by R S Surtees
‘Oh yes,’ replied Mr. Jogglebury slowly; ‘Mr. Puffington here draws up to Greatacre Gorse within a few (puff — wheeze) miles — say, three (puff) — of my (wheeze) house; and Sir Harry Scattercash (puff) hunts all the (puff — wheeze) country below, right away down to the (puff — wheeze) sea.’
‘Well, you’re a devilish good fellow!’ exclaimed Sponge; ‘and I’ll tell you what, as I’m sure you mean what you say, I’ll take you at your word and go at once; and that’ll give our friend here time to come round.’
‘Oh, but (puff — wheeze — gasp),’ started Mr. Jogglebury, the blood rushing to his great yellow, whiskerless cheeks, ‘I’m not quite (gasp) sure that Mrs. (gasp) Jogglebury (puff) Crowdey would be (puff — wheeze — gasp) prepared.’
‘Oh, hang preparation!’ interrupted Mr. Sponge. ‘I’ll take you as you are. Never mind me. I hate being made company of. Just treat me like one of yourselves; toad-in-the-hole, dog-in-the-blanket, beef-steaks and oyster-sauce, rabbits and onions — anything; nothing comes amiss to me.’
So saying, and while Jogglebury sat purple and unable to articulate, Mr. Sponge applied his hand to the ivory bell-knob and sounded an imposing peal. Mr. Jogglebury sat wondering what was going to happen, and thinking what a wigging he would get from Mrs. J. if he didn’t manage to shake off his friend. Above all, he recollected that they had nothing but haddocks and hashed mutton for dinner.
‘Tell Leather I want him,’ said Mr. Sponge, in a tone of authority, as the footman answered the summons; then, turning to his guest, as the man was leaving the room, he said, ‘Won’t you take something after your drive — cold meat, glass of sherry, soda-water, bottled porter — anything in that line?’
In an ordinary way, Jogglebury would have said, ‘if you please,’ at the sound of the words ‘cold meat,’ for he was a dead hand at luncheon; but the fix he was in completely took away his appetite, and he sat wheezing and thinking whether to make another effort, or to wait the arrival of Leather.
Presently Leather appeared, jean-jacketed and gaitered, smoothing his hair over his forehead, after the manner of the brotherhood.
‘Leather,’ said Mr. Sponge, in the same tone of importance, ‘I’m going to this gentleman’s’; for as yet he had not sufficiently mastered the name to be able to venture upon it in the owner’s presence. ‘Leather, I’m going to this gentleman’s, and I want you to bring me a horse over in the morning; or stay,’ said he, interrupting himself, and, turning to Jogglebury, he exclaimed, ‘I dare say you could manage to put me up a couple of horses, couldn’t you? and then we should be all cosy and jolly together, you know.’
‘‘Pon my word,’ gasped Jogglebury nearly choked by the proposal; ‘‘pon my word, I can hardly (puff) say, I hardly (wheeze) know, but if you’ll (puff — wheeze) allow me, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll (puff — wheeze) home, and see what I can (puff) do in the way of entertainment for (puff — wheeze) man as well as for (puff — wheeze) horse.’
‘Oh, thank you, my dear fellow!’ exclaimed Sponge, seeing the intended dodge; ‘thank you, my dear fellow!’ repeated he; ‘but that’s giving you too much trouble — far too much trouble! — couldn’t think of such a thing — no, indeed, I couldn’t. I’ll tell you what we’ll do — I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You shall drive me over in that shandrydan-rattle-trap thing of yours’ — Sponge looking out of the window, as he spoke, at the queer-shaped, jumped-together, lack-lustre-looking vehicle, with a turnover seat behind, now in charge of a pepper-and-salt attired youth, with a shabby hat, looped up by a thin silver cord to an acorn on the crown, and baggy Berlin gloves— ‘and I’ll just see what there is in the way of stabling; and if I think it will do, then I’ll give a boy sixpence or a shilling to come over to Leather, here,’ jerking his head towards his factotum; ‘if it won’t do, why then—’
‘We shall want three stalls, sir — recollect, sir, ‘interrupted Leather, who did not wish to move his quarters.
‘True, I forgot,’ replied Sponge, with a frown at his servant’s officiousness; ‘however, if we can get two good stalls for the hunters,’ said he, ‘we’ll manage the hack somehow or other.’
‘Well,’ replied Mr. Leather, in a tone of resignation, knowing how hopeless it was arguing with his master.
