Chapter III

It was on the last day of January that Percy had his first experience of a public shoot. He had found himself tolerably proficient at the shooting-school, and had killed quite thirty rabbits at Marston as well as half a dozen pheasants (out of a large number) that had been carefully driven over him one by one by the keeper. He accepted then with sufficient confidence a verbal invitation given him through Mabel to go over to Cleever and have a last day in the coverts.

" My brother's coming down," she said. " You haven't met him, I think? And there'll be one or two others. But it won't be anything much, you know."

" All the better for me," said Percy.

" I expect you're all right," she said, with a dancing humour in her eyes that Percy found pleasant

He presented an extraordinarily correct appearance— in fact a little too correct — as he climbed out of the dogcart at the entrance to Cleever gates at half -past ten on the following Monday. His cartridge-bag was a little new, perhaps — but then even experienced sportsmen must get new cartridge-bags occasionally. And his gun twinkled in the sunshine with the subdued glow of really good varnish. He was in a brown shooting-suit, with the proper pleats at the shoulder-blades, and neat leather patches on the shoulders: these showed distinct marks of use. He had neat leather cylinders to cover the tops of his boots;

m

Digitized by Google his stockings presented a good rich pattern where they were turned down over the button box-cloth that ended his knickerbockers; his cap had a kind of circular flap that could be let down in case of rain. He wore a glove on his left hand, and carried a fawn-coloured ample shooting-cloak over his left arm.

A group of beaters, with a keeper in velveteen and a couple of retrievers, solemnly saluted him; and he as solemnly returned it.

" Er — at about half-past four," he said to Roger the groom. Roger also saluted him in silence, and waited to see if more were required of him.

" Mr. Marridon coming? " asked Percy.

The keeper saluted again.

" Just coming down the road, sir."

Two figures, in fact, with two more behind, were advancing down the straight drive that united the big ironwork gates, where Percy stood, with the austere flat face of Cleever Court set among the trees.

Percy opened his gun and peered down it; patted his cartridge-bag; took two or three steps to and fro; and did all those things that a young man does when he is a little ill at ease and wishes not to appear so. He had been rehearsing in silence, all the way from Marston, a few broad irrefragable principles learned from a little book bound in red; and he now repeated these mentally to himself.

Never under any circumstances whatever point your gun at a human being.

Never under any circumstances whatever fire down the line; or into thick cover unless you are perfectly certain that no one is there.

Never follow a bird round with your gun.

Put your gun at least at half-cock on crossing any ob-

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And so forth.... He perceived that it was exceedingly important that he should make a reputable first appearance in public.

Percy managed rather well the moment at which it was necessary to turn to greet the others.

"Mr. Brandreth-Smith? " said the latter of the two sportsmen.

Percy agreed that this was so — perceiving that the two who followed were valets, each carrying a gun. (He wished he had brought James.)

" I'm Marridon," said the other; and murmured a vague introduction of the second man of which Percy caught only the word " Colonel."

As they turned together over the grass that led to the first coverts that they were to shoot, Percy was rapidly accumulating impressions.

Marridon was a bigly made man with a tanned red face, a small clipped moustache, and red hairy hands that wanted clipping; he spoke brusquely and shortly, and did not seem at any great pains to put strangers at their ease. The Colonel was an incredibly thin personage, with a large white flying moustache like a double sabre, and cross-looking eyes: he walked with a little fling as if he was being insolent to somebody. Percy felt his heart sink a little: he thought he was not making quite the man-of-the-world impression that he had intended., " There'll be nothing much to shoot, Colonel, you know," said Marridon. " I've warned you."

The Colonel grunted.

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" You're no end of a sportsman, I hear," went on the other, suddenly looking at Percy as if he were insulting him.

Percy made a deprecatory noise.

" I've only just begun," he said. " But I'm very keen."

" Don't be too keen," said the Colonel abruptly. " Dangerous, that! eh, Jim? "

The two laughed shortly; and Percy was in a tempest of confused resentment.

He felt very lonely and helpless ten minutes later. He was placed in a ride in the woods with tall trees before and behind; and no one at all was in sight. But he had been given to understand that his host was round the curve thirty yards to the right, and the Colonel the same distance, just beyond the corner to the left. A thousand thoughts tormented him; he perceived a hundred things that should have been otherwise: he had no shooting-seat of aluminium, no man-servant; he ought to have understood that when the squat beater with a beard had approached him (without saluting, this time) it was to take his cartridge-bag, and that this was usual; and he had said that he preferred to carry it himself. He shouldn't have said that about keenness; he ought to have grunted, like the others.

