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 killed, seized on him with claws so sharp that he had no heart left for anything further, and leaving the hounds to draw a gorsy common for another fox turned his horse's head round and rode off home.
Humphrey, not far away at the start, had been in at the finish, with half a dozen more, but he had seen nothing of Dick, and no one who had set out to follow on wheels had been anywhere within sight for the last half-hour. The Squire felt a grim satisfaction in the thought of Lady George Dubec left hopelessly out of it, but he also thought of Dick missing the best run, so far, of the season to keep behind with her, and his satisfaction turned into sad disgust. His long ride home was the most miserable he had ever taken, and he wished before it was ended that he had seen out the day, on the chance of another burst of excitement which for the time would have eased his pain.
He reached Kencote about three o'clock, and expected to find the house empty, for he knew that Mrs. Clinton had been going to lunch at Mountfield and he did not expect her to be back yet. But she met him in the hall and said, "I thought you might be home early, Edward, so I did not go out."
Now the Squire was never home early. He always saw out the day's sport, however bad it might be, and the number of times he had returned from hunting before dark during the last thirty years might have been counted on his ten fingers. He looked at his wife apprehensively and followed her into the morning-room, where she turned to him.
"Dick has gone," she said.
He stared at her, not understanding.