Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  The footmen and Tompkins then came in, the former bearing a tray with a reinforcement of cups and other crockery ware, in the midst of which rose the tall form of a coffeepot, with its usual accompaniments of hot milk and sugar, together with hot toast, hot rolls, hot everything. Mr Romford took tea, and Mrs Somerville took coffee, and our master nearly knocked the bottom out of a muffin plate by leistering two layers of roll with his fork at a blow. Hazey congratulated himself that it wasn’t his No.1 set when he heard it. “Rough fellow, that Romford,” thought he, eyeing his muscular arm; “strikes as if he was pronging a salmon.”

  And now the usual sound of eating being established, after a careful listen at the door, Miss Anna Maria made her appearance, as if for the first time that morning, taking the chance of her breakfast things either being removed, or of Mrs Somerville not noticing them. The fact was, Miss, considering the importance of the occasion, had determined, as she glanced at herself in the cheval glass, to make a complete revision of her person, regardless of the time it would require; and so, beginning with the damask cheek, she removed the before-mentioned pallor by the slightest possible touch of rouge, and that giving satisfaction, she then proceeded to array herself in a charming négligée of black and violet foullard.

  Miss Hazey was a pretty, sunny, blue-eyed girl of some twenty years of age, with a terrible taste for coquetting, which she gratified in the most liberal and promiscuous way. Lawyers, doctors, curates, soldiers, sailors, all were alike to her. Indeed, her sole employment seemed to be winning men’s hearts, and throwing them away. Her own was said to be equal parts steel and whalebone. Such was the young lady who now re-entered the dining-room at Tarring Neville, with the full determination of trying the force of her artillery upon the great and desirable Mr Romford. It was not every day that she had such a chance.

  Miss gave a well-feigned start, as if surprised at the unexpected presence of strangers, which mamma seeing, and knowing her talent for dissimulation, seconded by exclaiming, “Oh, come in, my dear! come in! It’s Mr and Mrs Romford — I beg pardon, Mr Romford and Mrs Somerville. They’ve been out hunting already this morning, while you, idle girl, have been dozing in bed.” Then, turning to Mrs Somerville, who was just chipping the shell of a guinea-fowl egg, she said, “This is my daughter, Anna Maria, Mrs Somerville: Mr Romford, my dear.” Whereupon Miss Anna Maria gave two of her best Brighton boarding-school curtsies, and took up a favourable position, with her back to the light, immediately opposite our master. As she unfolded her napkin, she looked deliberately at him, and thought what a queer-looking man he was, — queer eyes, queer nose, queer hair, queer altogether. “Must be rich,” thought she, “he’s so ugly.” And Facey, peering at her out of the corners of his little pig eyes, thought she was just as smart a little girl as ever he had seen — uncommonly smart little girl — just his fancy of a girl, in fact. He then leistered the other layer of roll. And now Mr Hazey, wishing to know to what cause they were indebted for the honour of this early visit — especially to know how Mr Romford’s hounds came to be in his country — essayed to direct the conversation into the hunting line.

  “So you didn’t kill the fox, you say?” observed he, reverting to Mr Romford’s early-bird rejoinder; “so you didn’t kill the fox, you say?”

  “No,” replied Romford, “no. Fact was, I didn’t care much about killin’ him.”

  “Must have been a good fox, though,” observed Mr Hazey; “brought you a long way out of your country, you know;” wondering whether Mr Romford had been drawing his (Mr Hazey’s) outside cover, Ravensclugh Gorse, on the sly.

  “No, not a bad fox,” assented Romford; “not a bad fox. Indeed, that made me less anxious to kill him. You see, we had a blank day yesterday, and I thought if I could blood a few couple of hounds with a bad fox it would keep them steady for Saturday; but, as usual, when one wants a bad fox, one gets a good ‘un, and he brought us here to breakfast with you. I’ve left him somewhere about your place here,” added he.

  “Ah, well, I’m much obliged. I’ll hunt him back to you some day,” replied Mr Hazey.

  “Do,” replied Mr Romford, “and kill him, if you can, in the open; but mind, don’t dig him!” added he, glancing significantly at Hazey, who was rather addicted to digging.

  “Oh, no! honour bright!” replied his host. “Wouldn’t do such a thing for the world!”

