A Match Pair. A novel

Chapter I

" Oft in glimmering bowers and glades He met her." Milton. If the English climate comes near to deserve the shafts of vituperative wit hurled at it alike by lovers of pleasure and of profit, it now and then accords to all an autumn day so indescribably beautiful that words are unable to go beyond a suggestion of its per fection. The epithet " golden " carries with it more of the burden of its rich stillness, the breadth of its smooth lights, the melody of vol. I. B its entangled harmonies, the luxuriance of its hues, than any other, however ultimately derived. Nature has attained her fulness, but it is not the fulness of a newly-acquired and obtrusive opulence, rather that of well weighed, well-borne riches carrying with them all the dignity of prescription. On such a day when cynics hint at the winter to come, and the immature regret the summer hardly yet gone, lavish nature burnishes man's many inventions with a glamour that, if it appears transitory, is destined to survive in some recollections with a life-long endurance, making a present of the past in some glowing memory of the future.

Such a golden light bathed alike Tipterley Wood and the high-road that led to it, one morning of late October, glittering impartially on the smooth trunks of beeches and the steel points of the headstalls and saddlery of a group of horses that were being led up and down at their foot, as a dogcart containing a couple of young men approached the corner at a smart pace. Raymond Henderson affected an early arrival at the covert-side. He was accus tomed to say he liked to judge of the ap pearance in cold blood of cattle to whom excitement lends an adventitious charm — a cynical statement that may or may not have expressed the sentiment of a capricious temper. Mr. Henderson's name as a rider had never soared to first flight honours, though as a critic his judgment was excep tionably sharp ; but he had peculiarities, grounded, his enemies said, upon jealousy, and, given an undeniable start, he had been known to ride straight and keen.

In either case, this morning his fancy played into the hands of his staunch friend and companion, Jim Codrington, who sat on his left hand, and whose observation of the saddle-horses in question could hardly have been surpassed in acuteness by Henderson's own. But Jim's criticism was, as he would have said himself, from the near side. " Any fool can find fault," was his favourite position ; " it re quires a wise man to detect merit ; " and this though Jim was no cynic. Now his clear eyes brightened and his good-tempered mouth relaxed as his nod acknowledged the servants' greeting, and he took in all he wanted to see in the glance Henderson's sharp driving allowed him as they trotted past. He noted a lady's saddle on the roan and observed the change in his bitting, wondered to see a groom on the big-hocked chestnut while the white-legged bay was led ; that perfect little hunter, the grey mare, was there too, bound to show her graceful rider all she cared to see, and for just as long or short a time as she cared to see it — that was as usual ; but why did the roan wear a snaffle, the roan whose pulling capacities were a proverb in the Hunt ?

The question lasted Codrington until he had jumped down from the cart, peeled, seen to his girths, and was preparing, mechanically enough, to mount the clever cob from which Henderson's jockeyweight groom had just dismounted. The great man himself, fidget ing over every detail, was about to get on his first hunter, the most perfect representa tion of three hundred guineas in the flesh that Sturgess himself could delineate ; Barker had led him to covert, mounted on the second horse, whose fire he had to reduce earlier in the day than his master would call for his services — a task eminently suited to the stud-groom's hard riding tastes and their crafty development ; but Barker was fully aware that, with all his subtlety, if he had been put to it to sell the second " string," he would have had to ride all he knew to beat Mr. Codrington on the hard-looking cob.

Jim Codrington, however, was bound to ride forward, as we shall see. Tipterley was a favourite fixture, and safe to follow upon the heels of the lawn meet that opened the Highshire season with hos pitable regularity. " The first day's hunting," men called it, and ladies added, " The first day men think of going," for ladies are rarely breakfast eaters, and are proportion ately severe on hunt dejeiiners and their results. Punctuality distinguished it, and the two men were hardly in their saddles, and it was long before Henderson's stirrup leathers had been levelled to his satisfaction, when the master trotted up with his hounds and began to work his way through the civil formularies of the covert-side. Codrington, it is true, found time to see everything, but that was his speciality ; he found time, too, to speak to every one and to hear all there was to be heard.

