Most men have a sunny spot to which they look back in their existence, as most have an impossible future, to attain which all their energies are exerted, and their resources employed. The difference between these visionary scenes is this, that they think a good deal of the latter, but talk a good deal of the former.
With some fellows the golden age seems to have been passed at Eton, with others at the Universities. Here a quiet, mild clergyman gloats over the roistering days he spent as a Cornet in the Hussars; there an obese old gentleman prates of the fascinations of London, and his own successes as a slim young dandy about town. Everybody believes he liked that rosy past better than he did. Just as we fancy that the hounds never run nowadays as they used, when we had lungs to holloa and nerves to ride; and that even if they could go the same pace hunters are not now to be got of the stamp of our old chestnut horse, concerning whose performances we think no shame to lie, year by year, with increasing audacity; there is nobody left to contradict us, and why should we not?
Now, Mr. Sawyer, too, will descend into the vale of years, with a landmark on which to fix his failing eyes, an era which shall serve as a date for his reminiscence, and a starting-point for his after-dinner yarns. This shall be the season when Mr. Sawyer went to the Shires. It is not yet very long ago. Perhaps it may be well to relate a few of his adventures and doings in those localities ere they lapse into the realms of fiction under the romantic colouring with which he will himself begin to paint them, when their actual freshness has worn off.
Touching Mr. Sawyer’s early history, I have collected but few particulars, not enjoying the advantage of that gentleman’s acquaintance till he had arrived at years of maturity. I gather, however, that he matriculated at Oxford, and was rusticated from that pleasant University for some breach of college discipline, sufficiently venial in itself, but imbued with a scarlet tinge in the eyes of the authorities. I have heard that he rode an Ayrshire bull across Peckwater in broad daylight, having previously attired himself in a red coat, with leathers, &c., complete, and clad the patient animal in a full suit of academicals. Also that he endeavoured to mollify his judges by apostrophising the partner of his trespass, in the words Horace puts into the mouth of Europa,
“Si quis infamem mihi nunc juvencum;”
and so on to the end of the stanza. As, although Mr. Sawyer’s fluency in all Saxon expletives is undeniable, I never heard him make use of any language but his own, I confess to my mind this story bears upon the face of it the stamp of improbability, and that perversion of the truth from which Oxonian annals are not entirely free.
It is a good old fashion to commence a narrative by a personal description of its hero; such as you would see in the Hue and Cry, or the advertisements for that missing gentleman in the Times who has never been found yet, and whose humble costume of half-boots, tweed trousers, and an olive surtout, with a bunch of keys and three-halfpence in the pockets, denotes neither affluence nor display. Upon this principle let me endeavour to bring before the mind’s eye of my readers the outward semblance of my worthy friend, John Standish Sawyer, a man of mark, forsooth, in his own parish, “and justice of peace in his county, simple though he stand here.”
Mr. Sawyer is a well-built, able-bodied personage, standing five feet eight in the worsted stockings he usually affects, with a frame admirably calculated to resist fatigue, to perform feats of strength rather than agility, and to put on beef: the last tendency he keeps down with constant and severe exercise, so that the twelve stone which he swings into his saddle is seldom exceeded by a pound. “As long as I ride thirteen stone,” quoth Mr. Sawyer to his intimates after dinner, “no man alive can take the shine out of me over a country. Mason! Mason’s all very well for a spurt! but where is he at the end of two hours and forty minutes, through woodlands, in deep clay? Answer me that! and pass the bottle.”
Our friend’s admirers term his person square: his enemies, and he has a few, call it “clumsy:” certainly his hands and feet are large, his limbs robust, but not well-turned; and though it would make him very angry to hear me, I confess his is not my beau idéal of the figure for a horseman. Nevertheless, he has an honest English face, round and rosy, light-grey eyes, such as usually belong to an energetic and persevering temperament, with thin sandy hair, and a good deal of stiff red whisker.
Altogether, he looks like a man you would rather drink with than fight with, any day. Perhaps, if very fastidious, you might prefer letting him alone, to doing either. Of his costume, I shall only say that it partakes on everyday occasions of the decidedly sporting, with a slight tendency towards the slang. Its details are those of a dress in which the owner is ready to get on horseback at a moment’s notice; nay, in which he is qualified, without further preparation, to ride four miles straight-on-end, over a stiff country; so enduring are its materials, and so suggestive of equestrian exercise is its general fit. Also, on Sundays, as on week-days, in town or country, he delights in a “five to two” sort of hat, with a flat brim and backward set, which denote indisputable knowledge of horseflesh, and a sagacity that almost amounts to dishonesty.
Not that Mr. Sawyer ever bets; far from it. He elbows his way indeed into the ring, and criticises the two-year-olds as they walk jauntily down to the starting-post, as if he speculated like the Leviathan, and owned a string like Sir Joseph Hawley’s; but all this is simply ex officio. Wherever horses are concerned, Mr. Sawyer deems it incumbent on him to make a demonstration, and he goes to Tattersall’s as regularly on the Sunday afternoons in the summer, as you and I do to dinner. Like the Roman Emperor, the horse is his high-priest, and the object of his idolatry.
I am afraid hunting is going downhill. I do not mean to say that there is not an ever-increasing supply of ambitious gentlemen who order coats from Poole, boots from Bartley, and horses from Mason, to display the same wherever they think they are most likely to be admired; but I think there are few specimens left of the old hunting sort, who devoted themselves exclusively to their favourite pursuit, and could not even bear to hear it mentioned with anything like levity or disrespect; men whose only claim to social distinction was that they hunted, who looked upon their red coat as a passport to all the society they cared to have, and who divided the whole community, in their own minds, into two classes—“men who hunt,” and “men who don’t.”
In these days people have so many irons in the fire! Look at even the first flight, with a crack pack of hounds; ten to one amongst the half-a-dozen who compose it you will find a soldier, a statesman, a poet, a painter, or a Master in Chancery, whilst “maddening in the rear” through the gates come a posse of authors, actors, amateurs, artists, of every description, till you think of Juvenal’s stinging lines, and his Protean Greek, who was
“Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes,
Augur, sch?nobates, medicus, magus,” &c.,
and vote a fox-hunter the conglomeration of all these different accomplishments.
But Mr. Sawyer did not trouble himself much about Juvenal or his opinions. Finding his classical career a failure, and, what was more disappointing, his anticipated season with Mr. Drake cut short in consequence of his misadventure with the bull, he gave up the little reading which he had been compelled to take in hand, and confined his studies exclusively to Bell’s Life, The Field, with its questions and answers to correspondents, suggestive alike of inventive ingenuity as of exhaustive research, and the Sporting Magazine. The fact is, what with hunting three and four times a week, talking of it the remaining days, and thinking of it all the seven, with constant visits to the stable and a perpetual feud with his blacksmith, Mr. Sawyer’s mind was completely filled with as much as that receptacle could be thought capable of containing.
My hero, like the champions of the Round Table, is perhaps seen to the greatest advantage on horseback. Let me introduce him to my reader, riding like a knight through the wilds of Lyonnesse, up a deep muddy lane, as he returns from hunting in the dull November twilight.
“Capital bit of stuff,” says Mr. Sawyer, knocking off the ashes of his cigar with his dogskin-clad finger, and apostrophising his “mount,” a very little grey horse, with an arched neck and light mouth, and a tail set on high on his quarters. “Capital bit of stuff,” he repeats, dangling his feet out of the stirrups; “as game as a pebble, and as neat as a pin.” “Two hundred—two hundred and fifty! You’re worth two hundred and fifty, every shilling of it” (he had bought him of a fishmonger for forty pounds and a broken-winded pony). “Worth as much as any horse can be to carry thirteen stone. Hang it; you’d fetch all the money at Tattersall’s if any of the customers could only have seen you go to-day!”
Then Mr. Sawyer placed his feet in the stirrups, and fell to thinking of his day’s sport.
They had really had a good run—a fine, wild, old-fashioned fox-hunting sort of run—from two hundred acres of woodland, down a couple of miles of bottomless ravine, and away over deep stiff ploughs and frequent straggling fences, till they reached the far-stretching Downs. Here their fox had made his point good up-wind, and the pace even of those square-headed, deep-ribbed, heavy-timbered hounds had been liberal enough to satisfy the most exacting. Mr. Sawyer remembered, with a glow of pride, how, when they descended into the low country once more, he had led the field, and jumped an awkward stile, into a lane, to the admiration of all beholders. He could ride, to give him his due; and, moreover, he knew what hounds were doing, and was familiar with the country. Therefore he had slipped away with them, when the pack, after three or four turns round the huge woodland, had forced their fox into the open; therefore he had kept on the down-wind side of the ravine aforesaid, and therefore he had been fortunate enough to see the fox handsomely run into, in an old double hedgerow, after an hour and forty minutes, during which he had unquestionably “gone best” from end to end. The huntsman said so—a wary ancient, who, never showing in front at any period, or running the slightest risks in the way of pace or fencing, had a huntsman’s peculiar knack of turning up when he was wanted, particularly towards the finish. The doctor said so—an old rival, whose high character for riding entitled him to be generous; and the fishmonger, previous possessor of the grey, loudly affirmed, with many oaths which it is unnecessary to repeat, that “Muster Sawyer always was a hout-and-houter, and had gone audacious!” Contrary to custom, none of the rest of the field had been near enough to give an opinion, though excuses as usual were rife for non-appearance. To judge from his own account, no man ever misses a run, save by a concatenation of circumstances totally unprecedented. Besides every normal casualty, he would always seem to have been baffled throughout by an opposing fiend of remarkable perseverance and diabolical ingenuity.
As the sun went down in a deep crimson segment, like the glow of a ruby, or the danger-signal on a railway, Mr. Sawyer lit a fresh cigar, and began to ponder on the merits of his own riding and the capabilities of his stud. As the daylight waned, and the grey ash of his “choice Laranaga” (seven-and-forty shillings the pound) grew longer and longer, he began to think so much talent was quite wasted in “the provinces”—that he was capable of better things than “showing the way” to the half-dozen of red-coats and couple of farmers who constituted his usual “gallery”—that he was too good for the Old Country, as its sportsmen affectionately designate that picturesque locality in which they follow the chase—and that he was bound to do himself and the little grey horse justice by visiting the wide pastures, the prairie-like grazing-ground of the crack countries; to use his own vernacular, that he ought to “cut the whole concern for a season, and have a turn at the Shires.” His cogitations took some such form as the following:—“Here am I, still on the sunny side of forty—in the prime of my life, of my pluck, of my strength, and—ahem!—of my appearance—none so dusty neither, on horseback, whatever Miss Mexico may think, with her olive skin and her stuck-up airs. After all, I don’t know that I’d have had her, though she was a thirty-thousand pounder! I don’t like ’em touched with the tar-brush. I’m all for the thorough-bred ones—women, as well as horses. Well, here I am, wasting my life in these deserted ploughs. Even if we do get a run, such as we had to-day, I have no one to talk to about it. The Grange is a crafty crib enough, and I’m as comfortable there as a bachelor need to be; but I can’t go home, night after night, to bolt my dinner by myself, smoke by myself to digest it, and go to bed at ten o’clock, because I’m so bored with John Sawyer, and it’s the only way to get rid of him. No, hang it! I’ll emigrate; I’ll go and hibernate in the grass. I’ll make Isaac a stud-groom; I’ll buy a couple more nags, the right sort too—show those dandified chaps how to ride, and perhaps sell the lot for a hatful of money at the end of the season, and have all my fun for nothing.” Deluded man! how feasible the latter project sounds—how difficult to realise!
