“What about you?”
Pauncefote shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t imagine I shall like it, but that’s neither here nor there. The first thing we’ve got to do is to fade away. Again, we must be in London. We must be on the spot. We must pay up what we owe, but if I can stop any orders—well, we might be glad of the dust. I ordered three suits at Brandon’s before we came away. I told him he needn’t hurry, so there’s just a chance they’re not cut. An’ Whippy’s makin’ a saddle, an’ Hardy a rod, an’—an’ . . .”
He caught his breath sharply and let the sentence go, sitting still in his chair with fixed, unseeing eyes.
The stabbing thought that never again would he hear the whimper of hounds in the soft, sweet-smelling burthen of a November day ripped and tore at Oliver Pauncefote’s heart. Memories came with a rush to rub salt in the wound—a tremendous day with the Cottesmore—a check at Garter Spinney, when the birches had looked like fountains and Sir Barnaby Shrew had come up and asked him to Stomacher Place—Mandarin’s joyous fly-jumps and the swift tremor of his ears—a burst up Sweeting Valley, when hounds were running mute and Fantasy jumped the Chaffer as though it were a garden-path. . . .
“Oliver! Oliver!”
Jean was beside him on her knees, with an arm round his neck.
Pauncefote put her aside and rose to his feet.
“Don’t let’s pretend,” he said quietly. “It’s hardly worth it. Besides, to tell you the truth, reach-me-down sympathy never cut very much ice with me. Finally, you’ll need all you’ve got for yourself before we’re through. I’ve let you down badly, I know. But God knows I’ve got my punishment. . . . And I’ll do my very best to break your fall.” Jean sat back on her heels and stared at the floor. “When you feel most sore—murderous, please try to remember the intolerable position I’m in. If we meant anything to each other, it would have been less odious. As it is—well, obviously, I’d rather have died by torture than let you down.”
He passed to the door of the salon. With his fingers about the handle, he stopped and spoke over his shoulder.