‘I really think,’ gasped Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, encouraged by the apparent sympathy of the servant to make a last effort, ‘I really think,’ repeated he, as the hashed mutton and haddocks again flashed across his mind, ‘that my (puff — wheeze) plan is the (puff) best; let me (puff — wheeze) home and see how all (puff — wheeze) things are, and then I’ll write you a (puff — wheeze) line, or send a (puff — wheeze) servant over.’
‘Oh no,’ replied Mr. Sponge, ‘oh no — that’s far too much trouble. I’ll just go over with you now and reconnoitre.’
‘I’m afraid Mrs. (puff — wheeze) Crowdey will hardly be prepared for (puff — wheeze) visitors,’ ejaculated our friend, recollecting it was washing-day, and that Mary Ann would be wanted in the laundry.
‘Don’t mention it!’ exclaimed Mr. Sponge; ‘don’t mention it. I hate to be made company of. Just give me what you have yourselves — just give me what you have yourselves. Where two can dine, three can dine, you know.’
Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey was nonplussed.
‘Well, now,’ said Mr. Sponge, turning again to Leather; ‘just go upstairs and help me to pack up my things; and,’ addressing himself to our visitor, he said, ‘perhaps you’ll amuse yourself with the paper — the Post — or I’ll lend you my Mogg,’ continued he, offering the little gilt-lettered, purple-backed volume as he spoke.
‘Thank’ee,’ replied Mr. Jogglebury, who was still tapping away at the card, which he had now worked very soft.
Mr. Sponge then left him with the volume in his hand, and proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.
In less than twenty minutes, the vehicle was got under way, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey and Mr. Sponge occupying the roomy seats in front, and Bartholomew Badger, the before-mentioned tiger, and Mr. Sponge’s portmanteau and carpet-bag, being in the very diminutive turnover seat behind. The carriage was followed by the straining eyes of sundry Johns and Janes, who unanimously agreed that Mr. Sponge was the meanest, shabbiest gent they had ever had in their house. Mr. Leather was, therefore, roasted in the servants’ hall, where the sins of the masters are oft visited upon the servants.
But to our travellers.
Little conversation passed between our friends for the first few miles, for, in addition to the road being rough, the driving-seat was so high, and the other so low, that Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey’s parables broke against Mr. Sponge’s hat-crown, instead of dropping into his ear; besides which, the unwilling host’s mind was a good deal occupied with wishing that there had been three haddocks instead of two, and speculating whether Mrs. Crowdey would be more pleased at the success of his mission, or put out of her way by Mr. Sponge’s unexpected coming. Above all, he had marked some very promising-looking sticks — two blackthorns and a holly — to cut on his way home, and he was intent on not missing them. So sudden was the jerk that announced his coming on the first one, as nearly to throw the old family horse on his knees, and almost to break Mr. Sponge’s nose against the brass edge of the cocked-up splash-board. Ere Mr. Sponge recovered his equilibrium, the whip was in the case, the reins dangling about the old screw’s heels, and Mr. Crowdey scrambling up a steep bank to where a very thick boundary-hedge shut out the view of the adjacent country. Presently, chop, chop, chop, was heard, from Mr. Crowdey’s pocket axe, with a tug — wheeze — puff from himself; next a crash of separation; and then the purple-faced Mr. Crowdey came bearing down the bank dragging a great blackthorn bush after him.
‘What have you got there?’ inquired Mr. Sponge, with surprise.
‘Got! (wheeze — puff — wheeze),’ replied Mr. Crowdey, pulling up short, and mopping his perspiring brow with a great claret-coloured bandana. ‘Got! I’ve (puff — wheeze) got what I (wheeze) think wil
l (puff) into a most elaborate and (wheeze) valuable walking-stick. This I (puff) think,’ continued he, eyeing the great ball with which he had got it up, ‘will (wheeze) come in most valuably (puff) for my great (puff — wheeze — gasp) national undertaking — the (puff) Kings and (wheeze) Queens of Great Britain (gasp).’
‘What are they?’ asked Mr. Sponge, astonished at his vehemence.
‘Oh! (puff — wheeze — gasp) haven’t you heard?’ exclaimed Mr. Jogglebury, taking off his great woolly hat, and giving his lank, dark hair, streaked with grey, a sweep round his low forehead with the bandana. ‘Oh! (puff — gasp) haven’t you heard?’ repeated he, getting a little more breath. ‘I’m (wheeze) undertaking a series of (gasp) sticks, representing — (gasp) — immortalizing, I may say (puff), all the (wheeze) crowned heads of England (puff).’
‘Indeed!’ replied Mr. Sponge.