The idea once having taken possession of our friend’s mind, soon found itself cramped for room in that somewhat circumscribed area. All dinner-time he was absent and preoccupied; even Scotch broth, a beef-steak pudding, a damson tart, and toasted cheese, did not tend to settle him. Two of the Laranagas were converted into smoke and ashes before he could come to anything like a definite conclusion. Though a temperate man habitually (for the sake of his nerves), he rang for the old brandy labelled V.O.P., and mixed himself a real stiff one, with boiling water and one lump of sugar. I have my suspicions that his final decision was partly its result. The great difficulty was where to go. A man of limited acquaintance and reserved manners has at least this advantage—that all parts of England are equally attractive as regards society. Then he had hunted too much to believe newspaper accounts of sport, so that looking up the old files of Bell’s Life assisted him no whit to a conclusion; also being of an inquiring turn of mind, wherever fox-hunting was concerned, he had amassed such a quantity of information concerning the “flying countries,” that it took him a considerable time and another glass of brandy-and-water to digest and classify his facts. Altogether it was a complicated and puzzling question. First he thought of Leamington and the Warwickshire North and South, with regular attendance on the Atherstone and one field-day per week with the Pytchley; but many considerations combined to render the Spa ineligible as his head-quarters. In the first place, the evening gaieties made his hair stand on end. Since his rejection by Miss Mexico, Sawyer was no dancing man; and indeed even in the first flush of his courtship he was seen to less advantage in a white neckcloth than a blue bird’s-eye. Some men’s hands and feet are not made to fit boots and gloves as constructed by our neighbour the fiery Gaul, and for such it is wise to abstain from “the mazy,” and to rest their hopes of success on other and more sterling qualities than the vapid demeanour and cool assurance which triumph in a ball-room. Then, with all his fondness for the applause of his fellow-creatures, he did not quite fancy making one of that crowd of irregular-horse who appear on a Wednesday at Crick or Misterton, to the unspeakable dismay of the Pytchley lady pack, who, if there is anything like a scent, scour away from them as if for their very lives; and although it is doubtless a high compliment that two hundred gentlemen in scarlet should patronise the same establishment, Mr. Sawyer thought that as far as he was concerned, the number might as well stop at one hundred and ninety-nine.
I believe, however, that the dread of those wide and fathomless rivers which are constantly jumped, in Warwickshire, by at least one amphibious sportsman out of a daring field, and of which the width from bank to bank, according to the newspapers, is seldom less than seven-and-twenty or more than seven-and-thirty feet, was what principally terrified our friend. Accustomed to a leading championship at home, he shrank from such aquatic rivalry, and resolved that, with all its fascinations, Warwickshire at least should not have the benefit of his patronage.
Once, after a steaming gulp of the stimulating fluid, the idea of Melton flashed across his mind, but it was dismissed as soon as entertained. “I’m not such a fool as I look,” quoth Mr. Sawyer; “and I don’t mean to keep eight hunters and a couple of hacks to meet a set of fellows every day, who won’t condescend to notice me unless I do as they do. Whist and dry champagne, and off to London at the first appearance of frost; ride like a butcher all day, risking twice as much neck as I do here, and then come out ‘quite the lady’ at dinner-time, and choke in a white tie, acting the part of a walking gentleman all the evening. No! Melton won’t suit my book at any price. Besides, I’d never sell my horses there; they order their hunters down from London just as they do their ’baccy’ and their breeches.” So the idea of Melton was dismissed; and a vision of Oakham, or Uppingham, or even Billesdon rose in its stead. He could not quite get those tempting pastures, with their sunny slopes and flying fences, out of his head. The same objection, however, applied to the last-mentioned places that drove him from home, viz. the want of society. That deficiency seemed to threaten him wherever he set up his staff. At Wansford he would be as solitary as in the Old Country; also he would be further from High Leicestershire than he liked. The same drawback was attached to Lutterworth, and Rugby, and Northampton. It was not till the third glass that the inspiration seized him. Dashing the end of his cigar under the grate, he rose from his easy-chair, stuck his hands in his pockets and his back to the waning fire, stamped thrice on the hearth-rug, like a necromancer summoning his familiar, and exclaimed aloud, “The very place! I wonder I never thought of it before. Strike me ugly, if I won’t go to Market Harborough!”
Then he finished his brandy-and-water at a gulp, lit his candle, and tumbled up to bed, where he dreamed he was riding a rocking-horse over the Skeffington Lordship, with no one in the same field with him but the late Mr. William Scott, the vehemence of whose language was in exact proportion to the strength of the beverage which had constituted his own night-cap.
The ancient Persians, who seem also to have been wonderful fellows to ride, had a pleasing system of deliberation, which has somewhat fallen into disuse in our modern Parliaments. According to the old historians, it was their practice to discuss all graver matters of policy when in a state of inebriety, giving their debate the advantage of being resumed and repeated next morning; also, should they inadvertently convene a meeting when sober, to reverse the process, and ascertain whether on getting drunk over it they arrived at the same result. The system was not without its merits, no doubt, one of the most prominent of which seems to have been that it entailed a double allowance of liquor. Mr. Sawyer was sufficiently a Persian to reconsider his decision of the previous night, when he woke next morning with a trifling head-ache, and a tongue more like that of a reindeer, as preserved by Fortnum and Mason, than the organ of speech and deglutition peculiar to the human subject.
He was a hard fellow enough; but no man can smoke cigars and drink hot-stopping the last thing at night, and get up in the morning without remembering that he has done so.
A plunge into his cold bath, however, a cup of warm tea, with a rasher of bacon frizzling from the fire, and well peppered, soon restored the brightness to our friend’s eye and the colour to his cheek. When he lit his cigar on his own well-cleaned door-step, and turned his face to the balmy breath of “jocund day,” under a soft November sky, dappled, and mellowed, and tinged here and there with gold by the winter sun, he felt, as he expressed it, “fit as a fiddle, and hotter upon Market Harborough than ever.”
He was a man of few words though, when he meant business, and only pausing for a moment at the Stable, and feeling the grey’s legs, which somehow always did fill after a day’s hunting, he took no living mortal into his confidence, not even the taciturn Isaac (of whom more hereafter); but started for a five-mile walk, to inspect the stables of a certain horse-coping worthy, with whom he had long been too well acquainted, and who generally had a good bit of stuff somewhere about the premises, provided only you could get hold of the right one.
Mr. Sawyer was not a man to order a horse out of the stable in the hunting season for any but the legitimate purpose of the chase. “Walking,” he said, “kept him in wind;” and off he started down a narrow lane that in summer was thick with blackberries and blooming with dog roses, and over a stile and across a fallow, and through a wood, at an honest five-mile-an-hour, heel-and-toe; every turn in the path reminding him, as he stepped along, of some feat of horsemanship or skilful shot, or other pleasing association connected with his country home. And this is one of the greatest advantages of hunting from home. After all, notwithstanding her irresistible attractions, we cannot follow Diana every day of our lives, and surely it is wiser and pleasanter to take her as we want her amongst our own woods and glades, and breezy uplands, and pleasant shady nooks, than to go all the way to Ephesus on purpose to worship with the crowd. Mixed motives, however, seem to be the springs that set in motion our human frames; and if Care sits behind the horseman on the cantle of his saddle, Ambition may also be detected clinging somewhere about his spurs.
In little more than an hour Mr. Sawyer found himself entering a dilapidated farmyard, of which three sides consisted of tumble-down sheds and out-houses; while the fourth, in somewhat better repair, denoted by its ventilating windows, latched doors, and occasional stable-buckets, that its inmates were of the equine race. Stamping up a bricked passage, on either side of which sundry plants were dying in about three inches of mould, our friend wisely entered the open door of the kitchen, preferring that easy ingress to the adjacent portal, of which a low scraper and rusty knocker seemed to point out that it was chiefly intended for visits of ceremony. Here he encountered nothing more formidable than a white cat sleeping by the fire, and a Dutch clock, with an enormous countenance, ticking drowsily in the warmest corner of the apartment.
Coughing loudly, and shuffling his feet against the sanded floor, he soon succeeded in summoning a bare-armed maid-of-all-work, with a dirty face and flaunting ribbons in her cap, who, to his inquiries whether “Mr. Sloper was at home,” answered, as maids-of-all-work invariably do, that “Master had just stepped out for a minute, but left word he would be back directly: would you please to take a seat?”
This interval, our friend, who, as he often remarked, “wasn’t born yesterday,” determined to spend in a private visit to the stables, and left the kitchen accordingly for that purpose. It is needless to observe that he had barely coasted a third of the ocean of muck which constituted the centre of the yard, ere he encountered the proprietor himself coming leisurely to greet him, with a welcome on his ruddy face and a straw in his mouth.
Mr. Sloper was a hale hearty man of some three-score years or so, who must have been very good-looking in his prime; but whose countenance, from the combined effects of good-living and hard weather, had acquired that mottled crimson tinge which, according to Dickens, is seldom observed except in underdone boiled beef and the faces of old mail coachmen and guards. It would have puzzled a physiognomist to say whether good-humour or cunning prevailed in the twinkle of his bright little blue eye; but the way in which he wore his shaved hat and stuck his hands into the pockets of his wide-skirted grey riding-coat, would have warned any observer of human nature that he was skilled in horseflesh and versed in all the secrets that lend their interest to that fascinating animal. Somehow Honesty seems to go faster on horseback than afoot.
Not that a man of Mr. Sloper’s years and weight ever got upon the backs of his purchases, save perhaps in very extreme cases, and where “the lie with circumstances” was as indispensable as “the lie direct.” No, he confined himself to dealing for them over dark-coloured glasses of brandy-and-water, puffing them unconscionably in the stable, and pretending to ignore them completely when he met his own property out-of-doors. “His eyesight,” he said, “was failing him; positively he didn’t know his own nags now, when he met them in his neighbour’s field!”
Tradition asserted, however, that Job Sloper, when a younger man, had been one of the best and boldest riders in the Old Country. The limp which affected his walk had been earned in a rattling fall over a turnpike-gate for a wager of a new hat, and Fiction herself panted in detailing his many exploits by flood and field when he first went into the trade. These had lost nothing by time and repetition, but even now, in those exceptional cases where he condescended to get into the saddle, there was no question that the old man could put them along still; for, as lusty and heavy as he’d grown, “I’m a sad cripple now, sir,” he’d say, in a mild reflective voice; “and they wants to be very quiet and gentle to me. I never had not what I call good nerve in the best of times, though I liked to see the hounds run a bit too. I was always fond of the sport, you see; and even now it does me good to watch a gent like yourself in the saddle. What I calls a reel ’orseman—as can give-an’-take, and bend his back like Old Sir ’Arry: him as kept our hounds for so long. If it ain’t taking too great a liberty, perhaps you’re related to Sir ’Arry: you puts me in mind of him so much, the way you carries your ’ands!”
The old hypocrite! Ingenuous youth was pretty sure to “stop and have a bit of lunch” after that, and after lunch was it not human nature that it should buy?
“Mornin’, sir,” says Mr. Sloper, scenting a customer as he accosts his guest. “Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Sawyer? Won’t ye step in and sit down after your walk? Take a glass of mild ale and a crust of bread-and-cheese, or a drop of sherry or anythink?”
“No hunting to-day, Job,” answers the visitor, declining the refreshment; “so I just toddled over to see how you’re getting on, and have a look round the stables; no harm in looking, you know.”
Mr. Sloper’s face assumes an expression of profound mystery. “I’m glad you come over to-day, sir,” he says, in a tone of confidential frankness, “of all days in the year. I’ve a ’orse here, as I should like to ast your opinion about—a gent like you as knows what a ’unter really is. And so you should, Mr. Sawyer, for there’s no man alive takes greater liberties with ’em when they can go and do it. And I’ve got one in that box, as I think, just is more than curious.”
