Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  “I’m afraid, there is no turtle, sir,” replied Mrs. Markham, well knowing there was not. “Gravy, macaroni, mulligatawney.”

  “No, jest fish, and steak, and fizzant,” rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, “Cod and hoister sauce, say — and p’raps a couple o’ dozen o’ hoisters to begin with, — jest as a whet you know.”

  “Any sweets?” asked the lady significantly.

  “No, I’ll ‘ave my sweets arter,” winked Mr. J. licking his lips.

  “Open tart, apple fritters, omelette, any thing of that sort?” continues she; intimating with her eye that the loitering housemaid might hear his answer.

  “No; I’ll fill hup the chinks wi’ cheese,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, stroking his stomach.

  “And wine?” asked the housekeeper; adding, “the butler’s away with Sir Archey, but I ‘ave the key of the cellar.”

  “That’s all right!” exclaimed our friend, adding, “I’ll drink his ‘ealth in a bottle of his best.”

  “Port?” asked Mrs. Markham.

  “Port in course,” replied Mr. J. with a hoist of his eyebrows, adding, “but mind I doesn’t call the oldest the best — far from it — it’s oftentimes the wust. No,” continued he, “give me a good fruity wine; a wine with a grip o’ the gob, that leaves a mark on the side o’ the glass; not your weak woe-begone trash, that would be water if it wasn’t wine.”

  “P’raps you’d like a little champagne at dinner,” suggested Mrs. Markham.

  “Champagne,” repeated Mr. Jorrocks thoughtfully, “Champagne! well, I wouldn’t mind a little champagne, only I wouldn’t like it hiced; doesn’t want to ‘ave all my teeth set a chatterin’ i my ‘ead; harn’t got so far advanced in gentility as to like my wine froze — I’m a Post Hoffice Directory, not a Peerage man,” added he with a broad grin.

  “Indeed,” smiled Mrs. Markham, not exactly understanding the simile.

  “Folks talk about the different grades o’ society,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, with a smile and a pshaw, “but arter all’s said and done there are but two sorts o’ folks i’ the world, Peerage folks, and Post Hoffice Directory folks, Peerage folks, wot think it’s all right and proper to do their tailors, and Post Hoffice Directory folks wot think it’s the greatest sin under the sun not to pay twenty shillins i’ the pund — greatest sin under the sun ‘cept kissin’ and then tellin’,” added he, in an under tone, with a wink, as he drew his hand across his jolly lips.

  “Well, then, you’ll have it iced,” observed Mrs. Markham, in a tone for the housemaid to hear. “Just a few minutes plunge in the pail, — enough to dull the glass p’raps?” continued she.

  “Well,” mused our friends, “as you are mistress o’ the revels, I’ll leave that to you, and I makes no doubt,” added he, with another sly squeeze of her soft hand, now that the housemaid’s back was turned, “I shall fare uncommon well.”

  And Mrs. Markham, seeing that the maid was bent on out-staying her, sailed away with a stately air, ordering her, in a commanding tone, to “bring some wood to the fire.”

  And Mr. Jorrocks, we need scarcely say, had a very good dinner, and spent his evening very pleasantly.

  CHAPTER XVII. THE PLUCKWELLE PRESERVES.

  NEXT MORNING, IN accordance with Sir Archey’s injunctions, as Mr. Jorrocks sat at a capital breakfast, Mr. Snapshot, the keeper, sent to know if he would please to go out shooting, or coursing, or rabbiting, and finding that the covers were near the house, and pretty full of pheasants, our M.F.H. thought he might as well have a “blaze among ’em” before he went home. Accordingly he sought Sir Archey’s dressing-room, and borrowed a pair of his best thick shoes and leather gaiters, which, with a fustian coat of the keeper’s, made him pretty perfect, and the stables being in the way to the kennels, he thought he might as well see how his hack was, and look at his proposed purchase. Accordingly, preceded by Mr. Snapshot, he passed through a lofty, deserted-looking, cobwebby, ten-stalled stable, with a two-stall one beyond, in which were a couple of shooting ponies, of which Mr. Snapshot spoke approvingly; then crossing the central passage, they traversed another two-stall, and entered upon a somewhat better conditioned corresponding stable to the ten.

