by R S Surtees
With this wise resolution he jumped out of bed with the vigorous determination of a man about to take a shower-bath, and proceeded to invest himself in the only mitigating features of the chace, the red coat and leathers. He was hardly well in them before a clamorous bell rang for breakfast, quickly followed by a knock at the door, announcing that it was on the table.
Sir Moses was always in a deuce of a hurry on a hunting morning. Our hero was then presently performing the coming downstairs feat he is represented doing at page 147. and on reaching the lower regions he jumped in with a dish of fried ham which led him straight to the breakfast room.
Here Sir Moses was doing all things at once, reading the “Post,” blowing his beak, making the tea, stirring the fire, crumpling his envelopes, cussing the toast, and doming the footman, to which numerous avocations he now added the pleasing one of welcoming our Billv.
“Well done you! First down, I do declare!” exclaimed he, tendering him his left hand, his right one being occupied with his kerchief. “Sit down, and let’s be at it,” continued he, kicking a rush-bottomed chair under Billy as it were, adding “never wait for any man on a hunting morning.” So saying, he proceeded to snatch an egg, in doing which he upset the cream-jug. “Dom the thing,” growled he, “what the deuce do they set it there for. D’ye take tea?” now asked he, pointing to the tea-pot with his knife— “or coffee?” continued he, pointing to the coffee-pot with his fork, “or both praps,” added he, without waiting for an answer to either question, but pushing both pots towards his guest, following up the advance with ham, eggs, honey, buns, butter, bread, toast, jelly, everything within reach, until he got Billy fairly blocked with good things, when he again set-to on his own account, munching and crunching, and ended by nearly dragging all the contents of the table on to the floor by catching the cloth with his spur as he got up to go away.
He then went doming and scuttling out of the room, charging Billy if he meant to go with the hounds to “look sharp.”
During his absence Stephen Booty and Mr. Silverthorn came dawdling into the room, taking it as easy as men generally do who have their horses on and don’t care much about hunting.
Indeed Silverthorn never disguised that he would rather have his covers under plough than under gorse, and was always talking about the rent he lost, which he estimated at two pounds an acre, and Sir Moses at ten shillings.
Finding the coast clear, they now rang for fresh ham, fresh eggs, fresh tea, fresh everything, and then took to pumping Billy as to his connection with the house, Sir Moses having made him out over night to be a son of Sir Jonathan Pringle’s, with whom he sometimes claimed cousinship, and they wanted to get a peep at the baronetage if they could. In the midst of their subtle examination, Sir Moses came hurrying back, whip in one hand, hat in the other, throwing open the door, with, “Now, are you ready?” to Billy, and “morning, gentlemen,” to Booty and Silverthorn.
Then Billy rose with the desperate energy of a man going to a dentist’s, and seizing his cap and whip off the entrance table, followed Sir Moses through the intricacies of the back passages leading to the stables, nearly falling over a coal-scuttle as he went. They presently changed the tunnel-like darkness of the passage into the garish light of day, by the opening of the dirty back door.
Descending the little flight of stone steps, they then entered the stable-yard, now enlivened with red coats and the usual concomitants of hounds leaving home. There was then an increased commotion, stable-doors flying open, from which arch-necked horses emerged, pottering and feeling for their legs as they went. Off the cobble-stone pavement, and on to the grass grown soft of the centre, they stood more firm and unflinching. Then Sir Moses took one horse, Tom Findlater another, Harry the first whip a third, Joe the second whip a fourth, while the bine-coated pad groom came trotting round on foot from the back stables, between Sir Moses’s second horse and Napoleon the Great.
Billy dived at his horse without look or observation, and the clang of departure being now at its height, the sash of a second-floor window flew up, and a white cotton night-capped head appeared bellowing out, “Y-o-i-cks wind ’im! y-o-i-cks push ’im up!” adding, “Didn’t I tell ye it was going to be a hunting morning?”
“Ay, ay, Cuddy you did,” replied Sir Moses laughing, muttering as he went: “That’s about the extent of your doings.”
“He’ll be late, won’t he?” asked Billy, spurring up alongside of the Baronet.
“Oh, he’s only an afternoon sportsman that,” replied Sir Moses; adding, “he’s greatest after dinner.”
