'What does your father mean to do about Trumpington Wood?' That was the first word from Lord Chiltern after he had shaken hands with his guest.
'Isn't it all right yet?'
'All right? No! How can a wood like that be all right without a man about the place who knows anything of the nature of a fox? In your grandfather's time--'
'My great-uncle you mean.'
'Well--your great-uncle!--they used to trap the foxes there. There was a fellow named Fothergill who used to come there for shooting.
Now it is worse than ever. Nobody shoots there because there is nothing to shoot. There isn't a keeper. Every scamp is allowed to go where he pleases, and of course there isn't a fox in the whole place. My huntsman laughs at me when I ask him to draw it.' As the indignant Master of the Brake Hounds said this the very fire flashed from his eyes.
'My dear,' said Lady Chiltern expostulating, 'Lord Silverbridge hasn't been in the house above half an hour.'
'What does that matter? When a thing has to be said it had better be said at once.'
Phineas Finn was staying at Harrington with his intimate friends the Chilterns, as were a certain Mr and Mrs Maule, both of whom were addicted to hunting,--the lady whose maiden name was Palliser, being a cousin of Lord Silverbridge. On that day also a certain Mr and Mrs Spooner dined at Harrington. Mr and Mrs Spooner were both very much given to hunting, as seemed to be necessarily the case with everybody admitted to the house. Mr Spooner was a gentleman who might be on the wrong side of fifty, with a red nose, very vigorous, and submissive in regard to all things but port-wine.
His wife was perhaps something more than half his age, a stout, hard-riding, handsome woman. She had been the penniless daughter of a retired officer,--but yet had managed to ride on whatever animal anyone would lend her. Then Mr Spooner, who had for many years been part and parcel of the Brake hunt, and who was much in want of a wife, had, luckily for her, cast his eyes upon Miss Leatherside. It was thought that upon the whole she made him a good wife. She hunted four days a week, and he could afford to keep horses for her. She never flirted, and wanted no one to open gates. Tom Spooner himself was not always so forward as he used to be; but his wife was always there and would tell him all that he did not see himself. And she was a good housewife, taking care that nothing should be spent lavishly, except upon the stable. Of him, too, and of his health, she was careful, never scrupling to say a word in season when he was likely to hurt himself, either among the fences, or among the decanters. 'You ain't so young as you were, Tom. Don't think of doing it.' This she would say to him with a loud voice when she would find him pausing at a fence.
Then she would hop over herself and he would go round. She as 'quite a providence to him', as her mother, old Mrs Leatherside, would say.
She was hardly the woman that one would have expected to meet as a friend in the drawing-room of Lady Chiltern. Lord Chiltern was perhaps a little rough, but Lady Chiltern was all that a mother, a wife, and a lady ought to be. She probably felt that some little apology ought to be made for Mrs Spooner. 'I hope you like hunting,' she said to Silverbridge.
'Best of all things,' he said enthusiastically.
'Because you know this is Castle Nimrod, in which nothing is allowed to interfere with the one great business in life.'
'It's like that, is it?'
'Quite like that. Lord Chiltern has taken up hunting as his duty in life, and he does it with his might and main. Not to have a good day is a misery to him;--not for himself but because he feels that he is responsible. We had one blank day last year, and I thought he never would recover it. It was that unfortunate Trumpington Wood.'
'How he will hate me.'
'Not if you praise the hounds judiciously. And then there is a Mr Spooner coming here tonight. He is the first-lieutenant. He understands all about the foxes, and all about the farmers. He has got a wife.'
'Does she understand anything?'
'She understands him. She is coming too. They have not been married long, and he never goes anywhere without her.'
'Does she ride?'
'Well; yes. I never go myself now because I have so much of it all at home. But I fancy she does ride a good deal. She will talk hunting too. If Chiltern were to leave the country I think they ought to make her master. Perhaps you'll think her rather odd; but really she is a very good woman.'
'I am sure I will like her.'
'I hope you will. You know Mr Finn. He is here. He and my husband are very old friends. And Adelaide Maule is your cousin. She hunts too. And so does Mr Maule,--only not quite so energetically. I think that is all we shall have.'
Immediately after that all the guests came in at once, and a discussion was heard as they were passing through the hall. 'No;--that wasn't it,' said Mrs Spooner loudly. 'I don't care what Dick said.' Dick Rabbit was the first whip, and seemed to have been much exercised with the matter now under dispute. 'The fox never went into Grobby Gorse at all. I was there and saw Sappho give him a line down the bank.'
'I think he must have gone into the gorse, my dear,' said her husband. 'The earth was open, you know.'
'I tell you she didn't. You weren't there, and you can't know. I'm sure it was a vixen by her running. We ought to have killed that fox, my Lord.' Then Mrs Spooner made her obeisance to her hostess. Perhaps she was rather slow in doing this, but the greatness of the subject had been the cause. These are matters so important, that the ordinary civilities of the world should not stand in their way.
'What do you say, Chiltern?' asked the husband.
'I say that Mrs Spooner isn't very often wrong, and the Dick Rabbit isn't very often right about a fox.'
'It was a pretty run,' said Phineas.'
'Just thirty-four minutes,' said Mr Spooner.
'Thirty-two up to Grobby Gorse,' asserted Mrs Spooner. 'The hounds never hunted a yard after that. Dick hurried them into the gorse, and the old hound wouldn't stick to her line when she found that no one believed her.'