‘They’ll be a most valuable collection (wheeze — puff),’ continued Mr. Jogglebury, still eyeing the knob. ‘This,’ added he, ‘shall be William the Fourth.’ He then commenced lopping and docking the sides, making Bartholomew Badger bury them in a sand-pit hard by, observing, in a confidential wheeze to Mr. Sponge, ‘that he had once been county-courted for a similar trespass before.’ The top and lop being at length disposed of, Mr. Crowdey, grasping the club-end, struck the other forcibly against the ground, exclaiming, ‘There! — there’s a (puff) stick! Who knows what that (puff — wheeze) stick may be worth some day?’
He then bundled into his carriage and drove on.
Two more stoppages marked their arrival at the other sticks, which being duly captured and fastened within the straps of the carriage-apron, Mr. Crowdey drove on somewhat more at ease in his mind, at all events somewhat comforted at the thoughts of having increased his wealth. He did not become talkative — indeed that was not his forte, but he puffed into his shirt-frill, and made a few observations, which, if they did not possess much originality, at all events showed that he was not asleep.
‘Those are draining-tiles,’ said he, after a hearty stare at a cart-load. Then about five minutes after he blew again, and said, ‘I don’t think (puff) that (wheeze) draining without (gasp) manuring will constitute high farming (puff).’
So he jolted and wheezed, and jerked and jagged the old quadruped’s mouth, occasionally hissing between his teeth, and stamping against the bottom of the carriage, when other persuasive efforts failed to induce it to keep up the semblance of a trot. At last the ill-supported hobble died out into a walk, and Mr. Crowdey, complacently dropping his fat hand on his fat knees, seemed to resign himself to his fate.
So they crawled along the up-and-downy piece of road below Poplarton plantations, Mr. Jogglebury keeping a sharp eye upon the underwood for sticks. After passing these, they commenced the gradual ascent of Roundington Hill, when a sudden sweep of the road brought them in view of the panorama of the rich Vale of Butterflower.
‘There’s a snug-looking box,’ observed Sponge, as he at length espied a confused jumble of gable-ends and chimney-pots rising from amidst a clump of Scotch firs and other trees, looking less like a farmhouse than anything he had seen.
‘That’s my house (puff); that’s Puddingpote Bower (wheeze),’ replied Crowdey slowly and pompously, adding an ‘e’ to the syllable, to make it sound better, the haddocks, hashed mutton, and all the horrors of impromptu hospitality rushing upon his mind.
Things began to look worse the nearer he got home. He didn’t care to aggravate the old animal into a trot. He again wondered whether Mrs. J. would be pleased at the success of his mission, or angry at the unexpected coming.
‘Where are the stables?’ asked Sponge, as he scanned the in-and-out irregularities of the building.
‘Stables (wheeze), stables (puff),’ repeated Crowdey — thinking of his troubles — of its being washing-day, and Mary Ann, or Murry Ann, as he called her, the under-butler, being engaged; of Bartholomew Badger having the horse and fe-a-ton to clean, &c.— ‘stables,’ repeated he for the third time; ‘stables are at the back, behind, in fact; you’ll see a (puff) vane — a (wheeze) fox, on the top.’
‘Ah, indeed!’ replied Mr. Sponge, brightening up, thinking there would be old hay and corn.
They now came to a half-Swiss, half-Gothic little cottage of a lodge, and the old horse turned instinctively into the open white gate with pea-green bands.
‘Here’s Mrs. Crow — Crow — Crowdey!’ gasped Jogglebury, convulsively, as a tall woman, in flare-up red and yellow stunner tartan, with a swarm of little children, similarly attired, suddenly appeared at an angle of the road, the lady handling a great alpaca umbrella-looking parasol in the stand-and-deliver style.
‘What’s kept you?’ exclaimed she, as the vehicle got within ear-shot. ‘What’s kept you?’ repeated she, in a sharper key, holding her parasol across the road, but taking no notice of our friend Sponge, who, in truth, she took for Edgebone, the butcher. ‘Oh! you’ve been after your sticks, have you?’ added she, as her spouse drew the vehicle up alongside of her, and she caught the contents of the apron-straps.
‘My dear (puff)’ gasped her husband, ‘I’ve brought Mr. (wheeze) Sponge,’ said he, winking his right eye, and jerking his head over his left shoulder, looking very frightened all the time. ‘Mr. (puff) Sponge, Mrs. (gasp) Jogglebury (wheeze) Crowdey,’ continued he, motioning with his hand.