And yet while he chaffed Miss Burrowes and gave Major Blazer a light, admired Lady Danderley's new habit and warned a hound off the cob's ready heels, he was alive to the fact that the roan had not been mounted, nor any of the party from Cumstrey Place put in an appearance. Hounds were trotted off before the group of horses had been claimed by their owners, and Henderson, riding as ever into Jim's pocket, was coasting along the woodside, stirrup-iron to stirrup-iron, abusing all he could find to abuse with infinite ingenuity. There was only one excuse for so unfailing a habit, and Jim alleged it unfailingly — " It's merely manner." " We shall do nothing to-day," growled Henderson, "or you might have had King Herod — never do from Tipterley." " Except three times out of five," returned Jim, with his unquenchable good humour.

" But Robin Hood's as fresh as paint and as fit as a fiddle. Give me the chance of Herod another day, Raymond." It is certain that Jim Codrington would not have been where he was had his sweet temper been less than perennial, and at the same time — for Henderson's wits were sharp — less genuine. "Hanged if you don't ride my second horse all this season ! " said Raymond presently. " Barker takes a deuced deal too much out of a horse for my taste, and you wouldn't. You're always there, I know — at least, generally — but, somehow, you never pump a horse." "Thanks — very," drawled Codrington, who knew precisely what the offer was worth ; " but Barker never takes too much out of them, as you know." "No more he does," returned Henderson, with a sudden change of front. " Hallo ! they've found, I believe."

At the same time a party of three ranged up at their side, and before there was time for more than a bare greeting, seven or eight horsemen and women were galloping smartly to the corner of the wood from which the holloa had sounded. The congratulations that all shared on getting away at a quiet corner, clear of the mob of horses that are the curse of a fashionable country, proved, however, to be empty enough. The fox, to whom life on so fair a morning may easily have seemed sweet, ran a short ring and back into the wood again, leaving the little party undispersed. " One never gets away from Tipterley Wood ! " exclaimed Lady Guenevere Cayley, a fair girl whom it was difficult to credit with five years of married life. "And scent bound to be good too, this morning," Henderson said sulkily. "The sun's gaining strength every minute, though," observed Elsie Davenant.

She was, where she was always to be found, at Lady Guenevere's side, and she glanced a little shyly at Henderson as she spoke, anticipating a snub. " Yes, it'll soon be up with our day's chance," observed Codrington. " It's far too early in the season to meet at eleven. I told Mainwaring so last night, but he says he can't get his field to see it." It was an unexpected reprieve to Elsie, but those sharp clear tones always spoke in agreement with her. It was not the first time she had noticed it, but she was begin ning to notice it too often. It was flattering, for Codrington was an authority, looked at from the point of view of social influence, the correspondent in the hunting-field of Turf, who could make or mar any man's riding reputation ; more than that, a man who understood the science of fox-hunting, and demonstrated his knowledge practically, in the saddle and in print.

Force of character, an intimate knowledge of all phases of outdoor life, and a cheery temper, had landed him at thirty in an ex ceptional position, that required the applica tion of all his common sense to hold unspoiled. To keep ever in view the existence of other sides, (and false bottoms), to each question ; to realize exactly where one's strength ends and what are the limits of one's social power; to be alive through all flattery to one's real position, stripped of adventitious advantages, (such as ground to stand on, without which the broadest pedestal must fall through space) ; to know, above all, exactly where one's in dulgences must be bounded — are perceptions not granted as an accompaniment to all genius, or, if existent, liable to be swamped, for want of inherent strength, by that very genius.

