‘Well, we’ll see what can be done,’ replied he; ‘and before dinner’s over, perhaps I may find some means to forward you.’
With this he left the room, leaving mademoiselle and myself tête-à-tête. And here let me confess, never did any man feel his situation more awkwardly than I did mine at that moment; and before any of my younger and more ardent brethren censure me, let me at least ‘show cause’ in my defence. First, I myself, however unintentionally, had brought Mademoiselle Laura into her present embarrassment; but for me and the confounded roan she had been at that moment cantering away pleasantly with the Comte d’Espagne beside her, listening to his fleurettes and receiving his attentions. Secondly, I was, partly from bashfulness, partly from fear, little able to play the part my present emergency demanded, which should either have been one of downright indifference and ease, or something of a more tender nature, which indeed the very pretty companion of my travels might have perfectly justified.
‘Well,’ said she, after a considerable pause, ‘this is about the most ridiculous scrape I’ve ever been involved in. What will they think at the château?’
‘If they saw your horse when he bolted——’
‘Of course they did,’ said she; ‘but what could they do? The Comte d’Espagne is always mounted on a slow horse: he couldn’t overtake me; then the maîtres couldn’t pass the grand maître.’
‘What!’ cried I, in amazement; ‘I don’t comprehend you perfectly.’
‘It’s quite clear, nevertheless,’ replied she; ‘but I see you don’t know the rules of the chasse in Flanders.’
With this she entered into a detail of the laws of the hunting-field, which more than once threw me into fits of laughter. It seemed, then, that the code decided that each horseman who followed the hounds should not be left to the wilfulness of his horse or the aspirings of his ambition, as to the place he occupied in the chase. It was no momentary superiority of skill or steed, no display of jockeyship, no blood that decided this momentous question. No; that was arranged on principles far less vacillating and more permanent at the commencement of the hunting season, by which it was laid down as a rule that the grand maître was always to ride first. His pace might be fast or it might be slow, but his place was there. After him came the maîtres, the people in scarlet, who in right of paying double subscription were thus costumed and thus privileged; while the ‘aspirants’ in green followed last, their smaller contribution only permitting them to see so much of the sport as their respectful distance opened to them—and thus that indiscriminate rush, so observable in our hunting-fields, was admirably avoided and provided against. It was no headlong piece of reckless daring, no impetuous dash of bold horsemanship; on the contrary, it was a decorous and stately canter—not after hounds, but after an elderly gentleman in a red coat and a brass tube, who was taking a quiet airing in the pleasing delusion that he was hunting an animal unknown. Woe unto the man who forgot his place in the procession! You might as well walk into dinner before your host, under the pretence that you were a more nimble pedestrian.
Besides this, there were subordinate rules to no end. Certain notes on the cor de chasse were royalties of the grand maître; the maîtres possessed others as their privileges which no ‘aspirant’ dare venture on. There were quavers for one, and semiquavers for the other; and, in fact, a most complicated system of legislation comprehended every incident, and I believe every accident, of the sport, so much that I can’t trust my memory as to whether the wretched ‘aspirants’ were not limited to tumbling in one particular direction—which, if so, must have been somewhat of a tyranny, seeing they were but men, and Belgians.
‘This might seem all very absurd and very fabulous if I referred to a number of years back; but when I say that the code still exists, in the year of grace, 1856, what will they say at Melton or Grantham? So you may imagine,’ said Laura, on concluding her description, which she gave with much humour, ‘how manifold your transgressions have been this day. You have offended the grand maître, maîtres, and aspirants, in one coup; you have broken up the whole “order of their going.”’