Then came a bay, and a brown, and a chestnut, the latter falling at his fence, but inflicting no damage on his rider, who never let go the bridle, but was up and at it again without delay. These were followed by another bay, who refused to jump, and a dark-coated gentleman on a roan, whose heart failed him at the last stride, and who faded ignominiously away from that moment. The huntsman and first whip must have come a different line altogether, for we saw their velvet caps bobbing up and down in the distance, but could not otherwise have identified them.
The Jovial, however, was now waxing visibly impatient. “Dash it!” said he, “we may as well see the finish. I’m game, Softly, if you are. Come along, Kate!” And without waiting for the consent, which as a partner in the firm I think I was entitled to withhold, he laid the rein on the mare’s back, and we were once more jolting and bumping across the fields in search of some dubious and unfrequented bridle-road.
My friend was a good pilot. I must do him the justice to admit that quality. He seemed to know every gate and lane in the country, also to possess an intuitive knowledge of the run of a fox, with a staunch predilection for keeping down wind. I did not despair of coming up with the chase once more, and truth to tell I was not without hopes that to-day my curiosity might be satisfied with a view of Miss Merlin.
“The Jovial,” on the other hand, had become preoccupied and restless. No longer dispensing his quaint sallies and florid parables in my ear, he gave his whole attention to Crafty Kate, an arrangement to which I should have been the last person on earth to object; and although he drove that game and resolute animal with merciless rapidity, it was in a style considerably less random than before. Perhaps the influence of the brandy had died out; perhaps he felt the depression that always succeeds the excitement of seeing hounds, when it has evaporated. Perhaps he was thinking of his dinner, perhaps of the rat-catching he had missed, perhaps of Miss Merlin. We drove on for at least two miles without speaking.
In justice to my friend’s humanity, I am bound to observe that we had long ago taken pity on Brimstone, and hoisted him into the cart, where he lay coiled up under my legs, sniffing them ominously from time to time, as if only deterred by considerations of the merest politeness from taking a bite out of them at the most sensitive place. I dreaded lest a jolt severer than common should be construed by this amiable animal into a personal insult to himself.
To any one who has ever tried the delusive pastime of following hounds at a distance, with any expectation of coming up with them, I may leave the task of imagining our repeated disappointments and the labour, like that of Sisyphus, undergone by Crafty Kate. The persevering sportsman will have no difficulty in understanding how we drove from field-road to cross-road, and from cross-road to highway; how the little indistinct figures and black hats, dotting and bobbing behind the hedges, were now on our right, now on our left, anon almost within hail, and then hopelessly and provokingly ahead; how we saw the hounds themselves entering Cropley Pastures, and, thinking to nick in upon them at Whitethorns, found they had taken an unexpected turn to Swillingford mill; in short, how surely, as must always be the case in a good run, the further we went, the farther we were left behind, till our hopes, being suddenly raised by a butcher in a tax-cart, who had met them not half-a-mile from where we then were, and thought they must have “got him in a drain,” to be as suddenly dashed into ruins again by a farmer’s lad at the spot indicated, who vowed they had been gone twenty minutes, and “were running like fire,” we gave it up in despair, and turned Crafty Kate’s head, soberly and sadly, on her homeward way. A mouthful of gruel at a road-side public-house for the mare, and a small measure of hot ale, with a glass of gin, a spoonful of brown sugar, and a dash of spice in it, called by the different titles of “lambs’ wool,” “dog’s nose,” and “purl,” but of superlative merit after a three hours’ drive in the wet, restored us all, except Brimstone, to something of our earlier energy. I was glad, I confess, to have got through the drive without an accident, and looked forward to a warm house and a comfortable dressing-room, where my servant, I hoped, had already arrived with my things, more cheerfully than I should have conceived possible in the morning, when I anticipated my enforced visit to The Ashes with considerable distaste. The Jovial, too, having apparently drowned his unpleasant reflections, whatever they might be, in the hot mixture, came out once more in his normal character, accepting one of my cigars with facetious condescension, and sticking it in the extreme corner of his mouth, from which he never once removed it till he had smoked it down to the very stump.
“Mare’s about told out, Softly,” said he, as we drove somewhat soberly through the very gate he had spoken of in the morning, opening it by the dangerous process of running the shaft against its bars, and fending it off from the wheel with his left hand. “Hard day for the Crafty: those field-roads are so blessed deep. Never mind; another half-mile will see us. I don’t think you know my sisters: remarkable young women, and accomplished, ’specially Jane. I am prepared now to back Jane against any other girl in England, weight for age of course, to do five things—work cross stitch, whistle jigs, do the outside edge backwards, speak German, and make a sparrow pudding. My money is ready at The Ashes, Waterborough, this identical house of call we’re coming to, that it’s too dark for you to see. Catch hold, while I jump out and ring the bell.”