Again, he hadn't the slightest idea how the pheasants would come over in those trees; at home he had always stood before in a nice clear space outside a coppice where it was possible to see all round him; here it would be a kind of miracle if he caught more than a glimpse of any living creature. He did not know whether he might turn and shoot behind him; whether he might fire into the covert in front, if, by good fortune, he saw a rabbit; nor if he might fire down the ride. He felt entirely help-

Digitized by Google less; and he knew he dared not ask. Besides, it was too late: he had been given injunctions not to move.

All was as silent about him as woods can be on a bright day in January. There was no wind; the leafless twigs formed about him a filigree of incredible intricacy. A bird hopped in the covert and gave forth a single tweet; and the boy's heart leapt into his mouth. He wished it was lunch-time; he wished he was home again; he wished violently that he hadn't been such an ass as to come out on the last day when his reputation might be ruined with no hope of recuperation.... He wondered why Mabel hadn't come out, when she had expressly said —

Bang!

And then Bang! Bang!

He gripped his gun and stood trembling.

Ill

He carried a single rabbit by its shattered hindlegs when he joined the others twenty minutes later.

It had been a terrible time; and he set his will like a flint to drive through his story. The first four pheasants had passed him without his venturing to fire at all, so grimly were the principles he had culled from the little red book embedded in his mind. Of the first, indeed, he had not been aware at all, except as of a tumultuous chuckling firework that had burst out overhead, travel-ling, it seemed, at about a thousand miles an hour. The other three, though he had seen them coherently for however short a space of time, had appeared to him either too much to the left or too much to the right to justify a shot.

The fifth he had fired at; and had had the satisfaction

Digitized by Google of seeing a little handful of twigs leap into the air a good two yards behind her tail. Then he had fired twice at rabbits as, after a dart across the ride, they vanished in the undergrowth behind him; then at two more pheasants; and then, at last, his chance came.

A rabbit suddenly appeared from nowhere, and sat up, with his ears cocked, plainly visible between two larch-stems, straight in front. Percy had cast agonized glances to right and left; his ears told him that the beaters were still far away: then he had lifted his gun slowly and taken aim: the rabbit dropped on all fours and crouched. Percy fired; the rabbit skipped sideways and lay still.

As he came up after the drive he saw seven pheasants, a smaller brown bird with a long bill, of which he dared not ask the name, and two rabbits. This was Marridon's contribution alone. The Colonel, who had passed him as he was getting his rabbit, flung down a couple of pheasants, and his man-servant, who followed immediately, no less than five rabbits.

" Awfully sorry," said Percy. " I... I couldn't see very well. But I think I must have wounded three or four."

" Eh?"

" I think I must have wounded several. I..."

" Where did they come down? Did you mark them? 99

"Oh! I don't think it's worth while " began Percy:

but Marridon turned away abruptly.

" What next, Kimber? " he said sharply to the keeper. And Percy perceived that his lies were seen through. He also remembered, too late, that it was not considered correct to wound birds, and still less to brag of it.

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" I shot vilely/' he said to Mabel after lunch, so soon as the two were walking together to fhe next covert.

They had lunched in an old timbered barn. Mabel, and a very thin girl who wore spats, and whose name, of course, he could not catch, had met them there; and they had all eaten hot mutton-pies out of a tin cylinder, potatoes in their jackets, cold tart and cheese. Jim Marridon and the Colonel had drunk a quantity of whisky, and had become almost genial by the time they had finished. Percy too had drunk a couple of glasses of sherry and felt much better.

Mabel looked simply charming in her fur toque and boa. From these her face peeped out, delicately pink, with her eyes brighter and lighter than ever; and, below her short tweed skirt, her neat gaitered feet.

" I expect you were first-rate," she said encouragingly.

Percy shook his head mournfully.

" But your brother was awfully good to me at lunch," he said, " in spite of it."

(Mr. Marridon had, in fact, warmed by whisky, remarked with genial irony that Percy would make a good sportsman yet; and even this had cheered the poor boy.)

" Well, I shall see for myself," said Mabel.

Conversation, in the intervals of shooting, is capable of becoming strangely intimate. There is no time for frills and periphrases. Things must be said quickly, or not at all. Further, there is a kind of primitiveness, a sense of companionship in the wild that favours intimacy. And, lastly, the sexes are in their original relations to one another; the man is performing, and the woman is admiring:

Digitized by Google the brave is hunting, and the squaw, so to speak, waiting as if to cook.