“Would he carry me?” asks Mr. Sawyer, with well-affected indifference, as if he had not come over expressly to find one that would. “Not that I want a horse, you know; but if I saw one I liked very much, and you didn’t price him too high, why I might be induced to buy against next season, perhaps.”
Job took his hands out of his coat-pockets, and spread them abroad, as it were to dry. The action denoted extreme purity and candour.
“No; I don’t think as he ought to carry you, sir,” was the unexpected reply. “Now, I ain’t a-going to tell you a lie, Mr. Sawyer. This horse didn’t ought to be ridden, not the way you take and ride them, Mr. Sawyer; leastways not over such a blind heart-breaking country as this here. He’s too good, he is, for that kind of work; he ought to be in Leicestershire, he ought; the Harborough country, that’s the country for him. He’s too fast for us, and that’s the truth. Only, to be sure, we have a vast of plough hereabout, and I never see such a sticker through dirt. It makes no odds to him, pasture or plough, and the sweetest hack ever I clapped eyes on besides. However, you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Sawyer. I won’t ask you to believe me. You’ve a quicker eye to a horse than I have, by a long chalk, and I’d sooner have your opinion than my own. I would now, and that’s the truth!”
Our purchaser began to think he might possibly have hit upon the animal at last. Often as he had been at the game, and often as he had been disappointed, he was still sanguine enough to believe he might draw the prize-ticket in the lottery at any time. As I imagine every man who pulls on his boots to go out hunting has a sort of vague hope that to-day may be his day of triumph with the hounds, so the oldest and wariest of us cannot go into a dealer’s yard without a sort of half-conscious idea that there must be a trump card somewhere in the pack, and it may be our luck to hold it as well as another’s.
But Sloper, like the rest of his trade, was not going to show his game first. It seems to be a maxim with all salesmen to prove their customers with inferior articles before they come to the real thing. Mr. Sawyer had to walk through a four-stall stable, and inspect, preparatory to declining, a mealy bay cob, a lame grey, a broken-winded chestnut, and an enormous brown animal, very tall, very narrow, very ugly, with extremely upright forelegs and shoulders to match. The latter his owner affirmed to be “an extraordinary shaped un” as no doubt he was. A little playful badinage on the merits of this last enlivened the visit.
“What will you take for the brown, Sloper, if I buy him at so much the foot?” said the customer, as they emerged into the fresh air.
“Say ten pound a foot, sir!” answered Job, with the utmost gravity, “and ten over, because he always has a foot to spare. Come now, Mr. Sawyer, I can afford to let a good customer like you have that horse for fefty. Fefty guineas, or even pounds, sir, to you. I got him in a bad debt, you see, sir;—it’s Bible truth I’m telling ye;—and he only stood me in forty-seven pounds ten, and a sov. I gave the man as brought him over. He’s not everybody’s horse, Mr. Sawyer, that isn’t; but I think he’ll carry you remarkably well.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever give him a chance,” was the rejoinder. “Come, Job, we’re burning daylight; let’s go and have a look at the crack.”
One individual had been listening to the above conversation with thrilling interest. This was no less a personage than Barney, Mr. Sloper’s head groom, general factotum, and rough-rider in ordinary—an official whose business it was to ride anything at anything, for anybody who asked him. He was a little old man, with one eye, a red handkerchief, and the general appearance of a post-boy on half-pay; a sober fellow, too, and as brave as King Richard; yet had he expressed himself strongly about this said brown horse, the previous evening, to the maid-of-all-work. “He’s the wussest we’ve had yet,” was his fiat. “It’s nateral for ’em to fall; but when he falls, he’s all over a chap till he’s crumpled him.” So his heroic heart beat more freely when they adjourned to the neighbouring box.
The Roan.
Mr. Sloper threw the door open with an air. It must be confessed he seldom had one that would bear, without preparation, a minute inspection from the eye of a sportsman; but he knew this was a sound one, and made the most of it. Clothed and hooded, littered to the hocks, and sheeted to the tail, there was yet something about his general appearance that fascinated Mr. Sawyer at once. Job saw the spell was working, and abstained from disturbing it. As far as could be seen, the animal was a long, low, well-bred-looking roan, with short flat legs, large clean hocks, and swelling muscular thighs. His supple skin threw off a bloom, as if he was in first-rate condition; and when, laying his ears back and biting the manger, he lifted a foreleg, as it were, to expostulate with his visitors, the hoof was round, open, and well-developed, as blue, and to all appearance as hard as a flint.
“Has he fashion enough, think ye, sir?” asked Job, at length, breaking the silence. “Strip him, Barney,” he added, taking the straw from his mouth.
The roan winced, and stamped, and whisked his tail, and set his back up during the process; but when it was concluded, Mr. Sawyer could not but confess to himself, that if he was only as good as he looked, he would do.
“Feel his legs, Mr. Sawyer!” observed the dealer, turning away to conceal the triumph that would ooze out. “There’s some legs—there’s some hocks and thighs! Talk of loins, and look where his tail’s set on. Carries his own head, too; and if you could see his manners! I never saw such manners in the hunting-field. Six-year-old—not a speck or blemish; bold as a bull, and gentle as a lady; he can go as fast as you can clap your hands, and stay till the middle of the week after next—jump a town, too, and never turn his head from the place you put him at. As handy as a fiddle, as neat as a pink, and worth all the money to carry in your eye when you go out to buy hunters. But what’s the use of talking about it to a judge like you? Lay your leg over him—only just lay your leg over him, Mr. Sawyer. I don’t want you to buy him! but get on him and feel his action, just as a favour to me.”
Our friend had made up his mind he would do so from the first. There was no mistaking the appearance of the animal; so good was it, that he had but two misgivings—some rank unsoundness, to account for its being there, or so high a price as to be beyond his means; for Mr. Sawyer was too fond of the sport to give a sum that he could not replace for so perishable an article as a hunter.
He was no mean equestrian, our friend, and quite at home on a strange horse. As he drew the curb-rein gently through his fingers, the roan dropped his long lean head, and champed the bit playfully, tossing a speck of froth back on his rider’s boots.
“You’ve got a mouth, at any rate,” quoth Mr. Sawyer, and trotted him gently down the hard road, the animal stepping freely and gaily under him, full of life and spirits. The customer liked his mount, and couldn’t help showing it. “May I lark him?” said he, pulling up after a short canter to and fro on the turf by the wayside; during which Job Sloper had been exercising his mental arithmetic in what we may term a sum of problematical addition.
“Take him into the close, sir,” was the generous reply; “put him at anything you like. If you can get him into one of these fences, I’ll give him to you!”
So Mr. Sawyer sat down to jump a low hedge and ditch, then stood up, and caught hold of the roan’s head, and sent him a cracker through the adjoining plough, and across a larger fence into a pasture, and back again over a fair flight of rails and lost his flat shooting-hat, and rucked his plaid trousers up to his knees; and Sloper marked his kindling eye and glowing cheek, and knew that he had landed him.
“Walk him about for ten minutes before you do him over,” said that worthy to Barney, as Mr. Sawyer dismounted, and the latter brought him his hat. “And now, sir,” added the hospitable dealer, “you can’t go away without tasting my cheese—the same you liked last time, you know. Walk in, sir; this way, and mind the step, if you please.” So speaking, Mr. Sloper ushered his guest into a neat little parlour with a strong odour of preserved tobacco-smoke, where a clean cloth set off a nice luncheon of bread and cheese, flanked by a foaming jug of strong ale and a decanter of oily-brown sherry.
And herein the dealer showed his knowledge of human nature, and his discrimination in the different characteristics of the species. Had his guest been some generous scion of the aristocracy, with more money than nerves, he would have primed him first, and put him up to ride afterwards. But he knew his man. He was well aware that Mr. Sawyer required no stimulant to make him jump, but a strong one to induce him to part with his money; so he proposed the luncheon after he was satisfied that his customer was pleased with his mount.
Neither of them touched on business during the meal, the conversation consisting chiefly of the runs that had lately taken place in the Old Country, with many an inferred compliment to the good riding of the possible purchaser.
Then Mr. Sawyer produced the Laranagas and offered one to Job, who bit it, and wet it, and smoked it, as men do who are more used to clay pipes, and then they went back to the stable to see the roan done up.
The gallop and the ale were working in Mr. Sawyer’s brain, but he didn’t see his way into the roan at a hundred; so he obstinately held his tongue. The dealer was obliged to break the ice.
“I’d take it very friendly of you, sir, if you’d give me your honest opinion of that horse,” said he, waving the Laranaga towards the animal. “I fancy he’s too good for our country; and I’ve a brother-in-law down in Rutland as wants to have him very bad. He’s just the cut, so he says, for these Melton gents; and he’s a good judge, is my brother-in-law, and a pretty rider to boot. He’d give me my price, too; but then, you know, sir, askin’ your pardon, it isn’t always ready money between relations; and that cuts the other way again, as a man may say. What do you think, Mr. Sawyer?”
“I’ll find out what he wants for him, at any rate,” thought the customer. “What’s his figure?” was the abrupt rejoinder.
Mr. Sloper hesitated. “A hundred and—” eighty, he was going to say; but seeing his customer’s eye resting on the roan’s back-ribs—a point in which the horse was somewhat deficient—he dropped at once to seventy, and regretted it the next moment when he caught the expression of the listener’s face.
“It isn’t even money,” answered Mr. Sawyer, without, however, making the same sort of face he had done several times before, when he had refused to give double the sum at which he had eventually purchased. “I should say you might get a hundred and twenty for him down there, if you’d luck. But it’s a great risk—a great risk—and a long distance; and perhaps have him sent back to you in the spring. If I wanted a horse, I’d give you a hundred for him, though he isn’t exactly my sort. A hundred!—I’ll tell you what, Sloper, I’ll be hanged if I won’t chance it—I’ll give you a hundred—guineas—come! Money down, and no questions asked.”
“I can warrant him sound,” answered Mr. Sloper; “and I’d rather you had him than anybody. But it’s childish talking of a hundred guineas and that horse on the same afternoon. However, I thank you kindly all the same, Mr. Sawyer. Barney! shut the box up. Come in, sir, and have one glass of sherry before you start. The evenings get chill at this time of year, and that’s old sherry, and won’t hurt you no more than milk. He is a nice horse, Mr. Sawyer, I think—a very nice horse, and I’m glad you’re pleased with him.”
So they returned into the little parlour, and stirred up the fire, and finished the bottle of old sherry: nor is it necessary to remark that, with the concluding glass of that generous fluid the roan became the property of John Standish Sawyer, under the following somewhat complicated agreement:—That he was to give an immediate cheque for a hundred and forty pounds, and ten pounds more at the end of the season; which latter donation was to be increased to twenty if he should sell him for anything over two hundred—a contingency which the dealer was pleased to observe amounted to what he called “a moral.”
The new owner went to look at him once more in the stable, and thought him the nicest horse he ever saw in his life. The walk home, too, was delightful, till the sherry had evaporated, when it became rather tedious; and at dinner-time Mr. Sawyer was naturally less hungry than thirsty. All the evening, however, he congratulated himself on having done a good day’s work. All night, too, he dreamed of the roan; and on waking resolved to call him “Hotspur.”
When the horse came home next day, he certainly looked rather smaller than his new owner had fancied. Old Isaac too, growled out his untoward opinion that he “looked a sort as would work very light.” But then Isaac always grumbled—it was the old groom’s way of enjoying himself.
Isaac was a character in his way—quite an institution at The Grange, where, by dint of indomitable tenacity of opinion, and a singular talent for silence, he had contrived to extend his influence over a good many matters not in the least connected with his department. For instance, not a sheep could be killed without consulting Isaac. His word on the subject of pigs was law; and it needed but a wave of his hand to substitute for the useless, hideous, gigantic Cochin-Chinas of the poultry-yard, a certain breed of plump Dorkings, that laid diurnal eggs in their lifetime, and, after death, made almost as handsome an appearance as Norfolk turkeys on the dining-table.