  First there stood Mr. Jorrocks’s hundred-guinea horse, with a wretched old rag of a rug over it, then a pair of better-clothed browns that Snapshot alluded to as “our ‘cage ‘orses;” then, as Mr. Jorrocks passed on to a bright bang-tailed bay beyond, thinking that would be his friend, Snapshot seized him suddenly by the arm, with a “take care of im, sir! take care! — He’ll kick ye to a certainly!”

  “Wot, he’s wicious is he?” observed Mr. Jorrocks coolly, eyeing the now well laid-back ears and exuberant, white of the eye.

  “Most vicious brute alive!” replied Mr. Snapshot. “If he was to get you off, he’d stand considerin’ whether he should kick out your right eye or your left.”

  “In-deed,” mused Mr. Jorrocks— “pleasant ‘oss to ‘ave.”

  “We’re expectin’ an old gent from Handley Cross to look at ’im,” observed the keeper, “but I think he’ll have to be crazier than they say he is afore he buys ’im.”

  “I think so too,” assented Mr. Jorrocks — stumping on out of heels’ reach.

  They then got the dogs out of the kennel, and proceeded to the pheasants.

  Mr. Jorrocks, being out of practice, did not make much of a hand at first, which, coupled with the injunctions all the servants were under to make the stranger as comfortable as possible, induced Snapshot to take him to the home cover, when the pheasants rising in clouds and the hares streaming out like sand ropes, our worthy friend very soon bagged his five brace of pheasants and three hares. Snapshot, now thinking “tipping time” was come, and feeling for his pheasants, proposed a truce, when Mr. Jorrocks, handing him the gun, picked out three brace of the best birds, with which he trudged away, leaving the astonished Snapshot to follow with the rest. Hares he wouldn’t take, thinking his riotous hounds would kill him plenty of them. He then very coolly locked the pheasants up in his vehicle, and ordering the horse to be put-to, was ready for a start by the time it came to the door. With a loving leave-taking of Mrs. Markham, he was presently in his rattle-trap and away. A favourable road incline with the horse’s head towards home, sent the hundred guinea nag along, and Mr. Jorrocks began to think it “wasn’t so bad as it seemed.”

  As he neared the last unlodged gates in Sir Archey’s grounds, he saw another vehicle approaching, and each driver thinking to get the other to open the gate, they timed themselves so as to meet with it between them.

  “Sky ye a copper who opens it!” at length exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, after a good stare at his much muffled up vis-à-vis.

  “Eads or tails?” continued he, producing a half-a-crown piece— “Eads I win! tails you lose!”

  “Heads!” cried the stranger.

  “Its tails!” replied Mr. Jorrocks, pretending to look at it, “so you opens it.”

  The youth then got out and did so.

  “Prop it hopen! prop it hopen!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, adding, “there arn’nt no cattle in either field, and it may as well stand that way as not.”

  The gentleman did as he was bid, drawing his vehicle — a German waggon with three crests (very symptomatic of money) — alongside of Mr. Jorrocks’s.

  “You’ll be agoin’ to Sir Harchey’s, I guess,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, after scrutinising his fat, vacant face intently.

  “I am,” replied the stranger.

  “Well, I’m jest a comin’ from there,” continued our friend, stroking his chin complacently, thinking of the pheasants and the fun he had had.

  “Indeed,” smiled the gentleman.

  “He’s not at ‘ome,” observed Mr. Jorrocks.

  “At home to me,” replied the stranger, with a man-of-the-house sort of air.

  “Humph,” mused Mr. Jorrocks, adding, after a pause,— “Well, now blow me tight, I shouldnt be at all s’prised, if they’re been a takin’ o’ me for you. Thought they were s
weeter upon me than a mere ‘oss-dealin’ case required, unless indeed they took me for a most egregius John Ass.”

  “Hope they’ve used you well,” observed the stranger.

  “Capital,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “and if it wasn’t that I ‘ave a ‘ticklar engagement, I wouldn’t mind returnin’ and spendin’ the evenin’ with you. Independent of a capital dinner, I had just as good a drink as man need wish for. Amost two bottles of undeniable black strap, besides et ceteras, and no more ‘ead ache than the crop o’ my wip.”

  “Indeed,” observed the stranger, thinking he was lucky to escape such a sand-bag.