When Mabel, then, suddenly remarked that Colonel Maitland was supposed to be a Catholic, Percy made a half-confidence.

" Really," he said. " I'm interested in that myself, you know."

" What! you aren't one! "

Percy hesitated. He wondered that Helen hadn't said anything about his plans.

"No," he said; "but I'm interested."

A gleam of sudden vindictiveness shone in the girl's eyes.

" I can't bear them," she said. " It... it isn't English. All their priests, and all that, you know. (Look out! they're coming)."

While Percy addressed himself to his gun and fired two shots without result, he had had time to think.

" That's the sort of thing I've been doing all the morning," he said savagely.

" You shot behind those," said Mabel judicially.

Percy reloaded.

" Why is it unEnglish? " he said.

"What?... Oh— Catholics. Well, you know, their foreign Pope and all that! Why should an Italian be over my soul? "

" Our Lord was a Jew," said Percy, with an effort.

u That's different," said Mabel.

Again a loud crowing from the shadows in front brought Percy up tense. He registered a violent resolution to fire three yards in front of the approaching bird.... There was a loud bang: and a large cock-pheasant fell with a delicious thump ten yards behind him.

" There! " said Mabel, " I told you so."

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When Percy had sufficiently recovered from his gleeful astonishment, he returned to the charge. He felt, somehow, that it was exceedingly important that he should know exactly what Mabel thought; and... and put her right, of course.

"I don't feel that a bit," he said. "Now, Colonel Maitland "

" Oh! he doesn't count," said the girl. " He never dreams of going to church or to confession or to anything like that. His wife's an Anglican, and so are his children."

" But I can't see why you object "

" I don't mean it's exactly wrong," said Mabel, " though my father would have a fit if he heard me say so. We're all very low-church, you know. But... but it's so second-rate. If Colonel Maitland was a proper Catholic, I don't suppose we should have him here, you know.... It's second-rate; that's all I mean. Like. •. like marrying an actress."

Percy caught his breath.

Percy was very silent indeed as he drove home in the dusk.

It was not that' Mabel had introduced an entirely new set of ideas to his mind: rather it was that she had put into words, with a startling appropriateness, exactly those ideas which, almost formlessly, had been materializing round him ever since he had come into his kingdom. The appropriateness had been more than startling: she had linked together as subject and illustration precisely the two very acts which Percy was contemplating.

And the worst of it was that he saw precisely what she meant. To marry an actress, to become a Catholic

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— these were " not wrong "; but they were " second-rate." They were out of harmony with that smooth, well-oiled, august system of English country-house life into which he was beginning to be initiated. A man of assured position might do either, without hopelessly insulating himself, — just as eccentricities are permitted to geniuses; but a man whose position was yet to be assured was in another case. He reflected on the Matthieson-Howleys. These were not considered entirely respectable — not respectable enough, that is, to be called upon from Marston, even though they might be consorted with in the tangle of London. Yet old Lord Barchison who lived on the other side of the county was welcomed everywhere, exactly as if it were not known at all that Lady Barchison was in a lunatic asylum, and that another lady had, for all practical purposes, taken her place in the smaller of his two houses.

He was very silent then, as he drove home with two brace of pheasants under the seat.... It was only a few weeks since he had engaged himself to Gladys Farham. •.. Besides, what does it matter what people think?

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CHAPTER IVi

Helen was coming back from a helpful afternoon at the Rectory — helpful, that is, in that she had been reading aloud, under her mother's orders, to a Mothers' Meeting, in the absence of Mrs. Bennett, indisposed.

She had disliked it quite intensely; yet it was one of those duties, it appeared, which she must expect to fall to her lot from time to time,

" You must remember, my dear," her mother had said, "that you are in a completely different position from that in which you were at Hanstead. We all have new responsibilities now; and you must just learn to shoulder yours."

" But I don't like Mothers' Meetings," said Helen rebelliously. " At least, I'm sure I shan't. I mean, I don't think they're any good."

Mrs. Brandreth-Smith smiled on one side of her mouth.

" My dear, you must allow me to be the judge of that. You have your duties and responsibilities now like the rest of us. And one of those duties is to do what you can to be friendly and pleasant to your poorer neighbours and the tenants, and so on,"

"Oh! I thought they were meant to be religious — Mothers' Meetings, I mean."

" And one of the duties of religion is to be kind to our neighbours. •.. At three o'clock then, Mrs. Bennett's note said."

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But she had her reward; for, as she came up the steps into the hall at dusk, Mabel ran out to meet her.