Finding himself in the presence of his handsome hostess, Sponge made her one of his best bows, and offered to resign his seat in the carriage to her. This she declined, alleging that she had the children with her — looking round on the grinning, gaping group, the majority of them with their mouths smeared with lollipops. Crowdey, who was not so stupid as he looked, was nettled at Sponge’s attempting to fix his wife upon him at such a critical moment, and immediately retaliated with, ‘P’raps (puff) you’d like to (puff) out and (wheeze) walk.’
There was no help for this, and Sponge having alighted, Mr. Crowdey said, half to Mr. Sponge and half to his fine wife, ‘Then (puff — wheeze) I’ll just (puff) on and get Mr. (wheeze) Sponge’s room ready.’ So saying, he gave the old nag a hearty jerk with the bit, and two or three longitudinal cuts with the knotty-pointed whip, and jingled away with a bevy of children shouting, hanging on, and dragging behind, amidst exclamations from Mrs. Crowdey, of ‘O Anna Maria! Juliana Jane! O Frederick James, you naughty boy! you’ll spoil your new shoes! Archibald John, you’ll be kilt! you’ll be run over to a certainty. O Jogglebury, you inhuman man!’ continued she, running and brandishing her alpaca parasol, ‘you’ll run over your children! you’ll run over your children!’
‘My (puff) dear,’ replied Jogglebury, looking coolly over his shoulder,’ how can they be (wheeze) run over behind?’
So saying Jogglebury ground away at his leisure.
CHAPTER XLVI
PUDDINGPOTE BOWER, THE SEAT OF JOGGLEBURY CROWDEY, ESQ.
‘YOUR GOOD HUSBAND,’ observed Mr. Sponge as he now overtook his hostess and proceeded with her towards the house, ‘has insisted upon bringing me over to spend a few days till my friend Puffington recovers. He’s just got the gout. I said I was ‘fraid it mightn’t be quite convenient to you, but Mr. Crowdey assured me you were in the habit of receivin’ fox-hunters at short notice; and so I have taken him at his word, you see, and come.’
Mrs. Jogglebury, who was still out of wind from her run after the carriage, assured him that she was extremely happy to see him, though she couldn’t help thinking what a noodle Jog was to bring a stranger on a washing-day. That, however, was a point she would reserve for Jog.
Just then a loud outburst from the children announced the approach of the eighth wonder of the world, in the person of Gustavus James in the nurse’s arms, with a curly blue feather nodding over his nose. Mrs. Jogglebury’s black eyes brightened with delight as she ran forward to meet him; and in her mind’s eye she saw him inheriting a splendid mansion, with a retinue of powdered footmen in pea-green liveries and broad gold-laced hats. Great — prospectively g
reat, at least — as had been her successes in the sponsor line with her other children, she really thought, getting Mr. Sponge for a god-papa for Gustavus James eclipsed all her other doings.
Mr. Sponge, having been liberal in his admiration of the other children, of course could not refuse unbounded applause to the evident object of a mother’s regards; and, chucking the young gentleman under his double chin, asked him how he was, and said something about something he had in his ‘box,’ alluding to a paper of cheap comfits he had bought at Sugarchalk’s, the confectioner’s, sale in Oxford Street, and which he carried about for contingencies like the present. This pleased Mrs. Crowdey — looking, as she thought, as if he had come predetermined to do what she wanted. Amidst praises and stories of the prodigy, they reached the house.
If a ‘hall’ means a house with an entrance-’hall,’ Puddingpote Bower did not aspire to be one. A visitor dived, in medias res, into the passage at once. In it stood an oak-cased family clock, and a large glass-case, with an alarming-looking, stuffed tiger-like cat, on an imitation marble slab. Underneath the slab, indeed all about the passage, were scattered children’s hats and caps, hoops, tops, spades, and mutilated toys — spotted horses without heads, soldiers without arms, windmills without sails, and wheelbarrows without wheels. In a corner were a bunch of ‘gibbeys’ in the rough, and alongside the weather-glass hung Jog’s formidable flail of a hunting-whip.
Mr. Sponge found his portmanteau standing bolt upright in the passage, with the bag alongside of it, just as they had been chucked out of the phaeton by Bartholomew Badger, who, having got orders to put the horse right, and then to put himself right to wait at dinner, Mr. Jogglebury proceeded to vociferate:
‘Murry Ann! — Murry Ann!’ in such a way that Mary Ann thought either that the cat had got young Crowdey, or the house was on fire. ‘Oh! Murry Ann!’ exclaimed Mr. Jogglebury, as she came darting into the passage from the back settlements, up to the elbows in soap-suds; ‘I want you to (puff) upstairs with me, and help to get my (wheeze) gibbey-sticks out of the best room; there’s a (puff) gentleman coming to (wheeze) here.’
