A letter I received by the morning post from Lolita at Strathpeffer told of a gay season at the Spa, for quite a merry lot of well-known people always assemble there in early autumn and many pleasant entertainments are given. One passage in the letter, however, caused me considerable apprehension. “If Marigold should question you regarding the re-appearance of a certain person at the inn in Sibberton, tell her nothing. She must not know.”
What could she mean? Unfortunately her warning had come too late! I had told the Countess exactly what was contrary to my love’s interests. Could any situation be more perilous or annoying?
When I recollected her ladyship’s words of the previous night I saw with chagrin how clever and cunning she was, and with what marvellous tact she had succeeded in eliciting the truth from me.
Pink came in during the afternoon, and flinging himself into the armchair opposite me, took a pinch of snuff with his usual nonchalant air.
“Thought you’d be out cubbing this morning,” he commenced. “Too early for you—eh? We killed a brace in Green Side Wood. Frank Gordon was there, of course. He’s as keen a sportsman as he ever was, and rides as straight as half the young ones. Wonderful man! They say he used, back in the fifties, to ride seventy miles to the meet, hunt all day, and ride home again. That’s what I call a sportsman!”
“Yes,” I said. “There are few left nowadays like old Frank Gordon. He was one of the hunting crowd at the Haycock at Wansford in the old days when men rode hard, drank hard, and played hard. He did the first, but always declares that his present good health is due to abstinence from the other two.”
The old gentleman we were speaking of was the doyen among hunting-men in the Midlands. He had hunted with the Belvoir half a century ago, and was as fine a specimen of an Englishman as existed in these degenerate days when men actually go to meets in motor cars.
The doctor himself hunted, as indeed did every one, the parson of Sibberton included, and the opening of “cubbing” was always a time of speculation as to what the season was to be, good or bad. The Earl had been delighted at his success at winning the cup for the best dog-hound at the Hound Show at Doncaster back in July, and certainly the pack was never in better form even under the old Earl than it was at present. Of course he spent money lavishly upon it, and money, as is so often the case, meant efficiency. The thousand pounds or so subscribed annually by the Hunt was but a drop in the ocean of expenditure, for a Master of Hounds, if he wishes to give his followers good sport, must be a rich man and not mind spending money to secure that end.
“I had a funny adventure last night,” the doctor remarked presently, after we had discussed the prospects of hunting and all appertaining to it. “Devilish funny! I can’t make it out. Of course you won’t say a word of what I tell you, for we doctors aren’t supposed to speak about our patients.”
“I sha’n’t say anything,” I assured him.