HIT-IM AND HOLD-IM SHIRE HUNT BALL.
—Mrs. Bobbinette begs to announce to the ladies her return from Paris, with every novelty in millinery, mantles, embroideries, wreaths, fans, gloves, &c.
“Mrs. Bobbinette be hanged,” growled the Major, who winced under the very name of milliner; “just as much goes to Paris as I do. Last time she was there I know she was never out of Hinton, for Paul Straddler watched her.”
“Well, but she gets very pretty things at all events,” replied Mrs. Yammerton, thinking she would pay her a visit.
“Aye, and a pretty bill she’ll send in for them,” replied the Major.
“Well, my dear, but you must pay for fashion, you know,” rejoined Mamma.
“Pay for fashion! pay for haystacks!” growled the Major; “never saw such balloons as the women make of themselves. S’pose we shall have them as flat as doors next. One extreme always leads to another.”
This discussion was here suddenly interrupted by a hurried “hush!” from Miss Clara, followed by a “hish!” from Miss Flora; and silence being immediately accorded, all ears recognised a rumbling sound outside the house that might have been mistaken for wind, had it not suddenly ceased before the door.
The whole party was paralysed: each drawing breath, reflecting on his or her peculiar position:—Mamma thinking of her drawing-room—Miss, of her hair—Flora, of her sleeves—Harriet, of her shabby shoes—the Major, of his dinner.
The agony of suspense was speedily relieved by the grating of an iron step and a violent pull at the door-bell, producing ejaculations of, “It is, however!”
“Him, to a certainty!” with, “I told you so,—nothing but liver and bacon for dinner,” from the Major; while Mrs. Yammerton, more composed, swept three pair of his grey worsted stockings into the well of the ottoman, and covered the old hearth-rug with a fine new one from the corner, with a noble antlered stag in the centre. The young ladies hurried out of the room, each to make a quick revise of her costume.
The shock to the nervous sensibilities of the household was scarcely less severe than that experienced by the inmates of the parlour; and the driver of the fly was just going to give the bell a second pull, when our friend of the brown coat came, settling himself into his garment, wondering who could be coming at that most extraordinary hour.
“Major at home?” asked our hero, swinging himself out of the vehicle into the passage, and without waiting for an answer, he began divesting himself of his muffin-cap, cashmere shawl, and other wraps.
He was then ready for presentation. Open went the door. “Mr. Pringle!” announced the still-astonished footman, and host and hostess advanced in the friendly emulation of cordiality. They were overjoyed to see him,—as pleased as if they had received a consignment of turtle and there was a haunch of venison roasting before the fire. The young ladies presently came dropping in one by one, each “so astonished to find Mr. Pringle there!” Clara thinking the ring was from Mr. Jinglington, the pianoforte-tuner; Flora, that it was Mr. Tightlace’s curate; while Harriet did not venture upon a white lie at all.
Salutations and expressions of surprise being at length over, the ladies presently turned the weather-conversation upon Pangburn Park, and inquired after the sport with Sir Moses, Billy being in the full glory of his pink and slightly soiled leathers and boots, from which they soon diverged to the Hunt ball, about which they could not have applied to any better authority than our friend. He knew all about it, and poured forth the volume of his information most freely.
Though the Major talked about there being nothing but liver and bacon for dinner, he knew very well that the very fact of there being liver and bacon bespoke that there was plenty of something else in the larder. In fact he had killed a south-down,—not one of your modern muttony-lambs, but an honest, home-fed, four-year-old, with its fine dark meat and rich gravy; in addition to which, there had been some minor murders of ugly Cochin-China fowls,—to say nothing of a hunted hare, hanging by the heels, and several snipes and partridges, suspended by the neck.
It is true, there was no fish, for, despite the railroad, Hit-im and Hold-im shire generally was still badly supplied with fish, but there was the useful substitute of cod-sounds, and some excellent mutton-broth; which latter is often better than half the soups one gets. Altogether there was no cause for despondency; but the Major, having been outvoted on the question of requiring notice of our friend’s return, of course now felt bound to make the worst of the case—especially as the necessary arrangements would considerably retard his dinner, for which he was quite ready. He had, therefore, to smile at his guest, and snarl at his family, at one and the same time.—Delighted to see Mr. Pringle back.—Disgusted at his coming on a Saturday.—Hoped our hero was hungry.—Could answer for it, he was himself,—with a look at Madam, as much as to say, “Come, you go and see about things and don’t stand simpering there.”
But Billy, who had eaten a pretty hearty lunch at Pangburn Park, had not got jolted back into an appetite by his transit through the country, and did not enter into the feelings of his half-famished host. A man who has had half his dinner in the shape of a lunch, is far more than a match for one who has fasted since breakfast, and our friend chatted first with one young lady, and then with another, with an occasional word at Mamma, delighted to get vent for his long pent-up flummery. He was indeed most agreeable.
Meanwhile the Major was in and out of the room, growling and getting into everybody’s way, retarding progress by his anxiety to hurry things on.
At length it was announced that Mr. Pringle’s room was ready; and forthwith the Major lit him a candle, and hurried him upstairs, where his uncorded boxes stood ready for the opening keys of ownership.
“Ah, there you are!” cried the Major, flourishing the composite candle about them; “there you are! needn’t mind much dressing—only ourselves—only ourselves. There’s the boot-jack,—here’s some hot water,—and we’ll have dinner as soon as ever you are ready.” So saying, he placed the candle on the much be-muslined toilette-table, and, diving into his pocket for the key of the cellar, hurried off to make the final arrangement of a feast.
Our friend, however, who was always a dawdling leisurely gentleman, took very little heed of his host’s injunctions, and proceeded to unlock and open his boxes as if he was going to dress for a ball instead of a dinner; and the whole party being reassembled, many were the Major’s speculations and enquiries “what could he be about?” “must have gone to bed,” “would go up and see,” ere the glad sound of his opening door announced that he might be expected. And before he descended a single step of the staircase the Major gave the bell such a pull as proclaimed most volubly the intensity of his feelings. The ladies of course were shocked, but a hungry man is bad to hold, and there is no saying but the long-pealing tongue of the bell saved an explosion of the Major’s. At all events when our friend came sauntering into the now illuminated drawing-room, the Major greeted him with, “Heard you coming, rang the bell, knew you’d be hungry, long drive from Sir Moses’s here;” to which Billy drawled a characteristic “Yarse,” as he extinguished his candle and proceeded to ingratiate himself with the now elegantly attired ladies, looking more lovely from his recent restriction to the male sex.
The furious peal of the bell had answered its purpose, for he had scarcely got the beauties looked over, and settled in his own mind that it was difficult to say which was the prettiest, ere the door opened, the long-postponed dinner was announced to be on the table, and the Major, having blown out the composites, gladly followed the ladies to the scene of action.
And his host being too hungry to waste his time in apologies for the absence of this and that, and the footboy having plenty to do without giving the dishes superfluous airings, and the gooseberry champagne being both lively and cool, the dinner passed off as pleasantly as a luncheon, which is generally allowed to be the most agreeable sociable meal of the day, simply because of the absence of all fuss and pretension. And by the time the Major had got to the cheese, he found his temper considerably improved. Indeed, so rapidly did his spirits rise, that before the cloth was withdrawn he had well-nigh silenced all the ladies, with his marvellous haryers,—five and thirty years master of haryers without a subscription,—and as soon as he got the room cleared, he inflicted the whole hunt upon Billy that he had written to him about, an account of which he had in vain tried to get inserted in the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, through the medium of old ‘Wotherspoon, who had copied it out and signed himself “A Delighted Stranger.” Dorsay Davis, however, knew his cramped handwriting, and put his manuscript into the fire, observing in his notice to correspondents that “A Delighted Stranger” had better send his currant jelly contributions to grandmamma, meaning the Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald. So our friend was victimised into a viva voce account of this marvellous chase, beginning at Conksbury corner and the flight up to Foremark Hill and down over the water meadows to Dove-dale Green, &c., interspersed with digressions and explanations of the wonderful performance of the particular members of the pack, until he scarcely knew whether a real run or the recital of one was the most formidable. At length the Major, having talked himself into a state of excitement, without making any apparent impression on his guest’s obdurate understanding, proposed as a toast “The Merry Haryers,” and intimated that tea was ready in the drawing room, thinking he never had so phlegmatic an auditor before. Very different, however, was his conduct amid the general conversation of the ladies, who thought him just as agreeable as the Major thought him the contrary. And they were all quite surprised when the clock struck eleven, and declared they thought it could only be ten, except the Major, who knew the odd hour had been lost in preparing the dinner. So he moved an adjournment, and proclaimed that they would breakfast at nine, which would enable them to get to church in good time. Whereupon mutual good-nights were exchanged, our friend was furnished with a flat candlestick, and the elder sisters retired to talk him over in their own room; for however long ladies may be together during the day, there is always a great balance of conversation to dispose of at last, and so the two chatted and talked until midnight.
Next morning they all appeared in looped-up dresses, showing the party-coloured petticoats of the prevailing fashion, which looked extremely pretty, and were all very well—a great improvement on the draggletails—until they came to get into the coach, when it was found, that large as the vehicle was, it was utterly inadequate for their accommodation. Indeed the door seemed ludicrously insufficient for the ingress, and Miss Clara turned round and round like a peacock contending with the wind, undecided which way to make the attempt. At last she chose a bold sideways dash, and entered with a squeeze of the petticoat, which suddenly expanded into its original size, but when the sisters had followed her example there was no room for the Major, nor would there have been any for our hero had not Mamma been satisfied with her own natural size, and so left space to squeeze him in between herself and the fair Clara. The Major then had to mount the coach box beside old Solomon, and went growling and grumbling along at the extravagances of fashion, and wondering what the deuce those petticoats would cost, he was presently comforted by seeing two similar ones circling over the road in advance, which on overtaking proved to contain the elegant Miss Bushels, daughters of his hind at Bonnyrigs farm, whereupon he made a mental resolution to reduce Bushel’s wages a shilling a week at least.
This speedy influx of fashion and abundance of cheap tawdry finery has well nigh destroyed the primitive simplicity of country churches. The housemaid now dresses better—finer at all events—than her mistress did twenty years ago, and it is almost impossible to recognise working people when in their Sunday dresses. Gauze bonnets, Marabout feathers, lace scarfs, and silk gowns usurp the place of straw and cotton print, while lace-fringed kerchiefs are flourished by those whose parents scarcely knew what a pocket-handkerchief was. There is a medium in all things, but this mania for dress has got far beyond the bounds of either prudence or propriety; and we think the Major’s recipe for reducing it is by no means a bad one.
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We need scarcely say, that our hero’s appearance at church caused no small sensation in a neighbourhood where the demand for gossip was far in excess of the supply. Indeed, we fear many fair ladies’ eyes were oftener directed to Major Yammerton’s pew than to the Reverend Mr. Tightlace in the pulpit. Wonderful were the stories and exaggerations that ensued, people always being on the running-up tack until a match is settled, after which, of course, they assume the running-down one, pitying one or other victim extremely—wouldn’t be him or her for anything—Mr. Tightlace thought any of the young ladies might do better than marry a mere fox-hunter, though we are sorry to add that the fox-hunter was far more talked of than the sermon. The general opinion seemed to be that our hero had been away preparing that dread document, the proposals for a settlement; and there seemed to be very little doubt that there would be an announcement of some sort in a day or two—especially when our friend was seen to get into the carriage after the gay petticoats, and the little Major to remount the box seat.
And when at the accustomed stable stroll our master of haryers found the gallant grey standing in the place of the bay, he was much astonished, and not a little shocked to learn the sad catastrophe that had befallen the bay.
“Well, he never heard anything like that!—dead! What, do you mean to say he absolutely died on your hands without any apparent cause?” demanded the Major; “must have been poisoned surely;” and he ran about telling everybody, and making as much to do as if the horse had still been his own. He then applied himself to finding out how Billy came by the grey, and was greatly surprised to learn that Sir Moses had given it him. “Well, that was queer,” thought he, “wouldn’t have accused him of that.” And he thought of the gift of Little Bo-peep, and wondered whether this gift was of the same order.
CHAPTER LI.
MONEY AND MATRIMONY.
MONEY and matrimony! what a fine taking title! If that does not attract readers, we don’t know what will. Money and matrimony! how different, yet how essentially combined, how intimately blended! “No money, no matrimony,” might almost be written above some doors. Certainly money is an essential, but not so absorbing an essential as some people make it. Beyond the expenditure necessary for a certain establishment, a woman is seldom much the better for her husband’s inordinate wealth. We have seen the wife of a reputed millionaire no better done by than that of a country squire.
Mr. Prospero Plutus may gild his coach and his harness, and his horses too, if he likes, but all the lacker in the world will not advance him a step in society; therefore, what can he do with his surplus cash but carry it to the “reserve fund,” as some Joint-Stock Bankers pretend to do. Still there is a money-worship among us, that is not even confined to the opposite sex, but breaks out in veneration among men, just as if one man having half a million or a million pieces of gold could be of any advantage to another man, who only knows the rich man to say “How d’ye do?” to. A clever foreigner, who came to this country some years ago for the honestly avowed purpose of marrying an heiress, used to exclaim, when any one told him that another man had so many thousands a year, “Vell, my good friend, vot for that to me? I cannot go for be marry to him!” and we never hear a man recommended to another man for his wealth alone, without thinking of our foreign friend. What earthly good can Plutus’s money do us? We can safely say, we never knew a rich man who was not uncommonly well able to take care of his cash. It is your poor men who are easy about money. To tell a young lady that a young gentleman has so many thousands a year is very different; and this observation leads us to say, that people who think they do a young man a kindness by exaggerating his means or expectations, are greatly mistaken. On the contrary, they do him an injury; for, sooner or later, the lawyers know everything, and disappointment and vexation is the result.
Since our friend Warren wrote his admirable novel, “Ten Thousand a Year,” that sum has become the fashionable income for exaggerators. Nobody that has anything a year has less, though we all know how difficult a sum it is to realise, and how impossible it is to extract a five-pound note, or even a sovereign, from the pockets of people who talk of it as a mere bagatelle. This money mania has increased amazingly within the last few years, aided, no doubt, by the gigantic sums the Joint-Stock Banks have enabled penniless people to “go” for.
When Wainwright, the first of the assurance office defrauders by poison, was in prison, he said to a person who called upon him, “You see with what respect they treat me. They don’t set me to make my bed, or sweep the yard, like those fellows,” pointing to his brother prisoners; “no, they treat me like a gentleman. They think I’m in for ten thousand pounds.” Ten thousand pounds! What would ten thousand pounds be nowadays, when men speculate to the extent of a quarter or may be half a million of money? Why Wainwright would have had to clean out the whole prison on the present scale of money delinquency. A hundred thousand pounder is quite a common fellow, hardly worth speaking of. There was a time when the greediest man was contented with his plum. Now the cry is “More! more!” until some fine morning the crier is “no more” himself.
This money-craving and boasting is all bad. It deceives young men, and drives those of moderate income into the London clubs, instead of their marrying and settling quietly as their fathers did before them. They hear of nothing but thousands and tens of thousands until they almost believe in the reality, and are ashamed to encounter the confessional stool of the lawyers, albeit they may have as much as with prudence and management would make married life comfortable. Boasting and exaggeration also greatly misleads and disappoints anxious “Mammas,” all ready to believe whatever they like, causing very likely promising speculations to be abandoned in favour of what turn out great deal worse ventures. Only let a young man be disengaged, professionally and bodily, and some one or other will be sure to invest him with a fortune, or with surprising expectations from an uncle, an aunt, or other near relation. It is surprising how fond people are of fanning the flame of a match, and how they will talk about what they really know nothing, until an unfortunate youth almost appears to participate in their exaggerations. Could some of these Leviathans of fortune know the fabulous £ s. d. colours under which they have sailed, they would be wonderfully astonished at the extent of their innocent imposture. Yet they were not to blame because people said they had ten thousand a year, were richest commoners in fact. Many would then understand much unexplained politeness, and appreciate its disinterestedness at its true value. Captain Quaver would see why Mrs. Sunnybrow was to anxious that he should hear Matilda sing; Mr. Grist why Mrs. Snubwell manoeuvred to get him next Bridget at dinner; and perhaps our “Richest Commoner” why Mrs. Yammerton was so glad to see him back at the Grange.
CHAPTER LII.
A NIGHT DRIVE.
PEOPLE who travel in the winter should remember it isn’t summer, and time themselves accordingly. Sir Moses was so anxious to see Monsieur Rougier off the premises, in order to stop any extra hospitality, that he delayed starting for Lundyfoote Castle until he saw him fairly mounted on the gift grey and out of the stable-yard; he then had the mare put to the dog-cart, and tried to make up for lost time by extra speed upon the road. But winter is an unfavourable season for expedition; if highways are improving, turnpikes are getting neglected, save in the matter of drawing the officers’ sinecure salaries, and, generally speaking, the nearer a turnpike is to a railway, the worse the turnpike is, as if to show the wonderful advantage of the former. So Sir Moses went flipping and flopping, and jipping and jerking, through Bedland and Hawksworth and Washingley-field, but scarcely reached the confines of his country when he ought to have been nearing the Castle. It was nearly four o’clock by the great gilt-lettered clock on the diminutive church in the pretty village of Tidswell, situated on the banks of the sparkling Lune, when he pulled up at the sign of the Hold-away Harriers to get his mare watered and fed. It is at these sort of places that the traveller gets the full benefit of country slowness and stupidity. Instead of the quick ostler, stepping smartly up to his horse’s head as he reins up, there is generally a hunt through the village for old Tom, or young Joe, or some worthy who is either too old or too idle to work. In this case it was old bow-legged, wiry Tom Brown, whose long experience of the road did not enable him to anticipate a person’s wants; so after a good stare at the driver, whom at first he thought was Mr. Meggison, the exciseman; then Mr. Puncheon, the brewer; and lastly, Mr. Mossman, Lord Polkaton’s ruler; he asked, with a bewildered scratch of his head, “What, de ye want her put oop?”
“Oop, yes,” replied Sir Moses; “what d’ye think I’m stopping for? Look alive; that’s a good fellow,” added he, throwing him the reins, as he prepared to descend from the vehicle.
“Oh, it’s you, Sir Moses, is it,” rejoined the now enlightened patriarch, “I didn’t know you without your red coat and cap;” so saying, he began to fumble at the harness, and, with the aid of the Baronet, presently had the mare out of the shafts. It then occurred to the old gentleman that he had forgotten the key of the stable. “A sink,” said he, with a dash of his disengaged hand, “I’ve left the key i’ the pocket o’ mar coat, down i’ Willy Wood’s shop, when ar was helpin’ to kill a pig—run, lad, doon to Willy Wood,” said he to a staring by-standing boy, “and get me mar coat,” adding to Sir Moses, as the lad slunk unwillingly away, “he’ll be back directly wi’ it.” So saying, he proceeded to lead the mare round to the stable at the back of the house.
When the coat came, then there was no pail; and when they got a pail, then the pump had gone dry; and when they got some water from the well, then the corn had to be brought from the top of the house; so, what with one delay and another, day was about done before Sir Moses got the mare out of the stable again. Night comes rapidly on in the short winter months, and as Sir Moses looked at the old-fashioned road leading over the steepest part of the opposite hill, he wished he was well on the far side of it. He then examined his lamps, and found there were no candles in them, just as he remembered that he had never been to Lundyfoote Castle on wheels, the few expeditions he had made there having been performed on horseback, by those nicks and cuts that fox-hunters are so famous at making and finding. “Ord dom it,” said he to himself, “I shall be getting benighted. Tell me,” continued he, addressing the old ostler, “do I go by Marshfield and Hengrove, or——”
“No, no, you’ve no business at noughter Marshfield nor Hengrove,” interrupted the sage; “veer way is straight oop to Crowfield-hall and Roundhill-green, then to Brackley Moor and Belton, and so on into the Sandywell-road at Langley. But if ar were you,” continued he, beginning to make confusion worse confounded, “ar would just gan through Squire Patterson’s Park here,” jerking his thumb to the left to indicate the direction in which it lay.
“Is it shorter?” demanded Sir Moses, re-ascending the vehicle.
“W-h-o-y no, it’s not shorter,” replied the man, “but it’s a better road rayther—less agin collar-like. When ye get to the new lodge ye mun mind turn to the right, and keep Whitecliffe Law to the left, and Lidney Mill to the right, you then pass Shimlow tilery, and make straight for Roundhill Green, and Brackley Moor, and then on to Belton, as ar toll’d ye afoor—ye can’t miss yeer way,” added he, thinking he could go it in the dark himself.
“Can’t I?” replied Sir Moses, drawing the reins. He then chucked the man a shilling, and touching the mare with the point of the whip, trotted across the bridge over the Lane, and was speedily brought up at a toll-bar on the far side.
It seems to be one of the ordinances of country life, that the more toll a man pays the worse road he gets, and Sir Moses had scarcely parted with his sixpence ere the sound running turnpike which tempted him past Squire Patterson’s lodge, ran out into a loose, river-stoned track, that grew worse and worse the higher he ascended the hill. In vain he hissed, and jerked, and jagged at the mare. The wheels revolved as if they were going through sea-sand. She couldn’t go any faster.
It is labour and sorrow travelling on wheels, with a light horse and a heavy load, on woolly winter roads, especially under the depressing influence of declining day—when a gorgeous sunset has no charms. It is then that the value of the hissing, hill-rounding, plain-scudding railway is appreciated. The worst line that ever was constructed, even one with goods, passengers, and minerals all mixed in one train, is fifty times better than one of these ploughing, sobbing, heart-breaking drives. So thought Sir Moses, as, whip in hand, he alighted from the vehicle to ease the mare up the steep hill, which now ran parallel with Mr. Patterson’s rather indifferent park wall.