  “Wouldn’t trust you,” thought our master, remembering the character Independent Jimmy gave him.

  Ladies are generally better hands at talking and eating at the same time than gentlemen are. At all events, Lucy eclipsed Mr Facey in that performance; for she chattered away, while Facey, in schoolboy parlance, “let his meat stop his mouth.” She talked about the opera, and she talked about the Prince and Princess of Wales, and she talked about the Court, and she talked of great people in such a social way, that Mrs Hazey felt as if she was regularly inducted into high life. It was quite clear Mrs Somerville moved in the highest circles; and Mrs Hazey thought what an advantage it would be to her daughter if Mrs Somerville would take Anna Maria by the hand. So she smiled, and simpered, and assented to everything Mrs Somerville said, mingling her applause with judicious appliances of coffee and tea. And Lucy, being pleased with her reception, and the evident respect that was paid to her, laid herself out to be extra-agreeable, and talked very magnificently of herself and her doings, and said that though Beldon Hall was a very comfortable place, yet it wasn’t so good a house as she expected to find it. And Miss Anna Maria, who always let the gentlemen digest her beauty properly before she began to exercise her arts and allurements, now seeing Mr Romford examining her attentively, just went on playing with her breakfast, exhibiting first her pretty hand, then her pretty teeth, next her pretty dimples, by a smile; until thinking he was ready for the grand assault of the tongue, she fixed the artillery of her beautiful, well-fringed blue eyes full upon him, and asked if he was fond of archery.

  “Oh, why, yes — no; — oi mean oi don’t care a great deal about it. Pretty amusement enough. Day should be fine, though,” added he, “or it’s very poor fun.”

  “Yes, the day should be fine,” assented Miss Hazey, who had been drenched in a thunderstorm at the last one she was at.

  They then indulged in a slight discussion upon fishing, at which, of course, Facey was more at home; in the midst of which, breakfast being at length concluded, Mrs Hazey offered Mrs Somerville the great feminine treat of showing her over her house. Facey and Hazey then, we need scarcely say, paired off to the stables.

  While the foregoing scene was enacting in the house, “my boy Bill,” ever anxious for reliable information, and always more happy in the stables than in the parlour, had slunk away to the former, there to see what he could make out of Mr Romford’s horses. And Leotard having finished the very moderate feed of corn Mr Silkey, the groom, vouchsafed him, now began sniffing and staring about, as horses will sniff and stare about in a strange stable; in this case, perhaps to see if there was any more corn coming. Then, as “Satan still,” as it has been beautifully expressed, “finds work for idle hands to do,” so the boy Bill bethought him he would give Leotard a round in the exercising ground at the back of the stables, and put him over the leaping-bar, and a few of the make-believe fences his father had established for the purpose of training his horses. So he told a helper to put on the bridle, and this being done, and the horse led forth, Bill mounted in the confident sort of way that a man mounts a lady’s horse, thinking, if a lady can ride him, anybody else can. And it was lucky that Bill began calmly, for a side-saddle not affording a very eligible investment for a gentleman’s person, if Bill had begun either in the bucketing or the timorous strain, Leotard would in all probability have kicked him over his head, whereas, Bill just employing the same light hand that Mrs Somerville had used, the horse went poking along as quietly as could be, fulfilling all Bill’s behests, first over the bar, then over the hurdle, next over the rail, and finally over the furze-coped on-and-oft mound. And Bi
ll, patting him on the safe completion of the last feat, thought he was quite as safe and clever a lady’s horse as it was possible to find. With this conviction he pulled up into a walk, and returned leisurely along to the stable, hoping he might not encounter Leotard’s fair owner by the way. Luckily, however, he got safe back, and Silkey had the horse restored to its stall, and all the stables put into apple-pie order, ere his master came heralding the great Mr Romford along to the stud. Some people have a wonderful pleasure in staring at horses — staring at them just as ladies stare at bonnets; the gentlemen, doubtless, thinking how well they would look on them, just as the ladies think how well they would look in them. Still, staring at horses is much more stupid than staring at bonnets, for with horses you haven’t the whole case before you. If the bonnets were enveloped in tissue, or cap paper, as the horses are in clothing and straw, a very slight glimpse would satisfy the ladies; whereas one sees men — at Tattersall’s, for instance — staring week after week at horses, who never buy a horse, who never bid for a horse, and who, if they had a horse, would very likely not know whether to mount at the right side or the left; yet, there they go — most likely taking a couple of catalogues each, pushing, and elbowing, and asking all sorts of absurd questions of the grooms and helpers, and finding all sorts of mare’s-nests for themselves and their friends.

