Patrick Spence, a real, old Anglo-Irish gentleman, who would have cutyour throat had you called him a liar, died not long ago at the age ofeighty-six and had a bottle of port with his dinner the day before hetook off. Those were Cassidy the old butler’s words. Cassidy said themaster was as sound as a bell and walking along by the rhododendronbushes to have a look at the new wing they were adding to the stableswhen he sprang into the air, cried, “Got me by glory!” and fell flat,just as a buck falls when a bullet takes it through the heart. A fitend for a big-game hunter you will say. A fit, anyhow, the doctorssaid.
The ancestral home of the Spences, The Grange, Scoresby, Lincolnshire,stands half a mile from the road. You reach it by an avenue ofchestnuts, and in Patrick’s time when the door opened you foundyourself in a hall hung with trophies of the chase; the whole housewas, in fact, a museum. Never in any man had the passion forcollection burned more acutely than in the owner of The Grange, orshown itself in a more extravagant fashion. Here you found lampsupheld by pythons, door handles cut from rhinoceros horn, tablestopped with hippopotamus hide, skins and masks everywhere ofeverything from black buffalo to Burchell’s zebra. In the longcorridors where the hartebeest heads faced the elands and Grant’sgazelle grinned at Bohm’s zebra, black bears upheld the electricstandards—black bears and apes.
The place was a mausoleum. To walk those corridors at night and alonerequired a fairly steady nerve, especially when the wind ofLincolnshire was howling outside like a troop of lost hyenas. Therewere envious men who said that three fourths of this collection hadbeen bought and paid for, but that is the way of the world. No manever dared to say it to the owner’s face.
I was staying at a village ten miles from Scoresby and twelve from TheGrange, when one day I met the old gentleman, whom I had known inLondon, and he invited me to a day’s fishing in the stream that runspast The Grange to join the Witham. We had good sport, but toward theend of the day the rain began—the rain of Lincolnshire driving acrossthe fens, drenching, disastrous, dismal. Spence insisted on my stayingfor dinner and the night; he gave me a rig-out which included aCanadian blanket coat and a pair of slippers and a dinner of the goodold times, including a cod’s head served with oyster sauce and a caponthe size of a small turkey.
Afterward we sat by the hall fire and talked, the light from theburning logs striking here and there, illuminating horns and masks andgiving a fictitious appearance of life to the snow leopard crouchingas if to spring at me from behind the door.
“Are those slippers comfortable?” asked Spence, filling his pipe fromthe tobacco jar—one of his infernal trophies, a thing made out of across section of elephant shin bone drilled out, for the leg bones ofelephants have no marrow.
“Quite, thanks.”
“I got ’em in a queer way, didn’t pay a cent for them, either.” Thecherry-colored cheeks of the old gentleman sucked in and he made thepipe draw against its will. Then, safely in the clouds, he went on.“Not a cent, though they cost me the lives of several men and nearthree hundred pounds of good ivory.”
“Mean to say you gave three hundred pounds of ivory for these oldslippers?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said he. “It was such a mixed business. I’llhave to give you the whole story if you are to underst