“Indeed!” mused Billy, who had looked upon him with the respect due to a regular flyer, a man who could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im-shire itself.
The reverie was presently interrupted by the throwing open of the kennel door, and the clamorous rush of the glad pack to the advancing red coats, making the green sward look quite gay and joyful.
“Gently, there! gently!” cried Tom Findlater, and first and second whips falling into places, Tom gathered his horse together and trotted briskly along the side of the ill-kept carriage road, and on through the dilapidated lodges: a tattered hat protruding through the window of one, and two brown paper panes supplying the place of glass in the other. They then got upon the high road, and the firy edge being taken off both hounds and horses, Tom relaxed into the old post-boy pace, while Sir Moses proceeded to interrogate him as to the state of the kennel generally, how Rachael’s feet were, whether Prosperous was any better, if Abelard had found his way home, and when Sultan would be fit to come out again.
They then got upon other topics connected with the chace, such as, who the man was that Harry saw shooting in Tinklerfield cover; if Mrs Swan had said anything more about her confounded poultry; and whether Ned Smith the rat-catcher would take half a sovereign for his terrier or not.
Having at length got all he could out of Tom, Sir Moses then let the hounds flow past him, while he held back for our Billy to come up. They were presently trotting along together a little in the rear of Joe, the second whip.
“I’ve surely seen that horse before,” at length observed Sir Moses, after a prolonged stare at our friend’s steed.
“Very likely,” replied Billy, “I bought him of the Major.”
“The deuce you did!” exclaimed Sir Moses, “then that’s the horse young Tabberton had.”
“What, you know him, do you?” asked Billy.
“Know him! I should think so,” rejoined Moses; “everybody knows him.”
“Indeed!” observed Billy, wondering whether for good or evil.
“I dare say, now, the Major would make you give thirty, or five-and-thirty pounds for that horse,” observed Sir Moses, after another good stare.
“Far more!” replied Billy, gaily, who was rather proud of having given a hundred guineas.
“Far more!” exclaimed Sir Moses with energy; “far more! Ah!” added he, with a significant shake of the head, “he’s an excellent man, the Major — an excellent man, — but a leetle too keen in the matter of horses.”
Just at this critical moment Tommy Heslop of Hawthorndean, who had been holding back in Crow-Tree Lane to let the hounds pass, now emerged from his halting-place with a “Good morning, Sir Moses, here’s a fine hunting morning?”
“Good morning, Tommy, good morning,” replied Sir Moses, extending his right hand; for Tommy was a five-and-twenty pounder besides giving a cover, and of course was deserving of every encouragement.
The salute over, Sir Moses then introduced our friend Billy,— “Mr. Pringle, a Featherbedfordshire gentleman, Mr. Heslop,” which immediately excited Tommy’s curiosity — not to say jealousy — for the “Billet” was very “contagious,” for several of the Peer’s men, who always brought their best horses, and did as much mischief as they could, and after ever so good a run, declared it was nothing to talk of. Tommy thought Billy’s horse would not take much cutting down, whatever the rider might do. Indeed, the good steed looked anything but formidabl
e, showing that a bad stable, though “only for one night,” may have a considerable effect upon a horse. His coat was dull and henfeathered; his eye was watery, and after several premonitory sneezes, he at length mastered a cough. Even Billy thought he felt rather less of a horse under him than he liked. Still he didn’t think much of a cough. “Only a slight cold,” as a young lady says when she wants to go to a ball.
Three horsemen in front, two black coats and a red, and two reds joining the turnpike from the Witch berry road, increased the cavalcade and exercised Sir Moses’ ingenuity in appropriating backs and boots and horses. “That’s Simon Smith,” said he to himself, eyeing a pair of desperately black tops dangling below a very plumb-coloured, long-backed, short-lapped jacket. “Ah I and Tristram Wood,” added he, now recognising his companion. He then drew gradually upon them and returned their salutes with an extended wave of the hand that didn’t look at all like money. Sir Moses then commenced speculating on the foremost group. There was Peter Linch and Charley Drew; but who was the fellow in black? He couldn’t make out.
“Who’s the man in black, Tommy?” at length asked he of Tommy Heslop.
“Don’t know,” replied Tommy, after scanning the stranger attentively.