" I thought you'd never be back," she said.

" Oh! how nice of you to come! " cried Helen.

" They told me where you were. I thought I must wait. The brougham's going to call for me at half-past six, on its way back from the station."

In spite of all Mabel's visits, and the friendship vowed between the two, Helen was still entirely aware that she was never wholly at her ease in the girl's company. More, she was also aware as to the cause of this; for she was quite sharp enough to see that Mabel's attitude to life was one thing, and her own another: Mabel had grown up in a kind of wordless creed as to behaviour and judgments on things and views generally; while she herself had them all yet to learn. She was learning very quickly, but she was not yet quite sure of herself. For instance, she did not burst out in abhorrence of Mothers' Meetings as she would have done to any of her own friends at Hanstead: she thought she'd better find out first what the other thought of them.

" How did you get on? " asked Mabel, as they came up the stairs into Helen's own room.

" Not very well," said Helen. " I... I've never been to a Mothers' Meeting before. They... they looked at me such a lot; and it was rather stuffy; and I didn't like the book."

Mabel laughed deliciously as she nestled back into the sofa.

" I know the sort," she said. " Poor dear! 99 Helen was encouraged.

"It really was awful, you know; all about clergymen and earnest young men and Sunday evening, and about

Digitized by Google somebody's 'temptation* to marry a wild young gamekeeper.... Mabel! 99 "Yes?"

" Do you really think that's the way to look at things? 99 " How do you mean? 99

" I mean all that sort of thing about good and bad and clergymen, and what happens if you aren't confirmed. It... it seems stuffy to me somehow."

Helen's voice had broken out into a sort of tentative pathos. Her Bohemianism, such as it was, had found itself terribly compressed by her new surroundings. Even amid the splendours of Marston there recurred from time to time visions of her little white and brown house among its orchards, its copper fire-hoods and its shelves of plaster-casts. But at the same time she was not sure how far Mabel would sympathize.

To her dismay Mabel looked at her uncomprehendingly.

" I don't understand a bit," she said.

Helen took up a small smoke-coloured kitten who had just disclosed himself by unrolling in the shadowy corner of the small sofa on which the girl sat.

"Oh! don't you," she said. ("Yes, darling; how very lucky I didn't sit on you!) I mean... I mean... oh! I don't know what I mean."

A small and solemn expression was on Mabel's features when she glanced at her again; and then, for the very first time Helen began to perceive that there was at least one corner of the other's mind into which humour and lightness had not yet penetrated.

" But you don't mean you don't believe — oh! you know."

The words were vague enough; but Helen entirely understood and perceived on what a precipitous edge she had

Digitized by Google been standing. It was a complete surprise to her to find Mabel like this; she had very nearly — but fortunately not quite — taken it for granted that this delightful girl was delightful all through — (delightful, that is, in the sense in which she understood the word) — and now she understood that, as has been said, there was a solemn corner which was sacred. She made haste to prevaricate.

" Oh! my dear! Of course I do. But... but I only meant the way it was put. That was really all. I mean, I think one can be good, without talking exactly in the way in which the people in that book talked. That was absolutely all.'*

There is no gravity in the world like the gravity of the adolescent; for the adolescent, whether boy or girl, has not yet succeeded in unifying things. To young persons like these two who had discoursed on Life and Being in the pleasant little fire-lit sitting-room, till the gong sounded for tea, emotions and philosophies and articles of belief are complete sets of things, like bricks in a builder's yard; each is whole and entire in itself: they have not yet been merged into a common building.

Mabel, therefore, who in other matters was human and light and easy, in such Matters as these was solemn, and even — (if the truth must be told) — a little priggish. She discoursed of the articles of faith, gravely and reverently, in complete little sentences, with a peculiar tone in her voice; and Helen listened and made resolutions not only to be very careful in future, but to conform her views so far as she could to those of her friend. It seemed to be good form to think like this; therefore she would think like it.

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Percy was distinctly sociable at tea; he seemed to brighten up wonderfully and to display qualities and graces which were not always so evident. He rang the bell for more hot water at the first hint from his mother; he sat on a low chair and uttered the kind of polite banter about toast and little cakes covered with sugar that is usual on such occasions.

" I say, Helen."

" Yes?"

" How did you get on with the Mothers' Meeting? "

" It was all right," said Helen gravely.

" What was the book you had to read? "

" I... I think it was called ' Emma's Temptation/ "

"Oh! Good Lord!" said Percy. "And "

"That's enough, my boy," said Mrs. Brandreth-Smith with dignity.