Perhaps the old groom was less omnipotent in the stable than elsewhere. Mr. Sawyer, like many other proprietors of small studs, chose to have his own way with his horses, and would no more have omitted to visit them after breakfast than he would have neglected to smoke his cigar. It is only the tip-top swells, with whom our friend had not yet scraped acquaintance, who “suppose their fellow will have ‘two or three’ at the place of meeting.” But although it is doubtless a great luxury to own plenty of hunters, this very plurality often prevents a man from finding out which is his best horse. There are not a great many good runs over any country in one season. It is a long time before you have treated each one of your dozen to a clipper; and, till then, you only know you have a good hunter, but cannot tell you have got a good horse.
Mr. Sawyer, however, knew the merits and the failings of his own two or three nags but too well. He was pretty often on their backs, and, when off them, constantly in and out of the stable. Isaac would no more have dared to give one of them a gallop, or a dose of physic, than to have inflicted the same discipline on his master. Nevertheless he grumbled always and continuously. As I have said before, it was the one relaxation he permitted himself. Perhaps he never had a better opportunity than on the morning after the new horse came home, when Mr. Sawyer, according to custom, but with a trifle more eagerness than usual, visited his favourites in their comfortable quarters. According to custom, too, he felt their legs all round; expressed his satisfaction that the grey’s had got “quite fine again,” and passed over a certain thick-set underbred bay horse without a remark. Indeed, it would have been difficult to say anything complimentary of this animal; and his remaining so long in Mr. Sawyer’s stable was less the consequence of his merits than that strangers seemed to have the same opinion of him as was entertained by his own master. It is somewhat galling, when we cannot get rid of a bad one, to reflect that it should be so difficult to find a bigger fool than ourselves. The bay, who rejoiced in the classical appellation of Marathon, was a slow horse, a sulky horse, and by no means a safe fencer—about as unpleasant a hunter as a man would wish to get upon, but rather a favourite with Isaac notwithstanding, as he was sound, and a voracious feeder. These three, the roan, the grey (who had no name), and the bay, with a little three-cornered jumping hack called Jack-a-Dandy, now constituted Mr. Sawyer’s stud; and, as he contemplated them all hard at work with their eleven o’clock feed, he felt that spark of ambition glowing in his bosom which has lured so many great men to their destruction.
“He looks a clipper! don’t he, Isaac?” observed the master, nodding towards the roan’s long shapely quarters and square tail. “The rarest shaped one we’ve had in this stable for many a day,” he added, seeing his servant’s features screwed into the well-known twist that denoted disapprobation.
“Looks!” grunted Isaac, who never called his master “sir.” “Looks! Ah! he’d be a nice thing enough to knock a light trap about, or do you a day now and then when the country gets dry. He’ll never be fit for our ploughs—you see if he will! They’ll pull him to pieces in a fortnight—you see if they won’t!”
“I don’t want him for our ploughs,” answered Mr. Sawyer, waxing somewhat impatient. “I don’t think I shall have another day in the Old Country this year. Look ye here, Isaac. I’m going to move the horses. I’ve three now, let alone ‘Jack’” (this was an abbreviation for the hack who seldom enjoyed his fall name, being generally designated as above, or as “The Dandy”)—“three right good ones. I can easily pick up another, when I’m settled. I’m going down to the grass.”
“Grass!” grunted the listener. “Where be that?”
“Well, I’m going to see what sport they have in the Shires,” answered his master, warming up with the subject—“going to have a look at Mr. Tailby and the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, and try if I can’t make a fight good enough to see those Pytchley bitches run into their fox. I’m going to Market Harborough, Isaac. Such horses as mine are wasted in this out-of-the-way country. Why, the grey’s the best I’ve ever had; and the roan ought to be faster than he; and even the bay would carry me better, I think, in that country than he does here.”
A gleam as of pity softened old Isaac’s hard blue eyes, as it rested on Marathon tucking in his feed, and he pictured that devoted animal rolling and lurching, disconsolate, over the ridge-and-furrow of a fifty-acre grass-field. But he only observed sardonically,
“Markit Harboro’, is it? To stand at the sign of the ‘Hand-in-Pocket,’ I suppose?”
“Never mind what you suppose!” answered Mr. Sawyer, now positively angry. “You do what I bid you. Move the horses down to-morrow by the rail. Take The Boy with you; and mind you keep him out of mischief. I’ve written to a friend of mine to engage stables. Next week we’ll begin work in right earnest. Come into the house, with your book, after your dinner; and hold your tongue!”
Old Isaac knew better than to pursue the subject any further; and, truth to tell, the old fellow had a spark of his youth’s adventurous spirit lingering about him still, which made him not averse to a change, although he thought the scheme wasteful, imprudent, and extravagant. He looked after his master, strolling leisurely towards the house, and observed very slowly to himself and the stable-cat:
“Market ’Arborow! Market ’Arborow! Five days a week, bullock-fences, and a wet country! Thorns, stubs, cracked heels, and hawful wear-an’-tear of horses! No—I couldn’t have believed it of him!”
Eight-and-forty hours more saw old Isaac stamping drearily about on the wet pavement of that excellent sporting locality. Market Harborough, though perhaps the best head-quarters in the world for fox-hunting, can scarcely be termed a gay or very beautiful town. On a wet, drizzling afternoon in early winter, when twilight begins somewhere about 2.45, with no movable object visible save a deserted carrier’s cart, and a small rain falling, which dulls the red-brick houses while it polishes the paved and slippery streets, it is, doubtless, a city suggestive of repose, not to say stagnation. Isaac’s was a temperament sufficiently susceptible of all unpleasant influences; and he began to wish heartily he hadn’t come. A variety of disadvantages had occurred to him since his arrival. The price of forage and stabling he considered enormous. The conveniences for hot water were not what he was accustomed to at home. Hotspur did by no means feed well in a strange box: the horse had begun to look poorer day by day since he left the dealer’s. And last night The Boy, who had never been from home before, certainly smelt of gin when he came to bed.
This youth—who, if he once had a name, must have long forgotten it, since he was never called anything but “The Boy”—was a continual thorn in the head groom’s side. He had originally been taken solely on Isaac’s recommendation, and had caused that worthy more trouble than all the rest of the establishment put together, horses, pigs, and the Cochin-Chinas to boot. He was a light, lathy lad, with a pretty face; a good horseman, considering his strength, or rather weakness; and had a knack of keeping his hands down: but he owned the usual faults of boyhood—carelessness, forgetfulness, “imperence” (as Isaac called it), a great love of procrastination, and general insensibility to the beauty of truth.
“If he takes to drinking, the young warmint!” thought Isaac, “I’ll larrup the skin off him!” And thus consoling himself, the old man turned his cheek once more to the chill, misty heavens, and shook his head. His horses were done up; the door locked, and the key in his pocket; The Boy also secured by the same means in the loft. Master could not arrive till eight or nine o’clock. It was the hour when, at The Grange, he was accustomed to see the pigs feed and the chickens to roost. He wished he was back in the Old Country: the time hung heavily on the old groom’s hands.
“Nothing to do, and lots of time to do it in! that seems to be about the size of it—eh, governor?” said a voice at his elbow; and, turning round, Isaac confronted a short and dapper personage, whom, by a sort of freemasonry, he had no difficulty in recognising as one of his own profession.
At any other time he would have treated this worthy’s advances to acquaintance with sovereign contempt; but his spirits were depressed and his heart solitary, so he vented a grunt of acquiescence, which, for him, was wonderfully polite.
“I think I see you arrive yesterday, with two or three nags,” continued this affable functionary, “when I was out a hairin’ some o’ mine; and you’re puttin’ up close by my place. Come in, governor, and take something hot, to keep the cold off till we become better acquainted.”
With this hospitable offer, Isaac found himself following his new friend into a cosy little tap-room, with red curtains and a sanded floor, which apartment they had all to themselves; and whilst “something hot”—a delicious compound of yolk of egg, brown sugar, warm beer, and cordial gin—was being got ready, he had time to study the exterior of his new acquaintance.
Probably the utmost ingenuity of the tailor’s art must have been exhausted in constructing trousers so tight as the pair which clung to that person’s legs. Not a crease had they, nor a fold anywhere; and, unless the man slept in them, it was difficult to conceive how they could conveniently be used as articles of daily apparel. The person’s boots, too, were neat, round-toed Wellingtons; his waistcoat descended far below his hips; and the waist-buttons of his grey-mixture coat were unusually low and wide apart. A cream-coloured silk neckcloth, secured by a horse-shoe pin, set off a pale, sharp-looking countenance, speaking of hot stables and dissipation, while the closest possible crop of hair and whiskers did justice to a shaved hat with an exceedingly flat brim. A few splashes of mud on the boots and trousers showed he had been lately on horseback; and he held up one of his thin little legs as he took his seat, and contemplated the stains with a grin of morbid satisfaction.
“Blessed if ever I see this country so deep!” he remarked, after a pull at the flip. “How my horses will stand it, I know no more than the dead, the way the governor rides. We’ve only nine this year; and he’s an awful hard man upon a horse.”
“Nine!” exclaimed old Isaac, smacking his lips after the draught, which warmed the very cockles of his heart; and being a man of few words, only added, “Well, now, to be sure!”
“He is awful hard upon ’em—that’s the truth,” continued the narrator. “It was only last week he says to me, ‘Tiptop,’ says he—my name’s Tiptop—‘what made Boadicea’ (that’s our bay mare by Bellerophon out of Blue Light)—‘what made Boadicea stop with me under Carlton Clump to-day? Either she wasn’t fit,’ says he, ‘or she isn’t worth five shillings.’ ‘Well, sir,’ says I, ‘the mare’s a gross feeder,’ says I, ‘and you ride with rayther a slack rein.’ ‘slack rein be hanged!’ says he. ‘If ever such a thing happens again, you’ll get the sack,’ says he. So I up and told him I was ready to go whenever he could replace me; and the upshot of it was as he apologised quite like a gentleman; for, indeed, he wouldn’t know whatever to do without me. He’s a good man—my governor—enough; but he’s hasty—very hasty. Why, to see him coming over a gate into the turnpike-road, as I did t’other day, on Catamount—that’s our chestnut, as ran fourth for the Liverpool—you’d say he’d no discretion whatever; but they’ve all got their faults—all on ’em. What’s yours? Can he ride?”
Discreet Isaac answered with a counter-question. “What’s your governor’s name?” said he, peeping once more into the waning pewter measure.
“The Honourable Crasher,” replied Mr. Tiptop, not without an air of exultation. “A brother he is to the Hearl of Heligoland. Now I’ve told you all about it, old bloke. There—you ease your mind in return, and give us your name.”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve seen the register,” answered Isaac. “But it’s a long way to the parish as owes me a settlement; and I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, Mr. Tiptop, till I can communicate with you by post.” Saying which Isaac finished the flip at a gulp, and walked off to seven-o’clock stables without uttering another word.
London is in the way to everywhere. I have an old friend,—an honest Lincolnshire squire,—who, paying his sister a visit in Norfolk, always goes and returns by London. I do not think it is necessary to traverse Oxford Street in order to proceed from the Old Country to Market Harborough; and yet on the day that witnessed his faithful groom’s introduction to Mr. Tiptop, John Standish Sawyer might have been, and indeed was, seen crossing that crowded thoroughfare, with hasty steps and air of considerable preoccupation.
