“Well, I’m off, anyhow,” said Hugh. “Make them look after you, Slaney. If Glasgow wants to know anything more about the next meet or stopping the earths, or anything, Bunbury, Dan can tell him.” In spite of himself, his voice stiffened till all the good-fellowship was gone from it. “Well, good-bye, everybody.”
He wondered whether his wife would come out to see him off, but he could not ask her. She got up and came to the door, and stood leaning against it as he passed out. She was not quite sufficiently feminine to discern that, in spite of his unprepossessing manner, and bald brevity of farewell, he hated going away from her, and he went down the passage unaccompanied except by his dog.
“I think Hughie’s got influenza, or liver, or something,” remarked Lady Susan, returning to the mandoline, “he’s awfully grumpy.”
Bunbury got up without answering, and followed his host to the hall door.
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Glasgow made no difficulty about hunting the hounds during Hugh’s absence. The office was very much to his taste, and its obligations fitted in satisfactorily with his inclinations. These he summarized with a fine brevity. He promised himself that he would wipe French’s eye; his exact motive for doing so he did not attempt to define. He calculated that he would have four days of office before Hugh returned. Four days only! The inequality of things! he thought, with an impatient sigh, gathering up a bundle of highly unsatisfactory letters, that he had received that morning, and slamming the lid of his desk down on them.
Fortune favoured him. The weather was perfect, from a hunting point of view, there never was better scent, and the foxes ran the way they were wanted. “Bedad,” said Danny-O, “if I had a red herrin’ in a halther I couldn’t make a nater line than thimselves.” There were long jogs to the meets through the pleasant soft weather, when Lady Susan rode at the head of her husband’s hounds with the acting master, while Slaney and Bunbury followed old Danny at their heels. Once or twice they left off twelve or fourteen miles from home, and a friendship can progress marvellously in the slow return in the twilight, with the golden link of a day’s enjoyment, and the easy snatches of talk and silence of a tête-à-tête on horseback.
It had become a custom that Glasgow should dine at French’s Court on hunting days, and it was on the third of these occasions that a letter from Hugh arrived, saying that he was prolonging his visit for a few more days. The post had been brought in while dessert was in progress. Lady Susan leaned back in her chair with folded arms. They were white arms, and had that composure about them that belongs to arms accustomed from their infancy to emerge from the latest variety of sleeve.
“Hughie says that we’re bound to go to this show to-night, and he’s thanking his stars he’s out of it, the little beast!” she remarked presently. “What sort of thing will they do, Slaney? You know all about ’em, I suppose. I never went to a parochial hall in my life. Will they sing the Doxology? I never can remember exactly what the Doxology is. Oh, I say, Bunny, shall you ever forget that night we dined with old Lady Pemberton, when she wanted her pet Bishop to say grace, and she leaned over and told him in her awful solemn old way to say ‘God save the Queen’!” Lady Susan laughed her loud short laugh, and looked across the round table at Major Bunbury.
Glasgow, sitting beside her, caught at that passing flash of her glance that was intended for him specially, and replied to it with an intimacy that startled Slaney. His face was pale, and had the tired look that comes with mental rather than physical fatigue, but the crisp tingle of the champagne had given its inimitable fillip; the excellence of the dinner had brought him into charity with all men—even with his Irish workmen—and the warm luxury and charm of the surroundings had the effect of a perfume whose dizzy fragrance can steep mind and body in repose. The anxieties that he had to bear alone, the reverses that hit him harder than he dared admit, slept in this atmosphere of ease. “Lovely Thais” sat beside him, and the gods had considerately prolonged the absence of her husband. Even Slaney, who might at one time have complicated the situation, now fell into her place in the general sentiment of repose, and made a pleasant background of literary intelligence and perceptiveness. He remembered only as a transient caprice the moment, unforgetable for her, that had given her life its first touch of passion. He finished his glass of burgundy, and took a cigarette from the silver box that his hostess pushed towards him.