Chapter Twenty Five.
How our heroes make their record.
If I were a poet, I should, at this point, pause to invoke Diana, Apollo, Adonis, and the other deities who preside over the chase, to aid me in describing the famous and never-to-be-forgotten run of the Templeton Harriers that early autumn afternoon. How they broke in full cry out of the fields up on to the free downs. How, with the fresh sea scent in their faces, they scoured the ridge that links Templeton with Blackarch, and Blackarch with Topping. How at the third mile they cried off inland, and plunged into the valley by Waly’s bottom and Bardie’s farm, through the pleasant village of Steg, over the railway, and along the fringe of Swilford Wood, to the open heath beyond. How half the hunt was out of it before they went up the other side of the valley, and scattered the gravel on the top of Welkin Beacon. How those who were left dropped thence suddenly on Lowhouse, and swam the Gurgle a mile above the ford. How from Lowhouse they swerved eastward, and caught the railway again at Norton Cutting. How they lost the scent in Durdon Copse, but found it again where the wood and the gravel pits met. How the six who stayed in blistered their feet after that on the gritty high road, till Cresswell hallooed them over the hedge, and showed them the scent down the winding banks of the Babrook. And once again, how they dived into the queer hamlet of Little Maddick, and saw the very loaf and round of cheese off which the hares had snatched a hasty meal not five minutes before. How Mansfield and Cresswell made a vow to taste neither meat nor drink till they had run their quarry down; and how the ever-diminishing pack sighted the hares just out of Maddick, going up the Bengle Hill. Over Bengle Hill, down into the valley beyond, and up the shoulder of Blackarch ridge, how they toiled and struggled, till once more the sea burst on to their view, and the salt breezes put new life into their panting frames. How along the ridge and down towards Grey Harbour the leaders gained on the hares, hand-over-hand. And how, at last, in that final burst along the hard, dry sand, the hares were caught gloriously, half a mile from home, after one of the fastest runs Templeton had ever recorded.
But my muse must curb her wings, and descend from poetry to prose, in order to narrate the particular adventures of our three modest heroes.
For the first half-mile, be it said to their glory, they led the hunt.
Being convinced that their only hope was to get a good start, and shake off the field from the very beginning, they dashed to the front on Cresswell’s cry of “Forward!” at the rate of ten miles an hour, and for five minutes showed Templeton the way.
Then occurred one of those lamentable disasters which so often befall youthful runners on the exhaustion of their first wind: Coote’s shoe-lace came undone! That was the sole reason for his pulling up. To say that he was blown, or that the pace was hard on him was adding insult to calamity; and doubtless the redness of his countenance as he knelt down to make fast the truant lace was solely due to indignation at the possibility of such a suggestion.
Dick and Heathcote, as they stood one on each side of him, really thankful for the pause, professed to be highly impatient at the delay.
“Come on,” said Dick, “here they all come.”
“What a brutal time you take to do up that beastly lace!” cried Georgie, “we might have been in the next field by this time.”
“I think it will hold now,” said Coote, rising slowly to his feet, as the pack came up in full cry.
“Blown already, youngsters?” asked Cresswell. “Better go home.”
“We’re not blown at all,” said Dick, trotting on abreast of the whipper-in; “Coote’s lace came undone, that was all.”
“Yes; we should have been in the next field if it hadn’t,” said the owner of the luckless lace.
The Harriers smiled, and for a minute or two the pack swung in an even line across the field.
Then Coote, anxious not to crowd anyone, let half a dozen or so of the Fifth go in front; and Dick and Georgie, generously considering that it would be rather low to leave their short-winded comrade in the lurch, dropped behind the leading rank in order to be nearer him.
In a minute more all anxiety Coote may have felt as to crowding any one was at an end. He was a yard or two in the rear of the last man, with a stitch in his side, beginning in his inmost soul to wonder whether the new “Sociables” Club was such a very good thing after all.
Dick and Georgie, as they gradually sacrificed their prospect of being in at the death, and fell back to the support of their ally, waxed very contemptuous of stitch in a fellow’s side. They knew what it meant. It was a pity Coote had started if he was liable to that sort of thing. His stitch had cost the “Firm” a whole field already. However, they were not selfish; they must back him up even if it meant coming in at the tail of the hunt; though, to be sure, the pace Mansfield, Cresswell, and a few others were going at was one which couldn’t be kept up, and the “Firm,” as soon as the stitch was out, might be in the running after all.
By dint of persuasions, threats, and imputations, Coote’s stitch did come out; but before it was gone the last of the pack were seen going over the ridge.
“We’re out of it,” said Georgie, despondently.
