be other festivities in other country houses, including a play at Feltham Hall, which Jimmy, who was a youth of infinite parts, had written himself during the foregoing term. Kate Pemberton, to whom his fancy had returned on the approach of the hunting season, was to be asked to play the heroine, with himself as the hero. There were also parts for the Grafton girls and for Young George, who had kindly been given permission to write his own up if he could think of anything he fancied himself saying. The play was frankly a melodrama, and turned upon the tracking down of a murderer through a series of strange and exciting adventures. Young George had first been cast for the professional detective—Jimmy, of course, playing the unprofessional one, who loves the heroine—but, as no writing up of the part had prevented it being apparent that the professional detective was essentially a fool, he had changed it for that of the villain. Young George rather fancied himself as the villain, who was compounded of striking attitudes, personal bravery and occasional biographical excursions revealing a career of desperate crime, to which he had added, with Jimmy's approval, a heart not altogether untouched by gentler emotions. Maggie Williams was to be his long-lost little sister, the thought of whom was to come over him when he was stirred to his blackest crimes, aided by a vision of her face through transparent gauze at the back of the stage; and she was to appear to him in person on his deathbed, and give him a chance of a really effective exit from a troubled and, on the whole, thoroughly ill-used world. It would be great fun, getting ready for it towards the end of the holidays, and would agreeably fill in the time that could not be more thrillingly employed in the open air. He was not sure that he would even want to go up to London for the few nights' play-going that had been suggested. There would be quite enough to do at Abington, which seemed to him about the jolliest place that could be found in England, which to an incipient John Bull like Young George naturally meant the world.

The meet was to be at Wilborough. The whole Grafton family turned out for it. George Grafton had hunted regularly two days a week with the South Meadshire since the opening of the season, and the three girls had been almost as regular, though they had all of them been away on visits for various periods during the autumn. Young George felt proud of his sisters, as he saw them all mounted. He had not thought that they would show up so well in circumstances not before familiar. But they all looked as if horses had been as much part of their environment as they had been of the Pemberton girls, though in their young grace and beauty, which neither hats nor habits could disguise, not so much as if it had been their only environment.

There are few scenes of English country life more familiar than a meet of hounds, but it can scarcely ever fail to arouse pleasure in contemplation. It is something so peculiarly English in its high seriousness over a matter not of essential importance, and its gathering together of so many who have the opportunities to make what they will of their lives and choose this ordered and ancient excitement of the chase as among the best that life can offer them. If the best that can be said for it in some quarters is that it keeps the idle rich out of mischief for the time being, it is a good deal to say. The idle rich can accomplish an enormous amount of mischief, as well as the rich who are not idle, and perhaps accomplish rather less in England than elsewhere. For a nation of sportsmen is at least in training for more serious things than sport, and courage and bodily hardness, some self-discipline, and readiness to risk life and limb, are attributes that are not to be gained from every form of pleasure. There was not a boy or a young man among all those who gathered in front of Wilborough House on that mild winter morning to enjoy themselves who did not come up to the great test a few years later. The pleasures, and even the selfishness, of their lives were all cast behind them without a murmur; they were ready and more than ready to serve.

But the great war had not yet cast its shadow over the mellowed opulent English country. Changes were at work all round to affect the life mirrored in its fair chart of hall and farm, village and market-place, park and wood and meadow, even without that great catastrophe looming ahead. But the life still went on, essentially unchanged from centuries back. From the squire in his hall to the labourer in his cottage, they were in relation to each other in much the same way as their forefathers had been, living much the same lives, doing much the same work, taking much the same pleasures. For the end of these things is not yet.

Wilborough was a great square house of stone, wrapped round by a park full of noble trees, as most of the parks in that rich corner of Meadshire were. Its hall door stood widely open, and there was constant coming and going between the hospitalities within and the activities without. On the grass of the park and the gravel of the drive stood or moved the horses which generations of care and knowledge had brought to the pitch of perfection for the purpose for which they would presently be employed, and their sleek well-tempered beauty would have gladdened the eye of one who knew least about them. The huntsman and whips came up with the hounds—a dappled mob of eager, restless or dogged, free-moving muscle and intelligence, which also filled the eye. There were motor-cars, carriages and smart-looking carts, and a little throng of people of all sorts and conditions. The scene was set, the characters all on the stage, and there was England, in one of its many enchanting time-told aspects.

Old Sir Alexander Mansergh, in a well-worn pink coat of old-fashioned cut, was in front of the house as the party from Abington Abbey rode up. He was welcoming his guests with a mixture of warmth and ferocity peculiarly English. He was an old bear, a tyrant, an ignoramus, a reactionary. But his tenants respected him, and his servants stayed with him. There was a gleam in his faded old eyes as he greeted the Grafton family, with the same gruffness as he used towards everybody else. He liked youth, and beauty, and these girls weren't in the least afraid of him, and by their frank treatment brought some reflection of the happy days of his youth into his crusty old mind—of the days when he had not had to wrap himself up in a mantle of grumpiness as a defence against the shoulders of the world, which turn from age. He had laughed and joked with everybody then, and nobody had been afraid of him.

"My son Richard's at home," he said. "Want to introduce him to you girls. All the nice girls love a sailor, eh?"

This was Sir Alexander's 'technique,' as the Graftons had it. Nice girls must always be running after somebody, in the world as the old bashaw saw it. But it did not offend them, though it did not exactly recommend 'my son Richard' to them.

Of the three girls only Barbara accepted Sir Alexander's pressed invitation to 'come inside.' Caroline and Beatrix, comfortably ensconced in their saddles, preferred to stay there rather than face the prospect of mounting again in a crowd. But before the move was made Lady Mansergh waddled down the house steps accompanied by a young man evidently in tow, whom she presented to them forthwith, with an air that made plain her expectation that more would come of it. "My stepson, Richard—Captain Mansergh," she said, beaming over her broad countenance. "He knows who all of you are, my dears, for I've never stopped talking of you since he came home. But in case there's any mistake, this is Caroline and this is Beatrix and this is Barbara; and if there's one of them you'll like better than the other, well, upon my word, I don't know which it is. And this is Mr. Grafton, and Young George. If Young George was a girl I should say the same of him."