Tact and talent are so rarely twin born that the conjunction is almost phe nomenal ; and it may be observed by the way that such tact is a thick veil for talent between itself and the apprehension of the vulgar. Half an hour's coffee-housing gave time for the repetition of the stereotyped remarks always heard at the covert-side. Hounds drew up the wood and down the wood, rousing foxes, but failing to make them break. Tantalizing sounds enticed the sanguine or the excitable by turns to every side of the wood, while the locally experienced, foremost among whom was Mr. Cayley, sat still and saved their horses' wind. Meanwhile satel lites gathered round the little group ; men who looked to Codrington for a hunting line, women who looked to Lady Guenevere for a social lead ; men who admired her for her beauty, women who courted his recognition of their riding.

There were men, too, who appreciated Cayley's dinners, and women who thought of Henderson's rent-roll — outsiders of hunting, who hunt for what the sport can bring them rather than for what it brings the hounds. And through it all no one was aware, except Codrington himself, whose affection was perhaps a crutch to his per ceptions, of the position that Miss Davenant held in the group — no one but herself, and she was only indistinctly conscious of it, for her sympathetic heart was almost literally free from vanity. She was proud of her friend's beauty, proud (without right) of Codrington's know ledge, a little proud of the horse she rode, but, above all, thoroughly and undefinably happy — so happy that for a moment she forgot the nature of the ground she stood on, and that Codrington's position, which de pended absolutely upon his physical powers, rested on a rock compared with the foundation of her own.

An incident later in the day was to recall it forcibly ; but meanwhile the Lord- Lieutenant was courting her for the sake of her influence with Lady Guenevere, whom he wanted to persuade into taking an active part in a political meeting ; Henderson was honouring her as the recipient of his latest theory of complaint ; Cayley was fidget ing over her girths, as if she had been his wife herself; Miss Burrowes was expostulating with her on the snaffle-bridle ; and Codrington through all kept his head just turned in her direction to catch what he could of her words, and she was conscious of it. Popularity for a penniless girl could hardly go further, and her head had need of the screwing on which has become proverbial, if it was not to turn to the right hand or the left. It might have been the finishing touch that Lady Guenevere put, as she turned in her saddle to say, "Dear! you shall settle it for me with Lord Lutterworth — you are always right ; " but at that moment the scene changed, and it was who should follow Codrington's cob in the standing jump over hurdles, as he sprang like a hound himself to the holloa up wind that no one had looked for.

Elsie rode down the hedgeside and took it where it was unstrengthened by timber, Lady Guenevere after her, and then all were riding hard to keep the start they had got. Henderson had been engaged in lighting a second cigar, certain nothing would occur for the next half hour, and the delay while he pocketed lights and weed lost him the only thing he cared for — a good place with hounds ; for those who rode showed him clean heels, and those who skirted had cleared far away from him, before he was in a condition to hold it. The brilliant twenty minutes that he lost was destined to inspire Codrington with the best bit of descriptive writing he had fur nished to his editor. Eye, ear, and wit had never been more keenly alive to every detail of working or observation of line, while the performance of each individual who could be said to be in it, forward as Jim was himself riding, was to be perpetuated with an exact ness that was individually flattering.

It is true that, so far as the hunting was con cerned, there was little to distract his attention from the field. Hounds got away almost at the brush of their fox, and over two or three enclosures ran literally in view, after which they carried a breast-high scent along the valley at a pace which bore hard on the condition of horses so early in the season. As he swung down wind the pace lessened perceptibly; but the steadier line-hunters never had occasion to falter, and the pack ran their fox back again into the lower end of Tipterley, to rattle him up and down the wood for longer than enough. The world had gone well with Miss Davenant. The roan horse, finding he was allowed his head, and that an unwonted in dulgence was placed in his erratic fencing, settled down after a first burst, during which his rider contrived to keep him wide of the line, and, yielding to the hands that held him together, without any attempt to get a pull upon him, began to show some perception of the meaning of the word " collected," and after ten minutes was going well within him self to the relief of Codrington, who had spared half an eye for the earlier phase of Elsie's experiment.