The fact is, Mr. Sawyer was full of business. In the first place, it is needless to observe, he had been to have his hair cut—a rite seldom neglected by the true Englishman when entering upon a new phase in his career. Also he had to purchase many articles of wearing apparel, such as are only to be procured in the Metropolis. Since his rejection by Miss Mexico (for previous to that casualty he had been rather a gaudy dresser than otherwise), our friend, although preserving an equestrian exterior, had suffered his wardrobe to run considerably to seed. In truth, there was little temptation to extravagance on that score at The Grange. But now that he was about to take his place, as he observed, amongst the sporting aristocracy of Great Britain, it would be necessary to call in the aid of such artists as consider themselves the especial providers of boots, breeches, &c., for the first flight.
When I met him he was hurrying towards the well-known emporium of Messrs. Putty & Co., now universally acknowledged to be the only firm in London at which a truly workmanlike top-boot—combining, as their advertisement expresses it, “comfort to the wearer, with satisfaction to the looker-on”—is to be obtained. I could not resist my friend’s imploring request to accompany him into the shop, and favour him with my experience on a subject which cannot be mastered without considerable observation and reflection.
Like most people from the country, Mr. Sawyer feels somewhat shy in the presence of a fashionable London tradesman. When he entered the warehouse, a languid gentleman, with one shoeless foot placed on a square of brown paper, was drawling out his directions to Messrs. Putty’s foreman, an exceedingly smart and voluble disciple of St. Crispin.
“Not too thick,” said the languid man, in a tone of utter physical exhaustion. “Man can’t ride nicely, if he don’t feel his stirrup through his boot;” and Sawyer nudged my elbow with a delighted wink, that seemed to say—“This swell, too, is a votary of Diana!”
The languid man’s silk-stockinged foot having been re-shod, he rose with great difficulty, and moved feebly in the direction of his brougham, from the window of which he adjured the shopman, in a faint voice, to forward “the tops when finished to my address at Market Harborough,” and sank back amongst the cushions, completely overcome.
The talismanic syllables raised the curiosity of my friend. “Who is it?” he whispered eagerly to the returning shopman; and that worthy, placing a chair and a fresh square of brown paper for his new customer, replied somewhat condescendingly—“That, sir? That’s the Honourable Crasher, sir; hunting gentleman, and very particular about his tops. What can I do for you, sir?”
I had now an opportunity of observing the great warmth and thickness of the worsted stockings in which my friend kept his legs encased; also the stout proportions of those useful limbs, more adapted perhaps for the Highland kilt, than any other costume. Mr. Putty’s foreman saw at a glance the difficulties he would have to contend with, and prepared to subdue them.
“Very muscular gentleman!” said he; passing his tape round my friend’s calf. “Great pedestrian powers, I should say. Inconvenient in the saddle; but will endeavour to rectify that. Excuse me, sir: take the liberty of asking whereabouts you generally hunt.”
“Hunt?” repeated the customer. “Oh! Leicestershire—Northamptonshire—all about there—in the neighbourhood of Market Harborough.” Mr. Sawyer spoke in a vague general sort of way, as if he was in the habit of pervading the whole of the grazing districts.
A cloud gathered on the foreman’s brow.
“The Shires!” he rejoined, with a perplexed air; “that increases our difficulties very much indeed. I could have made you, now, a particular neat provincial boot; but with this pattern it’s exceedingly difficult to attain the correct appearance for flying countries. I’ll show you a pair here, sir, that the Honourable Crasher sent back this very morning, because they fell away the eighth-of-an-inch at the setting-on of the leg, and the Honourable’s girth is at least two-and-a-half less than yours. You wouldn’t like a pair of Napoleons, I presume? Very fashionable just now, sir. All the gentlemen wear them in the Vale of Aylesbury.”
I confess I rather expected an outburst at this suggestion: my friend sharing with me a strong prejudice against what have been termed “Butcher-boots;” but
“Prolonged endurance tames the bold,”
and Sawyer submitted with considerable patience to the foreman’s promise, that they would do all in their power to make him two pair of top-boots, only inferior to those of the Honourable Crasher, and send them down to him in a little over a fortnight; or, “not to disappoint him, say punctually that day three weeks.”
A thorough revisal of gloves, neckcloths, &c., is soon made; and after a hearty luncheon at the railway station, I put my friend into a first-class carriage attached to the fast train, and wished him “Good sport,” and “Good-bye,” with a feeling somewhat akin to envy, as I remained in smoky London, and he was whirled away into the soft fragrant country saturated with rain, and smiling itself to sleep in the calm grey light of a mild winter’s afternoon. He had but one fellow-passenger, of whom more anon.
I wonder whether the reflections of other men in a railway-carriage, bowling through the midland counties at the rate of forty miles an hour, on such a day as I have described, are like my own. I honestly confess that a very few ideas, if they are favourite ones, are sufficient to fill my brain. As I speed along the level embankments, which give one such a commanding view of the surrounding country, I cannot help imagining myself on the back of a good horse, sailing away from field to field after a pack of hounds. How well I can see my way!—how easy the fences look!—how readily I distinguish the place I should make him take off at, and the exact spot on which he would land, choosing unhesitatingly the soundest ridge, on which I should increase my pace so confidently down to that glassy brook, that looks as if you could hop over it from here, but which memory tells me is at least fifteen feet of water! How easy to get a start from that spinny, shaped liked a cocked-hat, of which the three corners have puzzled me so often, never hitting the one the hounds came out at, though I have tried them all in turn! How contemptible the size of this woodland, in which I have yet known a fox hang for hours together! What a run I have in imagination! and how well I see it! Alas! like everything else coloured through that deceitful medium, how different from the “cold reality”!
Nevertheless, much as I sympathise in his bride’s consternation, I cannot deny a fellow-feeling with that bridegroom of whom it is related that, on a wedding-trip of many hours by the side of his late-won treasure, during which he ceased not to scan the adjacent fences with a practical eye, he uttered never a word during the entire journey, save this one remarkable sentence, “There’s my place! Where would you have it?”
Some such ruminations as the above probably engrossed the whole of my friend’s intellects, till the courteous offer of Punch—containing, as usual, one of Leech’s inimitable hunting sketches—drew his attention to his fellow-traveller, under whose multiplicity of wrappers he had no difficulty in recognising the placid features of the gentleman he had that morning noticed in the boot-shop. It was, indeed, none other than the Honourable Crasher; by this time completely worn out, and who, to do him justice, was a gentlemanlike, well-featured fellow enough, if he had not always looked so dreadfully tired.
The reply to such a courtesy, where there were no ladies in the carriage, could only be, “Have you any objection to smoking?” And as nobody ever does object nowadays to that soothing practice, and the “forty-shilling penalty” is, I trust, simply a dead-letter and a fallacy, the Laranagas were produced, and a couple of them soon got very freely under way.
No introduction from a mutual friend is equal to that of a cigar. Any two votaries of the “pleasant vice,” at least during the time they are engaged in its practice, are sure to fraternise, and in five minutes Mr. Sawyer and the Honourable Crasher were hard at it, I need scarcely observe, on the subject of fox-hunting; the former resolving, as far as possible, to pick the brains of his new acquaintance (if he could find them) on that exhaustless topic; the latter positively warming into a languid enthusiasm on the only subject to which he could direct his whole attention for ten consecutive minutes.
Racing men are bad enough. Politicians are sufficiently long-winded. A couple of agriculturists will keep the ball rolling pretty perseveringly on the congenial themes of “cake,” mangold wurzel, short-horns, reaping-machines, and guano; but I have heard ladies, who are perhaps the best judges of volubility, affirm that, for energy, duration, and the faculty of saying the same thing over and over again, a dialogue between a couple of fox-hunters beats every other kind of discussion completely out of the field.
Mr. Sawyer took the initiative by pointing to the fox’s tusk which fastened the string in his new friend’s hat.
“Done anything this last week?” said he, with that mysterious air specially affected by all individuals who are connected, however remotely, with horseflesh, and which, I believe, has much to answer for, in the impression of consummate roguery which it conveys to the uninitiated. “It’s been good scenting weather in my part of the world. Hounds must have run hard on the grass.”
The Honourable Crasher emitted a large volume of smoke, ere he roused himself for the effort, and replied: “Good thing, last Friday, with the Pytchley, from Fox Hall. Do you know that country?” he added, thinking, if his listener did not, he might save himself the trouble of detailing it.
“I am on my way down to hunt there now,” rejoined our friend, “so I take an interest, naturally, in your sport. Last Friday, you say? Ah! that was the day we had such a fine run over our country. Two hours and forty-seven minutes, and killed our fox—and killed our fox,” he repeated, as if such a climax was sufficiently rare to merit more than common attention.
Nothing but the spirit of emulation between different packs could have embarked the Honourable Crasher on a long story; but he woke up from his lethargy at this juncture, and observed,
“Two hours and forty-seven minutes? Indeed! It must have been a fine run; but slow, I conclude—slow. I never care much for anything over an hour. It’s labour and sorrow, walking after hounds, to my mind.”
“Slow!” retorted Mr. Sawyer indignantly. “Not at all; I was riding the best horse in my stable, and he had to do all he knew to live with them. Fine country, too—wild fox-hunting country—not a soul in the fields; very deep, and a good deal of fencing. I don’t know that I was ever better carried,” he added meditatively, hoping to bring the conversation round to the merits of the grey.
But the Honourable Crasher had his story to tell too, and broke in with unusual vehemence:
“Ours was about the quickest thing I ever rode to. Found in Faxton Corner; fox never hung a second, and the hounds ran him over those large grass-fields as if they were tied to him, all down by——Dear me, I forget the names of the places, and I never can describe a run; but if you don’t know the country, it don’t signify. In short, they ran him all about, you know, over a capital line, and turned him up in the open, at the end of seven-and-twenty minutes, without a check, and very straight, you know, and all that; satisfactory to everybody, and not at all bad fun, and so on.” The Honourable C. was rapidly collapsing, running down like the last notes of a musical box. Ere he arrived at this very explicit conclusion, he had become perfectly torpid again.
Finding his neighbour would not listen to his story, Mr. Sawyer thought he might as well get what he could in the way of information, and began accordingly to propound a series of questions, only interrupted by the occasional apparition, at the window, of a broad chest and ruddy bearded face belonging to the guard, who, seeing the gentlemen still smoking, vanished again incontinently. The examination proceeded much as follows, the catechumen, though waking up at intervals, becoming more and more comatose.
Mr. Sawyer: “It is very stiff, isn’t it, that Pytchley country? Large fences that won’t bear liberties being taken with them?”
The Honourable Crasher: “Yeas, I should say, it wanted a hunter to get over it.”
Mr. S.: “Do you consider it as difficult to cross as the Quorn?”
The Hon. C.: “Yeas—no—that’s to say, I ride the same horses in both; I don’t know that there’s much difference.”
“Whom do your consider your best men now, in your field?”
“Oh! there are lots of fellows who can ride, if they get a start. It’s impossible to say; there’s a good deal in luck, and a good deal in horses.” [N.B. This is hardly a sincere speech of the Hon. C.’s. He does not think either luck or horseflesh constitutes a customer, and has not the slightest doubt in his own mind as to whom he considers about the best performer in that or any other country; only modesty forbids him to name the individual.]
Mr. S., a little dissatisfied: “I suppose the Leicestershire men are splendidly mounted?”
Hon. C.: “No; I should say not. I never remember seeing so few good horses. I shouldn’t know where to get a hunter if I wanted one!”
Mr. Sawyer thought of the roan, and ran his eye over his friend’s slim figure and horsemanhorseman-like shape. “He’d carry him like a bird,” thought the owner, “and I shouldn’t mind letting him have him for two hundred, or say, if I dropped into a good thing with him, two hundred and fifty;” but he only observed, “I suppose you are very well mounted yourself?”