“It can’t be that nasty young Rowley Abingdon; and yet I believe it is,” continued Sir Moses, eyeing him attentively, and seeing that he did not belong to the red couple, who evidently kept aloof from him. “It is that nasty young Abingdon,” added he. “Wonder at his impittance in coming out with me. It’s only the other day that ugly old Owl of a father of his killed me young Cherisher, the best hound in my pack,” whereupon the Baronet began grinding his teeth, and brewing a little politeness wherewith to bespatter the young Owl as he passed. The foremost horses hanging back to let their friends the hounds overtake them, Sir Moses was presently alongside the black coat, and finding he was right in his conjecture as to who it contained, he returned the youth’s awkward salute with, “Well, my man, how d’ye do? hope you’re well. How’s your father? hope he’s well,” adding, “dom ’im, he should be hung, and you may tell ’im I said so.” Sir Closes then felt his horse gently with his heel, and trotted on to salute the red couple. And thus he passed from singles to doubles, and from doubles to triples, and from triples to quartets, and back to singles again, including the untold occupants of various vehicles, until the ninth milestone on the Bushmead road, announced their approach to the Crooked Billet. Tom Findlater then pulled up from the postboy jog into a wallk, at which pace he turned into the little green field on the left of the blue and gold swinging sign. Here he was received by the earthstopper, the antediluvian ostler, and other great officers of state. But for Sir Moses’ presence the question would then have been “What will you have to drink?” That however being interdicted, they raised a discussion about the weather, one insisting that it was going to be a frost; another, that it was going to be nothing of the sort.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE MEET.
THE CROOKED BILLET Hotel and Posting house, on the Bushin ead road had been severed from society by the Crumpletin Railway. It had indeed been cut off in the prime of life: for Joe Cherriper, the velvet-collared doeskin-gloved Jehu of the fast Regulator Coach, had backed his opinion of the preference of the public for horse transit over steam, by laying out several hundred pounds of his accumulated fees upon the premises, just as the surveyors were setting out the line.
“A rally might be andy enough for goods and eavy marchandise,” Joe said; “but as to gents ever travellin’ by sich contraband means, that was utterly and entirely out of the question. Never would appen so long as there was a well-appointed coach like the Regulator to be ad.” So Joe laid on the green paint and the white paint, and furbished up the sign until it glittered resplendent in the rays of the mid-day sun. But greater prophets than Joe have been mistaken.
One fine summer’s afternoon a snorting steam-engine came puffing and panting through the country upon a private road of its own, drawing after it the accumulated rank, beauty, and fashion of a wide district to open the railway, which presently sucked up all the trade and traffic of the country. The Crooked Billet fell from a first-class way-side house at which eight coaches changed horses twice a-day, into a very seedy unfrequented place — a very different one to what it was when our hero’s mother, then Miss Willing, changed horses on travelling up in the Old True Blue Independent, on the auspicious day that she captured Mr. Pringle. Still it was visited with occasional glimpses of its former greatness in the way of the meets of the hounds, when the stables were filled, and the long-deserted rooms rang with the revelry of visitors. This was its first gala-day of the season, and several of the Feather-bedfordshire gentlemen availed themselves of the fineness of the weather to see Sir Moses’ hounds, and try whether they, too, could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im shire.
The hounds had scarcely had their roll on the greensward, and old black Challenger proclaimed their arrival with his usual deep-toned vehemence, ere all the converging roads and lanes began pouring in their tributaries, and the space before the bay-windowed red brick-built “Billet” was soon blocked with gentlemen on horseback, gentlemen in Malvern dog-carts, gentlemen in Newport Pagnells, gentlemen in Croydon clothesbaskets, some divesting themselves of their wraps, some stretching themselves after their drive, some calling for brandy, some for baccy, some for both brandy and baccy.
Then followed the usual inquiries, “Is Dobbinson coming?”
“Where’s the Damper?”
“Has anybody seen anything of Gameboy Green?” Next, the heavily laden family vehicles began to arrive, containing old fat paterfamilias in the red coat of his youth, with his “missis” by his side, and a couple of buxom daughters behind, one of whom will be installed in the driving seat when papa resigns. Thus we have the Mellows of Mawdsley Hill, the Chalkers of Streetley, and the Richleys of Jollyduck Park, and the cry is still, “They come! they come!” It is going to be a bumper meet, for the foxes are famous, and the sight of a good “get away” is worth a dozen Legers put together.