The flood of warm light that shone out upon us from the hall was indeed a pleasant contrast to the dark cold afternoon, which had already changed again for the worse. As I divested myself of my wraps, with the assistance of a staid elderly servant, young Plumtree welcomed me quite courteously to his father’s house, diverging, however, immediately afterwards, into the kind of jesting slang which was most familiar to him.
“You’re wet,” he observed, laying his hand on my coat, through which the rain had indeed penetrated. “Perhaps you’d like to go and dress at once. Indeed, we dine in less than an hour. Shall I show you your room? Will you have anything before dinner?—glass of sherry?—biscuit?—crust of bread and a pickle? No? then step this way, if you please. Here’s your room; things laid out—hot water laid on. There’s the bell; you ring for what you want, and the servants will bring you what they have!”
Behold me, then, like a man in a dream, dressing comfortably for dinner, in a strange house, of which I did not know the proprietor, nor, indeed, one of the inmates, except the harum-scarum young gentleman who had introduced me. In justice to myself, I made an elaborate toilet—white tie, black suit, thin boots—everything rigorously correct. There is no costume, in my opinion, which so marks the distinction of classes, as the plain dinner-dress of an English gentleman; and, indeed, I once heard that very invidious title defined as “a man who had got evening clothes.” Passing down to the drawing-room—an apartment I had no difficulty in finding, for the door was open, and a lamp shone brilliantly from it into the hall—I had leisure to observe the articles of furniture in the passages, and to remark on the idiosyncrasy which prompts all country gentlemen alike to ornament the insides of their houses with stuffed animals in glass cases. The Ashes was rich in specimens of this description. All kinds of birds flourished their beaks at the visitors on the stairs. A gigantic pike, like a miniature shark, grinned at him over the chimney-piece, and a hideous otter snarled at him from under the umbrella-stand in the hall. A portrait, which I concluded to be that of Mr. Plumtree senior, also adorned this crowded vestibule. I studied it by the light of my chamber-candlestick, not entirely, I fear, without spilling some wax on the floor during the process, in pardonable curiosity as to the exterior of the gentleman with whom I was about to dine. The picture was in all probability more valuable from its resemblance to the original, than from any intrinsic merit of its own as a work of art. It represented a florid personage, in the prime of life, attired in a bright-blue coat, and yellow waistcoat, on both which articles of apparel the artist had bestowed a liberal amount of colour, sitting by a pillar of porphyry, under a crimson curtain, “with a distant view of the changing sea.” His face, devoid of any outward expression, denoted that rapt state of thought peculiar, I am informed, to the highest order of intellects, and he seemed equally unmoved by the magnificence of the scenery, the gorgeousness of the curtain which overhung him, or the splendour of a heavy watch-chain and seals that rested massively against his nankeen stomach. On a table at his elbow stood a large book and a snuff-box, whilst his hand rested carelessly on the head of a black retriever dog. “If old Plumtree is like that,” was my mental observation, “he must present as great a contrast to the Jovial as was ever afforded in the inconvenient relationship of father and son.” I did not speak aloud, fortunately; for this conclusion brought me into the drawing-room, which, having dressed early, I expected I should have had to myself: it was not so, however. On entering that apartment—a pretty, well-furnished, long, low room, with some excellent prints and a grand pianoforte—I was somewhat discomfited to find it already occupied by two young ladies, dressed, as far as my confusion permitted me to observe, precisely alike, sitting in precisely the same attitude, and engaged over similar pieces of crochet-work. I bowed very awkwardly, and walked up to the fire, with the startling intelligence that it was “a cold evening,” a proposition neither of the ladies seemed in a position to confute. This masterly manœuvre, however, gave me an opportunity of studying both their faces, and I am bound to admit that the one predominating idea present to my mind, during a perusal of their features, was, “How shall I ever know one from the other, when their brother comes down, and formally introduces us?” Each of them was a rather tall, rather large young lady, with hands and feet to correspond. Each of them had a certain regularity of features, totally devoid of any expression whatsoever, that might have laid claim to good looks, had it not been nullified by the absence of colouring and want of tone in their rather large, rather flat faces. If either of them had unfortunately taken to drinking, she would have been a bad likeness of her brother the Jovial. That I longed ardently for the conclusion of that gentleman’s toilet is no matter of surprise, the conversation between the Misses Plumtree and myself being driven, so to speak, at a funereal rate, and in the longest possible stages. I gathered, however, from a certain decision of tone in their few and disjointed remarks, that there was no mother Plumtree, and that the vestals now before me were the presiding goddesses of the place.