“Not a bit of it,” said Dick, who was getting his second wind and felt like holding on. “We’re bound to pull up on them if Coote only keeps up.”
So they held on gallantly.
They could not long keep up the fiction of being in the hunt. No amount of self-deception could persuade them, when the end of the straggling line of fellows going up the ridge was a clear half-mile ahead, that they were in it. Still every minute they held on they felt more like staying, and when they reflected that it was possible to run through the hunt without being in at the death, they took comfort, and determined Templeton should not say they had turned tail.
“We shall have to follow the scent now,” said Dick, when the pack suddenly disappeared to view over the ridge. “Thank goodness, it’s all white paper, and plenty of it. Come on, you fellows, we’ll run it through yet.”
“I feel quite fresh,” said Coote, mopping his head with his handkerchief. “How far do you think we’ve gone—six miles?”
“Six! we’ve not done a mile and a half yet.”
Coote put away his handkerchief, and gave the buckle of his running drawers a hitch; and the “Firm” settled down to business.
Having once found out their pace, and got their second wind, they felt comparatively comfortable. The scent lay true up the ridge, and as they rose foot by foot, and presently breasted the bluff nor’-wester, they felt like keeping it up for a week.
“Hullo, I say,” cried Georgie, when the top of the ridge was gained, “there they go right under us; we might almost catch them by a short cut.”
“Can’t do it,” said Dick, decisively. “We’re bound to follow the scent, even if the hares doubled and came back across this very place.”
“Would real harriers do that?” asked Coote. “If I was a real harrier, and saw the hare close to me, I’d go for him no matter what the scent was.”
“All very well, you can’t do it to-day—not if you want to get on the list,” said Dick. “They’ve taken a sharp turn, though, at the bottom.”
Trotting down a steep hill is not one of the joys of the chase, and our heroes, by the time they got to the level bottom, felt as bruised and shaken as if they had been in a railway accident.
However, a mile on the flat pulled them together again, and they plodded on by Bardie’s Farm, where the scent became sparse, and on to Steg where, for the first time since leaving Templeton, they came upon traces of their fellow-man.
The worthy inhabitants of Steg, particularly the junior portion of them, hailed our three heroes with demonstrations of friendly interest. They had turned out fully half an hour ago to see the main body of the hunt go by, and just as they were returning regretfully to their ordinary occupations, the cry of “Three more of ’em!” came as a welcome reprieve, and brought them back into the highway in full force.
Fond of their joke were the friendly youth of Steg, and considering the quiet life they led, their wit was none of the dullest.
“Hurrah! Here’s three more hounds!”
“They’s the puppies, I reckon.”
“Nay, one of ’em’s got the rickets, see.”
“If they don’t look to it, the hares will be round the world and catching them up.”
“Hi! Mister puppy, you’re going wrong; they went t’other way.”
“Shut up!” cried Dick.
“Go and give your pigs their dinner,” shouted Heathcote.
Coote contented himself with running through the village with his tongue in his cheek, and in another three minutes the trio were beyond earshot and shaking the dust of Steg from their feet.
“How many miles now?” asked Coote, with a fine effort to appear unconcerned at the answer, which he put down in his own mind at six or seven miles.
“Three and a half, about—put it on, you fellows.”
It was a long trot along the springy turf outside Swilford Wood. Once or twice the scent turned in and got doubtful among the underwood, but it came out again just as often, and presently turned off on to the Heath.
Our heroes ploughed honestly through the bracken and gorse which tangled their feet and scratched their bare shins at every step. That mile over the Heath was the most trying yet. The hares seemed to have picked out the very cruellest track they could find; and when, presently, the “Firm” caught sight of the ruthless little patches of paper going straight up the side of Welkin Beacon, Coote fairly cried for quarter and announced he must sit down.
His companions, though they would not have liked to make the suggestion themselves, were by no means inexorable to the appeal.
“Why, we’ve hardly started yet,” said Dick, throwing himself down on the ground; “you’re a nice fellow to begin to want a rest!”
“Only just started!” gasped Coote; “I never ran so far in my life.”
“We came that last bit pretty well, considering the ground,” said Heathcote, anxious to make the halt as justifiable as possible.
“I wonder where the hares are now?” said Dick, rather pensively.
“Back at Templeton, perhaps,” said Heathcote, “having iced ginger-beer, or turning into the ‘Tub.’”
“Shut up, Georgie,” said Dick, with a wince. “What’s the use of talking about iced ginger-beer out here?”
They lay some minutes, each dreading the first suggestion to move. Coote feigned to have dropped asleep, and Heathcote became intensely interested in the anatomy of a thistle.