“So-so,” was the reply. “I’m rather short just now; only ten. Good useful brutes some of them; but I shouldn’t say my lot was quite first-class, by any means!”
Again Mr. Sawyer found subject for rumination. Ten! Only ten! and not first-class ones neither, though it was probable that a man who had ten hunters in his stable would not find it worth while to keep a bad one; and then he thought of his own three, and the severe infliction it would be to have to ride Marathon over the fences, which, as he looked from the window, loomed larger and larger in the twilight, as they approached the grazing districts. No secret, it has been said, is so close as that between a horse and his rider; and Mr. Sawyer hardly liked to confess, even to himself, the very inferior brute he had got in the bay. Somehow all the difficulties into which he had put him seemed to rise in his mind’s eye, like an accumulation of photographs, as he sat back amongst the cushions, and, withdrawing his gaze from the outward world, fixed it on the lately-lit lamp above his head.
He remembered, not without a shudder, what a cropper the brute gave him at that stile in the potato-garden, which at least he might have scrambled over, if he had only risen six inches. He recalled the famous run he lost from the Forty-acres, because no persuasion would induce Marathon to face the bullfinch enclosing that meritorious fox-covert, and which a donkey could get through, if he would only look at it. He reflected how the animal perversely
“Struck all his timber, fathomed all his ditches;”
how he had never cleared a brook with him, or gone a run to his master’s satisfaction; and how even old Isaac allowed his favourite “wur a better nag in the stable nor he wur in the field;” and so musing, he shuddered to think of their joint endeavours to get out of a fifty-acre pasture, with an ox-fence all round it, and the gate locked!
To avoid such horrible visions, he would have plunged once more into conversation, but looking at his neighbour, observed he was now deep in “The Idylls of the King,”—an epic which served at least to keep the Honourable Crasher awake, thereby substantiating a theory I have heard broached by certain philosophers, and which I am not entirely prepared to dispute, viz. that there is something of poetry in every man who rides hard across a country.
Certainly not a Knight of the Table Round could have been more daring in the saddle than the Honourable Crasher, for all his dissipated looks and languid manners; nor could he have been so engrossed in the fate of “The Lily Maid of Astolat,” nor so lost in the description of the black barge floating dreamily down with its snowy burden (perhaps the most beautiful piece of word-painting in the language), had he not acknowledged in some corner of his much-neglected intellect that divin? particula aur?, which may often be found, like a sweet wayside flower, blooming in the most unexpected and uncultivated localities.
Though Mr. Sawyer was himself innocent of all such weaknesses, he had the grace not to interrupt his fellow-traveller, and consequently not a word more was spoken till they exchanged a courteous “Good-evening,” as they glided into the Market Harborough station, and the new arrival wondered in his own mind how it was possible for any one man to require such a quantity of clothing as must be contained in the numerous portmanteaus which the guard’s van produced, and which were claimed by the Honourable Crasher as his own.
“He can’t have been a week in town,” thought our honest friend, “for he was hunting here only last Friday, and he’s taken more clothes with him than I’ve got for my whole kit in the world!”
He had, however, his own affairs to attend to—himself and his modest luggage to stow away in a damp fly, with a broken-winded horse; his dinner to order at the principal hotel, where he meant to reside—at least, till he found out if he liked his quarters. For so old a traveller, he committed in this matter a somewhat unaccountable mistake. Dazzled by the magnificence of his manners, and the sumptuous verbal bill of fare which the waiter stated to be available, he left the details of his meal to that functionary—an oversight which produced a somewhat untoward result, inasmuch as that, after a visit to his stables, a minute inspection of his horses, and a long consultation with Isaac, concerning which of them he should ride on the morrow, interspersed with many complaints and prognostications of evil from the latter, when he returned to his apartment very hungry and in want of comfort, he found the following banquet prepared for his delectation: A slice of soft cod, one raw mutton-chop relieved by an underdone ditto, two sorts of pickles, and some exceedingly strong cheese.
When Mr. Sawyer awoke in the morning, his first impression was, that he had never left The Grange, but that the pattern of his bedroom paper was strangely altered, and the situation of his couch had been mysteriously changed in the night.
It was not till he had turned over, and yawned twice or thrice, that he comprehended the actual position in which he was placed. Then, for the first time, the magnitude of the undertaking on which he had embarked presented itself to his mind; and then did he realise the deficiencies of his stud, the difficulties he was about to encounter, the rashness and perplexity of the whole proceeding. A feeling of loneliness stole over him; and he even experienced a want of confidence in himself. For an instant, he almost wished he was back at home, and the dastardly possibility of returning there flashed across his mind. All these unworthy thoughts, however, were dissipated by the entrance of Isaac, with a pair of boots in one hand, and a glimmering bedroom candle in the other, as the mists of morning are dispelled by the rising sun; and, even as the shrinking combatant gathers confidence from the flash of his drawn sword, so, at the first glimpse of those long-rowelled spurs of which Marathon knew too well the persuasive powers, John Standish Sawyer was himself again.
“Half after eight, sir,” said Isaac, setting down the candle, and proceeding to pour cold water into the tub—a process that by no means tempted his master to rise on the instant. “Half after eight, sir; and the grey’s got a bit of a cough. It’s that strange stable as done it. And you was to let me know in the morning which of them I was to take on.”
“What sort of a day is it?” asked our friend, in a sleepy voice, turning, like Dr. Watts’s sluggard, into a more comfortable position. At that moment, it would not have broken his heart to be told that it was too hard to hunt.
“Can’t see your hand,” was the encouraging reply: “it’s one of these regular Leicester-sheer fogs, as the grooms tells me, as is wery prevalent hereabouts. The lamps is lit now in the streets; but it’ll be wusser up on the high ground. They’ll hunt, though, just the same, says they. Weather never stops them here, unless it be the sewerest of frost and snow, as I understand. Shall I open the shutters, sir?”
Isaac threw them back as he spoke, and drew up the blind, disclosing to Mr. Sawyer’s view about eighteen feet of tiles, a weathercock pointing east-south-east, and a chimney adorned with what is called an “old woman”—an ingenious contrivance to prevent it from smoking, but in this instance, to judge by the smell of soot which pervaded the apartment, by no means a successful piece of mechanism—the whole wrapped in a mantle of the densest and wettest fog he ever remembered to have seen.
“Sure to be late such a morning as this,” thought Mr. Sawyer, preparing for another comfortable half-hour in bed; but then he reflected that he must send Isaac forward with a horse, also that he should have to find his own way to Tilton Wood, on his hack—a sufficiently intricate proceeding as studied overnight by a map, but which might become excessively puzzling when reduced to practice, through large pastures and unknown bridle-gates, on such a morning as the present.
“Take on the grey!” said he, peremptorily, ignoring the cough; “and order breakfast for me in three-quarters of an hour.”
The fact is, Mr. Sawyer had but the grey to ride. He did not quite fancy giving the roan his earliest trial in what he understood to be a hilly country; and as for making his first appearance in High Leicestershire on Marathon—really, though both were pretty strong, neither his nerves nor his self-conceit would have stood such a test.
Somehow, everything went wrong, as is apt to be the case in a strange place, and when we are particularly anxious for the reverse. He cut himself shaving. His leathers were damp, and badly cleaned; looser, too, at the knees, and tighter in the thighs, than he liked. Also, he couldn’t find his button-hook; and any one who has put on boots and breeches without the aid of that implement, will sympathise with his distress. Isaac knew where it was, doubtless; but, ere his master arrived at the stage of toilet at which it was required, Isaac and the grey had made their first wrong turn in the fog, about a mile from the town, on their way to Tilton Wood.
Altogether, by the time The Boy, with rather heavy eyes and an unwashed face, had brought round Jack-a-Dandy, our friend was in that mood which is best described as having “got out of bed with the wrong foot foremost.”
Once in the saddle, however, things mended rapidly. No horseman could get upon Jack-a-Dandy without feeling what a good little animal it was; and, indeed, Jack’s career had been a somewhat adventurous one. Thorough-bred, but too small to be put in training, he had fallen into the hands of a steeple-chasing horsedealer, who sank his pedigree, and put him in one or two good handicaps as “his daughter’s pony.” Master Jack could jump like a deer, and, with nine stone seven on his back, was quite able to make hunters of considerable pretensions look extremely foolish. This could not go on for ever, and the dealer broke, after which, Jack carried the drunken whip of a pack of Irish fox-hounds for two seasons, and, when that establishment “busted up,” found his way once more into his native country, as leader in a young gentleman’s tandem, who tried to graduate at Oxford. Pending the failure of that acolyte, he had a good deal of fun at Bullingdon, winning cleverly whenever he had a chance, and only left the University because his master did, and took him to London, and, despite certain eccentricities, rode him in the Park. When that youth was compelled to obtain his passports for the Continent, Jack, in company with several other valuables, was seized by the creditors; and I fancy he had a very bad time of it for two or three years, till he turned up at Smithfield, nothing but skin, bone, and blemishes, with a pair of raw shoulders that would have made you sick. Here Mr. Sawyer, struck with his “make-and-shape,” bought him, after a good deal of haggling, for thirteen pounds ten shillings, throwing in half-a-crown for luck, and standing two pots of beer and a glass of brandy-and-water, besides the man’s expenses who brought him to the West-end. Altogether, he cost him less than fourteen sovereigns; and he justly considered him very cheap at the money. Though his knees were broke, and he was fired all round, he never stumbled or was lame; and if you didn’t mind a succession of kicks for the first half-mile and a mouth which bad usage had rendered perfectly callous, he was as pleasant a hack as you could wish to get upon. Jack never wanted to pull, if the rein was laid on his neck; but the moment it was caught hold of, his old associations took it as a signal to go, and go he would, accordingly. With regard to his appellation—the last among many aliases—when his master called him “Jack,” old Isaac called him “The Dandy,” and vice versa.
There are a good many ways from Market Harborough to Tilton Wood. Of course, the morning being very thick, and Mr. Sawyer a perfect stranger to the country, he chose the most intricate, hoping to pass between the Langtons—of which, for the more complete bewilderment of strangers, there are five or six—and so to reach Stanton Wyville, whence he meant boldly to leave the lanes, and strike out into a line of bridle-gates, by the corner of Stanton Wood, which might or might not eventually land him somewhere about Skeffington.
Deluded man! Ere he reached the grass-track he meant to follow, the fog was denser than ever. He managed to get through one bridle-gate, after catching his horse’s rein on the post—an insult which The Dandy resented by putting his head down, and racing wilfully and aimlessly into the surrounding obscurity—and then found himself riding round and round the same field, with extraordinary perseverance, and not the remotest chance of escape.
He would have liked, now, to get back again into the lanes; but he could not even hit the gate at which he entered, and had embarked upon the tedious process of coasting the field methodically, for that purpose, and giving up all idea of hunting for the day, when, much to his relief, he spied a gigantic object looming through the fog, which, on a nearer approach, proved to be nothing larger than a horseman, cantering confidently towards him.
On inspection, this timely arrival turned out to be the Honourable Crasher, with an enormous cigar in his mouth, looking more tired than ever, and, apparently, quite unconscious of the fog and everything else. With an effort, however, he recognised his fellow-traveller of the day before, and courteously offered to guide him—a proposal which the latter accepted with great readiness.
“I had almost lost myself,” said he, “what with this thick fog, and not knowing the country.”
To which the Honourable Crasher replied, “Y-e-e-es—it makes one cough, but it’s all plain sailing now,” and broke into a gallop.
Poor Mr. Sawyer! If he had only known it! His guide was one of the many gentlemen who could hunt twenty years from the same place, and never know their shortest way from one point to another.
By good luck our pair of lost sheep soon hit the bridle-gate Mr. Sawyer had been seeking in vain.