  “True, I assure you,” affirmed Jorrocks— “shouldn’t know that I’d taken more nor my usual quantity; shot as well as ever I did i’ my life this mornin’, and altogether I’m uncommon pleased with my jaunt, and that reminds me,” continued he, flourishing his whip bag-man-i-cally over his head, and thinking how he had got to the windward of Sir Archey, “you can do summat for me — I’m Mr. Jorrocks, the M.F.H. — you’ll most likely have ‘eard o’ me — I ‘unts the country. Well, I’ve been to look at an ‘oss of Sir Harchey’s — a werry nice h’animal he is, but ‘ardly hup to my weight — I’m a sixteen stunner you see. Ave the goodness to make my compliments to Sir Harchey, and tell ’im I’m werry much ‘bliged by his purlite hoffer on ’im, and that I’m werry sorry he wasn’t at ‘ome, so that I might ‘ave ‘ad the pleasure o’ makin’ his personal ‘quaintance, as well as that of his Port;” so saying, Mr. Jorrocks shortened his hold of the reins, and dropping the point of his whip scientifically into the Handley Cross back, bowed to his friend, and bowled away homewards.

  And when Sir Archey returned, and found the indignities that had been put upon him, he was exceeding wrath, and vowed vengeance against the grocer.

  CHAPTER XVIII. A SPORTING LECTOR.

  FOR SOME DAYS after Mr. Jorrocks’s return from Pluckwelle Park, Diana Lodge was literally besieged with people, offering him horses of every sort, size, and description. A man “wanting a horse” — and, confound it! some people are always “wanting” them, and never buy, — a man “wanting a horse,” we say, is always an object of interest to the idle and unemployed, looking out for horses for other people; and Handley Cross being as idle as a place as any, everybody seemed bent upon propagating the great M.F.H.’s wants. Even the ladies, who don’t generally bestir themselves in such matters, seemed smitten with the mania; and a horse being a horse with them, the curiosities their inquiries produced were very amusing. The horses that came were of all prices, from a hundred guineas down to thirty shillings; indeed, Mrs. Pearlash, the laundress, intimated that she might take “rayther” less than thirty for her old woe-begone white Rosinante. Our worthy M.F.H. was indebted to his wife for the offer of it; Mrs. Jorrocks making the subject of “osses” one of her standing topics of conversation, as well with her visitors as to all those with whom she came in contact. Having casually mentioned her great sporting-spouse’s wants to Mrs. Pearlash, that useful functionary, sticking her fists in her sides for the purpose of revolving the matter in her mind, said, “Well, now, she didn’t know but they might part with their horse, and she’d ask her old man;” who readily assented to the sale of an animal that could hardly crawl. Jorrocks was highly indignant when it came, and desired Mrs. J. not to meddle with matters she didn’t understand.

  Mr. Jorrocks, on his part, having about satisfied himself that hunting a pack of hounds was a very different things to riding after them, as near to them or as far off as he liked, repelled all inquiries as to when he would be going out again, and when he would begin to advertise, by saying, mysteriously, “that he must get things a little forwarder fust.” The fact was, he wanted to pick up a huntsman at whip’s wages, and had written to sundry friends in the City and elsewhere, describing what he wanted, and intimating that the whip might occasionally have to “‘unt the ‘ounds when he was away, or anything of that sort.” His City friends, who didn’t approve of his proceedings, and, moreover, had plenty of other matters to attend to of their own, gave his letters very little heed, if indeed they took any notice of them at all. Some of his old cronies shook their heads, and said they “wished any good might come of it;” while others said “he’d much better have stuck to his shop;” adding a wish that things might continue “serene” in the “lane.”

  Altogether Jorrocks’s proceedings were not approved of in the commercial world, where hunting and gambling are often considered synonymous. He, however, was all swagger and cock-a-hoop, vowing that he had got “the best pack of ‘ounds in the world;” adding, that “they would make the foxes cry ‘Capevi!”’

  Belinda’s beauty and unaffected manners drew Mrs. Jorrocks plenty of callers, who soon found herself a much greater woman at Handley Cross than she was in Great Coram Street.

  Belinda might have had an offer every day in the week, but somehow the suitors never could get the old girl out of the room — an error into which ladies, who trade in beauty other than that of their own daughters, are very apt to fall. Mrs. Jorrocks wouldn’t admit that she was in any ways indebted to Belinda for her company, and of course sat to receive her own guests. Not that Belinda wanted any of their offers; for, as Ben intimated, she had a young chap in her eye, who will shortly appear in our pages: but Mrs. Jorrocks, like a skilful old mouser, as she was, did not let that out.

