Mrs. Fitz. Snaith John Collis
table took up the gage.
"Fitz is a bad hat." Joseph Jocelyn De Vere removed the pipe from his lips. "Everybody knows it. But Mrs. Fitz is a thousand times too good for the cove that's married her."
Such an expression of opinion left his sister open-mouthed. Mary Catesby lowered her chin and her eyelashes at an indiscretion so portentous.
"The Fitzwarens," said that great authority, "are a very old family, and Nevil has the education, if not the instincts, of a gentleman, but as for this circus rider he has brought from Vienna, she has neither the birth, the education nor the instincts of a lady."
This tremendous pronouncement would have put most people out of action at once. But here was a man of mettle.
"She's tophole," said that Bayard. "I've never seen her equal. If you ask my opinion there's not a chap in the Hunt who is fit to open a gate for Mrs. Fitz."
The young fellow had fairly got the bit between his teeth and no mistake.
"One doesn't ask your opinion, Joseph," said Mary Catesby, with a bluntness that would have felled a bullock. "Why should one, pray? I know no person less fitted to express an opinion on any subject."
"I've followed her line anyhow, and I've been proud to follow it. She can ride cunning, too, mind you. I've never seen her equal anywhere, and don't suppose I ever shall."
"No one questions her riding. She was born and bred in a circus. But a more unmitigated female bounder never jumped through a hoop in pink tights."
It was below the belt, and not only Jodey but Brasset, who, inefficient as he is in most things, is unmistakably a sportsman of the first class, also felt it to be so.
"Mrs. Fitz has foreign ways," said the noble Master, "but she can be as nice as anybody when she likes. I've known her be awfully civil."
"She is not without charm," said I, feeling that it was up to me to play up a bit.
"She's it," said Jodey. "She's the sort of woman that would make a chap – "
"Shoot himself," chirruped the noble Master.
Disgust and indignation are mild terms to apply to Mrs. Catesby's wrath.
"Pair of boobies! You are as bad as he is, Reggie. But it was always so like your poor mother to take things lying down."
"Oh, come now, Mrs. Catesby, haven't I said all along that she had no right to hit me over the head with her crop?"
"The safest place in which to hit you, anyway." The Great Lady was in peril of losing her temper.
The question of Mrs. Fitz was a very vexed one in the Crackanthorpe Hunt. It had already divided that proud institution into two sections: i.e. the thick and thin supporters of that lady and those who would not have her at any price. It need excite no remark in the minds of the judicious that the male followers of the Hunt, almost to a man, admired, as much as they dared in the circumstances, a very remarkable personality; while its feminine patrons, with a unanimity quite without precedent in that august body, were conspiring to humiliate, as deeply as it lay in their power, a personage who had set three counties by the ears.
The Great Lady proceeded to temper her wrath with some extremely dignified pathos.
"It is a mystery to me," said she, "how men who call themselves gentlemen can attempt to defend a creature who offered a public affront to the Duke and dear Evelyn."
"I presume you mean the affair of the bazaar?" said I.
"I do; a lamentable fracas. Dear Evelyn never left her bed for a fortnight."
"Dear me! Are we to understand that actual physical violence was offered to her Grace?"
"Don't be childish, Odo! I was present and saw everything, and I can answer for it that no such thing as violence was used."
"Then why did the great lady take to her bed?"
"Through sheer vexation. And really one doesn't wonder. It was nothing less than a public insult."
"Tell me, Mary, precisely in three words what did happen at the bazaar. All the world agrees that it was a desperate affair, yet nobody seems to know exactly what it was that occurred."
Mrs. Catesby enveloped herself in that mantle of high diplomacy that she is pleased so often to assume.
"No, my dear Odo, I don't think it would be kind to the Duke and dear Evelyn to say actually what did occur. To my mind it is not a thing to be spoken of, but I may tell you this – it has been mentioned at Windsor!"
It was clear from the Great Lady's demeanour that at this announcement we were all expected to cross ourselves. Only Mrs. Arbuthnot did so, however.
"Oh, Mary!" The china-blue eyes swam with ecstasy.
"If you wish to convey to us, my dear Mary," said I, "that a royal commission has been appointed to inquire into the subject, all experience tends to teach that there will be less prospect than ever of finding out what did happen at the bazaar."
"Tell us what really did happen at the bazaar, Mrs. Catesby," said Brasset. "I am sorry I wasn't there."
"No, Reggie, I am much too fond of dear Evelyn to disclose the truth to a living soul. But I may tell you this: the incident was far worse than has been reported."
"I understand," said I, solemnly lying, at the instance of the histrionic sense, "that Windsor earnestly desired that the incident, whatever it was, should be minimised as much as possible."
The bait was gobbled, hook and all.
"How did you come to hear that, Odo? Even I was not told that."
"Who told you that, Odo?" Mrs. Arbuthnot twittered breathlessly.
"There was a rumour the other day in the House."
"The idle gossip of the lobbies," the Great Lady was moved to affirm.
But we were straying away from the point. And the point was, in what manner was public decency to mark its sense of outrage at the conduct of Mrs. Fitz?
CHAPTER IV
THE MIDDLE COURSE
Although so many conflicting rumours were abroad as to the unparalleled affront that had been offered to the Strawberry Leaf – some accounts had it that "dear Evelyn" had been called "a cat" within the hearing of the Mayor and other civic dignitaries of Middleham, while others were pleased to affirm that she had had her ears boxed before the eyes of the horrified reporter for the Advertiser– there was the implicit word of Brasset that he had been subjected not only to unchaste expressions in a foreign tongue, but had actually been in receipt of physical violence in his honourable endeavour to uphold the dignity and the discipline of the Crackanthorpe Hunt.
I hope and believe I am a lenient judge of the offences of others – fellow-occupants of our local bench delight to tell me so – but even I was so imbued with the spirit of the meeting as to allow that some kind of official notice ought to be taken of the outrageous conduct of Mrs. Nevil Fitzwaren. From the first hour of her appearance among us, a short fifteen months ago, she had gathered the storm-clouds of controversy about her. Almost as soon as she appeared out cubbing she became the most discussed person in the shire. Her ways were unmistakably foreign and "unconventional"; and certainly, in the saddle and out of it, her personality can only be described as a little overpowering.
In the beginning it may have been Fitz himself who contributed as much as anything to the notoriety of his continental wife. Five years before, the only surviving son of a disreputable father had let the house of his ancestors in a state of gross disrepair, together with the paternal acres, to a City magnate, and betook himself, Heaven alone knew where. Wise people, however, were more than willing that the President of the Destinies should retain the sole and exclusive possession of this information. Nobody had the least desire to know where Fitz the Younger, unmistakable scion of a somewhat deplorable dynasty, was to be found, except, perhaps, a few London tradesmen, who, if wise men, would be sparing of their tears. They might have been hit so much harder than proved to be the case. Wherever Fitz had gone, those who knew most of him, and the stock from which he sprang, devoutly