Though he declined Miss Davenant's lead over the brook, and, later, rode for a gate close to where the roan made a big thing of a ragged thorn hedge, he did her the justice to recognize that she was not riding for the gallery, and found time to make sure of Lady Guenevere's following him in place of her favourite pilot. Lord Lutterworth, a little to his right, was riding the line with the conscientious exact ness that was his never-failing characteristic, and made him a precisian in everyday life ; Mr. Cayley, who knew the country to a yard, was skirting unblushingly, and Henderson was out of it. Upon the rest, as time went on, the pace had told hardly ; but, far back as it occurred, Codrington knew to a field where Major Blazer's horse over-reached and came down, and where George Staniforth lost his stirrups and his seat.

His head, as Jim had observed, was lost long before. " So we've got it all to do again," he revol. 1. c marked cheerily, as the two ladies and Lord Lutterworth came up to him in one of the rides along which he was proceeding leisurely towards their central intersection. " And what a beautiful place to do it in ! " returned Guenevere, looking above and then along the line of the trees, as they stretched for a quarter of a mile in front of her, a blaze of gold and crimson, through which light flamed or shadows lay heavy on the mossy turf of the ride. " Everything's beautiful to-day," assented Codrington, glancing up too, and then letting his eyes drop to the level of Elsie Davenant's, who was shading hers with her hand as she looked closely along the line of the brushwood for any sign of a working hound.

Then he pulled aside and dropped back to her horse, which was pacing a little in rear of the other two. They rode on for some yards in silence. The position of the quartette was too natural to suggest notice, and when the leading pair quickened their stride Codrington observed carelessly on the improbability of hounds getting another fox away, and Elsie ac quiesced laconically. At the cross-roads he pulled up. " They are bound to come back to us," he said, nodding towards the others ; and his companion once more agreed with his sup position, and then relapsed into silence. Musical sounds came to them at intervals — the crack of a whip, a cheer, a whimper, a screech softened by distance, or the subdued thud of hoofs on the turf of the ride, alternating with a stillness that was music in itself.

Elsie, sitting motionless on her horse, was lost in an un definable dream of happiness that had neither beginning nor end, past nor future, but was all present. Jim Codrington, his keen wits all alive, was speculating, now in the present, now in the future, thinking, as he had never thought seriously until that moment, of the time when, in the course of events, Foxhills might be his home no longer, nor himself all-sufficient to Henderson. The arrangement had lasted four years, with the advantage, in the world's eye, all on the side of the poor man ; but Codrington knew exactly how the balance of obligation hung, and the limits of the ad vantage. Still he was fully aware how much easier it is to travel over life's road on springs, and was a long way from grudging the price he had to pay for the luxury that he knew to be the best nurse for his indi vidual genius.

Then Henderson and he pulled together, and Henderson, with all his oddity, cared more for Jim than for any living man. Of his own liking for Raymond Jim had no need to remind himself. "Did it ever strike you," he said presently, breaking the silence suddenly, "how dif ferent a man's position may be from what it looks?" " Looks to himself or to others ? " asked Elsie in return, surprised at the question. " To others, I meant," he said, " As, for example," returned Elsie, " Sir Harry Mainwaring's ? " " Oh, not Sir Harry's ! Half the world thinks he's a slave to his huntsmen, and the other half knows he's Lutterworth's humble servant." " Mr. Staniforth's, then ?" as the sporting doctor, his horse lathering freely, came bucketing down the ride. " George Staniforth ? No ; all the women think he is a fool, and the men know he is one.

"Your own?" Elsie turned, with a smile, to look at him as she spoke ; but a new shy ness had taken possession of her, and her eyes rose no higher than his moustache. She dropped them again upon the distant figure of Lady Guenevere, who had turned from Lord Lutterworth as he disappeared round a bend, and came cantering gently back towards them. " I suppose I was thinking of myself. After all, metaphysics have their root in egotism, less or — I said he was a fool!" and Jim put his horse into hasty motion as Lady Guenevere's mare, cannoned by Staniforth's, which seemed beyond his control, crossed her legs, made an effort to recover herself, and as she did so put her foot into a hole, and came down heavily, bringing her rider with her to the ground. Lady Guenevere fell clear ; but when Cod rington jumped down and raised her, she lay on his arm stunned and motionless.