What a commentary on consequence a drive across country affords, One sees life in all its phases—Cottage, House, Grange, “Imperial John” Hall, Park, Tower, Castle, &c. The wall, however, is the true index of the whole. Show me your wall and I’ll tell you what you have. There is the five hundred—by courtesy, thousand—a year wall, built of common stone, well embedded in mortar, extending only a few yards on either side of the lodgeless green gate. The thousand—by courtesy, fifteen hundred—a year wall, made of the same material, only the mortar ceases at the first convenient bend of the road, and the mortared round coping of the top is afterwards all that holds it together. Then there is the aspiring block and course wall, leading away with a sweep from either side of a handsome gateway, but suddenly terminating in hedges. The still further continued wall, with an abrupt juncture in split oak paling, that looks as if it had been suddenly nipped by a want-of-cash frost. We then get to the more successful all-round-the-park alike efforts of four or five thousand a-year—the still more solid masonry and ornamental work of “Ten Thousand a Year,” a Warren wall in fact, until at length we come to one so strong and so high, that none but a man on a laden wain can see over it, which of course denotes a Ducal residence, with fifty or a hundred thousand a year. In like manner, a drive across country enables a man to pick up information without the trouble of asking for it.
The board against the tree at the corner of the larch plantation, stating that “Any one trespassing on these grounds, the property of A. B. C. Sowerby, Esq., will, &c., with the utmost, &c.,” enables one to jump to the conclusion that the Westmoreland-slated roof we see peering among the eagle-winged cedars and luxuriant Scotch firs on the green slope to the left, is the residence of said Sowerby, who doesn’t like to be trespassed upon. A quick-eyed land-agent would then trace the boundaries of the Sowerby estate from the rising ground, either by the size of its trees, its natural sterility, or by the rough, gateless fences, where it adjoins the neighbouring proprietors.
Again, the sign of the Smith Arms at a wayside public-house, denotes that some member of that illustrious family either lives or has property in that immediate neighbourhood, and as everybody has a friend Smith, we naturally set about thinking whether it is our friend Smith or not. So a nobleman’s coronet surmounting his many-quartered coat-of-arms, suggests that the traveller is in the neighbourhood of magnificence; and if his appearance is at all in his favour, he will, perhaps, come in for a touch, or a demi-touch, of the hat from the passers-by, the process being almost mechanical in aristocratic parts. A board at a branch road with the words “To Lavender Lodge only,” saves one the trouble of asking the name of the place towards which we see the road bending, while a great deal of curious nomenclature may be gleaned from shop-fronts, inn-signs, and cart-shafts.
But we are leaving Sir Moses toiling up the hill alongside of his dog-cart, looking now at his watch, now at his jaded mare, now at Mr. Patterson’s fragile park wall, thinking how he would send it over with his shoulder if he came to it out hunting. The wall was at length abruptly terminated by a cross-road intersecting the hill along a favourable fall of the ground, about the middle of it, and the mare and Sir Moses mutually stopped, the former to ease herself on the piece of level ground at the junction, the latter to consider whether his course was up the hill or along the more inviting line to the left.
“Marshfield,” muttered he to himself, “is surely that way, but then that old buffer said I had no business at Marshfield. Dom the old man,” continued he, “I wish I’d never asked him anything about it, for he has completely bewildered me, and I believe I could have found my way better without.”
So saying, Sir Moses reconnoitered the scene; the balance of the fat hill in front, with the drab-coloured road going straight up the steepest part of it, the diverging lines either way; above all, the fast closing canopy around. Across the road, to the right, was a paintless, weather-beaten finger-post, and though our friend saw it had lost two of its arms, he yet thought the remaining ones might give him some information. Accordingly, he went over to consult it. Not a word, no, not a letter was legible. There were some upright marks, but what they had stood for it was impossible to decipher. Sir Moses was nonplussed. Just at this critical moment, a rumbling sound proceeded from below, and looking down the hill, a grey speck loomed in the distance, followed by a darker one a little behind. This was consoling; for those who know how soon an agricultural country becomes quiet after once the labourers go to their homes can appreciate the boon of any stirrers.
Still the carts came very slowly, and the quick falling shades of night travelled faster than they. Sir Moses stood listening anxiously to their jolting noises, thinking they would never come up. At the same time, he kept a sharp eye on the cross-road, to intercept any one passing that way. A tinker, a poacher, a mugger, the veriest scamp, would have been welcome, so long as he knew the country. No one, however, came along. It was an unfrequented line; and old Gilbert Price, who worked by the day, always retired from raking in the mud ruts on the approach of evening. So Sir Moses stood staring and listening, tapping his boot with his whip, as he watched the zig-zag course of the grey up the hill. He seemed a good puller, and to understand his work, for as yet no guiding voice had been heard. Perhaps the man was behind. As there is always a stout pull just before a resting-place, the grey now came to a pause, to collect his energies for the effort.
Sir Moses looked at his mare, and then at the carts halting below, wondering whether if he left her she would take off. Just as he determined to risk it, the grey applied himself vigorously to the collar, and with a grinding, ploughing rush, came up to where Sir Moses stood.
The cart was empty, but there was a sack-like thing, with a wide-awake hat on the top, rolling in the one behind.
“Holloo, my man!” shouted Sir Moses, with the voice of a Stentor.
The wide-awake merely nodded to the motion of the cart.
“Holloo, I say!” roared he, still louder.
An extended arm was thrown over the side of the cart, and the wide-awake again nodded as before.
“The beggar’s asleep!” muttered Sir Moses, taking the butt-end of his whip, and poking the somnambulist severely in the stomach.
A loud grunt, and with a strong smell of gin, as the monster changed his position, was all that answered the appeal.
“The brute’s drunk,” gasped Sir Moses, indignant at having wasted so much time in waiting for him.
The sober grey then made a well-rounded turn to the right, followed by the one in the rear, leaving our friend enveloped in many more shades of darkness than he was when he first designed him coming. Night had indeed about closed in, and lights began to appear in cottages and farm-houses that sparsedly dotted the hill side.
“Well, here’s a pretty go,” said Sir Moses, remounting the dogcart, and gathering up the reins; “I’ll just give the mare her choice,” continued he, touching her with the whip, and letting her go. The sensible animal took the level road to the left, and Sir Moses’s liberality was at first rewarded by an attempted trot along it, which, however, soon relaxed into a walk. The creaking, labouring vehicle shook and rolled with the concussion of the ruts.
He had got upon a piece of township road, where each surveyor shuffled through his year of office as best he could, filling up the dangerous holes in summer with great boulder stones that turned up like flitches of bacon in winter. So Sir Moses rolled and rocked in imminent danger of an upset. To add to his misfortunes, he was by no means sure but that he might have to retrace his steps: it was all chance.
There are but two ways of circumventing a hill, either by going round it or over it; and the road, after evading it for some time, at length took a sudden turn to the right, and grappled fairly with its severity. The mare applied herself sedulously to her task, apparently cheered by the increasing lights on the hill. At length she neared them, and the radiant glow of a blacksmith’s shop cheered the drooping spirit of the traveller.
“Holloo, my man!” cried Sir Moses, at length, pulling up before it.
“Holloo!” responded the spark-showering Vulcan from within.
“Is this the way to Lord Lundyfoote’s?” demanded Sir Moses, knowing the weight a nobleman’s name carries in the country.
“Lord Lundyfoote’s!” exclaimed Osmand Hall, pausing in his work; “Lord Lundyfoote’s!” repeated he; “why, where ha’ you come from?”
“Tidswell,” replied Sir Moses, cutting off the former part of the journey.
“Why, what set ye this way?” demanded the dark man, coming to the door with a red-hot horse-shoe on a spike, which was nearly all that distinguished him from the gloom of night; “ye should never ha’ coom’d this way; ye should ha’ gone by Marshfield and Hengrove.”
“Dom it, I said so!” ejaculated the Baronet, nearly stamping the bottom of his gig out with vexation. “However, never mind,” continued he, recollecting himself, “I’m here now, so tell me the best way to proceed.”
This information being at length accorded, Sir Moses proceeded; and the rest of the hill being duly surmounted, the dancing and stationary lights spreading o’er the far-stretching vale now appeared before him, with a clustering constellation, amid many minor stars scattered around, denoting the whereabouts of the castle.
It is always cheering to see the far end of a journey, distant though the haven be, and Sir Moses put on as fast as his lampless condition would allow him, trusting to his eyes and his ears for keeping on the road. Very much surprised would he have been had he retraced his steps the next morning, and seen the steep banks and yawning ditches he had suddenly saved himself from going over or into by catching at the reins or feeling either wheel running in the soft.
At length he reached the lodges of the massive variously-windowed castle, and passing gladly through them, found, on alighting at the door, that, instead of being late for dinner as he anticipated, his Lordship, who always ate a hearty lunch, was generally very easy about the matter, sometimes dining at seven, sometimes at eight, sometimes in summer even at nine o’clock. The footman, in reply to Sir Moses inquiring what time his Lordship dined, said he believed it was ordered at seven, but he didn’t know when it would be on the table.
Being an ardent politician, Lord Lundyfoote received Sir Moses with the fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind cordiality, and dived so energetically into his subject, as soon as he got the weather disposed of, as never to wait for an answer to his question, whether his guest would like to take anything before dinner, the consequence of which was, that our poor friend was nearly famished with waiting. In vain the library time-piece ticked, and chimed, and struck; jabber, jabber, jabber, went his voluble Lordship; in vain the deep-toned castle-clock reverberated through the walls—on, on he went, without noticing it, until the butler, in apparent despair, took the gong, and gave it such a beating just outside the door, that he could scarcely hear himself speak. Sir Moses then adroitly slipped in the question if that was the signal for dressing; to which his Lordship having yielded a reluctant “Yes,” he took a candle from the entering footman, and pioneered the Baronet up to his bedroom, amid a running commentary on the state of the country and the stability of the ministry. And when he returned he found his Lordship distributing his opinions amoung an obsequious circle of neighbours, who received all he said with the deference due to a liberal dispenser of venison; so that Sir Moses not only got his dinner in comparative peace, but warded his Lordship off the greater part of the evening.
CHAPTER LIII.
MASTER ANTHONY THOM.
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THE two-penny post used to be thought a great luxury in London, though somehow great people were often shy of availing themselves of its advantages, indeed of taking their two-penny-posters in. “Two-penny-posters,” circulars, and ticketed shops, used to be held in about equal repugnance by some. The Dons, never thought of sending their notes or cards of invitation by the two-penny post. John Thomas used always to be trotted out for the purpose of delivery. Pre-paying a letter either by the two-penny post or the general used to be thought little short of an insult. Public opinion has undergone a great change in these matters. Not paying them is now the offence. We need scarcely expatiate on the boon of the penny post, nor on the advantage of the general diffusion of post-offices throughout the country, though we may observe, that the penny post was one of the few things that came without being long called for: indeed, so soon as it was practicable to have it, for without the almost simultaneous establishment of railways it would have been almost impossible to have introduced the system. The mail could not have carried the newspaper traffic and correspondence of the present day. The folded tablecloths of Times, the voluminous Illustrated News, the Punch’s, the huge avalanches of papers that have broken upon the country within the last twenty years. Sir Moses Mainchance, unlike many country gentlemen, always had his letters forwarded to him where-ever he went. He knew it was only the trouble of writing a line to the Post-office, saying re-direct my letters to so-and-so, to have what he wanted, and thus to keep pace with his correspondence. He was never overpowered with letters when he came home from a visit or tour, as some of our acquaintance are, thus making writing doubly repugnant to them.
The morning after his arrival at Lundyfoote Castle brought him a great influx of re-directed letters and papers. One from Mr. Heslop, asking him to meet at his house on the Friday week following, as he was going to have a party, one from Signior Quaverini, the eminent musician, offering his services for the Hunt ball: one from Mr. Isinglass, the confectioner, hoping to be allowed to supply the ices and refreshment as usual; another (the fifth), from Mr. Mossman, about the damage to Mr. Anthill’s sown grass; an envelope, enclosing the card and terms of Signior Dulcetto, an opposition musician, offering lower terras than Quaverini; a note from Mr. Paul Straddler, telling him about a horse to be bought dog cheap; and a “dead letter office” envelope, enclosing a blue ink written letter, directed to Master Anthony Thom, at the Inn-in-the-Sands Inn, Beechwood Green, stating that the party was not known at the address, reintroduces Mr. Geordey Gallon, a gentleman already known to the reader.
How this letter came to be sent to Sir Moses was as follows:—
When Mr. Geordey Gallon went upon the “Torf,” as he calls it, becoming, as he considered, the associate of Princes, Prime Ministers, and so on, he bethought him of turning respectable, and giving up the stolen-goods-carrying-trade,—a resolution that he was further confirmed in by the establishment of that troublesome obnoxious corps the Hit-im-and-Hold-im-shire Rural Police.
To this end, therefore, he gradually reduced the number of his Tippy-Tom-jaunts through the country by night, intimating to his numerous patrons that they had better suit themselves elsewhere ere he ceased travelling altogether.
Among the inconvenienced, was our old friend Mrs. Margerum, long one of his most regular customers; for it was a very rare thing for Mr. Gallon not to find a carefully stitched-up bundle in the corner of Lawyer Hindmarch’s cattle-shed, abutting on the Shillburn road as he passed in his spring cart.
To remedy this serious inconvenience, Mrs. Margerum had determined upon inducting her adopted son, Master Anthony Thom, into the about-to-be-relinquished business; and Mr. Gallon having made his last journey, the accumulation of dripping caused by our hero’s visit to Pangburn Park made it desirable to have a clearing-out as soon as possible.
To this end, therefore, she had written the letter now sent to Sir Moses; but, being a very prudent woman, with a slight smattering of law, she thought so long as she did not sign her surname at the end she was safe, and that no one could prove that it was from her. The consequence was, that Anthony Thom not having shifted his quarters as soon as intended, the letter was refused at the sign of the Sun-in-the-Sands, and by dint of postmark and contents, with perhaps a little malice prepense on the part of the Post-master, who had suffered from a dishonest housekeeper himself, it came into the hands of Sir Moses. At first our master of the hounds thought it was a begging-letter, and threw it aside accordingly; but in course of casting about for a fresh idea wherewith to propitiate Mr. Mossman about the sown grass, his eye rested upon the writing, which he glanced at, and glanced at, until somehow he thought he had seen it before. At length he took the letter up, and read what made him stare very much as he proceeded. Thus it run:—
“PANGBURN PARK, Thursday Night.
“My own ever dear Anthony Thom,
“I write to you, trusting you will receive this safe, to say that as Mr. George Gallon has discontinued travelling altogether, I must trust to you entirely to do what is necessary in futur, but you must be most careful and watchful, for these nasty Pollis fellers are about every where, and seem to think they have a right to look into every bodies basket and bundle. We live in terrible times, I’m sure, my own beloved Anthony Thom, and if it wasn’t for the hope that I may see you become a great gentleman, like Mr. George Gallon, I really think I would forswear place altogether, for no one knows the anxiety and misery of living with such a nasty, mean, covetous body as Old Nosey.”
“Old Nosey!” ejaculated Sir Moses, stopping short in his reading, and feeling his proboscis; “Old Nosey! dom it, can that mean me? Do believe it does—and it’s mother Margerum’s handwriting—dom’d if it isn’t,” continued he, holding the letter a little way off to examine and catch the character of the writing; “What does she mean by calling me a nasty, covetous body? I that hunt the country, subscribe to the Infirmary, Agricultural Society, and do everything that’s liberal and handsome. I’ll Old Nosey her!” continued he, grinding his teeth, and giving a vigorous flourish of his right fist; “I’ll Old Nosey her! I’ll turn her out of the house as soon as ever I get home, dom’d if I won’t,” said Sir Moses quivering with rage as he spoke. At length he became sufficiently composed to resume his reading—
“-No one knows the anxiety and misery of living with such a nasty, mean, covetous body as Old Nosey, who is always on the fret about expense, and thinks everybody is robbing him.”
“Oh, dom it, that means me sure enough!” exclaimed Sir Moses; “that’s on account of the row I was kicking up t’other day about the tea—declared I drank a pound a week myself. I’ll tea her!” continued he, again turning to the letter and reading,—
“-I declare I’d almost as soon live under a mistress as under such a shocking mean, covetous man.”
“Would you?” muttered Sir Moses; adding, “you shall very soon have a chance then.” The letter thus continued,—
“-The old feller will be away on Saturday and Sunday, so come afore lightning on Monday morning, say about four o’clock, and I’ll have everything ready to lower from my window.”
“Oh the deuce!” exclaimed Sir Moses, slapping his leg; “Oh the deuce! going to rob the house, I declare!”
“-To lower from my window” read he again, “for it’s not safe trusting things by the door as we used to do, now that these nasty knavish Pollis fellers are about; so now my own beloved Anthony Thom, if you will give a gentle whistle, or throw a little bit of soft dirt up at the window, where you will see a light burning, I’ll be ready for you, and you’ll be clear of the place long afore any of the lazy fellers here are up,—for a set of nastier, dirtier drunkards never were gathered together.”
“Humph!” grunted Sir Moses, “that’s a cut at Mr. Findlater.” The writer then proceeded to say,—
“—But mind my own beloved Anthony Thom, if any body questions you, say it’s a parcel of dripping, and tell them they are welcome to look in if they like, which is the readiest way of stopping them from doing so. We have had a large party here, including a young gent from that fine old Lord Ladythorne, who I would dearly like to live with, and also that nasty, jealous, covetous body Cuddy Flintoff, peeping and prying about everywhere as usual. He deserves to have a dish-clout pinned to his tail.”
“He, he, he!” chuckled Sir Moses, as he read it
“-I shall direct this letter by post to you at the sign of the Sun in the Sands, unless I can get it conveyed by a private hand. I am half in hopes Mr. Gallon may call, as there is going to be a great steeple match for an immense sum of money, £200 they say, and they will want his fine judgment to direct matters. Mr. Gallon is indeed a man of a thousand.”
“Humph!” grunted Sir Moses, adding, “we are getting behind the curtain now.” He then went on reading,—
“—Oh my own dear darling Anthony Thom! what would I give to see you a fine gentleman like Mr. George Gallon. I do hope and trust, dearest, that it may yet come to pass; but we must make money, and take care of our money when made, for a man is nothing without money. What a noble example you have before you in Mr. George Gallon! He was once no better nor you, and now he has everything like a gentleman,—a hunting horse to ride on, gold studs in his shirt, and goose for his dinner. O my own beloved Anthony Thom, if I could but see you on a white horse, with a flowered silk tie, and a cut velvet vest with bright steel buttons, flourishing a silver-mounted whip, how glad, how rejoiced it would make me. Then I shouldn’t care for the pryings and grumblings of Old Nosey, or the jealous watchings of the nasty, waspish set with which one is surrounded, for I should say my Anthony Thom will revenge and protect me, and make me comfortable at last. So now my own dearest Anthony Thom, be careful and guarded in coming about here, for I dread those nasty lurkin Pollis men more nor can I say, for I never knew suspicious people what were good for any thing themselves; and how they ever come to interduce such nasty town pests into the quiet peaceful country, I can’t for the life of me imagine; but Mr. George Gallon, who is a man of great intellect, says they are dangerous, and that is partly why he has given up travelling; so therefore my own dearest Anthony Thom be guarded, and mind put on your pee jacket and red worsted comforter, for I dread these hoar frosts, and I’ll have everything ready for my darling pet, so that you won’t be kept waiting a moment; but mind if there’s snow on the ground you don’t come for fear of the tracks. I think I have littel more to say this time, my own darling Anthony Thom, except that I am, my own dear, dear son,
“Your ever loving mother,
“Sarah.”
“B-o-o-y Jove!” exclaimed Sir Moses, sousing himself down in an easy chair beside the table at which he had been writing “b-o-y Jove, what a production! Regular robber, dom’d if she’s not. Would give something to catch Master Anthony Thom, in his red worsted comforter, with his parcel of dripping. Would see whether I’d look into it or not. And Mr. Geordey Gallon, too! The impudent fellow who pretended not to know the Frenchman. Regular plant as ever was made. Will see whether he gets his money from me. Ten punds the wretch tried to do me out of by the basest deceit that ever was heard of. Con-found them, but I’ll see if I can’t be upsides with them all though,” continued he, writhing for vengeance. And the whole of that day, and most of that night, and the whole of the following day when hunting at Harker Crag, he was thinking how he could manage it. At length, as he was going quietly home with the hounds, after only an indifferent day’s sport, a thought struck him which he proceeded to put in execution as soon as he got into the house. He wrote a note to dear Lord Repartee, saying, if it would be quite convenient to Lady Repartee and his Lordship, he would be glad to stay all night with them before hunting Filberton forest; and leaving the unfolded note on the library table to operate during the night, he wrote a second one in the morning, inquiring the character of a servant; and putting the first note into the fire, he sealed the second one, and laid it ostentatiously on the hall table for the post.
We take it we all have some ambitious feeling to gratify—all have some one whom we either wish to visit, or who we desire should visit us. We will candidly state that our ambition is to dine with the Lord Mayor. If we could but achieve that great triumph, we really think we should rest satisfied the rest of our life. We know how it would elevate us in the eyes of such men as Cuddy Flintoff and Paul Straddler, and what an advantage it would be to us in society being able to talk in a familiar way of his Lordship (Lordship with a capital L., if you please, Mr. Printer).
Thus the world proceeds on the aspiring scale, each man looking to the class a little in advance of his own.
“O knew they but their happiness, of men the happiest” are the sporting country gentlemen who live at home at ease—unvexed alike with the torments of the money-maker and the anxieties of the great, and yet sufficiently informed and refined to be the companions of either—men who see and enjoy nature in all her moods and varieties, and live unfettered with the pomp and vexation of keeping up appearances, envying no one, whoever may envy them. If once a man quits this happy rank to breast the contending billows of party in hopes of rising to the one above it, what a harvest of discord he sows for his own reaping. If a man wants to be thoroughly disgusted with human nature, let him ally himself unreservedly to a political party. He will find cozening and sneaking and selfishness in all their varieties, and patriotic false pretences in their most luxuriant growth. But we are getting in advance of our subject, our thesis being Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon.
Our snuffy friend Spoon was not exempt from the ambitious failings of lesser men. His great object of ambition was to get Major Yammerton to visit him—or perhaps to put it more correctly, his great object of ambition was to visit Major Yammerton. But then, unfortunately, it requires two parties to these bargains; and Mrs. Yammerton wouldn’t agree to it, not so much because old Spoon had been a butler, but because his wife (our pen splutters as it writes the objection) his wife had been a—a—housekeeper. A handsome housekeeper she was, too, when she first came into the country; so handsome, indeed, that Dicky Boggledike had made two excursions over to their neighbour, Farmer Flamstead, to see her, and had reported upon her very favourably to the noble Earl his august master.