  So Belinda was talked of, and toasted, and toasted, and talked of, and “set out” for no end of people. The Jorrocks’s funds rose ten per cent. at least from having her, and the Barnington ones were depressed to a similar extent.

  Our great M.F.H. not finding any responses to his inquiries for a whip, and being dreadfully anxious to be doing, resolved to make known his wants through the medium of the newspapers; and while his bold advertisement for a “huntsman” (not a whip who could ‘unt the ‘ounds occasionally) was working, he bethought him, instead of exposing his incompetence as a huntsman, to display his sporting knowledge in a lecture, in which he could also inculcate the precepts he wished practised towards himself, both at home and in the field.

  Accordingly, he enlisted the assistance of Captain Doleful, to whose province such arrangements seemed peculiarly to belong and the large room of the Dragon was engaged and tastefully fitted up under their joint superintendence. A temporary platform was placed at the far end, surmounted by a canopy of scarlet cloth, tastefully looped up in the centre with an emblematical sporting device, formed of a hunting-cap, a pair of leather breeches, a boot-jack, and three foxes’ brushes. Inside the canopy was suspended a green-shaded lamp, throwing a strong light upon the party below, and the room was brilliantly lighted with wax both from the chandeliers and reflecting-mirrors against the wall. The doors were besieged long before the appointed hour for commencing, and ere the worthy lecturer made his appearance there was not standing room to be had in any part. The orchestra was also full, and in it “we observed many elegantly dressed ladies,” as the reporters say.

  Precisely at eight o’clock Mr. Jorrocks ascended the platform, attended by Captain Dolefu, Roger Swizzle, Romeo Simpkins, and Abel Snorem, and was received with the most enthusiastic cheering. He wore the full-dress uniform of the hunt; sky-blue coat lined with pink silk, canary-coloured shorts, and white silk stockings. His neckcloth and waistcoat were white, and a finely plaited shirt-frill protruded through the stand-up collar of the latter. Bunches of white ribbon dangled at his knees. In his hand he held a roll of notes, while some books of reference and a tumbler of brandy and water, were placed by Benjamin on a table at the back of the platform. Benjamin had on his new red frock with blue collar, cord breeches, and white stockings.

  After bowing most familiarly to the company, Mr. Jorrocks cleared his voice with a substantial hem, and then addressed the meeting.

  “Beloved ‘earers! — beloved I may call you, for though I have not the pleasure of knowin’ many of you, I hope werry soon to make your intimate acquaintance. Beloved ‘earers, I say, I have come ’ere this e
venin’ for the double purpose of seeing you, and instructin’ of you on those matters that have brought me to this your beautiful and salubrisome town. (Cheers.) Beautiful I may call it, for its architectural proportions are grand, and salubrisome it must be when it boasts so many cheerful, wigorous countenances as I now see gathered around me. (Loud applause.) And if by my comin’, I shall spread the great light of sportin’ knowledge, and enable you to perserve those glowin’ mugs when far removed from these waters, then shall I be a better doctor than either Swizzle or Sebastian, and the day that drew John Jorrocks from the sugars of retirement in Great Coram Street will henceforth remain red-lettered in the mental calendar of his existence. (Loud cheers.) Red-lettered did I say? ah! wot a joyous colour to denote a great and glorious ewent! Believe me there is no colour like red — no sport like ‘unting.

  “Blue coats and canaries,” observed Mr. Jorrocks looking down at his legs, “are well enough for dancin’ in, but the man wot does much dancin’ will not do much ‘unting. But to business — Lectorin’ is all the go — and why should sportin’be excluded? Is it because sportin’ is its own champion? Away with the idea! Are there no pints on which grey experience can show the beacon lights to ‘ot youth and indiscretion? — Assuredly there are! Full then of hardour — full of keenness, one pure concentrated essence of ‘unting, John Jorrocks comes to enlighten all men capable of instruction on pints that all wish to be considered conversant with.

  “Well did that great man, I think it was Walter Scott, but if it war’nt, ’twas little Bartley, the boot-maker, say, that there was no young man wot would not rather have a himputation on his morality than on his ‘ossmanship, and yet, how few there are wot really know anything about the matter! Oh, but if hignorance be bliss ’ow ‘appy must they be! (Loud cheers and laughter.)