``Ben was asking if we'd let John go out.''
``Oh, he's far too young.''
``Not to hunt. But I thought he might bring his pony to the meet and ride with them to the first covert. He'd love it so.''
``Is it quite safe?''
``Oh, yes, surely?''
``Bless his heart, I wish I could be here to see him.''
``Do change your mind.''
``Oh no, that's quite out of question. Don't make a thing about it, Tony.''
That was when she first arrived; later everything got better. Jock was there that week-end, also Allan and Marjorie and another married couple whom Tony had known all his life. Brenda had arranged the party for him and he enjoyed it. He and Allan went out with rook rifles and shot rabbits in the twilight; after dinner the four men played billiard fives while one wife watched. ``The old boy's happy as a lark,'' said Brenda to Marjorie. ``He's settling down wonderfully to the new rйgime.''
They came in breathless and rather hurried for whisky and soda.
``Tony nearly had one through the window,'' said Jock.
That night Tony slept in Guinevere.
``Everything is all right, isn't it,'' he said once.
``Yes of course, darling.''
``I get depressed down here all alone and imagine things.''
``You aren't to brood, Tony. You know that's one of the things that aren't allowed.''
``I won't brood any more,'' said Tony.
Next day Brenda came to church with him. She had decided to devote the week-end wholly to him; it would be the last for some time.
``And how are the abstruse sciences, Lady Brenda?''
``Absorbing.''
``We shall all be coming to you for advice about our overdraft.''
``Ha, ha.''
``And how's Thunderclap?'' asked Miss Tendril.
``I'm taking her out hunting on Wednesday,'' said John. He had forgotten Princess Abdul Akbar in the excitement of the coming meet. ``Please God make there be a good scent. Please God make me see the kill. Please God don't let me do anything wrong. God bless Ben and Thunderclap. Please God make me jump an enormous great oxer,'' he had kept repeating throughout the service.
Brenda did the round with Tony of cottages and hot houses; she helped him choose his button-hole.
Tony was in high spirits at luncheon. Brenda had begun to forget how amusing he could be. Afterwards he changed into other clothes and went with Jock to play golf. They stayed some time at the club house. Tony said, ``We've got the hounds meeting at Hetton on Wednesday. Couldn't you stay down till then?''
``Must be back. There's going to be a debate on the Pig Scheme.''
``I wish you'd stay. Look here why don't you ask that girl down. Everyone goes tomorrow. You could ring her up, couldn't you.''
``I could.''
``Would she hate it? She could have Lyonesse--Polly slept there two week-ends running so it can't be too uncomfortable.''
``She'd probably love it. I'll ring up and ask her.''
``Why don't you hunt too? There's a chap called Brinkwell who's got some quite decent hirelings I believe.''
``Yes, I might.''
``Jock's staying on. He's having the shameless blonde down. You don't mind?''
``Me? Of course not.''
``This has been a jolly week-end.''
``I thought you were enjoying it.''
``Just like old times--before the economics began.''
Marjorie said to Jock, ``D'you think Tony knows about Mr. Beaver?''
``Not a thing.''
``I haven't mentioned it to Allan. D'you suppose he knows?''
``I doubt it.''
``Oh, Jock, how d'you think it'll end?''
``She'll get bored with Beaver soon enough.''
``The trouble is that he doesn't care for her in the least. If he did, it would soon be over ... What an ass she is being.''
``I should say she was managing it unusually well, if you asked me.''
The other married couples said to each other, ``D'you think Marjorie and Allan know about Brenda?''
``I'm sure they don't.''
Brenda said to Allan, ``Tony's as happy as a sand-boy, isn't he?''
``Full of beans.''
``I was getting worried about him ... You don't think he's got any idea about my goings on.''
``Lord no. It's the last thing that would come into his head.''
Brenda said, ``I don't want him to be unhappy you know ... Marjorie's been frightfully governessy about the whole thing.''
``Has she? I haven't discussed it with her.''
``How did you hear?''
``My dear girl, until this minute I didn't know you had any goings on. And I'm not asking any questions about them now.''
``Oh ... I thought everyone knew.''
``That's always the trouble with people when they have affaires. They either think no one knows, or everybody. The truth is that a few people like Polly and Sybil make a point of finding out about everyone's private life; the rest of us just aren't interested.''
``Oh.''
Later he said to Marjorie, ``Brenda tried to be confidential about Beaver this evening.''
``I didn't know you knew.''
``Oh I knew all right. But I wasn't going to let her feel important by talking about it.''
``I couldn't disapprove more of the whole thing. Do you know Beaver?''
``I've seen him about. Anyway, it's her business and Tony's, not ours.''
Five
Jock's blonde was called Mrs. Rattery. Tony had conceived an idea of her from what he overheard of Polly's gossip and from various fragments of information let fall by Jock. She was a little over thirty. Somewhere in the Cottesmore country there lived a long-legged, slightly discredited Major Rattery, to whom she had once been married. She was American by origin, now totally denationalized, rich, without property or possessions, except those that would pack in five vast trunks. Jock had had his eye on her last summer at Biarritz and had fallen in with her again in London where she played big bridge, very ably, for six or seven hours a day and changed her hotel, on an average, once every three weeks. Periodically she was liable to bouts of morphine; then she gave up her bridge and remained for several days at a time alone in her hotel suite, refreshed at intervals with glasses of cold milk.
She arrived by air on Monday afternoon. It was the first time that a guest had come in this fashion and the household was appreciably excited. Under Jock's direction the boiler man and one of the gardeners pegged out a dust sheet in the park to mark a landing for her and lit a bonfire of damp leaves to show the direction of the wind. The five trunks arrived in the ordinary way by train, with an elderly, irreproachable maid. She brought her own sheets with her in one of the trunks; they were neither silk nor coloured, without lace or ornament of any kind, except small, plain monograms.
Tony, Jock and John went out to watch her land. She climbed out of the cockpit, stretched, unbuttoned the flaps of her leather helmet, and came to meet them. ``Forty-two minutes,'' she said, ``not at all bad with the wind against me.''
She was tall and erect, almost austere in helmet and overalls; not at all as Tony had imagined her. Vaguely, at the back of his mind he had secreted the slightly absurd expectation of a chorus girl, in silk shorts and brassiиre, popping out of an immense beribboned Easter Egg with a cry of ``Whooppee, boys.'' Mrs. Rattery's greetings were deft and impersonal.
``Are you going to hunt on Wednesday?'' asked John. ``They're meeting here you know.''
``I might go out for half the day, if I can find a horse. It'll be the first time this year.''
``It's my first time too.''
``We shall both be terribly stiff.'' She spoke to him exactly as though he were a man of her own age. ``You'll have to show me the country.''
``I expect they'll draw Bruton wood first. There's a big fox there, daddy and I saw him.''
When they were alone together, Jock said, ``It's delightful your coming down. What d'you think of Tony?''