Still Mrs. Yammerton wouldn’t visit her. In vain Mrs. Wotherspoon sent her bantams’ eggs, and guinea fowls’ eggs, and cuttings from their famous yellow rose-tree; in vain old Spoon got a worn-out horse, and invested his nether man in white cords and top boots to turn out after the harriers; in vain he walked a hound in summer, and pulled down gaps, and lifted gates off their hinges in winter—it all only produced thanks and politeness. The Yammertons and they were very good How-do-you-do? neighbours, but the true beef-and-mutton test of British friendship was wanting. The dinner is the thing that signs and seals the acquaintance.
Thus they had gone on from summer to summer, and from season to season, until hope deferred had not only made old Spoon’s heart sick, but had also seen the white cords go at the knees, causing him to retire his legs into the military-striped cinnamon-coloured tweeds in which he appears in:
In addition to muffling his legs, he had begun to mutter and talk about giving up hunting,—getting old,—last season—and so on, which made the Major think he would be losing one of the most personable of his field. This made him pause and consider how to avert the misfortune. Hunted hares he had sent him in more than regular rotation: he had liquored him repeatedly at the door; the ladies had reciprocated the eggs and the cuttings, with dahlias, and Sir Harry strawberry runners; and there really seemed very little left about the place wherewith to propitiate a refractory sportsman. At this critical juncture, a too confiding hare was reported by Cicely Bennett, farmer Merry field’s dairymaid, to have taken up her quarters among some tussuckey brambles at the north-east corner of Mr. Wotherspoon’s cow pasture—a most unusual, indeed almost unprecedented circumstance, which was communicated by Wotherspoon in person to the Major at the next meet of the hounds at Girdle Stone Green, and received with unfeigned delight by the latter.
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed he, wringing the old dandy’s hand; “you don’t say so!” repeated he, with enthusiasm, for hares were scarce, and the country good; in addition to which the Major knew all the gaps.
“I do,” replied Spoon, with a confident air, that as good as said, you may take my word for anything connected with hunting.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” rejoined the Major, poking him familiarly in the ribs with his whip, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll have a turn at her on Tuesday—meet at your house, eh? what say you to that?”
“With all my heart,” responded the delighted Wotherspoon, adding, in the excitement of the moment, “S’pose you come to breakfast?”
“Breakfast,” gasped the Major, feeling he was caught. “Dash it, what would Mrs. Yammerton say? Breakfast!” repeated he, running the matter through his mind, the wigging of his wife, the walk of his hound, the chance of keeping the old boy to the fore if he went—go he would. “With all my heart,” replied he, dashing boldly at the oiler; for it’s of no use a man saying he’s engaged to breakfast, and the Major felt that if the worst came to the worst, it would only be to eat two, one at home, the other with Spoon.
So it was settled, much to Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon’s satisfaction, who were afterwards further delighted to hear that our friend Billy had returned, and would most likely be of the party. And most assiduously they applied themselves to provide for this, the great event of their lives.
CHAPTER LIV.
MR. WOTHERSPOON’S DÉJEUNER À LA FOURCHETTE.
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IVY BANK Tower (formerly caled Cow gate Hill), the seat of Jeames Wotherspoon Esquire, stands on a gentle eminence about a stone’s throw from the Horseheath and Hinton turnpike road, and looks from the luxuriance of its ivy, like a great Jack-in-the-green. Ivy is a troublesome thing, for it will either not grow at all or it grows far too fast, and Wotherspoon’s had fairly overrun the little angular red brick, red tiled mansion, and helped it to its new name of Ivy Bank Tower. If the ivy flourished, however, it was the only thing about the place that did; for Wotherspoon was no farmer, and the 75A, 3R. 18P., of which the estate consisted, was a very uninviting looking property. Indeed Wotherspoon was an illustration of the truth of Sydney Smith’s observation that there are three things which every man thinks he can do, namely, drive a gig, edit a newspaper, and farm a small property, and Spoon bought Cowgate Hill thinking it would “go of itself,” as they say of a horse, and that in addition to the rent he would get the farmer’s profit as well, which he was told ought to be equal to the rent. Though he had the Farmers’ Almanack, he did not attend much to its instructions, for if Mrs. Wotherspoon wanted the Fe-a-ton, as she called it, to gad about the country in, John Strong, the plough-boy footman “loused” his team, and arraying himself in a chocolate-coloured coat, with a red striped vest and black velveteens, left the other horse standing idle for the day. So Spoon sometimes caught the season and sometimes he lost it; and the neighbours used to hope that he hadn’t to live by his land. If he caught the season he called it good management; if he didn’t he laid the blame upon the weather, just as a gardener takes the credit for all the good crops of fruit, and attributes the failures to the seasons. Still Spoon was not at all sensible of his deficiencies, and subscribed a couple of guineas a year to the Harrowford Agricultural Society, in return for which he always had the toast of the healths of the tenant farmers assigned to him, which he handled in a very magnificent and condescending way, acknowledging the obligations the landowners were under to them, and hoping the happy union would long subsist to their mutual advantage; indeed, if he could only have got the words out of his mouth as fast as he got the drink into it, there is no saying but he might some day have filled the presidential chair. Now, however, a greater honour even than that awaited him, namely, the honour of entertaining the great Major Yammerton to breakfast. To this end John Strong was first set to clean the very dirty windows, then to trim the ivy and polish the brass knocker at the door, next to dig the border, in which grew the famous yellow rose, and finally to hoe and rake the carriage-drive up to the house; while Mrs. Wotherspoon, aided by Sally Brown, her maid-of-all-work, looked out the best blue and gold china, examined the linen, selected a tongue, guillotined the poultry, bespoke the eggs, and arranged the general programme of the entertainment.
The Major thought himself very sly, and that he was doing the thing very cleverly by nibbling and playing with his breakfast on the appointed morning, instead of eating voraciously as usual; but ladies often know a good deal more than they pretend to do, and Mrs. Yammerton had seen a card from Mrs. Wotherspoon to their neighbour, Mrs. Broadfurrow, of Blossomfield Farm, inviting Broadfurrow and her to a “déjeuner à la fourchette” to meet Major Yammerton and see the hounds. However, Mrs. Yammerton kept the fact to herself, thinking she would see how her Major would manoeuvre the matter, and avoid a general acquaintance with the Wotherspoons. So she merely kept putting his usual viands before him, to try to tempt him into indulgence; but the Major, knowing the arduous part he would have to perform at the Tower, kept rejecting all her insidious overtures for eating, pretending he was not altogether right. “Almond pudding hadn’t agreed with him,” he thought. “Never did—should have known better than take it,” and so on.
Our dawdling hero rather discontented his host, for instead of applying himself sedulously to his breakfast, he did nothing but chatter and talk to the young ladies, as if there was no such important performance before them as a hare to pursue, or the unrivalled harriers to display. He took cup after cup, as though he had lost his reckoning, and also the little word “no” from his vocabulary. At length the Major got him raised from the table, by telling him they had two miles farther to go than they really had, and making for the stable, they found Solomon and the footman whipper-in ready to turn out with the hounds. Up went our sportsmen on to their horses, and forth came the hounds wriggling and frolicking with joy. The cavalcade being thus formed, they proceeded across the fields, at the back of the house, and were presently passing up the Hollington Lane. The gift grey was the first object of interest as soon as they got well under way, and the Major examined him attentively, with every desire to find fault.
“Neatish horse,” at length observed he, half to himself, half to our friend; “neatish horse—lightish of bone below the knee, p’raps, but still by no means a bad shaped ‘un.”
Still though the Major could’nt hit off the fault, he was pretty sure there was a screw loose somewhere, to discover which he now got Billy to trot the horse, aud cauter him, and gallop him, successively.
“Humph!” grunted he, as he returned after a brush over the rough ground of Farthingfield Moor; “he has the use of his legs—gets well away; easy horse under you, I dessay?” asked he.
Billy said he was, for he could pull him about anywhere; saying which he put him boldly at a water furrow, and landed handsomely on the far side.
“Humph!” grunted the Major again, muttering to himself, “May be all right—but if he is, it’s devilish unlike the Baronet, giving him. Wish he would take that confounded moon-eyed brute of mine and give me my forty puns back.”
“And he gave him ye, did he?” asked the Major, with a scrutinising stare at our friend.
“Why—yarse—no—yarse—not exactly,” replied Billy, hesitating. “The fact is, he offered to give me him, and I didn’t like taking him, and so, after a good deal to do, he said I might give him fifty pounds for him, and pay him when it suited me.”
“I twig,” replied the Major, adding, “then you have to pay fifty pounds for him, eh?”
“Or return him,” replied Billy, “or return him. He made me promise if over I wanted to part with him, I would give him the refusal of him again.”
“Humph!” grunted the Major, looking the horse over attentively. “Fifty puns,” muttered he to himself,—“must be worth that if he’s sound, and only eight off. Wouldn’t mind giving fifty for him myself,” thought he; “must be something wrong about him—certain of that—or Sir Moses wouldn’t have parted with him;” with which firm conviction, and the full determination to find out the horse’s weak point, the Major trotted along the Bodenham Road, through the little hamlet of Maywood, thence across Faulder the cattle jobber’s farm, into the Heath-field Road at Gilden Bridge. A quarter of a mile further, and Mr. Wotherspoon’s residence was full in sight.
The “Tower” never, perhaps, showed to greater advantage than it did on this morning, for a bright winter’s sun lit up the luxuriant ivy on its angular, gable-ended walls, nestling myriads of sparrows that flew out in flocks at the approach of each visitor.
“What place is this?” asked our hero, as, at a jerk of the Major’s head, Solomon turned off the road through the now propped-open gate of the approach to the mansion.
“Oh, this is where we meet,” replied the Major; “this is Mr. Wotherspoon’s, the gentleman you remember out with us the day we had the famous run when we lost the hare at Mossheugh Law—the farm by the moor, you know, where the pretty woman was churning—you remember, eh?”
“O, ah!” repeated Billy: “but I thought they called his place a Tower,—Ivy something Tower,” thinking this was more like two great sentry boxes placed at right angles, and covered with ivy than anything else.
“Well, yes; he calls this a Tower,” replied the Major, seeing by Billy’s face that his friend had not risen in his estimation by the view of his mansion. “Capital feller Spoon, though,” continued he, “must go in and pay our respects to him and his lady.” So saying, he turned off the road upon the closely eaten sward, and, calling to Solomon to stop and let the hounds have a roll on the grass, he dismounted, and gave his horse in charge of a fustian-clad countryman, telling him to walk him about till he returned, and he would remember him for his trouble. Our friend Billy did the same, and knocking the mud sparks off his boots against the well pipe-clayed door-steps, prepared to enter the Tower. Before inducting them, however, let us prepare the inmates for their reception.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon had risen sufficiently early to enable them to put the finishing stroke to their respective arrangements, and then to apparel themselves for the occasion. They were gorgeously attired, vieing with the rainbow in the colour of their clothes. Old Spoon, indeed, seemed as if he had put all the finery on he could raise, and his best brown cauliflower wig shone resplendent with Macassar oil. He had on a light brown coat with a rolling velvet collar, velvet facings and cuffs, with a magnificent green, blue, and yellow striped tartan velvet vest, enriched with red cornelian buttons, and crossed diagonally with a massive Brazilian gold chain, and the broad ribbon of his gold double-eye-glasses. He sported a light blue satin cravat, an elaborately worked ruby-studded shirt front, over a pink flannel vest, with stiff wrist-bands well turned up, showing the magnificence of his imitation India garnet buttons. On his clumsy fingers he wore a profusion of rings—a brilliant cluster, a gold and opal, a brilliant and sapphire, an emerald half-hoop ring, a massive mourning, and a signet ring,—six in all,—genuine or glass as the case might be, equally distributed between the dirty-nailed fingers of each hand. His legs were again encased in the treacherous white cords and woe-begone top-boots that were best under the breakfast table. He had drawn the thin cords on very carefully, hoping they would have the goodness to hang together for the rest of the day.
Mrs. Wotherspoon was bedizened with jewellery and machinery lace. She wore a rich violet-coloured velvet dress, with a beautiful machinery lace chemisette, fastened down the front with large Cairngorum buttons, the whole connected with a diminutive Venetian chain, which contrasted with the massive mosaic one that rolled and rattled upon her plump shoulders. A splendid imitation emerald and brilliant brooch adorned her bust, while her well-rounded arms were encircled with a mosaic gold, garnet and turquoise bracelet, an imitation rose diamond one, intermixed with pearl, a serpent armlet with blood-stone eyes, a heavy jet one, and an equally massive mosaic gold one with a heart’s ease padlock. Though in the full development of womanhood, she yet distended her figure with crinoline, to the great contraction of her room.
The two had scarcely entered the little parlour, some twelve feet square, and Spoon got out his beloved Morning Post, ere Mr. and Mrs. Broadfurrow were seen wending their way up the road, at the plodding diligent sort of pace an agricultural horse goes when put into harness; and forthwith the Wotherspoons dismissed the last anxieties of preparation, and lapsed into the easy, unconcerned host and hostess. When John Strong threw open the door, and announced Mr. and Mrs. Broadfurrow, they were discovered standing over the fire, as if d’ejeuner à la fourchette giving was a matter of every day’s occurrence with them. Then, at the summons, they turned and came forward in the full glow of cordiality, and welcomed their guests with all the fervour of sincerity; and when Mrs. Wotherspoon mounted the weather for a trot with Mrs. Broadfurrow, old Spoon out with his engine-turned gold snuff-box, and offered Broadfurrow a pinch ere he threw his conversation into the columns of his paper. The offer being accepted, Wotherspoon replenished his own nose, and then felt ready for anything. He was in high feather. He sunk his favourite topic, the doings of the House of Lords, and expatiated upon the Princess Royal’s then approaching marriage. Oh, dear, he was so glad. He was so glad of it—glad of it on every account—glad of it on the Princess’s account—glad of it on her most gracious Majesty’s account. Bless her noble heart! it almost made him feel like an old man when he remembered the Prince Consort leading her to the hymeneal altar herself. Well, well, life was life, and he had seen as much of it as most men; and just as he was going to indulge in some of his high-flown reminiscences, the crack of a hunting whip sounded through the house, and farmer Nettlefold’s fat figure, attired in the orthodox green coat and white cords of the Major Yammerton’s hunt was seen piled on a substantial brown cob, making his way to the stables at the back of the Tower. Mr. Nettlefold, who profanely entered by the back door, was then presently announced, and the same greetings having been enacted towards him, Wotherspoon made a bold effort to get back to the marriage, beginning with “As I was observing,” when farmer Rintoul came trotting up on his white horse, and holloaed out to know if he could get him put up.
“Oh, certainly,” replied Wotherspoon, throwing up the window, when a sudden gust of wind nearly blew off his wig, and sadly disconcerted the ladies by making the chimney smoke.
Just at this moment our friend appeared in sight, and all eyes were then directed to the now gamboling tongue-throwing hounds, as they spread frisking over the green.
“What beauties!” exclaimed Mrs. Wotherspoon, pretending to admire them, though in reality she was examining the Point de Paris lace on Mrs. Broadfurrow’s mantle—wondering what it would be a yard, thinking it was very extravagant for a person like her to have it so broad. Old Spoon, meanwhile, bustled away to the door, to be ready to greet the great men as they entered.
“Major Yammerton and Mr. Jingle!” announced John Strong, throwing it open, and the old dandy bent nearly double with his bow.
“How are ye, Wotherspoon?” demanded our affable master, shaking him heartily by the hand, with a hail-fellow-well-met air of cordiality. “Mr. Pringle you know,” continued he, drawing our friend forward with his left hand, while he advanced with his right to greet the radiant Mrs. Wotherspoon.
The Major then went the round of the party, whole handing Mrs. Broadfurrow, three fingering her husband, presenting two to old Rintonl, and nodding to Nettlefold.
“Well, here’s a beautiful morning,” observed he, now Colossus-of-Rhodesing with his clumsily built legs—“most remarkable season this I ever remember during the five-and-thirty years that I have kept haryers—more like summer than winter, only the trees are as bare of leaves as boot-trees, haw, haw, haw.”
“He, he, he,” chuckled old Wotherspoon, “v-a-a-ry good, Major, v-a-a-ry good,” drawled he, taking a plentiful replenishment of snuff as he spoke.
Breakfast was then announced, and the Major making up to the inflated Mrs. Wotherspoon tendered his arm, and with much difficulty piloted her past the table into the little duplicate parlour across the passage, followed by Wotherspoon with Mrs. Broadfurrow and the rest of the party.
And now the fruits of combined science appeared in the elegant arrangement of the breakfast-table, the highly polished plate vieing with the snowy whiteness of the cloth, and the pyramidical napkins encircling around. Then there was the show pattern tea and coffee services, chased in wreaths and scrolls, presented to Mr. Wotherspoon by the Duke of Thunderdownshire on his marriage; the Louis Quatorze kettle presented to Mrs. Wotherspoon by the Duchess, with the vine-leaf-patterned cake-basket, the Sutherland-patterned toast-rack, and the tulip-patterned egg-stand, the gifts and testimonials of other parties.
Nor was the entertainment devoted to mere show, for piles of cakes and bread of every shape and make were scattered profusely about, while a couple of covered dishes on the well polished little sideboard denoted that the fourchette of the card was not a mere matter of form. Best of all, a group of flat vine-leaf encircling Champagne glasses denoted that the repast was to be enlivened with the exhilarating beverage.
The party having at length settled into seats, Major Yammerton on Mrs. Wotherspoon’s right, Mr. Pringle on her left, Mrs. Broadfurrow on Spoon’s right, her husband on his left, with Rintoul and Nettlefold filling in the interstices, breakfast began in right earnest, and Mrs. Wotherspoon having declined the Major’s offer of assisting with the coffee, now had her hands so full distributing the beverages as to allow him to apply himself sedulously to his food. This he did most determinedly, visiting first one detachment of cakes, then another, and helping himself liberally to both hashed woodcocks and kidneys from under the covers. His quick eye having detected the Champagne glasses, and knowing Wotherspoon’s reputed connoisseurship in wines, he declined Mrs. Wotherspoon’s tea, reserving himself for what was to follow. In truth, Spoon was a good judge of wine, so much so that he acted as a sort of decoy duck to a London house, who sent him very different samples to the wine they supplied to the customers with whom he picked up. He had had a great deal of experience in wines, never, in the course of a longish life having missed the chance of a glass, good, bad, or indifferent. We have seen many men set up for judges without a tithe of Wotherspoon’s experience. Look at a Club for instance. We see the footman of yesterday transformed into the butler of to-day, giving his opinion to some newly joined member on the next, with all the authority of a professor—talking of vintages, and flavours, and roughs and smooths, and sweets, and drys, as if he had been drinking wine all his life. Wotherspoon’s prices were rather beyond the Major’s mark, but still he had no objection to try his wine, and talk as if he would like to have some of the same sort. So having done ample justice to the eatables he turned himself back in his chair and proceeded to criticise Mrs. Wotherspoon’s now slightly flushed face, and wonder how such a pretty woman could marry such a snuffy old cock. While this deliberate scrutiny was going on, the last of the tea-drinkers died out, and at a pull of the bell, John Strong came in, and after removing as many cups and saucers as he could clutch, he next proceeded to decorate the table with Champagne glasses amid the stares and breath-drawings of the company.
While this interesting operation was proceeding, the old dandy host produced his snuff-box, and replenishing his nose passed it on to Broadfurrow to send up the table, while he threw himself back in his chair and made a mental wager that Strong would make a mistake between the Champagne and the Sillery. The glasses being duly distributed, and the Major’s eye at length caught, our host after a prefatory throat-clearing hem thus proceeded to address him, individually, for the good of the company generally.
“Major Yammerton,” said he, “I will take the liberty of recommending a glass of Sillery to you.—The sparkling, I believe, is very good, but the still is what I particularly pride myself upon and recommend to my friends.”
“Strong!” continued he, addressing the clown, “the Sillery to Major Yammerton,” looking at Strong as much as to say, “you know it’s the bottle with the red cord round the neck.”
The Major, however, like many of us, was not sufficiently versed in the delicacies of Champagne drinking to prefer the Sillery, and to his host’s dismay called for the sparkling-stuff that Wotherspoon considered was only fit for girls at a boarding school. The rest of the party, however, were of the Major’s opinion, and all glasses were eagerly held for the sparkling fluid, while the Sillery remained untouched to the master.
It is but justice to Wotherspoon to add, that he showed himself deserving of the opportunity, for he immediately commenced taking two glasses to his guest’s one.
That one having been duly sipped and quaffed and applauded, and a becoming interval having elapsed between, Mr. Wotherspoon next rose from his chair, and looking especially wise, observed, up the table “that there was a toast he wished—he had—he had—he wished to propose, which he felt certain under any—any (pause) circumstances, would be (pause again) accepted—he meant received with approbation (applause), not only with approbation, but enthusiasm,” continued he, hitting off the word he at first intended to use, amid renewed applause, causing a slight “this is my health,” droop of the head from the Major—“But when,” continued the speaker, drawing largely on his snuff-box for inspiration, “But when in addition to the natural and intrinsic (pause) merit of the (hem) illustrious individual” (“Coming it strong,” thought the Major, who had never been called illustrious before,) “there is another and a stronger reason,” continued Wotherspoon, looking as if he wished he was in his seat again—“a reason that comes ‘ome to the ‘earts and symphonies of us all (applause). (“Ah, that’s the hounds,” thought the Major, “only I ‘spose he means sympathies.”) “I feel (pause) assured,” continued Mr. Wotherspoon, “that the toast will be received with the enthusiasm and popularity that ever attends the (pause) mention of intrinsic merit, however (pause) ‘umbly and inadequately the (pause) toast may be (pause) proposed,” (great applause, with cries of no, no,) during which the orator again appealed to his snuff-box. He knew he had a good deal more to say, but he felt he couldn’t get it out. If he had only kept his seat he thought he might have managed it. “I therefore,” said he, helping Mrs. Broadfurrow to the sparkling, and passing the bottle to her husband while he again appealed to the Sillery, “beg to propose, with great sincerity, the ‘ealth of Her most gracious Majesty The Queen! The Queen! God bless her!” exclaimed Wotherspoon, holding up a brimming bumper ere he sunk in his chair to enjoy it.