Elsie was by her side the next moment, and he laid the fair head on her lap while he secured the ladies' horses, and asked what he had best do. " Don't go ! " Elsie implored, meeting his eyes with her whole heart in her own, so that the look was a memory to him for months ; " she may come to herself." He slipped the bridles over one arm and stood by their side examining the hat, which was only bruised, not cut. There was not a half-minute's pause, but in those few seconds Elsie lived hours, seeing with a vivid clear ness all she possessed in all she might be about to lose — a second home, a second sister, half her interests in life, and all her pleasures. She was a girl of simple tastes, and with talent that association with higher minds had taught her to estimate at a just value, living a quiet life in a sphere that might have seemed a narrow one if judged only from outside, when Lady Guenevere married into Highshire.

There was a year of unbroken association between the Cayleys, and then the husband resuming his partially inter rupted habits of incessant activity, his wife unconsciously to herself cast about her for a companionship that should relieve a solitude which she would not have acknowledged to exist. It is probable that the presence of Elsie, with whom accident threw her into habits of intimacy, rather created the friendship than supplied an unsuspected void. A friend to respect a woman's husband as she herself does, to care for all she cares for, and to be in all conditions of her life a second self, is no common figure in private history. Such was the noble Princesse de Lamballe, such, in a lower capacity, the faithful-hearted Fleming, and in both cases the mistress made the follower. Lady Guenevere had something of the supreme gift of winning hearts that characterized both Marie Capet and Mary Stuart, only her lines lay along a high-road, where those of the ill-fated queens traversed quicksands.

She had, too, the royal perception — and in her case as well as theirs the sense may have been derived from kingly ancestors — of sifting truelove from the mass of graceful flattery that was laid, as potentially acceptable tribute, at the feet of the beautiful bride. Elsie loved her for herself. She saw it in her look as the two women parted, after their first meeting, with conventional formality, and from that moment she had suffered the friendship to grow between them, until on Elsie's part love had developed into devotion, and her visits at Cumstrey had been ex tended into a residence there. All that past, drawn out through a consecutive and rapid series of pictures, passed before Elsie's eyes again during Guenevere's short stupefaction, and they were thrown back, to sharpen their outline, upon a black curtain of terror.

If her morning's triumph had for one moment blinded her to the uncertainty of her happiness, the lesson was enforced now with a pang she could never forget. The time was so short that Codrington still stood looking down at her, and the horses had not moved from his hold, when Guenevere opened her eyes, and, with the same impulse, struggled to her feet. She was only shaken, and Codrington was mount ing her again before any one had found out the accident. Then two or three men converged from different points to inquire, condole, and receive explanations, among whom was Mr. Cayley. He tried his best to send his wife home, but, finding her objection too strong, and that she would not even confess to giddiness, conceded to her the liberty of keeping about the woodlands on condition she followed hounds no further that day.

So it came to pass that, all through the golden sunlight, Codrington loitered by the side of the two women, now laughing, now talking, now silent, but ever falling still deeper in admiration of Elsie's manner and Elsie's mind, while Lady Guenevere indulged him, and Mr. Cayley unwittingly encouraged him, allowing him full license to follow their lead in appealing to her on every question, or to fall back to her side wherever the ride was narrow. An hour had slid by when Sir Harry gave the word for Maybury Gorse, and Henderson, leaving a distant group of horsemen, rode up to them. " Jim," he said, halting close by the party, " I wish you would take the chance of nick ing in with hounds later, and trot back to Foxhills, in the hope of a telegram from Tattersall. You could send an answer according to the circumstances."

