Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

by R. D. Blackmore

CHAPTER XVIII. CONCUSSION.

All the time these things were going on, the patient Christie had been waiting, or rather driving to and fro, on the outskirts of the private grounds. These were large, and well adorned with trees of ancient growth, and clumps of shrubs, and ferny dingles. Southward stretched the rich Perle valley, green with meadows beloved by cows, who expressed their fine emotions in the noblest cream; on the north-east side was the Beacon Hill, sheltering from the bitter winds, and forming a goodly landmark; while to the north and west extended heathery downs with sweet short grass, knolls of Scotch fir here and there, and gorse for ever blooming. Across these downs, and well above the valley-margin ran one of the two great western roads, broad and smooth as a ball-room floor, and ringing some forty times a day, with the neigh, and the tramp, and the harness-rattle of four steeds tossing their heads up, and the musical blast of long brass horn, or merry notes of key-bugle.

Christie Fox in her own opinion was an exceedingly fine whip. Tandem-driving was then much in vogue; and truly to be a good tandem-whip was one of the loftiest aspirations of the rational being who could afford it. Christie was scarcely up to that mark yet, although she had been known to "tool a team," when her father had the gout, and there was some one at her side. So it may be supposed, with what sweet contempt her sparkling eyes regarded Churchwarden Tarrant's rattle-trap, and his old cob Punch anteceding it.

"Now don't you go capering about, Miss Chris;" her brother had said when he left her. "I should have brought George, or at any rate the boy. These lanes are so narrow, and the ditches such a depth."

"Well, Jemmy, it shows how little you have been at home! Why I can drive Sparkler, and Wild-oats, and Hurricane. To think of my coming to grief with this old screw!"

"You are a wonder, no doubt. But at any rate, be careful. He is a quiet old buffer, but he has got a temper of his own. Why he upset the Reverend, last summer."

"He won't spill me, I can tell him that. The Reverend is a muff—he should have let him say his prayers."

For a long time the young lady proved that she was right. Punch went up and down, and even on the common, as grave as a Judge, and as steady as a Church. "Poor old chap!" said Christie to him; "Why you haven't got the pluck to call your soul your own." Punch only replied with a whisk of his tail, as if to say—"well, I can call this my own," and pursued his reflections, with a pensive head.

But suddenly the scene changed. A five-barred gate was flung mightily open, half across the lane, with a fierce creak of iron, and a shivering of wood; and out poured a motley crowd of all sorts and sizes, rattling tea-kettles, and beating frying-pans, blowing old cow's horns, and flourishing a blown dozen of Bob Jake's bladders, with nuts inside them. Punch was coming past, in a moody state of mind, down upon his luck in some degree, and wondering what the world was made for, if a piece of iron in a horse's mouth was allowed to deny him the Almighty's gift of grass. However he resigned himself about all that.

But when this tremendous uproar broke upon him—for it happened to be the Northern party of the parish, beating bounds towards the back of Beacon Hill, and eager to win a bet about where they met the other lot—and when a gate was flung almost into his shaky knees, which had begun for some time to "come over," up rose the spirit of his hunting days, for he had loved the hounds, when he was young. There was no room to rise the gate; or perhaps he would have tried it, for the mettle of springier times sprang up, and he had never heard a louder noise, in the most exciting burst. Surely his duty was at least to jump a hedge.