“With all my heart!” gasped the disgusted Major, writhing with vexation—observing to Mrs. Wotherspoon as he helped her, and then took severe toll of the passing bottle himself, “by Jove, your husband ought to be in Parliament—never heard a man acquit himself better”—the Major following the now receding bottle with his eye, whose fast diminishing contents left little hopes of a compliment for himself out of its contents. He therefore felt his chance was out, and that he had been unduly sacrificed to Royalty. Not so, however, for Mr. Wotherspoon, after again charging his nose with snuff, and passing his box round the table while he collected his scattered faculties for the charge, now drew the bell-cord again, and tapping with his knife against the empty bottle as “Strong” entered, exclaimed, “Champagne!” with the air of a man accustomed to have all the wants of life supplied by anticipation. There’s nobody gets half so well waited upon as an old servant.
This order being complied with, and having again got up the steam of his eloquence, Mr. Wotherspoon arose, and, looking as wise as before, observed, “That there was another toast he had to propose, which he felt (pause) sure would (pause) would be most agreeable and acceptable to the meeting,—he meant to say the party, the present party (applause)—under any circumstances (sniff, snuff, sneeze); he was sure it would be most (snuff) acceptable, for the great and distinguished (pause), he had almost said illustrious (sniff), gentleman (pause), was—was estimable”—
“This is me, at all events,” thought the Major, again slightly drooping his too bashful head, as though the shower-bath of compliment was likely to be too heavy for him.
“——was estimable (pause) and glorious in every relation of life (applause), and keeps a pack of hounds second to none in the kingdom (great applause, during which the drooping head descended an inch or two lower). I need not after that (snuff) expression of your (sniff) feelings (pause), undulate on the advantage such a character is of to the country, or in promoting (pause) cheerful hospitality in all its (pause) branches, and drawing society into sociable communications; therefore I think I shall (pause) offer a toast most, most heartily acceptable (sniff) to all your (snuff) feelings, when I propose, in a bumper toast, the health of our most—most distinguished and—and hospitable host—guest, I mean—Major Yammerton, and his harriers!” saying which, the old orator filled himself a bumper of Sillery, and sent the sparkling beverage foaming and creaming on its tour. He then presently led the charge with a loud, “Major! your very good health!”
“Major, your very good health!”
“Your very good health, Major!”
“Major, your very good health!” then followed up as quickly as the glasses could be replenished, and the last explosion having taken place, the little Major arose, and looked around him like a Bantam cock going to crow. He was a man who could make what he would call an off-hand speech, provided he was allowed to begin with a particular word, and that word was “for.” Accordingly, he now began with,—
“Ladies and gentlemen, For the very distinguished honour you have thus most unexpectedly done me, I beg to return you my most grateful and cordial thanks. (Applause.) I beg to assure you, that the ‘steem and approbation of my perhaps too partial friends, is to me the most gratifying of compliments; and if during the five-and-thirty years I have kept haryers, I have contributed in any way to the ‘armony and good fellowship of this neighbourhood, it is indeed to me a source of unfeigned pleasure. (Applause.) I ‘ope I may long be spared to continue to do so. (Renewed applause.) Being upon my legs, ladies and gentlemen,” continued he, “and as I see there is still some of this most excellent and exhilarating beverage in the bottle (the Major holding up a half-emptied one as he spoke), permit me to conclude by proposing as a toast the ‘ealth of our inestimable ‘ost and ‘ostess—a truly exemplary couple, who only require to be known to be respected and esteemed as they ought to be. (Applause.) I have great pleasure in proposing the ‘ealth of Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon! (Applause.) Mrs. Wotherspoon,” continued he, bowing very low to his fair hostess, and looking, as he thought, most insinuating, “your very good ‘ealth! Wotherspoon!” continued he, standing erect, and elevating his voice, “Your very good ‘ealth!” saying which he quaffed off his wine, and resumed his seat as the drinking of the toast became general.
Meanwhile old Wotherspoon had taken a back hand at the Sillery, and again arose, glass in hand, to dribble out his thanks for the honour the Major and company had done Mrs. Wotherspoon and himself, which being the shortest speech he had made, was received with the greatest applause.
All parties had now about arrived at that comfortable state when the inward monitor indicates enough, and the active-minded man turns to the consideration of the “next article, mem,”—as the teasing shop-keepers say, The Major’s “next article,” we need hardly say, was his haryers, which were still promenading in front of the ivy-mantled tower, before an admiring group of pedestrians and a few sorrily mounted horsemen,—old Duffield, Dick Trail, and one or two others,—who would seem rather to have come to offer up their cattle for the boiler, than in expectation of their being able to carry them across country with the hounds. These are the sort of people who stamp the farmers’ hedges down, and make hare hunting unpopular.
“Well, sir, what say you to turning out?” now asked our Master, as Wotherspoon still kept working away at the Sillery, and maundering on to Mr. Broadfurrow about the Morning Post and high life.
“Well, sir, what you think proper,” replied Spoon, taking a heavy pinch of snuff, and looking at the empty bottles on the table.
“The hare, you say, is close at hand,” observed our master of hounds.
“Close at hand, close at hand—at the corner of my field, in fact,” assented Wotherspoon, as if there was no occasion to be in a hurry.
“Then let’s be at her!” exclaimed the Major rising with wine-inspired confidence, and feeling that it would require a very big fence to stop him with the hounds in full cry.
“Well, but we are going to see you, ain’t we?” asked Mrs. Wotherspoon.
“By all means,” replied our Master; adding, “but hadn’t you better get your bonnet on?”
“Certainly,” rejoined Mrs. Wotherspoon, looking significantly at Mrs. Broadfurrow; whereupon the latter rose, and with much squeezing, and pardoning, and thank-you-ing, the two succeeded in effecting a retreat. The gentlemen then began kicking their legs about, feeling as though they would not want any dinner that day.
CHAPTER LV.
THE COUNCIL OF WAR.—POOR PUSS AGAIN!
WHILE the ladies were absent adorning themselves, the gentlemen held a council of war as to the most advisable mode of dealing with the hare, aud the best way of making her face a good country. The Major thought if they could set her a-going with her head towards Martinfield-heath, they would stand a good chance of a run; while Broadfurrow feared Borrowdale brook would be in the way.
“Why not Linacres?” asked Mr. Rintoul, who preferred having the hounds over any one’s farm but his own.
“Linacres is not a bad line,” assented the Major thoughtfully; “Linacres is not a bad line, ‘specially if she keeps clear of Minsterfield-wood and Dowland preserve; but if once she gets to the preserve it’s all U. P., for we should have as many hares as hounds in five minutes, to say nothing of Mr. Grumbleton reading the riot act among us to boot.”
“I’ll tell ye how to do, then,” interposed fat Mr. Nettlefold, holding his coat laps behind him as he protruded his great canary-coloured stomach into the ring; “I’ll tell you how to do, then. Just crack her away back over this way, and see if you can’t get her for Witherton and Longworth. Don’t you mind,” continued he, button-holeing the Major, “what a hunt we had aboot eighteen years since with a har we put off old Tommy Carman’s stubble, that took us reet away over Marbury Plot, the Oakley hill, and then reet down into Woodbury Yale, where we killed?”
“To be sure I do!” exclaimed the delighted Major, his keen eyes glistening with pleasure at the recollection. “The day Sam Snowball rode into Gallowfield bog and came out as black as a sweep—I remember it well. Don’t think I ever saw a better thing. If it had been a—a—certain somebody’s hounds (he, he, he!), whose name I won’t mention (haw, haw, haw!), we should never have heard the last of it (he, he, he!).”
While this interesting discussion was going on, old Wotherspoon who had been fumbling at the lock of the cellaret, at length got it open, and producing therefrom one of those little square fibre-protected bottles, with mysterious seals and hieroglyphical labels, the particoloured letters leaning different ways, now advanced, gold-dotted liquor-glass in hand, towards the group, muttering as he came, “Major Yammerton, will you ‘blege me with your ‘pinion of this Maraschino di Zara, which my wine merchants recommend to me as something very ‘tickler,” pouring out a glass as he spoke, and presenting it to his distinguished guest.
“With all my heart,” replied the Major, who rather liked a glass of liquor; adding, “we’ll all give our opinion, won’t we, Pringle?” appealing to our hero.
“Much pleasure,” replied Billy, who didn’t exactly know what it was, but still was willing to take it on trust.
“That’s right,” rejoined old Spoon; “that’s right; then ‘blege me,” continued he, “by helping yourselves to glasses from the sideboard,” nodding towards a golden dotted brood clustering about a similarly adorned glass jug like chickens around a speckled hen.
At this intimation a move was made to the point; and all being duly provided with glasses, the luscious beverage flowed into each in succession, producing hearty smacks of the lips, and “very goods” from all.
“Well, I think so,” replied the self-satisfied old dandy; “I think so,” repeated he, replenishing his nose with a good pinch of snuff; “Comes from Steinberger and Leoville, of King Street, Saint Jeames’s—very old ‘quaintance of mine—great house in the days of George the Fourth of festive memory. And, by the way, that reminds me,” continued he, after a long-drawn respiration, “that I have forgotten a toast that I feel (pause) we ought to have drunk, and—”
“Let’s have it now then,” interrupted the Major, presenting his glass for a second helping.
“If you please,” replied “Wotherspoon, thus cut short in his oration, proceeding to replenish the glasses, but with more moderate quantities than before.
“Well, now what’s your toast?” demanded the Major, anxious to be off.
“The toast I was about to propose—or rather, the toast I forgot to propose,” proceeded the old twaddler, slowly and deliberately, with divers intermediate sniffs and snuffs, “was a toast that I feel ‘sured will come ‘ome to the ‘arts and symphonies of us all, being no less a—a—(pause) toast than the toast of the illustrious (pause), exalted—I may say, independent—I mean Prince—Royal Highness in fact—who (wheeze) is about to enter into the holy state of matrimony with our own beloved and exalted Princess (Hear, hear, hear). I therefore beg to (pause) propose that we drink the ‘ealth of His Royal (pause) ‘Ighness Prince (pause) Frederick (snuff) William (wheeze) Nicholas (sniff) Charles!” with which correct enunciation the old boy brightened up and drank off his glass with the air of a man who has made a clean breast of it.
“Drink both their ‘ealths!” exclaimed the Major, holding up his glass, and condensing the toast into “The ‘ealths of their Royal Highnesses!” it was accepted by the company with great applause.
Just as the last of the glasses was drained, and the lip-smacking guests were preparing to restore them to the sideboard, a slight rustle was heard at the door, which opening gently, a smart black velvet bonnet trimmed with cerise-coloured velvet and leaves, and broad cerise-coloured ribbons, piloted Mrs. Wotherspoon’s pretty face past the post, who announced that Mrs. Broadfurrow and she were ready to go whenever they were.
“Let’s be going, then,” exclaimed Major Yammerton, hurrying to the sideboard and setting down his glass. “How shall it be, then? How shall it be?” appealing to the company. “Give them a view or put her away quietly?—give them a view or put her away quietly?”
“Oh, put her away quietly,” responded Mr. Broadfurrow, who had seen many hares lost by noise and hurry at starting.
“With her ‘ead towards Martinfield?” asked the Major.
“If you can manage it,” replied Broadfurrow, well knowing that these sort of feats are much easier planned than performed.
“‘Spose we let Mrs. Wotherspoon put her away for us,” now suggested Mr. Rintonl.
“By all means!” rejoined the delighted Major; “by all means! She knows the spot, and will conduct us to it. Mrs. Wotherspoon,” continued he, stumping up to her as she now stood waiting in the little passage, “allow me to have the honour of offering you my arm;” so saying, the Major presented it to her, observing confidentially as they passed on to the now open front door, “I feel as if we were going to have a clipper!” lowering the ominous hat-string as he spoke.
“Solomon! Solomon!” cried he, to the patient huntsman, who had been waiting all this time with the hounds. “We are going! we are going!”
“Yes, Major,” replied Solomon, with a respectful touch of his cap.
“Now for it!” cried the Major, wheeling sharp round with his fair charge, and treading on old Wotherspoon’s gouty foot, who was following too closely behind with Mrs. Broadfurrow on his arm, causing the old cock to catch up his leg and spin round on the other, thus splitting the treacherous cords across the knee.
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“Oh-o-o-o!” shrieked he, wrinkling his face up like a Norfolk biffin, and hopping about as if he was dancing a hornpipe.
“Oh-o-o-o!” went he again, on setting it down to try if he could stand.
“I really beg you ten thousand pardons!” now exclaimed the disconcerted Major, endeavouring to pacify him. “I really beg you ten thousand pardons; but I thought you were ever so far behind.”
“So did I, I’m sure,” assented Mrs. Wotherspoon.
“You’re such a gay young chap, and step so smartly, you’d tread on any body’s heels,” observed the Major jocularly.
“Well, but it was a pincher, I assure you,” observed Wotherspoon, still screwing up his mouth.
At length he got his foot down again, and the assault party was reformed, the Major and Mrs. Wotherspoon again leading, old Spoon limping along at a more respectful distance with Mrs. Broadfurrow, while the gentlemen brought up the rear with the general body of pedestrians, who now deserted Solomon and the hounds in order to see poor puss started from her form. Solomon was to keep out of sight until she was put away.
Passing through the little American blighted orchard, and what Spoon magnificently called his kitchen garden, consisting of a dozen grass-grown gooseberry bushes, and about as many winter cabbages, they came upon a partially-ploughed fallow, with a most promising crop of conch grass upon the unturned part, the hungry soil looking as if it would hardly return the seed.
“Fine country! fine country!” muttered the Major, looking around on the sun-bright landscape, and thinking he could master it whichever way the hare went. Up Sandywell Lane for Martinfield Moor, past Woodrow Grange for Linacres, and through Farmer Fulton’s fold-yard for Witherton.
Oh, yes, he could do it; and make a very good show out of sight of the ladies.
“Now, where have you her? where have you her?” whispered he, squeezing Mrs. Wotherspoon’s plump arm to attract her attention, at the same time not to startle the hare.
“O, in the next field,” whispered she, “in the next field,” nodding towards a drab-coloured pasture in which a couple of lean and dirty cows were travelling about in search of a bite. They then proceeded towards it.
The gallant Major having opened the ricketty gate that intervened between the fallow and it, again adopted his fair charge, and proceeded stealthily along the high ground by the ragged hedge on the right, looking back and holding up his hand for silence among the followers.
At length Mrs. Wotherspoon stopped. “There, you see,” said she, nodding towards a piece of rough, briary ground, on a sunny slope, in the far corner of the field.
“I see!” gasped the delighted Major; “I see!” repeated he, “just the very place for a hare to be in—wonder there’s not one there always. Now,” continued he, drawing his fair charge a little back, “we’ll see if we can’t circumvent her, and get her to go to the west. Rintoul!” continued he, putting his hand before his mouth to prevent the sound of what he said being wafted to the hare. “Rintoul! you’ve got a whip—you go below and crack her away over the hill, that’s a good feller, and we’ll see if we can’t have something worthy of com-mem-mo-ration”—the Major thinking how he would stretch out the run for the newspapers—eight miles in forty minutes, an hour and twenty with only one check—or something of that sort.
The pause thrilled through the field, and caused our friend Billy to feel rather uncomfortable, he didn’t appreciate the beauties of the thing.
Rintoul having now got to his point, and prepared his heavy whip-thong, the gallant band advanced, in semicircular order, until they came within a few paces of where the briars began. At a signal from the Major they all hailed. The excitement was then intense.
“I see her!” now whispered the Major into Mrs. Wotherspoon’s ear. “I see her!” repeated he, squeezing her arm, and pointing inwardly with his thong-gathered whip.
Mrs. Wotherspoon’s wandering eyes showed that she did not participate in the view.
“Don’t you see the tuft of fern just below the thick red-berried rose bush a little to the left here?” asked the Major; “where the rushes die out?”
Mrs. Wotherspoon nodded assent.
“Well, then, she’s just under the broken piece of fern that lies bending this way. You can see her ears moving at this moment.”
Mrs. Wotherspoon’s eyes brightened as she saw a twinkling something.
“Now then, put her away!” said the Major gaily.
“She won’t bite, will she?” whispered Mrs. Wotherspoon, pretending alarm.
“Oh, bite, no!” laughed the Major; “hares don’t bite—not pretty women at least,” whispered he. “Here take my whip and give her a touch behind,” handing it to her as he spoke.
Mrs. Wotherspoon having then gathered up her violet-coloured velvet dress a little, in order as well to escape the frays of the sharp-toothed brambles as to show her gay red and black striped petticoat below, now advanced cautiously into the rough sea, stepping carefully over this tussuck and t’other, avoiding this briar and that, until she came within whip reach of the fern. She then paused, and looked back with the eyes of England upon her.
“Up with her!” cried the excitcd Major, as anxious for a view as if he had never seen a hare in his life.
Mrs. Wotherspoon then advanced half a step farther, and protruding the Major’s whip among the rustling fern, out sprang—what does the reader think?—A GREAT TOM CAT!
“Tallyho!” cried Billy Pringle, deceived by the colour.
“Hoop, hoop, hoop!” went old Spoon, taking for granted it was a hare.
Crack! resounded Rintoul’s whip from afar.
“Haw, haw, haw! never saw anything like that!” roared the Major, holding his sides.
“Why, it’s a cat!” exclaimed the now enlightened Mrs. Wotherspoon, opening wide her pretty eyes as she retraced her steps towards where he stood.
“Cat, ay, to be sure, my dear! why, it’s your own, isn’t it?” demanded our gallant Master.
“No; ours is a grey—that’s a tabby,” replied she, returning him his whip.
“Grey or tab, it’s a cat,” replied the Major, eyeing puss climbing up a much-lopped ash-tree in the next hedge.
“Why, Spoon, old boy, don’t you know a cat when you see her?” demanded he, as his chagrined host now came pottering towards them.
“I thought it was a hare, ‘pon honour, as we say in the Lords,” replied the old buck, bowing and consoling himself with a copious pinch of snuff.
“Well, it’s a sell,” said the Major, thinking what a day he had lost.
“D-a-a-vilish likely place for a hare,” continued old Wotherspoon, reconnoitring it through his double eye-glasses; “D-a-a-vilish likely place, indeed.”
“Oh, likely enough,” muttered the Major, with a chuck of his chin, “likely enough,—only it isn’t one, that’s all!”
“Well, I wish it had been,” replied the old boy.
“So do I,” simpered his handsome wife, drawing her fine lace-fringed kerchief across her lips.
The expectations of the day being thus disappointed, another council of war was now held, as to the best way of retrieving the misfortune. Wotherspoon, who was another instance of the truth of the observation, that a man who is never exactly sober is never quite drunk, was inclined to get back to the bottle. “Better get back to the house,” said he, “and talk matters quietly over before the fire;” adding, with a full replenishment of snuff up his nose, “I’ve got a batch of uncommonly fine Geisenheimer that I would like your ‘pinion of, Major,” but the Major, who had had wine enough, and wanted to work it off with a run, refused to listen to the tempter, intimating, in a whisper to Mrs. Spoon, who again hung on his arm, that her husband would be much better of a gallop.
And Mrs. Wotherspoon, thinking from the haziness of the old gentleman’s voice, and the sapient twinkling of his gooseberry eyes, that he had had quite enough wine, seconded this view of the matter; whereupon, after much backing and bowing, and shaking of hands, and showing of teeth, the ladies and gentlemen parted, the former to the fire, the latter to the field, where the performance of the pack must stand adjourned for another chapter.
CHAPTER LVI.
A FINE RUN!—THE MAINCHANCE CORRESPONDENCE.
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HE worst of these dejeuners à la fourchette, and also of luncheons, is, that they waste the day, and then send men out half-wild to ride over the hounds or whatever else comes in their way. The greatest funkers, too, are oftentimes the boldest under the influence of false courage; so that the chances of mischief are considerably increased. The mounted Champagne bottle smoking a cigar, at page 71, is a good illustration of what we mean. We doubt not Mr. Longneck was very forward in that run.
All our Ivy Tower party were more or less primed, and even old Wotherspoon felt as if he could ride. Billy, too, mounted the gallant grey without his usual nervous misgivings, and trotted along between the Major and Rintoul with an easy Hyde Park-ish sort of air. Rintonl had intimated that he thought they would find a hare on Mr. Merryweather’s farm at Swayland, and now led them there by the fields, involving two or three little obstacles—a wattled hurdle among the rest—which they all charged like men of resolution. The hurdle wasn’t knocked over till the dogs’-meatmen came to it.
Arrived at Swayland, the field quickly dispersed, each on his own separate hare-seeking speculation, one man fancying a fallow, another a pasture: Rintonl reserving the high hedge near the Mill bridle-road, out of which he had seen more than one whipped in his time. So they scattered themselves over the country, flipping and flopping all the tufts ard likely places, aided by the foot-people with their sticks, and their pitchings and tossings of stones into bushes and hollows, and other tempting-looking retreats.
The hounds, too, ranged far and wide, examining critically each likely haunt, pondering on spots where they thought she had been, but which would not exactly justify a challenge.
While they were all thus busily employed, Rintoul’s shallow hat in the air intimated that the longed-for object was discerned, causing each man to get his horse by the head, and the foot-people to scramble towards him, looking anxiously forward and hurriedly back, lest any of the riders should be over them. Rintoul had put her away, and she was now travelling and stopping, and travelling and stopping, listening and wondering what was the matter. She had been coursed before but never hunted, and this seemed a different sort of proceeding.
The terror-striking notes of the hounds, as they pounced upon her empty form, with the twang of the horn and the cheers of the sportsmen urging them on, now caused her to start; and, laying back her long ears, she scuttled away over Bradfield Green and up Ridge Hill as hard as ever she could lay legs to the ground.
“Come along, Mr. Pringle! come along, Mr. Pringle!” cried the excited Major, spurring up, adjusting his whip as if he was going to charge into a solid square of infantry. He then popped through an open gate on the left.
The bustling beauties of hounds had now fallen into their established order of precedence, Lovely and Lilter contending for the lead, with Bustler and Bracelet, and Ruffler and Chaunter, and Ruin and Restless, and Dauntless and Driver, and Dancer and Flaunter and others striving after, some giving tongue because they felt the scent, others, because the foremost gave it.—So they went truthfully up the green and over the hill, a gap, a gate, and a lane serving the bustling horsemen.