"Why, where's Barker?" asked Jim. " Couldn't he — oh, I see you've changed your horse. Well, I don't know that I mind ; there's not likely to be much more doing this afternoon, I suspect." " Then, Codrington," put in Mr. Cayley, " I'm sure you will be so good as to see my wife and Miss Davenant as far as that on their way home ? " "Certainly," Jim said, resigning himself easily to what had seemed before an un conscionable demand on his good nature. " Delighted, of course." And, without more words, he turned his horse's head in the direction of Foxhills. Lady Guenevere trotted on sharply for a couple of miles, divining perhaps that Cod rington's mood was not likely to be a soft one. Elsie was equally silent, pitying him with the exaggerated pity that a sweet-natured woman bestows on a man's disappointments.

The distance brought them to the back entrance of Foxhills, which led by a winding road through a thin strip of covert and a wood-yard, past the stables up to a side door of the house. Jim would have ignored it, but as they rode by a stable-helper came out of the gate and asked for directions about the delivery of a telegram to his master. Codrington took it with an "All right, I'll see to it, George," and, catching up his companions, opened it as he trotted on by their side. A glance at it showed him its contents referred to matters more domestic than the vacancy of stalls for Monday's sale. "Poor Henderson!" he exclaimed dis jointedly. "Mrs. Meyrick — I'm afraid it means all is over." " His sister ? " asked Lady Guenevere, pulling up. " Yes ; I must get back to hounds if I can, and let Henderson have this.

I had meant to see you home, Lady Guenevere, but I am afraid this won't wait. You'll excuse my " Oh, certainly ; don't let us detain you a moment ! I'm only so sorry for the cause." Jim was folding the telegram as he spoke, and as he put it into his pocket he spared one glance for Elsie, then raised his hat, and, turning his horse over a low hedge by the roadside, cantered smartly away across a grass-field, pointing for a line of gates that would lead him by a short cut to Maybury. Both ladies watched him as he rode off, and Elsie dwelt lingeringly on the diminishing outline of his figure until it was out of sight, losing it with a smothered sigh that was half for Mr. Henderson's loss and half for the barrier that rose between her present friendship and any more perma nent connection with Jim Codrington.

As she did so she was inappropriately un conscious that the wire, flashing tidings of death to Raymond, lighted a time-fuse for the destruction of that barrier.

Chapter II

" Once I loved Her whom I dared not woo." Coleridge. Raymond Henderson lost in his sister at once his only relative and his chief ambition. To an ordinar}- observer of his face, whose easy curves expressed indolence, while its lines suggested the captious temper that was his most conspicuous characteristic, a latent ambition would have been unsuspected ; and yet the ambition existed, and existed tinged with romance. As the only son of a rich and successful man of the people he had not, despite liberal expenditure, found himself popular in the set which had received him for its sake. Cut off since his boyhood from the few members of a family that would have been proud of him for his education's sake, and placed, by means of carefully procured introductions, in a society that recognized the importance of his income, but did not forget his want of social qualities, Henderson had turned for the fulfilment of his ambition to the future of his handsome sister, married, partly by his own means, to a man whose pride of birth intensified, to Raymond at least, his other merits as a husband.

Henderson had inherited from his father one attribute of a successful man — perception in the choice of his agents. The adoption of his sister as the tool of a personally indolent ambition showed it as plainly as the selection of Jim Codrington for his friend. Mrs. Meyrick had been a social success — a reigning beauty, a wife who retained an impressionable husband's love, a devout daughter of the Faith to which her conversion had been misconstrued as interested. Now she was dead, and by her side in her coffin lay the prospective heir to an old peerage that was to have been buttressed by the fortune of the new con tractor. The episode was over, and her brother felt her death as a man only feels the death of one who embodies at once his present and his future pride. Raymond shut himself up and brooded, alternating fits of inaction with restless journeys to his London chambers, while Codrington paid the price of friendship in the endurance of bad temper testified in words and actions.