See here comes a nice quiet-looking little old gentleman in a well-brushed, flat-brimmed hat, a bird’s-eye cravat, a dark grey coat buttoned over a step-collared toilanette vest, nearly matching in line his delicate cream-coloured leathers, who everybody stares at and then salutes, as he lifts first one rose-tinted top and then the other, working his way through the crowd, on a thorough-bred suatlle-bridled bay. He now makes up to Sir Muses, who exclaims as the raised hat shows the familiar blue-eyed face, “Ah! Dicky my man! how d’ye do? glad to see you?” and taking off his glove the Baronet gives our old friend Boggledike a hearty shake of the hand. Dicky acknowledges the honour with becoming reverence, and then begins talking of sport and the splendid runs they have been having, while Sir Moses, instead of listening, cons over some to give him in return.
But who have we here sitting so square in the tandem-like dogcart, drawn by the high-stepping, white-legged bay with sky-blue rosettes, and long streamers, doing the pride that apes humility in a white Macintosh, that shows the pink collar to great advantage? Imperial John, we do believe?
Imperial John, it is! He has come all the way from Barley Hill Hall, leaving the people 011 the farm and the plate in the drawing-room to take care of themselves, starting before daylight, while his footman groom has lain ont over night to the serious detriment of a half sovereign. As John now pulls up, with a trace-rattling ring, he cocks his Imperial chin and looks round for applause — a “Well done, you!” or something of that sort, for coming such a distance. Instead of that, a line of winks, and nods, and nudges, follow his course, one man whispering another, “I say, here’s old Imperial John,” or “I say, look at Miss de Glancey’s boy;” while the young ladies turn their eyes languidly upon him to see what sort of a hero the would-be Benedict is. His Highness, however, has quite got over his de Glancey failure, and having wormed his way after divers “with your leaves,” and “by your leaves,” through the intricacies of the crowd, he now pulls
up at the inn door, and standing erect in his dog-cart, sticks his whip in the socket, and looks around with a “This is Mr. Hybrid the-friend-of-an-Earl” sort of air.
“Ah! Hybrid, how d’ye do?” now exclaims Sir Moses familiarly; “hope you’re well? — how’s the Peer? hope he’s well. Come all the way from Barley Hill?”
“Barley Hill Hall,” replies the great man with an emphasis on the Hall, adding in the same breath, “Oi say, ostler, send moy fellow!” whereupon there is a renewed nudging and whispering among the ladies beside him, of “That’s Mr. Hybrid!”
“That’s Imperial John, the gentleman who wanted to marry Miss de Glancey for though Miss de Glancey was far above having him, she was not above proclaiming the other.”
His Highness then becomes an object of inquisitive scrutiny by the fair; one thinking he might do for Lavinia Edwards; another, for Sarah Bates; a third, for Rachel Bell; a fourth, perhaps, for herself. It must be a poor creature that isn’t booked for somebody.
Still, John stands erect in his vehicle, flourishing his whip, hallooing and asking for his fellow.
“Ring the bell for moy fellow! — Do go for moy fellow! — Has anybody seen moy fellow? Have you seen moy fellow?” addressing an old smock-frocked countryman with a hoe in his hand.
“Nor, arm d — d if iver ar i did!” replied the veteran, looking him over, a declaration that elicited a burst of laughter from the bystanders, and an indignant chuck of the Imperial chin from our John.
“Tweet, tweet, tweet!” who have we here? All eyes turn up the Cherryburn road; the roused hounds prick their ears, and are with difficulty restrained from breaking away. It’s Walker, the cross postman’s gig, and he is treating himself to a twang of the horn. But who has he with him? Who is the red arm-folded man lolling with as much dignity as the contracted nature of the vehicle will allow? A man in red, with cap and beard, and all complete. Why it’s Monsieur! Monsieur coming in forma pauperis, after Sir Moses’ liberal offer to send him to cover, — Monsieur in a faded old sugar-loaf shaped cap, and a scanty coat that would have been black if it hadn’t been red.