Dick was the only one who could not honestly settle down, and the dreaded summons, when at last it came, came in his voice:—
“You lazy beggars,” cried he, starting up, “get up, can’t you? and come on.”
Rip Van Winkle never slept more profoundly than did Coote at that moment. But alas! Rip had the longer nap of the two.
An unceremonious application of the leader’s toe, and a threat to go on alone, brought the “Firm” to their feet in double-quick time, and started them up the steep side of the Beacon Hill.
Demoralised by their halt, they fared badly up the slope, and had it not been for Dick’s almost vicious resolution, which kept him going and overcame his own frequent inclination to yield to the lazier motions of his companions, they might never have done it. Dick saw that the effort was critical, and he was inexorable. Even Georgie thought him unkind, and Coote positively hated him up that slope.
Oh, those never-ending ridges, one above the other, each seeming to be the top, but each discovering another beyond more odious than itself!
More than once they felt they had just enough left in them to make the peak that faced them; and then, when it was reached, their endurance had to stretch and stretch until it seemed that the point of breaking must come at each step.
If nothing else they had ever done deserved the reward of the virtuous, that honest pull up the side of the Welkin Beacon did; and Freckleton, had he seen them making the last scramble, would have put their names down on his list without further probation.
The cairn stood before them at last, and as they rushed to it, and planted themselves on the topmost point, where still a few scraps of the scent lingered, all the fatigue and labour were forgotten in an exhilarating sense of triumph and achievement.
“Rather a breather, that,” said Dick, his honest face beaming all over; “you chaps took a lot of driving.”
“I feel quite fresh after it,” said Coote, beaming too.
“You didn’t feel fresh ten minutes ago, under the last shoulder but one, my boy. If you feel so fresh, suppose you trot down and up again while Georgie and I sit here and look at the view.”
Coote declined, and after a short rest they dropped down the long slope, with the scent in full view, on to Lowhouse, where the Gurgle, slipping clear and deep between its banks, seemed to them one of the loveliest pictures Nature ever drew.
The scent lay right along the bank, sometimes down on the stones, sometimes on the high paths above the tree tops, until suddenly it stopped.
“By Jove, we shall have to swim for it, you fellows,” cried Dick, delighted. “Chuck your shoes and things across, and tumble in.”
With joy they obeyed. They would fain have spent half an hour in the delicious water, so soft and cool and deep. But Dick was in a self-denying mood, and would not allow his men more than ten minutes. That, however, was as good as an hour’s nap; and when, after dressing and picking up the scent, they took up the running again, it was like a new start.
Half-a-mile down, they came on to the country road, and here suddenly the scent vanished. High or low they could not find it. It neither crossed the road, nor went up the road, nor went down the road. They sniffed round in circles, but all to no good—not a scrap of paper was anywhere within twenty yards, except at the spot where they had struck the road.
They had gone, perhaps, half a mile with no sign yet of the scent, and were beginning to make up their minds that, after all, they should have turned up the road instead of down, when a horseman, followed by a groom, turned a corner of the road in front of them and came to meet them.
“Hurrah!” cried Dick, “here’s a chap we can ask.”
The “chap” in question was evidently somewhat perplexed by the apparition of these three bareheaded, bare-legged, dust-stained youngsters, and reined up his horse as they trotted up.
“I say,” cried Dick, ten yards off, “have you seen the Harriers go by, please?—Whew!”
This last exclamation was caused by the sudden and alarming discovery that the “chap” thus unceremoniously addressed was no other than one of the two magistrates before whom, not three days ago, Tom White had stood on his trial in the presence of the “Firm.”
“What Harriers, my man?” asked the gentleman.
“Oh, if you please, the Templeton Harriers, sir. It’s a paper-chase, you know.”
“Oh, you’re Templeton boys, are you? Why, I was a Templetonian myself at your age,” said the delighted old boy. “No; no Harriers have gone this way. You must have lost the scent.”
“We lost it half a mile ago. If you’re going that way, we can show you where,” said Dick.
“Come on, then,” said the good-humoured squire; “we’ll smell ’em out somewhere.”
So the “Firm” turned and trotted in its very best form alongside the worthy magistrate until they reached the point where the scent had struck the road.
The old Templetonian summoned his groom, and, dismounting, joined the boys, with all the ardour of an old sportsman, in their search for the scent. He poked the hedges knowingly with his whip, and tracked up the ditches; he took note of the direction of the wind, and ordered his groom to take his horse a wide sweep of the field opposite on the chance of a discovery.