The vale below was not quite so inviting to our “green linnets” as the country they had come from, the fields being small, with the fences as irregular as the counties appear on a map of England. There was none of that orderly squaring up and uniformity of size, that enables a roadster to trace the line of communication by gates through the country.—All was zigzag and rough, indicating plenty of blackthorns and briers to tear out their eyes. However, the Champagne was sufficiently alive in our sportsmen to prevent any unbecoming expression of fear, though there was a general looking about to see who was best acquainted with the country. Rintoul was now out of his district, and it required a man well up in the line to work them satisfactorily, that is to say, to keep them in their saddles, neither shooting them over their horses’ heads nor swishing them over their tails. Our friend Billy worked away on the grey, thinking, if anything, he liked him better than the bay. He even ventured to spur him.
The merry pack now swing musically down the steep hill, the chorus increasing as they reach the greener regions below. The fatties, and funkers, and ticklish forelegged ones, begin who-a-ing and g-e-e-ntly-ing to their screws, holding on by the pommels and cantrells, and keeping their nags’ heads as straight as they can. Old Wotherspoon alone gets off and leads down. He’s afraid of his horse slipping upon its haunches. The sight of him doing so emboldens our Billy, who goes resolutely on, and incautiously dropping his hand too soon, the grey shot away with an impetus that caused him to cannon off Broadfurrow and the Major and pocket himself in the ditch at the bottom of the hill. Great was the uproar! The Richest Commoner in England was in danger! Ten thousand a-year in jeopardy! “Throw yourself off!”
“Get clear of him!”
“Keep hold of him!”
“Mind he doesn’t strike ye!” resounded from all parts, as first the horse’s head went up, and then his tail, and then his head again, in his efforts to extricate himself.
At length Billy, seizing a favourable opportunity, threw himself off on the green sward, and, ere he could rise, the horse, making a desperate plunge, got out, and went staring away with his head in the air, looking first to the right and then to the left, as the dangling reins kept checking and catching him.
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“Look sharp or you’ll loss him!” now cried old Duffield, as after an ineffectual snatch of the reins by a passing countryman, the horse ducked his head and went kicking and wriggling and frolicking away to the left, regardless of the tempting cry of the hounds.
The pace, of course, was too good for assistance—and our friend and the field were presently far asunder.
Whatever sport the hounds had—and of course they would have a clipper—we can answer for it Mr. Pringle had a capital run; for his horse led him a pretty Will-o’-the-wisp sort of dance, tempting him on and on by stopping to eat whenever his rider—or late rider, rather—seemed inclined to give up the chase, thus deluding him from field to lane and from lane to field until our hero was fairly exhausted.—Many were the rushes and dashes and ventures made at him by hedgers and ditchers and drainers, but he evaded them all by laying back his ears and turning the battery of his heels for the contemplation, as if to give them the choice of a bite or a kick.
At length he turned up the depths of the well-known Love Lane, with its paved trottoir, for the damsels of the adjoining hamlets of East and West Woodhay to come dry-shod to the gossip-shop of the well; and here, dressed in the almost-forgotten blue boddice and red petticoat of former days, stood pretty Nancy Bell, talking matrimonially to Giles Bacon, who had brought his team to a stand-still on the higher ground of the adjoining hedge, on the field above.
Hearing the clatter of hoofs, as the grey tried first the hard and then the soft of the lane, Bacon looked that way; and seeing a loose horse he jumped bodily into the lane, extending his arms and his legs and his eyes and his mouth in a way that was very well calculated to stop even a bolder animal than a horse. He became a perfect barrier. The grey drew up with an indignant snort and a stamp of his foot, and turning short round he trotted back, encountering in due time his agitated and indignant master, who had long been vowing what a trimming he would give him when he caught him. Seeing Billy in a hurry,—for animals are very good judges of mischief, as witness an old cock how he ducks when one picks up a stone,—seeing Billy in a hurry we say, the horse again wheeled about, and returned with more leisurely steps towards his first opponent. Bacon and Nancy were now standing together in the lane; and being more pleasantly occupied than thinking about loose horses, they just stood quietly and let him come towards them, when Giles’s soothing w-ho-o-ays and matter-of-course style beguiled the horse into being caught.
Billy presently came shuffling up, perspiring profusely, with his feet encumbered with mud, and stamping the thick of it off while he answered Bacon’s question as to “hoo it happened,” and so on, in the grumpy sort of way a man does who has lost his horse, he presented him with a shilling, and remounting, rode off, after a very fine run of at least twenty minutes.
The first thing our friend did when he got out of sight of Giles Bacon and Nancy, was to give his horse a good rap over the head with his whip for its impudent stupidity in running away, causing him to duck his head and shake it, as if he had got a pea or a flea in his ear.—He then began wheeling round and round, like a dog wanting to lie down, much to Billy’s alarm, for he didn’t wish for any more nonsense. That performance over, he again began ducking and shaking his head, and then went moodily on, as if indifferent to consequences. Billy wished he mightn’t have hit him so hard.
When he got home, he mentioned the horse’s extraordinary proceedings to the Major, who, being a bit of a vet. and a strong suspector of Sir Moses’ generosity to boot, immediately set it down to the right cause—megrims—and advised Billy to return him forthwith, intimating that Sir Moses was not altogether the thing in the matter of horses; but our friend, who kept the blow with the whip to himself, thought he had better wait a day or two and see if the attack would go off.—In this view he was upheld by Jack Rogers, who thought his old recipe, “leetle drop gin,” would set him all right, and proceeded to administer it to himself accordingly. And the horse improved so much that he soon seemed himself again, whereupon Billy, recollecting Sir Moses’s strenuous injunctions to give him the refusal of him if ever he wanted to part with him, now addressed him the following letter:—
“Yammerton Grange.
“Dear Sir Moses,
“As I find I must return to town immediately after the hunt ball, to which you were so good as invite me, and as the horse you were so good as give me would be of no use to me there, I write, in compliance with my promise to offer him back to you if ever I wanted to part with him, to say that he will be quite at your service after our next day’s hunting, or before if you like, as I dare say the Major will mount me if I require it. He is a very nice horse, and I feel extremely obliged for your very handsome intentions with regard to him, which, under other circumstances, I should have been glad to accept. Circumstanced as I am, however, he would be wasted upon me, and will be much better back in your stud.
“I will, therefore, send him over on hearing from you; and you can either put my I.O.U. in the fire, or enclose it to me by the Post.
“Again thanking you for your very generous offer, and hoping you are having good sport, I beg to subscribe myself,
“Dear Sir Moses,
“Yours very truly,
“Wm. PRINGLE
“To Sir Moses Mainchance, Bart.,
“Pangburn Park.”
And having sealed it with the great seal of state, he handed it to Rougier to give to the postman, without telling his host what he had done.
The next post brought the following answer:—
“Many, very many thanks to you, my dear Pringle, for your kind recollection of me with regard to the grey, which I assure you stamps you in my opinion as a most accurate and excellent young man.—You are quite right in your estimate of my opinion of the horse; indeed, if I had not considered him something very far out of the common way, I should not have put him into your hands; but knowing him to be as good as he’s handsome, I had very great satisfaction in placing him with you, as well on your own account as from your being the nephew of my old and excellent friend and brother baronet, Sir Jonathan Pringle—to whom I beg you to make my best regards when you write.
“Even were it not so, however, I should be precluded from accepting your kind and considerate offer for only yesterday I sent Wetun into Doubleimupshire, to bring home a horse I’ve bought of Tom Toweler, on Paul Straddler’s recommendation, being, as I tell Paul, the last I’ll ever buy on his judgment, unless he turns out a trump, as he has let me in for some very bad ones.
“But, my dear Pringle, ain’t you doing yourself a positive injustice in saying that you would have no use for the grey in town? Town, my dear fellow, is the very place for a horse of that colour, figure, and pretension; and a very few turns in the Park, with you on his back, before that best of all pennyworths, the chair-sitting swells, might land you in the highest ranks of the aristocracy—unless, indeed, you are booked elsewhere, of which, perhaps, I have no business to inquire.
“I may, however, as a general hint, observe to the nephew of my old friend, that the Hit-im and Hold-imshire Mammas don’t stand any nonsense, so you will do well to be on your guard. No; take my advice, my dear fellow, and ride that horse in town.—It will only be sending him to Tat.‘s if you tire of him there, and if it will in any way conduce to your peace of mind, and get rid of any high-minded feeling of obligation, you can hand me over whatever you get for him beyond the £50 —And that reminds me, as life is uncertain, and it is well to do everything regularly, I’ll send my agent, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, over with your I.O.U., and you can give me a bill at your own date—say two or three months—instead, and that will make us all right and square, and, I hope, help to maintain the truth of the old adage, that short reckonings make long friends,—which I assure you is a very excellent one.
“And now, having exhausted both my paper and subject, I shall conclude with repeating my due appreciation of your kind recollection of my wishes; and with best remembrances to your host and hostess, not forgetting their beautiful daughters, whom I hope to see in full feather at the ball, I remain,
“My dear Pringle.
“Very truly and sincerely, yours,
“Moses Mainchance.
“To Wm. Pringle”
We need scarcely add that Mr. Mordecai Nathan followed quickly on the heels of the letter, and that the I. 0. U. became a short-winded bill of exchange, thus saddling our friend permanently with the gallant grey. And when Major Yammerton heard the result, all the consolation Billy got from him was, “I told you so,” meaning that he ought to have taken his advice, and returned the horse as unsound.
With this episode about the horse, let us return to Pangburn Park.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE ANTHONY THOM TRAP.
SIR Moses was so fussy about his clothes, sending to the laundry for this shirt and that, censuring the fold of this cravat and that, inquiring after his new hunting ties and best boots, that Mrs. Margerum began to fear the buxom widow, Mrs. Vivian, was going to be at Lord Repartee’s, and that she might be saddled with that direst of all dread inflictions to an honest conscientious housekeeper, a teasing, worreting, meddling mistress. That is a calamity which will be best appreciated by the sisterhood, and those who watch how anxiously “widowers and single gentlemen” places are advertised for in the newspapers, by parties who frequently, not perhaps unaptly, describe themselves as “thoroughly understanding their business.”
Sir Moses, indeed, carried out the deception well; for not only in the matter of linen, but in that of clothes also, was he equally particular, insisting upon having all his first-class daylight things brought out from their winter quarters, and reviewing them himself as they lay on the sofa, ere he suffered Mr. Bankhead to pack them.
At length they were sorted and passed into the capacious depths of an ample brown leather portmanteau, and the key being duly turned and transferred to the Baronet, the package itself was chucked into the dog-cart in the unceremonious sort of way luggage is always chucked about. The vehicle itself then came to the door, and Sir Moses having delivered his last injunctions about the hounds and the horses, and the line of coming to cover so as to avoid public-houses, he ascended and touching the mare gently with the whip, trotted away amid the hearty—“well shut of yous” of the household. Each then retired to his or her private pursuits; some to drink, some to gamble, some to write letters, Mrs. Margerum, of course, to pick up the perquisites. Sir Moses, meanwhile, bowled away ostentatiously through the lodges, stopping to talk to everybody he met, and saying he was going away for the night.
Bonmot Park, the seat of Lord Repartee, stands about the junction of Hit-im and Hold-imshire, with Featherbedfordshire. Indeed, his great cover of Tewington Wood is neutral between the hunts, and the best way to the park on wheels, especially in winter time, is through Hinton and Westleak, which was the cause of Sir Moses hitting upon it for his deception, inasmuch as he could drive into the Fox and Hounds Hotel; and at Hinton, under pretence of baiting his mare without exciting suspicion, and there make his arrangements for the night. Accordingly, he took it very quietly after he got clear of his own premises, coveting rather the shades of evening that he had suffered so much from before, and as luck would have it by driving up Skinner Lane, instead of through Nelson Street, he caught a back view of Paul Straddler, as for the twenty-third time that worthy peeped through the panes of Mrs. Winship, the straw-bonnet maker’s window in the market-place, at a pretty young girl she had just got from Stownewton. Seeing his dread acquaintance under such favourable circumstances, Sir Moses whipped Whimpering Kate on, and nearly upset himself against the kerb-stone as he hurried up the archway of the huge deserted house,—the mare’s ringing hoofs alone, announcing his coming.
Ostler! Ostler! Ostler! cried he in every variety of tone, and at length the crooked-legged individual filling that and other offices, came hobbling and scratching his head to the summons. Sir Moses alighting then, gave him the reins and whip; and wrapper in hand, proceeded to the partially gas-lit door in the archway, to provide for himself while the ostler looked after the mare.
Now, it so happened, that what with bottle ends and whole bottles, and the occasional contributions of the generous, our friend Peter the waiter was even more inebriated than he appears at page 263; and the rumbling of gig-wheels up the yard only made him waddle into the travellers’ room, to stir the fire and twist up a bit of paper to light the gas, in case it was any of the despised brotherhood of the road.—He thought very little of bagmen—Mr. Customer was the man for his money. Now, he rather expected Mr. Silesia, Messrs. Buckram the clothiers’ representative, if not Mr. Jaconette, the draper’s also, about this time; and meeting Sir Moses hurrying in top-coated and cravated with the usual accompaniments of the road, he concluded it was one of them; so capped him on to the commercial room with his dirty duster-holding hand.
“Get me a private room, Peter; get me a private room,” demanded the Baronet, making for the bottom of the staircase away from the indicated line of scent.
“Private room,” muttered Peter.
“Why, who is it?”
“Me! me!” exclaimed Sir Moses, thinking Peter would recognise him.
“Well, but whether are ye a tailor or a draper?” demanded Peter, not feeling inclined to give way to the exclusiveness of either.
“Tailor or draper! you stupid old sinner—don’t you see it’s me—me Sir Moses Mainchance?”
“Oh, Sir Moses, Sir, I beg your pardon, Sir,” stammered the now apologising Peter, hurrying back towards the staircase. “I really begs your pardon, Sir; but my eyes are beginning to fail me, Sir—not so good as they were when Mr. Customer hunted the country.—Well Sir Moses, Sir, I hope you’re well, Sir; and whether will you be in the Sun or the Moon? You can have a fire lighted in either in a minute, only you see we don’t keep fires constant no ways now, ‘cept in the commercial room.—Great change, Sir Moses, Sir, since Mr. Customer hunted the country; yes, Sir, great change—used to have fires in every room, Sir, and brandy and—”
“Well, but,” interrupted Sir Moses, “I can’t sit freezing up stairs till the fire’s burnt up.—You go and get it lighted, and come to me in the commercial-room and tell me when it’s ready; and here!” continued he, “I want some dinner in an hour’s time, or so.”
“By all means, Sir Moses. What would you like to take, Sir Moses?” as if there was everything at command.
Sir Moses—“Have you any soup?”
Peter—“Soup, Sir Moses. No, I don’t think there is any soup.”
Sir Moses—“Fish; have you any fish?”
Peter—“Why, no; I don’t think there’ll be any fish to-day, Sir Moses.”
Sir Moses—“What have you, then?”
Peter—(Twisting the dirty duster), “Mutton chops—beef steak—beef steak—mutton chops—boiled fowl, p’raps you’d like to take?”
Sir Moses—“No. I shouldn’t (muttering, most likely got to be caught and killed yet.) Tell the cook,” continued he, speaking up, “to make on a wood and coal fire, and to do me a nice dish of mutton chops on the gridiron; not in the frying-pan mind, all swimming in grease; and to boil some mealy potatoes.”
Peter—“Yes, Sir Moses; and what would you like to have to follow?”
“Cheese!” said Sir Moses, thinking to cut short the inquiry.
“And hark’e.” continued Sir Moses: Don’t make a great man of me by bringing out your old battered copper showing-dishes; but tell the cook to send the chops up hot and hot, between good warm crockery-ware plates, with ketchup or Harvey sauce for me to use as I like.”
“Yes, Sir Moses,” replied Peter, toddling off to deliver as much of the order as he could remember.
And Sir Moses having thawed himself at the commercial-room fire, next visited the stable to see that his mare had been made comfortable, and told the ostler post-boy boots to be in the way, as he should most likely want him to take him out in the fly towards night. As he returned, he met Bessey Bannister, the pretty chambermaid, now in the full glow of glossy hair and crinoline, whom he enlisted as purveyor of the mutton into the Moon, in lieu of the antiquated Peter, whose services he was too glad to dispense with.—It certainly is a considerable aggravation of the miseries of a country inn to have to undergo the familiarities of a dirty privileged old waiter.
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So thought Sir Moses, as he enjoyed each succeeding chop, and complimented the fair maiden so on her agility and general appearance, that she actually dreamt she was about to become Lady Mainchance.
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE ANTHONY THOM TAKE.
SIR Moses Mainchance, having fortified himself against the night air with a pint of club port, and a glass of pale brandy after his tea, at length ordered out the inn fly, without naming its destination to his fair messenger. These vehicles, now so generally scattered throughout the country, are a great improvement on the old yellow post-chaise, that made such a hole in a sovereign, and such a fuss in getting ready, holloaing, “Fust pair out!” and so on, to give notice to a smock-frocked old man to transform himself into a scarlet or blue jacketed post-boy by pulling off his blouse, and who, after getting a leg-up and a ticket for the first turnpike-gate, came jingling, and clattering, and cracking his dog-whip round to the inn door, attracting all the idlers and children to the spot, to see who was going to get into the “chay.” The fly rumbles quietly round without noise or pretension, exciting no curiosity in any one’s mind; for it is as often out as in, and may only be going to the next street, or to Woodbine Lodge, or Balsam Bower, on the outskirts of the town, or for an hour’s airing along the Featherbedfordshire or the old London road. It does not even admit of a pull of the hair as a hint to remember the ostler as he stands staring in at the window, the consequence of which is, that the driver is generally left to open the door for his passenger himself. Confound those old iniquities of travelling!—a man used never to have his hand out of his pocket. Let not the rising generation resuscitate the evil, by contravening the salutary regulation of not paying people on railways.
Sir Moses hearing the sound of wheels, put on his wraps; and, rug in hand, proceeded quietly down stairs, accompanied only by the fair Bessy Bannister, instead of a flight of dirty waiters, holloaing “Coming down! coming down! now then! look sharp!” and so on.
The night was dark, but the ample cab-lamps threw a gleam over the drab and red lined door that George Beer the driver held back in his hand to let his customer in.
“Good night, my dear,” said Sir Moses, now slyly squeezing Miss Bannister’s hand, wondering why people hadn’t nice clean quiet-stepping women to wait upon them, instead of stuck-up men, who thought to teach their masters what was right, who wouldn’t let them have their plate-warmers in the room, or arrange their tables according to their own desires.—With these and similar reflections he then dived head-foremost into the yawning abyss of a vehicle. “Bang” went the door, and Beer then touched the side of his hat for instructions where to go to.
“Let me see,” said Sir Moses, adjusting his rug, as if he hadn’t quite made up his mind. “Let me see—oh, ah! drive me northwards, and I’ll tell you further when we stop at the Slopewell turnpike-gate:” so saying Sir Moses drew up the gingling window, Beer mounted the box, and away the old perpetual-motion horse went nodding and knuckling over the uneven cobble-stone pavement, varying the motion with an occasional bump and jump at the open channels of the streets. Presently a smooth glide announced the commencement of Macadam, and shortly after the last gas-lamp left the road to darkness and to them. All was starlight and serene, save where a strip of newly laid gravel grated against the wheels, or the driver objurgated a refractory carter for not getting out of his way. Thus they proceeded at a good, steady, plodding sort of pace, never relaxing into a walk, but never making any very vehement trot.
At the Slopewell gate Sir Moses told Beer to take a ticket for the Winterton Burn one; arrived at which, he said, “Now go on and stop at the stile leading into the plantation, about half a mile on this side of my lodges,” adding, “I’ll walk across the park from there;” in obedience to which the driver again plied his whip along the old horse’s ribs, and in due time the vehicle drew up at the footpath along-side the plantation.—The door then opened, Sir Moses alighted and stood waiting while the man turned his fly round and drove off, in order to establish his night eyes ere he attempted the somewhat intricate passage through the plantation to his house.
The night, though dark, was a good deal lighter than it appeared among the gloom of the houses and the glare of the gaslights at Hinton; and if he was only well through the plantation, Sir Moses thought he should not have much difficulty with the rest of the way. So conning the matter over in his mind, thinking whereabouts the boards over the ditch were, where the big oak stood near which the path led to the left, he got over the stile, and dived boldly into the wood.
The Baronet made a successful progress, and emerged upon the open space of Coldnose, just as the night breeze spread the twelve o’clock notes of his stable clock through the frosty air, upon the quiet country.
“All right,” said he to himself, sounding his repeater to ascertain the hour, as he followed the tortuous track of the footpath, through cowslip pasture, over the fallow and along the side of the turnip field; he then came to the turn from whence in daylight the first view of the house is obtained.
A faint light glimmered in the distance, about where he thought the house would be situate.
“Do believe that’s her room,” said Sir Moses, stopping and looking at the light. “Do believe that’s her signal for beloved Anthony Thom. If I catch the young scoundrel,” continued he, hurrying on, “I’ll—I’ll—I’ll break every bone in his skin.” With this determination, Sir Moses put on as fast as the now darker lower ground would allow, due regard being had to not missing his way.
At length he came to the cattle hurdles that separated the east side of the park from the house, climbing over which he was presently among the dark yews and hollies, and box-bushes of the shrubbery. He then paused to reconnoitre.—The light was still there.—If it wasn’t Mrs. Margerum’s room, it was very near it; but he thought it was hers by the angle of the building and the chimneys at the end. What should he do?—Throw a pebble at the window and try to get her to lower what she had, or wait and see if he could take Anthony Thom, cargo and all? The night was cold, but not sufficiently so, he thought, to stop the young gentleman from coming, especially if he had his red worsted comforter on; and as Sir Moses threw his rug over his own shoulders, he thought he would go for the great haul, at all events; especially as he felt he could not converse with Mrs. Margerum à la Anthony Thom, should she desire to have a little interchange of sentiment. With this determination he gathered his rug around him, and proceeded to pace a piece of open ground among the evergreens, like the Captain of a ship walking the quarter-deck, thinking now of his money, now of his horses, now of Miss Bannister, and now of the next week’s meets of his hounds.—He had not got half through his current of ideas when a footstep sounded upon the gravel-walk; and, pausing in his career, Sir Moses distinctly recognised the light patter of some one coming towards him. He down to charge like a pointer to his game, and as the sound ceased before the light-showing window, Sir Moses crept stealthily round among the bushes, and hid behind a thick ground-sweeping yew, just as a rattle of peas broke upon the panes.