“I suppose it’s all right,” said the Honourable Crasher, putting his horse into a canter, with the loose rein and easy off-hand seat peculiar to a gentleman riding to covert.
Mr. Sawyer, following close in his wake, devoutly hoped it was so; but had little leisure for considering the subject, inasmuch as his energies were completely engrossed by the delicate task of gammoning The Dandy that he didn’t want to pull at him. He knew too well, by the way his little horse’s ears were laid back, that he was fully prepared, and only sought an excuse, to come with a rush at the shortest possible notice.
They went on pleasantly enough for a mile or so, the Honourable leading, and commencing a variety of courteous remarks to his follower, which invariably broke off in the middle. At last, the former pulled up with an air of uncertainty.
“Very odd,” he said; “often as I’ve come this way before, I never remember the gate locked.” He had put his whip confidently under the latch, and his horse’s chest against the top, without the slightest effect. “’Pon my soul, it seems rather absurd, but I do believe we’ve lost our way.”
“We,” thought Mr. Sawyer; “and this fiend in top-boots laughs as if it were a joke!” but he only said aloud, “I shall get down and take it off its hinges.”
The Honourable’s reply was simple and conclusive. He pointed to the upper hinge, craftily turned downwards, so as effectually to prevent all tampering with it, and observed in a tone of melancholy apology, “The fence seems rather a bad one” (it was an “oxer,” about seven feet high, and impervious to a bird!). “Do you think your horse could get over the gate after mine? This is only a five-year-old, and very likely to break it,” he added, with the manner of a nurse tempting a child to take its dose.
I have said Mr. Sawyer was a brave man, and so he was; but I am bound to confess the proposition startled him not a little. Put yourself in his place, courteous reader, and say whether a foggy morning, an uninhabited country, and the necessity of riding a horse barely fourteen-two over a gate more than four feet high, after a languid desperado in pursuit of an uncertainty, was not a somewhat alarming contingency. Nevertheless, there was nothing else for it. The Honourable turned his horse round, took him in a grasp of iron, and put him rather slowly at the gate, which the animal, a well-bred, raking-looking chestnut, with a long bang-tail, got over exceedingly badly, striking the top bar with fore and hind legs; but neither disturbing the Honourable Crasher’s seat nor the imperturbability of his demeanour in the slightest degree. He looked back, however, to see his companion come, and even condescended to express a feeble approval of his performance, without removing the cigar from his mouth.
It is but justice to The Dandy to observe, that he no sooner obtained “the office” from his rider, and saw what was expected of him, than he cocked his ears, took the bit in his teeth, and bounded over the gate like a buck, indemnifying himself for the effort, by breaking clean away with his rider as soon as he landed, and going by the Honourable Crasher and his chestnut like a flash of lightning.
I have often observed that the blood of a languid person, if once he or she gets it “up,” boils more fervidly than that of less peaceful temperaments; perhaps it is altogether a thicker fluid, and consequently more retentive of caloric. Be this as it may, no sooner did the Honourable Crasher behold Mr. Sawyer speeding by him like an express train, than, roused by the example, and further stimulated by the insubordination of the chestnut, he sat well down in the saddle; and, taking his horse by the head, soon caught up and passed the astonished Sawyer, merely remarking, “We’ve got a little out of the line; you seem to be riding a good fencer, and had better follow me!” and then proceeded to lead his victim perfectly straight across country, in the direction of Tilton Wood; the fog, too, was by this time clearing off considerably, or it might be they had emerged from the region of its influence, and the stranger had not even the advantage of its friendly veil to hide from him the dangers by which he was encompassed.
To this day Mr. Sawyer has not left off talking about this his first ride over High Leicestershire. After a bottle of port, he even becomes heterodox for so good a sportsman, and vows he would rather gallop to covert over those grass-fields, than see a run in any other country in the world. I have my doubts, however, whether he enjoyed it so very much at the time. Jack put him down twice; first at an ox-fence, of which the rail was from him, and which, although his leader hit it very hard, deluded the unsuspecting Dandy; and secondly, by landing on a covered drain, which gave way with him, and superinduced one of those falls that are generally designated “collar-boners.” On this occasion the Honourable Crasher brought him back his horse, with quite a radiant expression of countenance.
“What a good little animal it is!” said he, throwing the reins back over its neck. “I’m trying to ‘crop’ this beggar of mine, and I very soon should, if I had to follow you.”
In effect, the chestnut’s head and bridle-band were plastered over with mud, although his rider’s coat was as yet unstained.
At Skeffington, they relapsed into a quiet trot, and rode on together, feeling as if they could hardly realise the fact, that twenty-four hours ago they were utter strangers to each other.
It is odd how people cast up at a meet of fox-hounds, from all sorts of different directions, even on the most unpromising mornings. Though the fog was as thick as ever at the top of the hill, and Tilton Wood, at no time the best of places to “get away from,” was perfectly invisible at two hundred yards’ distance, there was already a good sprinkling of sportsmen assembled at the fixture. Two or three “swells” from Melton, very much the pattern of the Honourable Crasher, had arrived on their smoking hacks, and were greeted by him with considerable cordiality. Truth to tell, the Honourable dearly loved what he called “a customer,” meaning simply an individual who was fool enough to rate his neck at the value he did his own; and, indeed, he never would have taken so affably to Mr. Sawyer, on such short notice, had the latter not been fortunate enough to possess an excellent hack hunter in Jack-a-Dandy, and bold enough to make very free use of that jumping little animal; the hounds, too, had already arrived, and in the glimpse which Mr. Sawyer caught of them as he rode up, he was sportsman enough to remark that they looked speedy, stout, level, and uncommonly fit to go. Such a pack, he thought, would not even have disgraced the Old Country! the huntsman also seemed to afford the happy combination of a riding as well as a hunting one; and the other servants were remarkably well mounted, and looked like business. Mr. Sawyer began to feel quite keen, and to look about for Isaac and the grey, who had not made their appearance; the other Harborough hunters, however, had not yet come up; their grooms had, probably, taken the chance of a late meet to refresh in a body somewhere on the road; there was nothing for it but to light a cigar, and wait patiently for more daylight.
Two or three clever-looking horses with side-saddles, denoted that if the weather had been more propitious, the same number of fair equestrians would have graced the field. Mr. Sawyer particularly remarked a very neat chestnut, apparently, like the groom who led it, exceedingly loath to be ordered home. A peremptory gentleman, in particularly good boots and breeches, with a clerical white neckcloth, and black coat, who had just arrived on wheels, seemed to be the proprietor of this shapely animal. Mr. Sawyer caught himself vaguely wondering whether it belonged to his wife or daughter, and laughed at his own preoccupation as he thought, “What could it signify to him?”
It is very tiresome work, that waiting for a fog to clear off before hounds are put into covert. In all other anti-hunting weather, you know, to a certain extent, what you are about; the frost, that sent you to look at the thermometer last night before you went to bed, is either all gone by twelve o’clock, or the matter is set at rest the other way, and you make up your mind not to hunt again till the moon changes. It is the same thing with snow; and, moreover, if you can hunt on the surface of mother earth when wrapped in her spotless shroud, she rewards you by carrying a capital scent. But in a fog everything is uncertain and obscure; it may clear off in ten minutes, or it may not be so dense elsewhere. It seems a pity to go home, when the very signal for a return may herald a change of weather; and yet it is a melancholy amusement to walk hounds and horses round a wet field till far on in the afternoon. Everybody is of a different opinion too, usually regulated by personal convenience; those who live a long way off are all for having a try, whilst the man who has ridden his hunter a mile or two to the place of meeting, and can keep him fresh for next day, opines that “It is madness—folly—you’ll disturb your country—you’ll lose your hounds—you might as well go out hunting in the middle of the night,” &c.
On the present occasion it was obvious that the day was getting worse. Sheets of mist came driving up the valleys, and wreathing round the crests of the wooded hills; the slight breeze seemed but to bring up fresh relays of vapour, and every visible object, trees, hedges, gates—nay, the very ears of the horses, and whiskers of their riders, were dripping and saturated with moisture. The Master of the Hounds, a thorough sportsman, never to be beaten by a difficulty, announced his intention of waiting whilst any one else remained; but it soon appeared that ere long he would have the field to himself. The Melton gentlemen lost no time in galloping home on their hacks, to while away the hours till dinner-time with a “smoking rubber.” Half-a-dozen yeomen adjourned to a neighbouring farm-house to have what they called “a snack” and drink a goodly allowance of port and sherry in the middle of the day. Even the clerical gentleman, owner of the chestnut ladies’-horse, thought it wouldn’t do; and just as Isaac on the grey turned up at the head of a strong detachment from Harborough, with whom he had fortunately fallen in, after losing his way twice, it was finally decided that the hounds should go home, and the day’s hunting be given up.
Warmed by his ride to covert, and hopeless of finding his way back, except in the same company, Mr. Sawyer lost no time in exchanging The Dandy for the grey. “If we are to lark home,” he thought, “I may as well ride a nag I can trust; but if ever I pin my faith upon one of these thin-booted gentlemen to show me the way again, why, I shall deserve the worst that can happen to me—that’s all!”
Now, although the appearance of a stranger does not create such a sensation in Leicestershire as in more remote countries, yet the Honourable Crasher was so well known, that it was natural some inquiries should be made as to his companion; for the Honourable C., who was thoroughly good-natured, had no sooner fraternised with our friend than he began to consider him in some sort, and in his own off-hand way, as under his especial charge. Mr. Sawyer’s exterior, too, although not extraordinarily prepossessing, was undoubtedly workmanlike. As he settled himself in the grey’s saddle, and altered the stirrups which Isaac could never be persuaded to pull to the same length, the clerical gentleman ranging alongside of the Honourable whispered to the latter:
“Who’s that fellow? Is he staying with you at Harborough?”
The Honourable laughed feebly.
“Don’t know him from Adam,” he replied, as if there could be any connection between the two. “He don’t seem half a bad fellow, though,” he added, “and I shouldn’t wonder if he could ride.”
Now, the clerical gentleman, who was, indeed, no other than the well-known Parson Dove, had struck up a firm alliance with the Honourable Crasher, cemented on both sides by a keen love for fox-hunting, or perhaps I should rather say, for galloping and jumping over a country—the Parson, be it observed, being the best sportsman of the two. On an occasion like the present, he hoped to secure his friend’s company at luncheon, by which stroke of policy he should please Mrs. Dove, who was not unprepared, and also show him a certain four-year-old, by which the Reverend set great store. Nay, it was by no means impossible that the Honourable, who never missed a chance of placing his neck in jeopardy, or the stranger who looked hard, might be induced to buy the animal for purposes of tuition. So he ignored all about Adam, and simply said, “It’s not a quarter of a mile out of your way to stop at the Rectory; indeed, you go by my stableyard. Won’t you and your friend come in and have a glass of sherry and a biscuit?”
Mr. Sawyer was a man who had no objection to a glass of sherry and a biscuit at any time, let alone such a cheerless day as this. The hospitable offer, too, was made in so loud a voice that he could not but accept it as addressed to himself; so he drew his horse back to the speaker, and thanked him for the offer, which he expressed his willingness to accept. The Honourable Crasher perceiving that he had been led into the virtual introduction of a man whose name he didn’t know, put a bold face on the matter, devoutly hoping the patronymic might never be asked, and the three turned in at a hand-gate, and jogged on amicably through the fog, in the direction of the Rectory.