The boys, fired by his example, strained every nerve to prove themselves good Harriers, and covered a mile or more in their circuits.
At length the old gentleman brought his whip a crack down on his leggings and exclaimed:—
“I have it! Ha! ha! knowing young dogs! Look here, my boy! look here!”
And, taking Dick by the arm, he led him to the point where the scent touched the road.
“Do you see what they’ve done?—artful young scamps! They’ve doubled on their own scent. Usen’t to be allowed in my days.”
And, delighted with his discovery, he led them back along the scent for a hundred yards or so up the field, where it suddenly forked off behind some gorse-bushes, and made straight for the railway at Norton.
“Ha! ha! the best bit of sniffing I’ve had these many years. And, now I come to think of it, with the wind the way it is blowing, they may have dropped their scent fair, and the breeze has taken it on to the old track. Cunning young dogs!”
“Thanks, awfully,” said Dick, gratefully; “we should never have found it.”
The other two echoed their gratitude, and the delighted old gentleman valued their thanks quite as much as his Commission of the Peace.
“Now you’ve got it,” said he, “come along and have a bit of lunch at my house; I’m not five minutes away.”
“Thanks, very much,” said Dick, “but I’m afraid—”
“Nonsense! come on. You’re out of the hunt; ten minutes won’t make any difference.”
Of course they yielded, and enjoyed a sumptuous lunch of cold meat and bread and cheese, which made new men of them. It took all their good manners to curb their attentions to the joint; and their chatty host spun out the repast with such stories of his own school days, that the ten minutes grew to fully half an hour before they could get away.
Before they did so Dick, who for a quarter of an hour previously had been exhibiting signs of agitation and inward debate, contrived to astonish both the “Firm,” and his host.
“We saw you at Tom White’s trial the other day, sir,” said he, abruptly, at the close of one of the Squire’s stories.
“Bless my soul! were you there? Why, of course—all three of you; I saw you. They didn’t let the youngsters do that sort of thing in my day.”
“We were rather interested about White, you know,” said Dick, nervously.
“A good-for-nothing vagabond he is!” said the very unprofessional magistrate.
“We rather hope,” said Dick, turning very red, “he’ll get let off.”
“Eh? what? Do you know, you young scamp, I can— So you want him let off, do you? How’s that?”
“Because he didn’t take the boat away,” said Dick, avoiding the horror-struck eyes of his “Firm.”
“We—that is I—let it go.”
“What do you say?” said the Squire, putting down his knife and fork and sitting back in his chair.
Whereupon Dick, as much to stave off the expected storm as to justify himself, proceeded to give a true, though agitated, story of his and Georgie’s adventures on the day of the Grandcourt match, appealing to Georgie at every stage in the narration to corroborate him. Which Georgie did, almost noisily.
The magistrate heard it all out in silence, with a face gradually becoming serious.
“Do you know what you can get for doing it?” he asked.
Dick’s face grew graver and graver.
“Shall we be transported?” he asked, with a quaver in his voice.
The magistrate took a hurried gulp from the tumbler before him.
“You’ve put me in a fix, my man. You’d no business to get round me to prevent me doing my duty.”
“I really didn’t mean to do that,” put in Dick.
“No—we wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Georgie.
“Well, never mind that. Whatever Tom White did to you, you’d no right to do what you did. You’ve put me in a fix, I say. Take my advice and write to your father, and tell him all about it, and get him to come down. If Tom White’s partners and the pawnbroker get their money, they may stop the case, and there’ll be an end of it. If they don’t, Tom must take his chance. Dear, dear, things have changed in Templeton since my day. Confound it, I wish the
Harriers would choose some other run! A nice fix I’m in, to be sure—young rascals!”
Late that evening a crowd assembled in the Quadrangle of Templeton. The hunt had been in three hours ago, and all the hounds but three had turned up and gone to their kennels. It was to welcome the remaining three that the crowd was assembled. They had already been signalled from the beach, and the faint hum in the High Street told that they had already got into their last run.
Nearer and louder grew the sound, till the hum became a shout, and the shout a roar, as through the great gate of Templeton three small travel-stained figures trotted gamely into the Quad, with elbows down and heads up.
They hardly seemed to hear the cheers or notice the crowd, but kept their faces anxiously towards where Cresswell—book in hand—stood at the door of Westover’s to receive them.
“Have you run right through?” he asked as they came up.
“Yes, every step,” gasped Dick.
Five minutes later, the “Firm” was in bed and fast asleep.
And two days later, when the revised list of candidates eligible for election to the “Select Sociables” was displayed on the library door, it included the names of Richardson, Heathcote, and Coote.