The sash then rose gently, and Sir Moses participated in the following conversation:—
Mrs. Margerum (from above)—“O, my own dearly beloved Anthony Thom, is that you, darling! But don’t, dear, throw such big ‘andfulls, or you’ll be bricking the winder.”
Master Anthony Thom (from below)—“No, mother; only I thought you might be asleep.”
Mrs. Margerum—“Sleep, darling, and you coming! I never sleep when my own dear Anthony Thom is coming! Bless your noble heart! I’ve been watching for you this—I don’t know how long.”
Master Anthony Thom—“Couldn’t get Peter Bateman’s cuddy to come on.”
Mrs. Margerum—“And has my Anthony Thom walked all the way?”
Master Anthony Thom—“No; I got a cast in Jackey Lishman the chimbley-sweep’s car as far as Burnfoot Bridge. I’ve walked from there.”
Mrs. Margerum—“Bless his sweet heart! And had he his worsted comforter on?”
Master Anthony Thom—“Yes; goloshes and all.”
Mrs. Margerum—“Ah, goloshes are capital things. They keep the feet, warm, and prevent your footsteps from being heard. And has my Anthony Thom got the letter I wrote to him at the Sun in the Sands?”
Master Anthony Thom—“No, never heard nothin’ of it.”
Mrs. Margerum—“No! Why what can ha’ got it?”
Master Anthony Thom—“Don’t know.—Makes no odds.—I got the things all the same.”
Mrs. Margerum—“O, but my own dear Anthony Thom, but it does. Mr. Gerge Gallon says it’s very foolish for people to write anything if they can ‘elp it—they should always send messages by word of mouth. Mr. Gallon is a man of great intellect, and I’m sure what he says is right, and I wish I had it back.”
Master Anthony Thom—“O, it’ll cast up some day, I’ll be bound.—It’s of no use to nobody else.”
Mrs. Margerum—“I hope so, my dear. But it is not pleasant to think other folks may read what was only meant for my own Anthony Thom. However, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, and we must manish better another time. So now look out, my beloved, and I’ll lower what I have.”
So saying, a grating of cord against the window-sill announced a descent, and Master Anthony Thom, grasping the load, presently cried, “All right!”
Mrs. Margerum,—“It’s not too heavy for you, is it, dear?” Master Anthony Thom (hugging the package)—“O, no; I can manish it. When shall I come again, then, mother?” asked he, preparing to be off.
Mrs. Margerum—“Oh, bless your sweet voice, my beloved. When shall you come again, indeed? I wish I could say very soon; but, dearest, it’s hardly safe, these nasty pollis fellers are always about, besides which, I question if old Nosey may be away again before the ball; and as he’ll be all on the screw for a while, to make up for past expense, I question it will be worth coming before then. So, my own dear Anthony Thom, s’pose we say the ball night, dear, about this time o’ night, and get a donkey to come on as far as the gates, if you can, for I dread the fatigue; and if you could get a pair of panniers, so much the better, you’d ride easier, and carry your things better, and might have a few fire-bricks or hearth-stones to put at the top, to pretend you were selling them, in case you were stopped—which, however, I hope won’t be the case, my own dear; but you can’t be too careful, for it’s a sad, sinful world, and people don’t care what they say of their neighbours. So now, my own dearest Anthony Thom, good night, and draw your worsted comforter close round your throat, for colds are the cause of half our complaints, and the night air is always to be dreaded; and take care that you don’t overheat yourself, but get a lift as soon as you can, only mind who it is with, and don’t say you’ve been here, and be back on the ball night. So good night, my own dearest Anthony Thom, and take care of yourself whatever you do, for——”
“Good night, mother,” now interrupted Anthony Thom, adjusting the bundle under his arm, and with repeated “Good night, my own dearest,” from her, he gave it a finishing jerk, and turning round, set off on his way rejoicing.
Sir Moses was too good a sportsman to holloa before his game was clear of the cover; and he not only let Anthony Thom’s footsteps die out on the gravel-walk, but the sash of Mrs. Margerum’s window descend ere he withdrew from his hiding-place and set off in pursuit. He then went tip-toeing along after him, and was soon within hearing of the heavily laden lad.
“Anthony Thom, my dear! Anthony Thom,” whispered he, coming hastily upon him as he now turned the corner of the house.
Anthony Thom stopped, and trembling violently exclaimed, “O Mr. Gallon, is it you?”
“Yes, my dear, it’s me,” replied Sir Moses, adding, “you’ve got a great parcel, my dear; let me carry it for you,” taking it from him as he spoke.
[Original Size]
“Shriek! shriek! scream!” now went the terrified Thom, seeing into whose hands he had fallen. “O you dom’d young rascal,” exclaimed Sir Moses, muffling him with his wrapper,—“I’ll draw and quarter you if you make any noise. Come this way, you young miscreant!” added he, seizing him by the worsted comforter and dragging him along past the front of the house to the private door in the wall, through which Sir Moses disappeared when he wanted to evade Mon s. Rougier’s requirements for his steeple-chase money.
That passed, they were in the stable-yard, now silent save the occasional stamp of the foot or roll of the halter of some horse that had not yet lain down. Sir Moses dragged his victim to the door in the corner leading to the whipper-in’s bedroom, which, being open, he proceeded to grope his way up stairs. “Harry! Joe! Joe! Harry!” holloaed he, kicking at the door.
Now, Harry was away, but Joe was in bed; indeed he was having a hunt in his sleep, and exclaimed as the door at length yielded to the pressure of Sir Moses’ foot. “‘Od rot it! Don’t ride so near the hounds, man!”
“Joe!” repeated Sir Moses, making up to the corner from whence the sound proceeded. “Joe! Joe!” roared he still louder.
“O, I beg your pardon! I’ll open the gate!” exclaimed Joe, now throwing off the bed-clothes and bounding vigorously on to the floor.
“Holloa!” exclaimed he, awaking and rubbing his eyes. “Holloa! who’s there?”
“Me,” said Sir Moses, “me,”—adding: “Don’t make a row, but strike a light as quick as you can; I’ve got a bag fox I want to show you.”
“Bag fox, have you?” replied Joe, now recognising his master’s voice, making for the mantel-piece and feeling for the box. “Bag fox, have you? Dreamt we were in the middle of a run from Ripley Coppice, and that I couldn’t get old Crusader over the brook at no price.” He then hit upon the box, and with a scrape of a lucifer the room was illuminated.
Having lit a mould candle that stood stuck in the usual pint-bottle neck, Joe came with it in his hand to receive the instructions of his master.
“Here’s a dom’d young scoundrel I’ve caught lurking about the house,” said Sir Moses, pushing Anthony Thom towards him “and I want you to give him a good hiding.”
“Certainly, Sir Moses; certainly,” replied Joe, taking Anthony Thom by the ear as he would a hound, and looking him over amid the whining and whimpering and beggings for mercy of the boy.
“Why this is the young rascal that stole my Sunday shirt off Mrs. Saunders’s hedge!” exclaimed Joe, getting a glimpse of Anthony Thom’s clayey complexioned face.
“No, it’s not,” whined the boy. “No, it’s not. I never did nothin’ o’ the sort.”
“Nothin’ o’ the sort!” retorted Joe, “why there ain’t two hugly boys with hare lips a runnin’ about the country,” pulling down the red-worsted comforter, and exposing the deformity as he spoke.
“It’s you all over,” continued he, seizing a spare stirrup leather, and proceeding to administer the buckle-end most lustily. Anthony Thom shrieked and screamed, and yelled and kicked, and tried to bite; but Joe was an able practitioner, and Thom could never get a turn at him.
Having finished one side, Joe then turned him over, and gave him a duplicate beating on the other side.
“There! that’ll do: kick him down stairs!” at length cried Sir Moses, thinking Joe had given him enough; and as the boy went bounding head foremost down, he dropped into his mother’s arms, who, hearing his screams, had come to the rescue.
Joe and his master then opened the budget and found the following goods:—
2 lb. of tea, 1 bar of brown soap in a dirty cotton night-cap, marked C. F.; doubtless, as Sir Moses said, one of Cuddy Flintoff’s.
“Dom all such dripping,” said Sir Moses, as he desired Joe to carry the things to the house. “No wonder that I drank a great deal of tea,” added he, as Joe gathered them together.
“Who the deuce would keep house that could help it?” muttered Sir Moses, proceeding on his way to the mansion, thinking what a trouncing he would give Mrs. Margerum ere he turned her out of doors.
1 lb. of coffee
3 lb. of brown sugar
3 lb. of starch
1 lb. of currants
1 lb. of rushlights
1 roll of cocoa
2 oz. of nutmegs
1 lb. of mustard
1 bar of pale soap
1 lb. of orange peel
1 bottle of capers
1 quail of split pras
CHAPTER LIX.
ANOTHER COUNCIL OF WAR.—MR. GALLON AT HOME.
MRS. Margerum having soothed and pressed her beautiful boy to her bosom, ran into the house, and hurrying on the everlasting pheasant-feather bonnet in which she was first introduced to the reader, and a faded red and green tartan cloak hanging under it, emerged at the front door just as Sir Moses and Joe entered at the back one, vowing that she would have redress if it cost her a fi’ pun note. Clutching dear Anthony Thom by the waist, she made the best of her way down the evergreen walk, and skirting the gardens, got upon the road near the keeper’s lodge. “Come along, my own dear Anthony Thom,” cried she, helping him along, “let us leave this horrid wicked hole.—Oh, dear! I wish I’d never set foot in it; but I’ll not have my Anthony Thom chastised by any nasty old clothesman—no, that I won’t, if it cost me a fifty pun note”—continued she, burning for vengeance. But Anthony Thom had been chastised notwithstanding, so well, indeed, that he could hardly hobble—seeing which, Mrs. Margerum halted, and again pressing him to her bosom, exclaimed, “Oh, my beloved Anthony Thom can’t travel; I’ll take him and leave him at Mr. Hindmarch’s, while I go and consult Mr. Gallon.”—So saying, she suddenly changed her course, and crossing Rye-hill green, and the ten-acre field adjoining, was presently undergoing the wow-wow wow-wow of the farmer lawyer’o dog, Towler. The lawyer, ever anxious for his poultry, was roused by the noise; and after a rattle of bolts, and sliding of a sash, presented his cotton night-capped head at an upper window, demanding in a stentorian voice “who was there?”
“Me! Mr. Hindmarch, me! Mrs. Margerum; for pity’s sake take us in, for my poor dear boy’s been most shemfully beat.”
“Beat, has he!” exclaimed the lawyer, recognising the voice, his ready wit jumping to an immediate conclusion; “beat, has he!” repeated he, withdrawing from the window to fulfil her behest, adding to himself as he struck a light and descended the staircase, “that’ll ha’ summut to do with the dripping, I guess—always thought it would come to mischief at last.” The rickety door being unbolted and opened, Mrs. Margerum and her boy entered, and Mrs. Hindmarch having also risen and descended, the embers of the kitchen fire were resuscitated, and Anthony Thom was examined by the united aid of a tallow candle and it. “Oh, see! see!” cried Mrs. Margerum, pointing out the wales on his back,—“was there ever a boy so shemfully beat? But I’ll have revenge on that villainous man,—that I will, if it cost me a hundred pun note.”—The marks seen, soothed, and deplored, Mr. Hindmarch began inquiring who had done it. “Done it! that nasty old Nosey,” replied Mrs. Margerum, her eyes flashing with fire; “but I’ll make the mean feller pay for it,” added she,—“that I will.”
“No, it wasn’t old No-No-Nosey, mo-mo-mother,” now sobbed Anthony Thom, “it was that nasty Joe Ski-Ski-Skinner.”
“Skinner, was it, my priceless jewel,” replied Mrs. Margerum, kissing him, “I’ll skin him; but Nosey was there, wasn’t he, my pet?”
“O, yes, Nosey was there,” replied Anthony Thom, “it was him that took me to Ski-Ski-Skinner”—the boy bursting out into a fresh blubber, and rubbing his dirty knuckles into his streaming eyes as he spoke.
“O that Skinner’s a bad un,” gasped Mrs. Margerum, “always said he was a mischievous, dangerous man; but I’ll have satisfaction of both him and old Nosey,” continued she, “or I’ll know the reason why.”
The particulars of the catastrophe being at length related (at least as far as it suited Mrs. Margerum to tell it), the kettle was presently put on the renewed fire, a round table produced, and the usual consolation of the black bottle resorted to. Then as the party sat sipping their grog, a council of war was held as to the best course of proceeding. Lawyer Hindmarch was better versed in the law of landlord and tenant—the best way of a tenant doing his landlord,—than in the more recondite doctrine of master and servant, particularly the delicate part relating to perquisites; and though he thought Sir Moses had done wrong in beating the boy, he was not quite sure but there might be something in the boy being found about the house at an unseasonable hour of the night. Moreover, as farming times were getting dull, and the lawyer was meditating a slope à la Henerey Brown & Co.? he did not wish to get mixed up in a case that might bring him in collision with Sir Moses or his agent, so he readily adopted Mrs. Margerum’s suggestion of going to consult Mr. George Gallon. He really thought Mr. Gallon would be the very man for her to see. Geordey was up to everything, and knew nicely what people could stand by, and what they could not; and lawyer Hindmarch was only sorry his old grey gig-mare was lame, or he would have driven her up to George’s at once. However, there was plenty of time to get there on foot before morning, and they would take care of Anthony Thom till she came back, only she must be good enough not to return till nightfall; for that nasty suspicious Nathan was always prowling about, and would like nothing better than to get him into mischief with Sir Moses.—And that point being settled, they replenished their glasses, and drank success to the mission; and having seen the belaboured Anthony Thom safe in a shakedown, Mrs. Margerum borrowed Mrs. Hindmarch’s second best bonnet, a frilled and beaded black velvet one with an ostrich feather, and her polka jacket, and set off on foot for the Rose and Crown beer-shop, being escorted to their door by her host and hostess, who assured her it wouldn’t be so dark when she got away from the house a bit.
And that point being accomplished, lawyer and Mrs. Hindmarch retired to rest, wishing they were as well rid of Anthony Thom, whom they made no doubt had got into a sad scrape, in which they wished they mightn’t be involved.
A sluggish winter’s day was just dragging its lazy self into existence as Mrs. Margerum came within sight of Mr. Gallon’s red-topped roof at the four lane ends, from whose dumpy chimney the circling curl of a wood fire was just emerging upon the pure air. As she got nearer, the early-stirring Mr. Gallon himself crossed the road to the stable, attired in the baggy velveteen shooting-jacket of low with the white cords and shining pork-butcher’s top-boots of high life. Mr. Gallon was going to feed Tippy Tom before setting off for the great open champion coursing meeting to be held on Spankerley Downs, “by the kind permission of Sir Harry Fuzball, Baronet,” it being one of the peculiar features of the day that gentlemen who object to having their game killed in detail, will submit to its going wholesale, provided it is done with a suitable panegyrick. “By the kind permission of Sir Harry Fuzball, Baronet,” or “by leave of the lord of the manor of Flatshire,” and so on; and thus every idler who can’t keep himself is encouraged to keep a greyhound, to the detriment of a nice lady-like amusement, and the encouragement of gambling and poaching.
Mr. Gallon was to be field steward of this great open champion meeting, and had been up betimes, polishing off Tippy Tom; which having done, he next paid a similar compliment to his own person; and now again was going to feed the flash high-stepping screw, ere he commenced with his breakfast.
Mrs. Margerum’s “hie Mr. Gallon, hie!” and up-raised hand, as she hurried down the hill towards his house, arrested his progress as he passed to the stable with the sieve, and he now stood biting the oats, and eyeing her approach with the foreboding of mischief that so seldom deceives one.
“O Mr. Gallon! O Mr. Gallon!” cried Mrs. Margerum, tottering up, and dropping her feathered head on his brawny shoulder.
“What’s oop? What’s oop?” eagerly demanded our sportsman, fearing for his fair character.
“O Mr. Gallon! such mischief! such mischief!”
“Speak, woman! speak!” demanded our publican; “say, has he cotched ye?”
“Yes, Gerge, yes,” sobbed Mrs. Margerum, bursting into tears. “To devil he has!” exclaimed Mr. Gallon, stamping furiously with his right foot, “Coom into it hoose, woman; coom into it hoose, and tell us arl aboot it.” So saying, forgetting Tippy Toni’s wants, he retraced his steps with the corn, and flung frantically into the kitchen of his little two-roomed cottage.
“Here, lassie!” cried he, to a little girl, who was frying a dish of bubble-and-squeak at the fire. “Here, lassie, set doon it pan loike, aud tak this corn to it huss, and stand by while it eats it so saying he handed her the sieve, and following her to the door, closed it upon her.
“Noo,” said he to Mrs. Margerum, “sit doon and tell us arl aboot it. Who cotched ye? Nosey, or who?”
“0 it wasn’t me! It was Anthony Thom they caught, and they used him most shemful; but I’ll have him tried for his life ofore my Lord Size, and transported, if it costs me all I’m worth in the world.”
“Anthony Thom was it?” rejoined Mr. Gallon, raising his great eye-brows, and staring wide his saucer eyes, “Anthony Thom was it? but he’d ha’ nothin’ upon oi ‘ope?”
“Nothin’, Gerge,” replied Mrs. Margerum, “nothin’—less now it might just appen to be an old rag of a night-eap of that nasty, covetous body Cuddy Flintoff; but whether it had a mark upon it or not I really can’t say.”
“O dear, but that’s a bad job,” rejoined Mr. Gallon, biting his lips and shaking his great bull-head; “O dear, but that’s a bad job. you know I always chairged ye to be careful ‘boot unlawful goods.”
“You did, Gerge! you did!” sighed Mrs. Margerum; “and if this old rag had a mark, it was a clear oversight. But, O dear!” continued she, bursting into tears, “how they did beat my Anthony Thom!” With this relief she became more composed, and proceeded to disclose all the particulars.
“Ah, this ‘ill be a trick of those nasty pollis fellers,” observed Mr. Gallon thoughtfully, “oi know’d they’d be the ruin o’ trade as soon as ever they came into it country loike—nasty pokin’, pryin’, mischievous fellers. Hoosomiver it mun be seen to, aud that quickly,” continued he. “for it would damage me desp’rate on the Torf to have ony disturbance o’ this sorrt, and we mun stop it if we can.
“Here, lassie!” cried he to the little girl who had now returned from the stable, “lay cloth i’ next room foike, and then finish the fryin’; and oi’ll tell ve what,” continued he, laying his huge hand on Mrs. Margerum’s shoulder, “oi’ve got to go to it champion cooursin’ meetin’, so I’ll just put it hus into harness and droive ye round by it Bird-i’-the-Bush, where we’ll find Carroty Kebbel, who’ll tell us what te do, for oi don’t like the noight-cap business some hoo,” so saying Mr. Gallon took his silver plated harness down from its peg in the kitchen, and proceeded to caparison Tippy Tom, while the little girl, now assisted by Mrs. Margerum, prepared the breakfast, and set it on the table. Rather a sumptuous repast they had, considering it was only a way-side beer-shop; bubble-and-squeak, reindeer-tongue, potted game, potted shrimps, and tea strikingly like some of Sir Moses’s. The whole being surmounted with a glass a-piece of pure British gin, Mr. Gallon finished his toilette, and then left to put the high-stepping screw into the light spring-cart, while Mrs. Margerum reviewed her visage in the glass, and as the openworks clock in the kitchen struck nine, they were dashing down the Heatherbell-road at the rate of twelve miles an hour.
CHAPTER LX.
MR. CARROTY KEBBEL.
MR. Carroty Kebbel was a huge red-haired, Crimean-bearded, peripatetic attorney, who travelled from petty sessions to petty sessions, spending his intermediate time at the public houses, ferreting out and getting up cases. He was a roistering ruffian, who contradicted everybody, denied everything, and tried to get rid of what he couldn’t answer with a horse-laugh. He was in good practice, for he allowed the police a liberal per-centage for bringing him prosecutions, while his bellowing bullying insured him plenty of defences on his own account. He was retained by half the ragamuffins in the country. He had long been what Mr. Gallon not inaptly called his “liar,” and had done him such good service as to earn free quarters at the Rose and Crown whenever he liked to call. He had been there only the day before, in the matter of an alibi he was getting up for our old hare-finding friend Springer, who was most unhandsomely accused of night-poaching in Lord Oilcake’s preserves, and that was how Mr. Gallon knew where to find him. The Crumpletin railway had opened out a fine consecutive line of petty sessions, out of which Carrots had carved a “home circuit” of his own. He was then on his return tour.
With the sprightly exertions of Tippy Tom, Gallon and Mrs. Margerum were soon within sight of the Bird-in-the-Bush Inn, at which Gallon drew up with a dash. Carrots, however, had left some half-hour before, taking the road for Farningford, where the petty sessions were about to be held; and though this was somewhat out of Gallon’s way to Spankerley Downs, yet the urgency of the case determined him to press on in pursuit, and try to see Carrots. Tippy Tom, still full of running, went away again like a shot, and bowling through Kimberley toll-bar with the air of a man who was free, Gallon struck down the Roughfield road to the left, availing himself of the slight fall of the ground to make the cart run away with the horse, as it were, and so help him up the opposing hill. That risen, they then got upon level ground; and, after bowling along for about a mile or so, were presently cheered with the sight of the black wide-awake crowned lawyer striding away in the distance.