" But I say, mother," protested Percy (who did not propose to be treated quite like that before Mabel), "you said yourself you didn't care much for that kind of book."

" I meant," explained his mother with dignity, " that it would probably not be the kind of book I should choose for my own reading. But I have no doubt it was excellent for the Mothers' Meeting."

Percy presently asked what Helen was going to do after tea.

" Mabel and I have got to talk," she said. And a gloom fell upon the boy, that was quite unmistakable.

And indeed they talked. They carefully did not light the candles upstairs; Helen poked the fire into a blaze and sat down on the hearthrug, clasping her knees: Mabel sat again on the sofa and nursed the kitten.

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Once more then they discussed on high matters — of Life and Being and Friendship and Religion; and Helen glowed with an intoxicating mixture of sentimentality and pride so subtly mingled that she did not know whether she loved a peer's daughter for being so intimate, or whether she loved her friend for being a peer's daughter. Mabel really was attractive; she had the daintiness and humour of a little cat such as that which she nursed and stroked under the ears; indeed she faintly resembled the cat even facially; and the gravity and reverence which she displayed on certain subjects added a distinct charm, now that Helen had determined to like it. But through all Helen's appreciation of her friend there ran a strong thread of what must be called snobbishness: Mabel was, by every law of breeding, immeasurably her superior, and yet condescended to sit here in the twilight and talk of deep and intimate affairs.

It was Helen who first brought up Percy's name.

" Poor Percy caught it at tea, didn't he? 99 sfie said rather nervously. "Mother's like that, you know; she can come down hard when she wants to."

("Darling!") said Mabel parenthetically to the kitten.

" I say, MabeL

"Yes?"

"How did Percy shoot? Tell me, really."

"Oh! he shot all right, for a first time," said Mabel. " He shot rather well."

" I'm glad. Percy hates to make an exhibition of himself,"

" We talked quite a lot," went on Mabel easily. "What about?"

"Oh, it began with Colonel Maitland, who's a Roman Catholic, you know." Helen sat up.

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"Who's he?"

" Oh J a man who shoots with us a good lot. He's rather nice."

Helen felt excited. It was nervous work talking about Popery under the circumstances. She had not even yet told her friend what the facts were about Percy; and she half wondered to which side she owed most loyalty.

" Well; what did you talk about? "

" Oh! we talked about the Roman Church. I said what I thought, you know."

"What do you think about it?" asked Helen rather breathlessly, turning round to look straight at her friend. A flame shot up from the hearth, and by its light she saw tjjie solemn expression in full occupation of the little catlike features.

" I disapprove of it very much indeed," proclaimed Mabel. " Of course, I didn't say so quite like that. I told him I thought it unEnglish and... and that sort of thing, you know."

" Did you really?"

"Yes; but of course I feel much more deeply about it really, than that. I... I can't bear it. I once heard a Mr. Railton speak — he had been a priest and gave it up. He said the most frightful things."

Helen was making quite a quantity of discoveries today; and for the first time in her life she had met that really serious and almost vindictive hatred of Catholicism which appears now and again in completely unexpected surroundings. She questioned her friend even more closely; she asked exactly what it was she felt so strongly about in the Catholic system, and got nothing but the fact. Somehow or other it was in the girl's blood; she could no more give adequate reasons for her repugnance

Digitized by Google than Percy himself — maybe — could have given for his violent attraction towards it. There it was, as impregnable as rock under shallow soil; and Helen was amazed at its immovability.

" My dear/' said the other presently — (she had put down the kitten five minutes ago, when conversation had become really serious) — " My dear; I simply can't tell you what I feel. I... I suppose it may be partly bringing up.... I don't know. My grandfather left the Church of Rome, you know, when he was a young man; and then I can't forget what Mr. Railton said at a meeting once. But it's not only that. I... I simply can't bear it at all."

Then Helen's last layer of discretion broke down. " Mabel — " she began. Then she got up from the hearth* rug, sat down by her friend and took her hand. "Mabel—" " Yes?"

" I want to tell you something. Will you promise not to tell? I oughtn't to, you know; but I simply must." Mabel looked at her. "Yes. What is it?"

" You really promise on your word of honour not to tell?"

The girl nodded.

Helen drew a trembling breath.

"Well; it's about Percy," she said. "He didn't tell you anything, did he? " The girl shook her head. " I don't know what you mean."

"Well: it's this. Percy is 'under instruction,' as they call it. He means to be a Roman Catholic. You've promised not to tell anyone, you know."

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