As Mr. Sawyer ran his eye over the person and appointments of his future host, he could not but acknowledge to himself that never, no, never in his life had he seen such a thoroughly workmanlike exterior: from the clean-shaved ruddy face, with its bright-blue eye and close-cropped grey hair, down to the long heavy hunting-spurs, the man was faultless all over. Nobody’s leathers were so well made, so well cleaned, so well put on as Parson Dove’s; and, though he affected brown tops, it is well known that they were such unequalled specimens as to have caused one of his intimate friends who particularly piqued himself on “boots,” to give up all hope, even of imitation, and relapse into “Napoleons” in disgust. Why, the very way he folded his neckcloth was suggestive of Newmarket, and no scarlet coat that was ever turned out by Poole looked so like hunting as that well-cut unassuming black. His open-flapped saddle, his shining stirrup-irons, his heavy double-bridle, were all in keeping with the man himself, and it is needless to state that he was riding a thorough-bred bay, with a pair of fired forelegs, and about the best shoulders you ever saw on a hunter.
All this Mr. Sawyer had time to observe ere they rode into a neatly-bricked stableyard, where they gave their horses to a couple of smart grooms, and followed the owner through the back door, past the cleanest of kitchens and tidiest of sculleries, into the more aristocratic part of the mansion.
I think it is the observant author of “Soapy Sponge,” who makes that sporting tourist declare that “women never look so well as when you come home from hunting.” Certainly the contrast between a cold cheerless day out-of-doors and the luxurious atmosphere of a well-warmed, well-ventilated house, inclines a man to view everything through a complimentary medium, even without taking into consideration the delightful exchange of a hard slippery saddle for the cushions of a comfortable arm-chair, or the warmth of a blazing fire. The inside of the Rectory was as pretty and as snug as it was possible for any house to be. Parson Dove was one of those men in whom the bump of comfort is strongly developed, and whether he bought a warming-pan or a wine-cooler, he was sure to get the best, and the best-looking, article that was to be had for money.
As the three sportsmen clanked along the carpeted passage to the drawing-room, they heard the notes of a pianoforte sounding from that apartment, and Mr. Sawyer had barely time to summon all his fortitude, for the subversion of his constitutional shyness, ere he found himself ushered into that sanctuary, in the wake of the Honourable Crasher, whom, truth to tell, just at that moment, he felt he would have followed with less apprehension over another locked gate, or treacherous “oxer.” It was not so formidable an undertaking, after all. There were but two ladies, and both seemed delighted at the acquisition of visitors on so dull a morning. The introductions were got over, none the worse that nobody knew the stranger’s name; and both Mrs. Dove, an ample lady, with the remains of considerable beauty, and “My daughter Cecilia,” of whom more anon, seemed resolved to make themselves agreeable to their guests—Mamma rather inclining to the Honourable Crasher, who was an old friend, and had often dropped in to luncheon before; whilst the siren Cecilia, fresh from the execution of that “sweet thing” they had heard on the pianoforte, seemed willing to devote herself to the amusement and possible subjugation of the stranger.
There are some men on whom young ladies feel instinctively they are but wasting their time, and it is curious how seldom their perceptions deceive them on this point. Of such was the Honourable C. Good-looking, amiable, to all appearance well-off, and not over-burdened with brains, he possessed all the attributes of an “eligible parti” and yet somehow the most match-making of mothers, and the most enterprising of daughters, always gave him up as a bad job, after the first ten minutes. There was something about him that betrayed to female shrewdness he was not “a marrying man,” and as they judiciously abstain from playing a game in which the loss is not exclusively on the side of the adversary, they let him alone accordingly.
Now, it was otherwise with Mr. Sawyer. Although you and I would have voted him a confirmed bachelor, might even have judged him uncharitably as somewhat rough and unpolished and unrefined, might have scouted the idea of his being in any respect “a ladies’ man,” and laughed outright at his competing with such a double-distilled dandy as the Honourable C., we should thus have only exposed our ignorance of the secret springs and impulses that move that mysterious piece of mechanism—the female mind. Miss Dove, in the absence of any other and nobler game, had not the slightest objection to exercise the different weapons in her armoury on her Mamma’s friend’s friend.
These were of a sufficiently deadly character. Miss Cecilia—or “Cissy,” as they called her at home—without being strictly pretty, was a very attractive young lady. She had a pair of wicked black eyes, with rather thick eyebrows; a high colour; white teeth, which she did not scruple to display on all available occasions; and a laugh so clear and ringing and inspiriting, that it put a man in good-humour in spite of himself. Even in the bitterest of frosts, Papa could not be cross for five minutes together, when “Cissy” set to work to tease him into affability. Also, Miss Dove’s figure was exceedingly round and symmetrical; not an angle nor a corner in those graceful, flowing lines. Her foot and ankle were undeniable, and her hands white and well-shaped. Altogether, she would have passed muster as good-looking in London: it is needless, therefore, to say that she ought to have been placarded “dangerous” in Leicestershire. Nor had this young woman neglected such opportunities of improving her natural advantages as had come in her way. She could play and sing with much taste and tolerable skill; she could waltz down a strong man in pretty good training, without drawing her breath quicker for the exertion; she could ride with a degree of nerve and judgment seldom enjoyed by the softer sex; and, finally, she had a way of looking down, to show her long eyelashes, which in many instances had been productive of much loss and confusion to the adversary.
It was, you see, scarcely a fair match to pit all these qualities against honest John Standish Sawyer, with his coarse hands and feet, his short, square-tailed coat, ill-made boots and breeches, red whiskers, and general diffidence.
As he sat before her, with his cap between his feet (I need hardly observe that, like the other ornaments of the Old Country, he wore a velvet hunting-cap), and the horn handle of his whip in his mouth, she took the lead in the conversation; indeed, I am prepared to lay my reader considerable odds, that, whenever he meets a lady and gentleman together, the former is talking, and the latter listening.
Miss Dove began at him without delay:
“You’ve only just arrived, I hear; and, indeed, what unpromising weather you find us with! I told Papa, this morning, I was sure we shouldn’t be able to hunt; and I went and took my habit off directly after breakfast. If there’s one thing I abominate more than another, it’s a fog; and at Tilton Wood, too, of all places in the world! I’ve no idea of leaving a good fire, to go and sit there with the others, like a lot of crows in a mist; and this weather always lasts three days; and to-morrow they meet at the best place they have; and I hope you like our country?”
Mr. Sawyer could not conscientiously affirm that he had yet seen it; so he mumbled out an unintelligible answer, and the young lady went off again at score:
“Harborough’s getting quite a gay place, I declare. So many gentlemen come there now, to hunt; and it’s so convenient for the railroad; and I dare say you know Mr. Savage, and Captain Struggles, and Major Brush; and are you going to give us a Harborough ball?”
Mr. Sawyer was sufficiently experienced to take heart of grace at this juncture, and reply, “Oh, certainly—certainly! I’m sure it will be a capital ball. May we hope, Miss Dove, that you will come to it?”
The eyelashes went down immediately; and Miss D. was, no doubt, on the eve of making an appropriate reply, when the announcement of luncheon, and the simultaneous return of Paterfamilias, broke up the pair of tête-à-têtes, and the party adjourned to the dining-room, all, apparently, on pretty good terms with themselves—Mr. Sawyer inwardly proud of having got so well out of the ball difficulty; “Cissy” a little elevated with the conviction that she had made a fresh conquest (not that it was any novelty, but the feeling is always more or less agreeable); Papa ready for luncheon, and sanguine about the four-year-old; Mamma enchanted to have caught a good listener; and the Honourable Crasher in his usual state of easy and affable nonchalance.
It is only right to observe that the Rev. had exchanged his hunting costume for a suit of more clerical attire, yet, somehow, had failed to put off with his leathers an atom of his equestrian air. Even in the fullest canonicals, you never could have taken Mr. Dove for anything but a sportsman.
Why are people always so much pleasanter at luncheon than at dinner? Notwithstanding John Bull’s predilection for the latter meal, as a mode of testifying his regard, his civility, and his own respectability, I cannot help thinking that foreigners are right to ignore that heavy system of dinner-giving which we islanders regard as the very framework of our social system. There is always more or less of pomposity, and consequent restraint, attendant upon a regular set dinner in the country. A few thorough people of the world, “worldly,” know how to ask exactly the right three couple or so, and put them down to a hot dinner at a round table, such as is the very acme of all festive boards; but this is a rare quality in host and hostess. Usually, you are placed next to a guest you don’t know, and opposite to one you don’t like. Your soup is cold, your venison underdone; and the eyes of three or four servants intently watching every mouthful you swallow is destruction to a delicate appetite. In some old-fashioned houses, you may even recognise the burly coachman assisting his fellow-domestics to wait upon the company; and although, for my own part, I confess to a liking for “the smell of the stables,” I cannot but admit that the flavour is somewhat spoilt by being mixed with that of a “salmi de gibier,” or a sweetbread plastered round with spinach.
But luncheon, on the contrary, is a light, exhilarating, free-and-easy meal. Even Mr. Sawyer, as he finished his leg of pheasant and glass of brown sherry, felt wonderfully restored by his repast. “Cissy” was a good “doer” (ladies generally are, about two o’clock), and, till she had disposed of her meal, gave her neighbour a little breathing-time, and leisure to look about him.
I have often thought, although I am by no means the first person who has made the observation, both in and out of print, how true it is that it may be a huge disadvantage to a girl to be seen in company with her mother. It is sometimes discouraging enough to reflect that the coveted treasure must eventually expand into a facsimile of the dragon on guard. Fancy, if the fruit in the Gardens of the Hesperides had been eggs instead of apples, each golden shell enclosing the germ of just such a monster as was grinning at the gate! To be sure, the resemblance may cut the other way as well. I have seen mammas whom the fairest of Eve’s daughters might be proud to resemble; but it is sometimes hard upon the young Ph?be to have perpetually at her side the shapeless Mother Bunch, into the facsimile of which she must eventually grow. Mr. Sawyer, gazing intently on his hostess discussing her cutlet and glass of port-wine with considerable relish, acknowledged, though he would not accept, the warning.
Miss Dove took after Mamma rather than Papa. The matron’s red face was a brilliant colour in the girl; and the exuberant proportions of the one, suggestive of good-humour, good-living, and motherly content, were but the full, flowing outlines of perfect symmetry in the other.
However, they all got on remarkably well. Even the Honourable Crasher made a feeble joke, of which the point somehow escaped his listeners—without, however, destroying his own enjoyment in its delivery. By the time Papa proposed an adjournment to the stables, to inspect the four-year-old—“Cissy” pleading for two minutes’ law, to put her hat on—they were all in high good-humour. If “one spur in the head” be “worth two in the heel,” I think it is equally true that a slight stimulant about 1.30 is twice as effectual as a feast at 7.45.
The four-year-old was a fine, lengthy, lashing-looking young horse, to use a graphic expression, more akin to the kennel than the stable. He had all that thickness of outline and coarseness of particular points which sportsmen so like to see, when pedigrees are unimpeachable, and which are sure to grow out into eventual strength and symmetry. Mr. Sawyer would perhaps have admired him more, had his attention not been distracted by the apparition in the young one’s box of the following choice assortment: viz. one pair of Balmoral-boots (arched instep and pointed heels, after Leech); one scarlet jupe, short and full; one morning-gown, very rich and voluminous, tucked and girt up all about ditto; one pair of neat little gloved hands, with tight-fitting bust and arms to match; and one rosy, smiling, happy face; the whole crowned by such a hat and feather as said “Suivez moi!” far more peremptorily than ever did Henri Quatre’s great white panache. After that, he looked very little at the four-year-old.
Poor Mr. Sawyer! When his horse was led out, to take him back to Harborough, she patted its grey nose, and called it “a darling.” “A darling!” and the ungrateful brute snorted all over her pretty face and hands! Well, he patted its neck himself, as he rode out of the yard.
The day seemed to have improved somehow, though the fog was equally dense, and twilight—or rather no-light—had set in. That cigar, too, which the Honourable gave him just under Langton, he thought, was the best he had ever smoked in his life.