Carrots was a disciple of the great Sir Charles Napier, who said that a change of linen, a bit of soap, and a comb were kit enough for any one; and being only a two-shirts-a-week man, he generally left his “other” one at such locality as he was likely to reach about the middle of it, so as to apportion the work equally between them. This was clean-shirt day with him, and he was displaying his linen in the ostentatious way of a man little accustomed to the luxury. With the exception of a lavender-and-white coloured watch-ribbon tie, he was dressed in a complete suit of black-grounded tweed, with the purple dots of an incipient rash, the coat having capacious outside pockets, and the trousers being now turned up at the bottoms to avoid the mud; “showing” rhinoceros hide-like shoes covering most formidable-looking feet. Such was the monster who was now swinging along the highway at the rate of five miles an hour, in the full vigour of manhood, and the pride of the morning. At the sight of him in advance, Mr. Gallon just touched Tippy Tom with the point of the whip, which the animal resented with a dash at the collar and a shake of the head, that as good as said, “You’d better not do that again, master, unless you wish to take your vehicle home in a sack.” Mr. Gallon therefore refrained, enlisting the aid of his voice instead, and after a series of those slangey-whiney yaah-hoo! yaah-hoo’s! that the swell-stage-coachmen, as they called the Snobs, used to indulge in to clear the road or attract attention, Mr. Gallon broke out into a good downright “Holloa, Mr. Kebbel! Holloa!”
At the sound of his name, Carrots, who was spouting his usual exculpatory speech, vowing he felt certain no bench of Justices would convict on such evidence, and so on, pulled up; and Mr. Gallon, waving his whip over his head, he faced about, and sat down on a milestone to wait his coming. The vehicle was presently alongside of him.
“Holloa, George!” exclaimed Carrots, rising and shaking hands with his client. “Holloa! What’s up? Who’s this you’ve got?” looking intently at Mrs. Margerum.
“I’ll tell you,” said George, easing the now quivering-tailed Tippy Tom’s head; “this is Mrs. Margerum you’ve heard me speak ‘boot; and she’s loike to get into a little trooble loike; and I tell’d her she’d best see a ‘liar’ as soon as she could.”
“Just so,” nodded Kebbel, anticipating what had happened. “You see,” continued Mr. Gallon, winding his whip thong round the stick as he spoke “in packing up some little bit things in a hurry loike, she put up a noight cap, and she’s not quoite sure whether she can stand by it or not, ye know.”
“I see,” assented Carrots; “and they’ve got it, I ‘spose?”
“I don’t know that they got it,” now interposed Mrs. Margerum; “but they got my Anthony Thom, and beat him most shameful. Can’t I have redress for my Anthony Thom?”
“We’ll see,” said Carrots, resuming his seat on the milestone, and proceeding to elicit all particulars, beginning with the usual important inquiry, whether Anthony Thom had said anything or not. Finding he had not, Carrots took courage, and seemed inclined to make light of the matter. “The groceries you bought, of course,” said he, “of Roger Rounding the basket-man—Roger will swear anything for me; and as for the night-cap, why say it was your aunt’s, or your niece’s, or your sister’s—Caroline Somebody’s—Caroline Frazer’s, Charlotte Friar’s, anybody’s whose initials are C. F.”
“O! but it wasn’t a woman’s night-cap, sir, it was a man’s; the sort of cap they hang folks in; and I should like to hang Old Mosey for beating my Anthony Thom,” rejoined Mrs. Margerum.
“I’m afraid we can’t hang him for that,” replied Mr. Kebbel, laughing. “Might have him up for the assault, perhaps.”
“Well, have him up for the assault,” rejoined Mrs. Margerum; “have him up for the assault. What business had he to beat my Anthony Thom?”
“Get him fined a shilling, and have to pay your own costs, perhaps,” observed Mr. Kebbel; “better leave that alone, and stick to the parcel business—better stick to the parcel business. There are salient points in the case. The hour of the night is an awkward part,” continued he, biting his nails; “not but that the thing is perfectly capable of explanation, only the Beaks don’t like that sort of work, it won’t do for us to provoke an inquiry into the matter.”
“Just so,” assented Mr. Gallon, who thought Mrs. Margerum had better be quiet.
“Well, but it’s hard that my Anthony Thom’s to be beat, and get no redress!” exclaimed Mrs. Margerum, bursting into tears.
“Hush, woman! hush!” muttered Mr. Gallon, giving her a dig in the ribs with his elbow; adding, “ye mun de what it liar tells ye.”
“I’ll tell you what I can do,” continued Mr. Kebbel, after a pause. “They’ve got my old friend Mark Bull, the ex-Double-im-up-shire Super, into this force, and think him a great card. I’ll get him to go to Sir Moses about the matter; and if Mark finds we are all right about the cap, he’s the very man to put Mosey up to a prosecution, and then we shall make a rare harvest out of him,” Carrots rubbing his hands with glee at the idea of an action for a malicious prosecution.
“Ay, that’ll be the gam,” said Mr. Gallon, chuckling,—“that’ll be the gam; far better nor havin’ of him oop for the ‘sult.”
“I think so,” said Mr. Kebbel, “I think so; at all events I’ll consider the matter; and if I send Mark to Sir Moses, I’ll tell him to come round by your place and let you know what he does; but, in the meantime,” continued Kebbel, rising and addressing Mrs. Margerum earnestly, “don’t you answer any questions to anybody, and tell Anthony Thom to hold his tongue too, and I’ve no doubt Mr. Gallon and I’ll make it all right;” so saying, Mr. Kebbel shook hands with them both, and stalked on to his petty-sessional practice.
Gallon then coaxed Tippy Turn round, and, retracing his steps as far as Kimberley gate, paid the toll, and shot Mrs. Margerum out, telling her to make the best of her way back to the Rose and Crown, and stay there till he returned. Gallon then took the road to the right, leading on to the wide-extending Spankerley Downs; where, unharnessing Tippy Tom under lea of a secluded plantation, he produced a saddle and bridle from the back of the cart, which, putting on, he mounted the high-stepping white, and was presently among the coursers, the greatest man at the meeting, some of the yokels, indeed, taking him for Sir Harry Fuzball himself.
But when Mr. Mark Bull arrived at Sir Moses’s, things had taken another turn, for the Baronet, in breaking open what he thought was one of Mrs. Margerum’s boxes, had in reality got into Mr. Bankhead’s, where, finding his ticket of leave, he was availing himself of that worthy’s absence to look over the plate prior to dismissing him, and Sir Moses made so light of Anthony Thom’s adventure that the Super had his trouble for nothing. Thus the heads of the house—the Mr. and Mrs. in fact, were cleared out in one and the same day, by no means an unusual occurrence in an establishment, after which of course Sir Moses was so inundated with stories against them, that he almost resolved to imitate his great predecessor’s example and live at the Fox and Hounds Hotel at Hinton in future. To this place his mind was now more than ordinarily directed in consequence of the arrangements that were then making for the approaching Hunt Ball, to which long looked-for festival we will now request the company of the reader.
CHAPTER LXI.
THE HUNT BALL.—MISS DE GLANCEY’S REFLECTIONS.
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THE Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt balls had long been celebrated for their matrimonial properties, as well for settling ripe flirtations, as for bringing to a close the billing and cooing of un-productive love, and opening fresh accounts with the popular firm of “Cupid and Co.” They were the greenest spot on the memory’s waste of many, on the minds of some whose recollections carried them back to the romping, vigorous Sir Roger de Coverley dances of Mr. Customer’s time,—of many who remembered the more stately glide of the elegant quadrille of Lord Martingal’s reign, down to the introduction of the once scandalising waltz and polka of our own. Many “Ask Mamma’s” had been elicited by these balls, and good luck was said to attend all their unions.
Great had been the changes in the manners and customs of the country, but the one dominant plain gold ring idea remained fixed and immutable. The Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt ball was expected to furnish a great demand for these, and Garnet the silversmith always exhibited an elegant white satin-lined morocco case full in his window, in juxtaposition with rows of the bright dress-buttons of the hunt, glittering on beds of delicate rose-tinted tissue paper.
All the milliners far and wide used to advertise their London and Parisian finery for the occasion, like our friend Mrs. Bobbinette,—for the railway had broken through the once comfortable monopoly that Mrs. Russelton and the Hinton ones formerly enjoyed, and had thrown crinoline providing upon the country at large. Indeed, the railway had deranged the old order of things; for whereas in former times a Doubleimnpshire or a Neck-and-Crop shire sportsman was rarely to be seen at the balls, aud those most likely under pressure of most urgent “Ask Mamma” circumstances, now they came swarming down like swallows, consuming a most unreasonable quantity of Champagne—always, of course, returning and declaring it was all “gusberry.” Formerly the ball was given out of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt funds; but this unwonted accession so increased the expense, that Sir Moses couldn’t stand it, dom’d of he could; and he caused a rule to be passed, declaring that after a certain sum allowed by the club, the rest should be paid by a tax on the tickets, so that the guest-inviting members might pay for their friends. In addition to this, a sliding-seale of Champagne was adopted, beginning with good, and gradually relaxing in quality, until there is no saying but that some of the late sitters might get a little gooseberry. Being, however, only a guest, we ought not perhaps to be too critical in the matter, so we will pass on to the more general features of the entertainment.
We take it a woman’s feelings and a man’s feelings with regard to a ball are totally different and distinct.
Men—unmarried men, at least—know nothing of the intrinsic value of a dress, they look at the general effect on the figure. Piquant simplicity, something that the mind grasps at a glance and retains—such as Miss Yammerton’s dress in the glove scene—is what they like. Many ladies indeed seem to get costly dresses in order to cover them over with something else, just as gentlemen build handsome lodges to their gates, and then block them out of sight by walls.
But even if ball-dresses were as attractive to the gentlemen as the ladies seem to think them, they must remember the competition they have to undergo in a ball-room, where great home beauties may be suddenly eclipsed by unexpected rivals, and young gentlemen see that there are other angels in the world besides their own adored ones. Still balls are balls, and fashion is fashion, and ladies must conform to it, or what could induce them to introduce the bits of black of the present day into their coloured dresses, as if they were just emerging from mourning. Even our fair friends at Yammerton Grange conformed to the fashion, and edged the many pink satin-ribboned flounces of their white tulle dresses with narrow black lace—though they would have looked much prettier without.
Of all the balls given by the members of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, none had perhaps excitcd greater interest than the one about to take place, not only on account of its own intrinsic merits as a ball, but because of the many tender emotions waiting for solutions on that eventful evening. Among others it may be mentioned that our fat friend the Woolpack, whose portrait adorns page 241, had confided to Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, who kept a sort of register-office for sighers, his admiration of the fair auburn-haired Flora Yammerton; and Mrs. Rocket having duly communicated the interesting fact to the young lady, intimating, of course, that he would have the usual “ten thousand a year,” Flora had taken counsel with herself whether she had not better secure him, than contend with her elder sister either for Sir Moses or Mr. Pringle, especially as she did not much fancy Sir Moses, and Billy was very wavering in his attentions, sometimes looking extremely sweet at her, sometimes equally so at Clara, and at other times even smiling on that little childish minx Harriet. Indeed Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, in the multiplicity of her meddling, had got a sort of half-admission from that young owl, Rowley Abingdon, that he thought Harriet very pretty, and she felt inclined to fan the flame of that speculation too.
Then Miss Fairey, of Yarrow Court, was coming, and it was reported that Miss de Glancey had applied for a ticket, in order to try and cut her out with the elegant Captain Languisher, of the Royal Hollyhock Hussars. Altogether it was expected to be a capital ball, both for dancers and lookers-on.
People whose being’s end and aim is gaiety, as they call converting night into day, in rolling from party to party, with all the means and appliances of London, can have little idea of the up-hill work it is in the country, getting together the ingredients of a great ball. The writing for rooms, the fighting for rooms—the bespeaking of horses, the not getting horses—the catching the train, the losing the train—above all, the choosing and ordering those tremendous dresses, with the dread of not getting those tremendous dresses, of their being carried by in the train, or not fitting when they come. Nothing but the indomitable love of a ball, as deeply implanted in a woman’s heart as the love of a hunt is in that of a man, can account for the trouble and vexation they undergo.
But if ’tis a toil to the guests, what must it be to the givers, with no friendly Grange or Gunter at hand to supply everything, guests included, if required, at so much per head! Youth, glorious youth, comes to the aid, aud enters upon the labour with all the alacrity that perhaps distinguished their fathers.
Let us now suppose the absorbing evening come; and that all-important element in country festivities, the moon shining with silvery dearness as well on the railway gliders as on the more patient plodders by the road. What a converging there was upon the generally quiet town of Hinton; reminding the older inhabitants of the best days of Lord Martingal and Mr. Customer’s reigns. What a gathering up there was of shining satins and rustling silks and moire antiques, white, pink, blue, yellow, green, to say nothing of clouds of tulle; what a compression of swelling eider-down and watch-spring petticoats; and what a bolt-upright sitting of that happy pride which knows no pain, as party after party took up and proceeded to the scene of hopes and fears at the Fox and Hounds Hotel and Posting House.
The ball-room was formed of the entire suite of first-floor front apartments, which, on ordinary occasions, did duty as private rooms—private, at least, as far as thin deal partitions could make them so—and the supper was laid out in our old acquaintance the club-room, connected by a sort of Isthmus of Suez, with a couple of diminutive steps towards the end to shoot the incautious becomingly, headforemost, into the room.
Carriages set down under the arched doorway, and a little along the passage the Blenheim was converted into a cloak-room for the ladies, where the voluminous dresses were shook out, and the last hurried glances snatched amid anxious groups of jostling arrivals. Gentlemen then emerging from the commercial room rejoined their fair friends in the passage, and were entrusted with fans and flowers while, with both hands, they steered their balloon-like dresses up the red druggetted staircase.
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Gentlemen’s balls have the advantage over those given by ladies, inasmuch as the gentlemen must be there early to receive their fair guests; and as a ball can always begin as soon as there are plenty of gentlemen, there are not those tedious delays and gatherings of nothing but crinoline that would only please Mr. Spurgeon.
The large highly-glazed, gilt-lettered, yellow card of invitation, intimated nine o’clock as the hour; by which time most of the Hinton people were ready, and all the outlying ones were fast drawing towards the town. Indeed, there was nothing to interfere with the dancing festivities, for dinner giving on a ball night is not popular with the ladies—enough for the evening being the dance thereof. Country ladies are not like London ones, who can take a dinner, an opera, two balls, and an at-home in one and the same night. As to the Hinton gentlemen, they were very hospitable so long as nobody wanted anything from them; if they did, they might whistle a long time before they got it. If, for instance, that keeper of a house of call for Bores, Paul Straddler, saw a mud-sparked man with a riding-whip in his hand, hurrying about the town, he would after him, and press him to dine off, perhaps, “crimped cod and oyster sauce, and a leg of four year old mutton, with a dish of mince pies or woodcocks, whichever he preferred;” but on a ball night, when it would be a real convenience to a man to have a billet, Paul never thought of asking any one, though when he met his friends in the ball, and heard they had been uncomfortable at the Sun or the Fleece, he would exclaim, with well-feigned reproach, “Oh dash it, man, why didn’t you come to me?”
But let us away to the Fox and Hounds, and see what is going on.
To see the repugnance people have to being early at a ball, one would wonder how dancing ever gets begun. Yet somebody must be there first, though we question whether any of our fair readers ever performed the feat; at all events, if ever they did, we will undertake to say they have taken very good care not to repeat the performance.
The Blurkinses were the first to arrive on this occasion, having only themselves to think about, and being anxious, as they said, to see as much as they could for their money. Then having been duly received by Sir Moses and the gallant circle of fox-hunters, and passed inwardly, they took up a position so as to be able to waylay those who came after with their coarse compliments, beginning with Mrs. Dotherington, who, Blurkins declared, had worn the grey silk dress she then had on, ever since he knew her.
Jimmy Jarperson, the Laughing Hyæna, next came under his notice, Blurkins telling him that his voice grated on his ear like a file; asking if any body else had ever told him so.
Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, who was duly distended in flaming red satin, was told she was like a full-blown peony; and young Treadcroft was asked if he knew that people called him the Woolpack.
Meanwhile Mrs. Blurkins kept pinching and feeling the ladies’ dresses as they passed, making a mental estimate of their cost. She told Miss Yammerton she had spoilt her dress by the black lace.
A continuously ascending stream of crinoline at length so inundated the room, that by ten o’clock Sir Moses thought it was time to open the ball; so deputing Tommy Heslop to do the further honours at the door, he sought Lady Fuzball, and claimed the favour of her hand for the first quadrille.
This was a signal for the unmated ones to pair; and forthwith there was such a drawing on of gloves, such a feeling of ties, such a rising on tiptoes, and straining of eyes, and running about, asking for Miss This, and Miss That, and if anybody had seen anything of Mrs. So-and-so.
At length the sought ones were found, anxiety abated, and the glad couples having secured suitable vis-à-vis, proceeded to take up positions.
At a flourish of the leader’s baton, the enlivening “La Traviata” struck up, and away the red coats and black coats went sailing and sinking, and rising and jumping, and twirling with the lightly-floating dresses of the ladies.
The “Pelissier Galop” quickly followed, then the “Ask Mamma Polka,” and just as the music ceased, and the now slightly-flushed couples were preparing for a small-talk promenade, a movement took place near the door, and the elegant swan-like de Glancey was seen sailing into the room with her scarlet-geranium-festooned dress set off with eight hundred yards of tulle! Taking her chaperone Mrs. Roseworth’s arm, she came sailing majestically along, the men all alive for a smile, the ladies laughing at what they called her preposterous dimensions.
But de Glancey was not going to defeat her object by any premature condescension; so she just met the men’s raptures with the slightest recognition of her downcast eyes, until she encountered the gallant Captain Languisher with lovely Miss Fairey on his arm, when she gave him one of her most captivating smiles, thinking to have him away from Miss Fairey in no time.
But Miss de Glancey was too late! The Captain had just “popped the question,” and was then actually on his way to “Ask Mamma,” and so returned her greeting with an air of cordial indifference, that as good as said, “Ah, my dear, you’ll not do for me.”
Miss de Glancey was shocked. It was the first time in her life that she had ever missed her aim. Nor was her mortification diminished by the cool way our hero, Mr. Pringle, next met her advances. She had been so accustomed to admiration, that she could ill brook the want of it, and the double blow was too much for her delicate sensibilities. She felt faint, and as soon as she could get a fly large enough to hold herself and her chaperone, she withdrew, the mortification of this evening far more than counterbalancing all the previous triumphs of her life.
One person more or less at a ball, however, is neither here nor there, and the music presently struck up again, and the whirling was resumed, just as if there was no such person as Miss de Glancey in existence. And thus waltz succeeded polka, and polka succeeded quadrille, with lively rapidity—every one declaring it was a most delightful ball, and wondering when supper would be.
At length there was a lull, and certain unmistakeable symptoms announced that the hour for that superfluous but much talked of meal had arrived, whereupon there was the usual sorting of consequence to draw to the cross table at the top of the room, with the pairing off of eligible couples who could be trusted alone, and the shirking of Mammas by those who were not equally fortunate. Presently a movement was made towards the Isthmus of Suez, on reaching which the rotund ladies had to abandon their escorts to pilot their petticoats through the straits amid the cries of “take care of the steps!” “mind the steps at the end!” from those who knew the dangers of the passage. And thus the crinoline came circling into the supper room—each lady again expanding with the increased space, and reclaiming her beau. Supper being as we said before a superfluous meal, it should be light and airy, something to please the eye and tempt the appetite; not composed of great solid joints that look like a farmer’s ordinary, or a rent-day dinner with “night mare” depicted on every dish. The Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt balls had always been famous for the elegance of their supper, Lord Ladythorne kindly allowing his Italian confectioner, Signor Massaniello, to superintend the elegancies, that excited such admiration from the ladies as they worked their ways or wedged themselves in at the tables, but whose beauty did not save them from destruction as the evening advanced. At first of course the solids were untouched, the tongues, the hams, the chickens, the turkeys, the lobster salads, the nests of plover eggs, the clatter patter being relieved by a heavy salvo of Champagne artillery. Brisk was the demand for it at starting, for the economical arrangement was as well known as if it had been placarded about the room. When the storm of corks had subsided and clean plates been supplied, the sweets, the jellies, the confectionery were attacked, and occasional sly sorties were made against the flower sugar vases and ornaments of the table. Then perspiring waiters came panting in with more Champagne fresh out of the ice, and again arm-extended the glasses hailed its coming, though some of the Neck-and-Crop-shire gentlemen smacked their lips after drinking it, and pronounced it to be No. 2. Nevertheless they took some more when it came round again. At length the most voracious cormorant was appeased, and all eyes gradually turned towards the sporting president in the centre of the cross table.
We have heard it said that the House of Commons is the most appalling and critical assembly in the world to address, but we confess we think a mixed party of ladies and gentlemen at a sit-down supper a more formidable audience.
We don’t know anything more painful than to hear a tongue-tied country gentleman floundering for words and scrambling after an idea that the quick-witted ladies have caught long before he comes within sight of his subject. Theirs is like the sudden dart of the elastic greyhound compared to the solemn towl of the old slow-moving “southern” hound after its game.
Sir Moses, however, as our readers know, was not one of the tongue-tied sort—on the contrary, he had a great flow of words and could palaver the ladies as well as the gentlemen. Indeed he was quite at home in that room where he had coaxed and wheedled subscriptions, promised wonders, and given away horses without the donees incurring any “obligation.” Accordingly at the fitting time he rose from his throne, and with one stroke of his hammer quelled the remaining conversation which had been gradually dying out in anticipation of what was coming. He then called for a bumper toast, and after alluding in felicitous terms to the happy event that so aroused the “symphonies” of old Wotherspoon, he concluded by proposing the health of her Majesty the Queen, which of course was drunk with three times three and one cheer more. The next toast, of course, was the ladies who had honoured the Ball with their presence, and certainly if ever ladies ought to be satisfied with the compliments paid them, it was on the present occasion, for Sir Moses vowed and protested that of all beauties the Hit-im and Hold-im shire beauties were the fairest, the brightest, and the best; and he said it would be a downright reflection upon the rising generation if they did not follow the Crown Prince of Prussia’s excellent example, and make that ball to be the most blissful and joyous of their recollections. This toast being heartily responded to, Sir Moses leading the cheers, Sir Harry Fuzball rose to return thanks on behalf of the ladies, any one of whom could have done it a great deal better; after which old Sir George Persiflage, having arranged his lace-tipped tie, proposed the health of Sir Moses, and spoke of him in very different terms to what Sir Moses did of Sir George at the hunt dinner, and this, answer affording Sir Moses another opportunity—the good Champagne being exhausted—he renewed his former advice, and concluded by moving an adjournment to the ball-room. Then the weight of oratory being off, the school broke loose as it were, and all parties paired off as they liked. Many were the trips at the steps as they returned by the narrow passage to the ball-room. The “Ask Mamma” Polka then appropriately struck up, but polking being rather beyond our Baronet’s powers he stood outside the ring rubbing his nose and eyeing the gay twirlers, taking counsel within himself what he should do. The state of his household had sorely perplexed him, aud he had about come to the resolution that he must either marry again or give up housekeeping and live at Hinton. Then came the question whom he should take? Now Mrs. Yammerton was a noted good manager, and in the inferential sort of way that we all sometimes deceive ourselves, he came to the conclusion that her daughters would be the same. Clara was very pretty—dom’d if she wasn’t—She would look very well at the head of his table, and just at the moment she came twirling past with Billy Pringle, the pearl loops of her pretty pink wreath dancing on her fair forehead. The Baronet was booked; “he would have her, dom’d if he wouldn’t,” and taking courage within himself as the music ceased, he claimed her hand for the next quadrille, and leading her to the top of the dance, commenced joking her about Billy, who he said would make a very pretty girl, and then commenced praising herself. He admired her and everything she had on, from the wreath to her ribbon, and was so affectionate that she felt if he wasn’t a little elevated she would very soon have an offer. Then Mammas, and Mrs. Rocket Larkspurs, and Mrs. Dotherington, and Mrs. Impelow, and many other quick-eyed ladies followed their movements, each thinking that they saw by the sparkle of Clara’s eyes, and the slight flush of her pretty face, what was going on. But they were prématuré. Sir Moses did not offer until he had mopped his brow in the promenade, when, on making the second slow round of the room, a significant glance with a slight inclination of her handsome head as she passed her Mamma announced that she was going to be Lady Mainchance!
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Hoo-ray for the Hunt Ball!
Sold again and the money paid! as the trinket-sellers say at a fair.
Another offer and accepted say we. Captain and Mrs. Languisher, Sir Moses and Lady Mainchance. Who wouldn’t go to a Hit-im-and-Hold-im-shire hunt ball?
Then when the music struck up again, instead of fulfilling her engagements with her next partner. Clara begged to be excused—had got a little headache, and went and sat down between her Mamma and her admiring intended; upon which the smouldering fire of surmise broke out into downright assertion, and it ran through the room that Sir Moses had offered to Miss Yammerton. Then the indignant Mammas rose hastily from their seats and paraded slowly past, to see how the couple looked, pitying the poor creature, and young gentlemen joked with each other, saying—“Go thou and do likewise.” and paired off to the supper room to acquire courage from the well iced but inferior Champagne.
And so the ardent ball progressed, some laying the foundations for future offers, some advancing their suits a step, others bringing them to we hope, a happy termination. Never was a more productive hunt ball known, and it was calculated that the little gentleman who rides so complacently on our first page exhausted all his arrows o the occasion.
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When the mortified Miss de Glancey returned to her lodgings at Mrs. Sarsnet the milliner’s, in Verbena Crescent, she bid Mrs. Roseworth good-night, and dismissing her little French maid to bed, proceeded to her own apartment, where, with the united aid of a chamber and two toilette-table candles, she instituted a most rigid examination, as well of her features as her figure, in her own hand-mirror and the various glasses of the room, and satisfied herself that neither her looks nor her dress were any way in fault for the indifference with which she had been received. Indeed, though she might perhaps be a little partial, she thought she never saw herself looking better, and certainly her dress was as stylish and looming as any in the ball-room.
Those points being satisfactorily settled, she next unclasped the single row of large pearls that fastened the bunch of scarlet geraniums into her silken brown hair; and taking them off her exquisitely modelled head, laid them beside her massive scarlet geranium bouquet and delicate kid gloves upon the toilette-table. She then stirred the fire; and wheeling the easy-chair round to the front of it, took the eight hundred yards of tulle deliberately in either hand and sunk despondingly into the depths of the chair, with its ample folds before her. Drawing her dress up a little in front, she placed her taper white-satined feet on the low green fender, and burying her beautiful face in her lace-fringed kerchief, proceeded to take an undisturbed examination of what had occurred. How was it that she, in the full bloom of her beauty and the zenith of her experience, had failed in accomplishing what she used so easily to perform? How was it that Captain Langnisher seemed so cool, and that supercilious Miss eyed her with a side-long stare, that left its troubled mark behind, like the ripple of the water after a boat. And that boy Pringle, too, who ought to have been proud and flattered by her notice, instead of grinning about with those common country Misses?
All this hurt and distressed our accomplished coquette, who was unused to indifference and mortification. Then from the present her mind reverted to the past; aud stirring the fire, she recalled the glorious recollections of her many triumphs, beginning with her school-girl days, when the yeomanry officers used to smile at her as they met the girls out walking, until Miss Whippey restricted them to the garden during the eight days that the dangerous danglers were on duty. Next, how the triumph of her first offer was enhanced by the fact that she got her old opponent Sarah Snowball’s lover from her—who, however, she quickly discarded for Captain Capers—who in turn yielded to Major Spankley.
Dicer, and the grave Mr. Woodhouse all in tow together, each thinking himself the happy man and the others the cat’s-paw, until the rash Hotspur Smith exploded amongst them, and then suddenly dwindled from a millionaire into a mouse. Other names quickly followed, recalling the recollections of a successful career. At last she came to that dread, that fatal day, when, having exterminated Imperial John, and with the Peer well in hand, she was induced, much against her better judgment, to continue the chase, and lose all chance of becoming a Countess. Oh, what a day was that! She had long watched the noble Earl’s increasing fervour, and marked his admiring eye, as she sat in the glow of beauty and the pride of equestrianism; and she felt quite sure, if the chase had ended at the check caused by the cattle-drover’s dog, he would have married her. Oh, that the run should ever have continued! Oh, that she should ever have been lured on to her certain destruction! Why didn’t she leave well alone? And at the recollection of that sad, that watery day, she burst into tears and sobbed convulsively. Her feelings being thus relieved, and the fire about exhausted, she then got out of her crinoline and under the counterpane.
CHAPTER LXII.
LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.—CUPID’S SETTLING DAY.
A sudden change now came over the country.—The weather, which had been mild and summer-like throughout, changed to frost, binding all nature up in a few hours. The holes in the streets which were shining with water in the gas-lights when Miss de Glancey retired to bed, had a dull black-leaded sort of look in the morning, while the windows of her room glistened with the silvery spray of ferns and heaths and fancy flowers.—The air was sharp and bright, with a clear blue sky overhead, all symptomatic of frost, with every appearance of continuing.—That, however, is more a gentleman’s question than a lady’s, so we will return within doors.
Flys being scarce at Hinton, and Miss de Glancey wishing to avoid the gape and stare of the country town, determined to return by the 11.30 train; so arose after a restless night, and taking a hurried breakfast, proceeded, with the aid of her maid, to make one of those exquisite toilettes for which she had so long been justly famous. Her sylph-like figure was set off in a bright-green terry-velvet dress, with a green-feathered bonnet of the same colour and material, trimmed with bright scarlet ribbons, and a wreath of scarlet flowers inside.—A snow-white ermine tippet, with ermine cuffs and muff, completed her costume. Having surveyed herself in every mirror, she felt extremely satisfied, and only wished Captain Languisher could see her. With that exact punctuality which constant practice engenders, but which sometimes keeps strangers sadly on the fret, the useful fly was at length at the door, and the huge box containing the eight hundred yards of tulle being hoisted on to the iron-railed roof, the other articles were huddled away, and Miss de Glancey ascending the steps, usurped the seat of honour, leaving Mrs. Roseworth and her maid to sit opposite to her. A smile with a half-bow to Mrs. Sarsnet, as she now stood at the door, with a cut of the whip from the coachman, sent our party lilting and tilting over the hard surface of the road to the rail.
The line ran true and smooth this day, and the snorting train stopped at the pretty Swiss cottage station at Fairfield just as Mrs. Roseworth saw the last of the parcels out of the fly, while Miss de Glancey took a furtive peek at the passengers from an angle of the bay window, at which she thought she herself could not be seen.
Now, it so happened that the train was in charge of the well-known Billy Bates, a smart young fellow, whose good looks had sadly stood in the way of his preferment, for he never could settle to anything; and after having been a footman, a whipper-in, a watcher, a groom, and a grocer, he had now taken up with the rail, where he was a great favourite with the fair, whom he rather prided himself upon pairing with what he considered appropriate partners. Seeing our lovely coquette peeping out, it immediately occurred to him, that he had a suitable vis-à-vis for her—a dashing looking gent., in a red flannel Emperor shirt, a blue satin cravat, a buff vest, aud a new bright-green cut-away with fancy buttons; altogether a sort of swell that isn’t to be seen every day.
“This way, ladies!” now cried Billy, hurrying into the first-class waiting-room, adjusting the patent leather pouch-belt of his smart grcen-and-red uniform as he spoke. “This way, ladies, please!” waving them on with his clean white doeskin-gloved hand towards the door; whereupon Miss de Glancey, drawing herself up, and primming her features, advanced on to the platform, like the star of the evening coming on to the stage of a theatre.
Billy then opened the frosty-windowed door of a carriage a few paces up the line; whereupon a red railway wrapper-rug with brown foxes’ heads being withdrawn, a pair of Bedford-corded legs dropped from the opposite seat, and a dogskin gloved hand was protruded to assist the ascent of the enterer. A pretty taper-fingered primrose-kidded one was presently inside it; but ere the second step was accomplished, a convulsive thrill was felt, and, looking up, Miss de Glancey found herself in the grasp of her old friend Imperial John!
“O Mr. Hybrid!” exclaimed she, shaking his still retained hand with the greatest cordiality; “O Mr. Hybrid! I’m so glad to see you! I’m so glad to meet somebody I know!” and gathering herself together, she entered the carriage, and sat down opposite him.
Mrs. Roseworth then following, afforded astonished John a moment to collect his scattered faculties, yet not sufficient time to compare the dread. “Si-r-r-r! do you mean to insult me!” of their former meeting, with the cordial greeting of this. Indeed, our fair friend felt that she had a great arrear of politeness to make up, and as railway time is short, she immediately began to ply her arts by inquiring most kindly after His Highness’s sister Mrs. Poppeyfield and her baby, who she heard was such a sweet boy; and went on so affably, that before Billy Bates arrived with the tickets, which Mrs. Roseworth had forgotten to take, Imperial John began to think that there must have been some mistake before, and Miss de Glancey couldn’t have understood him. Then, when the train was again in motion, she applied the artillery of her eyes so well—for she was as great an adept in her art as the Northumberland horse-tamer is in his—that ere they stopped at the Lanecroft station, she had again subjugated Imperial John;—taken his Imperial reason prisoner! Nay more, though he was going to Bowerbank to look at a bull, she actually persuaded him to alight and accompany her to Mrs. Roseworth’s where we need scarcely say he was presently secured, and in less than a week she had him so tame that she could lead him about, anywhere.
The day after the ball was always a busy one in Hit-im-and-Hold-em-shire. It was a sort of settling day, only the parties scattered about the country instead of congregating at the “corner.” Those who had made up their minds overnight, came to “Ask Mamma” in the morning, and those who had not mustered sufficient courage, tried what a visit to inquire how the young lady was after the fatigue of the ball would do to assist them. Those who had got so far on the road as to have asked both the young lady and “Mamma,” then got handed over to the more business-like inquiries of Papa—when Cupid oft “spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.” Then it is that the terrible money exaggerations come out—the great expectations dwindling away, and the thousands a-year becoming hundreds. We never knew a reputed Richest Commoner’s fortune that didn’t collapse most grievously under the “what have you got, and what will you do?” operation. But if it passes Papa, the still more dread ordeal of the lawyer has to be encountered when one being summoned on either side, a hard money-driving bargain ensues, one trying how much he can get, the other how little he can give—until the whole nature and character of the thing is changed. Money! money! money! is the cry, as if there was nothing in the world worth living for but those eternal bits of yellow coin. But we are getting in advance of our subject, our suitor not having passed the lower, or “Ask-Mamma” house.
Among the many visited on this auspicious day were our fair friends at Yammerton Grange, our Richest Commoner having infused a considerable degree of activity into the matrimonial market. There is nothing like a little competition for putting young gentlemen on the alert. First to arrive was our friend Sir Moses Mainchance, who dashed up to the door in his gig with the air of a man on safe ground, saluting Mamma whom he found alone in the drawing-room, and then the young ladies as they severally entered in succession. Having thus sealed and delivered himself into the family, as it were, he enlarged on the delights of the ball—the charming scene, the delightful music, the excellent dancing, the sudden disappearance of de Glancey and other the incidents of the evening. These topics being duly discussed, and cake and wine produced, “Mamma” presently withdrew, her example being followed at intervals by Flora and Harriet.
Scarcely had she got clear of the door ere the vehement bark of the terrier called her attention to the front of the house, where she saw our fat friend the Woolpack tit-tup-ing up on the identical horse Jack Rogers so unceremoniously appropriated on the Crooked Billet day. There was young Treadcroft with his green-liveried cockaded groom behind him, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, though in reality he was in as great a fright as it was well possible for a boy to be. Having dismounted and nearly pulled the bell out of its socket with nervousness, he gave his horse to the groom, with orders to wait, and then followed the footman into the dining-room, whither Mrs. Yammerton had desired him to be shown.
Now, the Woolpack and the young Owl (Rowley Abingdon), had been very attentive both to Flora and Harriet at the ball, the Woolpack having twice had an offer on the tip of his tongue for Flora, without being able to get it off.
Somehow his tongue clave to his lips—he felt as if his mouth was full of claggum. He now came to see if he could have any better luck at the Grange.
Mrs. Yammerton had read his feelings at the ball, and not receiving the expected announcement from Flora, saw that he wanted a little of her assistance, so now proceeded to give it. After a most cordial greeting and interchanges of the usual nothings of society, she took a glance at the ball, and then claimed his congratulations on Clara’s engagement, which of course led up to the subject, opening the locked jaw at once; and Mamma having assured the fat youth of her perfect approval and high opinion of his character, very soon arranged matters between them, and produced Flora to confirm her. So she gained two sons-in-law in one night. Miss Harriet thus left alone, took her situation rather to heart, and fine Billy, forgetful of his Mamma’s repeated injunctions and urgent entreaties to him to return now that the ball was over, and the hunting was stopped by the frost, telling him she wanted him on most urgent and particular business, was tender-hearted enough on finding Harriet in tears the next day to offer to console her with his hand, which we need not say she joyfully accepted, no lady liking to emulate “the last rose of summer and be left blooming alone.” So all the pretty sisters were suited, Harriet perhaps the best off, as far as looks at least went.
But, when in due course the old “what have you got and what will you do?” inquiries came to be instituted, we are sorry to say our fine friend could not answer them nearly so satisfactorily as the Woolpack, who had his balance-sheets nearly off by heart. Billy replying in the vacant negligè sort of way young gentlemen do, that he supposed he would have four or five thousand a-year, though when asked why he thought he’d have four or five thousand a-year, he really could not tell the reason why. Then when further probed by our persevering Major, he admitted that it was all at the mercy of uncle Jerry, and that his Mamma had said their lawyer had told her he did not think pious Jerry would account except under pressure of the Court of Chancery, whereupon the Major’s chin dropped, as many a man’s chin has dropped, at the dread announcement. It sounds like an antidote to matrimony. Even Mrs. Yammerton thought under the circumstances that the young Owl might be a safer speculation than fine Billy, though she rather leant to fine Billy, as people do lean to strangers in preference to those they knew all about. Still Chancery was a choker. Equity is to the legal world what Newmarket is to the racing world, the unadulterated essence of the thing. As at Newmarket there is none of the fun and gaiety of the great race-meetings, so in Chancery there is none of the pomp and glitter and varied incident that rivets so many audiences to the law courts.
All is dull, solemn, and dry—paper, paper, paper—a redundancy of paper, as if it were possible to transfer the blush of perjury to paper. Fifty people will make affidavits for one that will go into a witness-box and have the truth twisted out of them by cross-examination. The few strangers who pop into court pop out again as quickly as they can, a striking contrast to those who go in in search of their rights—though wrestling for one’s rights under a pressure of paper, is very like swimming for one’s life enveloped in a salmon-net. It is juries that give vitality to the administration of justice. A drowsy hum pervades the bar, well calculated for setting restless children to sleep, save when some such brawling buffoon as the Indian juggler gets up to pervert facts, and address arguments to an educated judge that would be an insult to the mind of a petty juryman. One wonders at men calling themselves gentlemen demeaning themselves by such practices. Well did the noble-hearted Sir William Erie declare that the licence of the bar was such that he often wished the offenders could be prosecuted for a misdemeanour. We know an author who made an affidavit in a chancery suit equal in length to a three-volume novel, and what with weighing every word in expectation of undergoing some of the polished razors keen of that drowsy bar, he could not write fiction again for a twelvemonth. As it was, he underwent that elegant extract Mr. Verde, whose sponsors have done him such justice in the vulgar tongue, and because he made an immaterial mistake he was held up to the Court as utterly unworthy of belief! We wonder whether Mr. Verde’s character or the deponent’s suffered most by the performance. But enough of such worthies. Let all the bullies of the bar bear in mind if they have tongues other people have pens, and that consideration for the feelings of others is one of the distinguishing characteristics of gentlemen.
CHAPTER LXIII.
A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT.
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HE proverbial serenity of Poodles was disturbed one dull winter afternoon by our old friend General Binks banging down the newly-arrived evening paper with a vehemence rarely witnessed in that quiet quarter. Mr. Dorfold, who was dosing as usual with outstretched leg’s before the fire, started up, thinking the General was dying. Major Mustard’s hat dropped off, Mr. Proser let fall the “Times Supplement,” Mr. Crowsfoot ceased conning the “Post..” Alemomh, the footman, stood aghast, and altogether there was a general cessation of every thing—Beedles was paralyzed.
The General quickly followed up the blow with a tremendous oath, and seizing Colonel Callender’s old beaver hat instead of his own new silk one, flung frantically out of the room, through the passage and into St. James’s Street, as if bent on immediate destruction.
All was amazement! What’s happened the General? Something must have gone wrong with the General! The General—the calmest, the quietest, the most, placid man in the world—suddenly convulsed with such a violent paroxysm. He who had neither chick nor child, nor anything to care about, with the certainty of an Earldom, what could have come over him?
“I’ll tell you,” exclaimed Mr. Bullion who had just dropped in on his way from the City: “I’ll tell you,” repeated he. taking up the paper which the General had thrown down. “His bank’s failed! Heard some qweerish hints as I came down Cornhill:” and forthwith! Bullion turned to the City article, and ran his accustomed eye down its contents.
“Funds opened heavily. Foreign stocks quiet. About £20,000 in bar gold. The John Brown arrived from China. Departure of the Peninsular Mail postponed,” and so on; but neither failures, nor rumours of failures, either of bankers or others, were there.
Very odd—what could it be, then? must be something in the paper. And again the members resolved themselves into a committee of the whole house to ascertain what it was.
The first place that a lady would look to for the solution of a mystery of this sort, is, we believe, about the last place that a man would look to, namely, the births, deaths, and marriages; and it was not until the sensation had somewhat subsided, and Tommy White was talking of beating up the General’s quarter in Bury Street, to hear what it was, that his inseparable—that “nasty covetous body Cuddy Flintoff,” who had been plodding very perseveringly on the line, at length hit off what astonished him as much as we have no doubt it will the reader, being neither more nor less than the following very quiet announcement at the end of the list of marriages:—
“This morning, at St. Barnabas, by the Rev. Dr. Duff, the Right Hon. The Earl of Ladythorne, to Emma, widow of the late Wm, Pringle, Esq.”
The Earl of Ladythorne married to Mrs. Pringle! Well done our fair friend of the frontispiece! The pure white camellias are succeeded by a coronet! The borrowed velvet dress replaced by anything she likes to own. Who would have thought it!
But wonders will never cease; for on this eventful day Mr. George Gallon was seen driving the Countess’s old coach companion, Mrs. Margerum, from Cockthorpe Church, with long white rosettes flying at Tippy Tom’s head, and installing her mistress of the Rose and Crown, at the cross roads; thus showing that truth is stranger than fiction. “George,” we may add, has now taken the Flying Childers Inn at Eversley Green, where he purposes extending his “Torf” operations, and we make no doubt will be heard of hereafter.
Of our other fair friends we must say a few parting words on taking a reluctant farewell.
Though Miss Clara, now Lady Mainchance, is not quite so good a housekeeper as Sir Moses could have wished, she is nevertheless extremely ornamental at the head of his table; and though she has perhaps rather exceeded with Gillow, the Major promises to make it all right by his superior management of the property. Mr. Mordecai Nathan has been supplanted by our master of “haryers,” who has taken a drainage loan, and promises to set the water-works playing at Pangburn Park, just as he did at Yammerton Grange. He means to have a day a week there with his “haryers,” which, he says, is the best way of seeing a country.
Miss de Glancey has revised Barley Hill Hall, for which place his Highness now appears in Burke’s “Landed Gentry,” very considerably; and though she has not been to Gillow, she has got the plate out of the drawing-room, and made things very smart. She keeps John in excellent order, and rides his grey horse admirably. Blurkins says “the grey mare is the better horse,” but that is no business of ours.
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Of all the brides, perhaps, Miss Flora got the best set down; for the Woolpack’s house was capitally furnished, and he is far happier driving his pretty wife about the country with a pair of pyebald ponies, making calls, than in risking his neck across country with hounds—or rather after them.
Of all our beauties, and thanks to Leech we have dealt in nothing else, Miss Harriet alone remains unsettled with her two strings to her bow—fine Billy and Rowley Abingdon; though which is to be the happy man remains to be seen.
We confess we incline to think that the Countess will be too many for the Yammertons; but if she is, there is no great harm done; for Harriet is very young, and the Owl is a safe card in the country where men are more faithful than they are in the towns. Indeed, fine Billy is almost too young to know his own mind, and marrying now would only perhaps involve the old difficulty hereafter of father and son wanting top boots at the same time, supposing our friend to accomplish the difficult art of sitting at the Jumps.
So let us leave our hero open. And as we have only aimed at nothing but the natural throughout, we will finish by proposing a toast that will include as well the mated and the single of our story, as the mated and the single all the world over, namely, the old and popular one of “The single married, and the married happy!” drunk with three times three and one cheer more! HOO-RAY!