  But our brother masters of hounds are now approaching the stables — sauntering along, each trying to make a mental estimate of the other. As in all show places, from Windsor Castle downwards, they begin with the smaller rooms first, and proceed to those of increased size and importance, until they culminate in the baronial or some great hall; so Mr Hazey always passed an expectant purchaser through the servants’ horses stable before introducing him to the grand exhibition of his own. On these interesting occasions our delicate-minded master had hitherto always pretended to play second fiddle to Silkey, who had a most insinuating way of recommending a horse, never pressing him, indeed, but rather expressing his reluctance to part with him; always declaring in confidence to a customer that he thought he was “just about the very best ‘oss he ever had through his hands, but master really was so ‘ticlar and fanciful that there was no sich thing as pleasing him. If an ‘oss pulled an ounce more than he liked, he would part with him; if he went a little gayer at his fences than he was accustomed to, he would cast him. Altogether there was no such thing as suiting him.”

  “Ah, sir,” Silkey would conclude with a sigh, and a shrug of his shoulders, “I wish I had all the money master has wasted in ‘osses since I first came to him — make me a very comfortable independence, I assure you.”

  If Silkey had put it the other way, and said if he had all the money he had helped his master to cheat other people of, he would not have been far wrong in his assertion.

  Now, however, since the boy Bill came home he had rather taken the initiative out of Silkey’s hands, though, to do Bill justice, he was clever enough to strike out a fresh line of his own, and, instead of “but”-ing, like Silkey, he used to praise the horse they wanted to sell, or, rather, the horse they thought the other party wanted to buy, so superlatively — Bill declaring he didn’t think his father would part with him for “any money” — that instead of taking a trifle off the price as the “but” used to do, it enabled Mr Hazey to put something on; a much more agreeable process than the other. But Silkey waxed sulky under the change, considering that no gentleman ought to interfere with the just prerogatives of his groom.

  “The idea of using me so!” said Silkey to his friend Jawkins, the huntsman. “The idea of his using me so! I who always treated him like a brother!”

  And now Mr Hazey, having got our great master Mr Romford fairly through the servants’ horses stables, gradually dropped astern as he came to his own, leaving the redoubtable Bill to pilot the way, and expatiate on their extraordinary merits as they went. This stable contained the joint-stock stud; viz., Mr Hazey’s and the boy Bill’s, but Bill thinking it would be more to the honour and glory of the establishment to announce them all as his father’s, inducted our master into the presence with the observation, “Ah! these are the governor’s horses — five for his own riding, you see — rather more than he wants, p’r’aps, for three days a week, but still he likes to be over-horsed, and doesn’t care much about cost.”

  Then Bill went up first to Volunteer, then to Lottery, then to Gay and Sure, then to the Clipper, and lastly, to Topthorn, patting and praising and caressing them as though they were the greatest favourites under the sun, that no money could purchase, though in reality Volunteer was the only horse Hazey had had during the last season, and he, too, had been sold and returned, charged with having an incipient cataract — of which little defect, of course, neither Hazey nor Silkey knew anything. He was now waiting for a convenient turn of the complaint to go up to the hammer to be sold as the property of a gentleman who never warranted, with Silkey to do the cajolers. “Sound an ‘oss as ever stepped — master, full of fancies, doesn’t know a good ‘oss when he has one.” That is, of course, always presuming that Silkey was properly primed and propitiated for the occasion.

  And now the boy Bill, having at length concluded his loving laudations, his beloved parent came sauntering in from the other end of the stable, and, seeing the performance was about over, just glanced his eye along the stalls, and then asked Mr Romford to take a seat on the corn-bin and finish his pipe, an invitation that Romford readily complied with, and the two were presently in full puff.

  Whiff, puff, whiff— “That’s a good horse,” said Hazey, nodding at Gay and Sure.

  Puff, whiff, puff— “Is he?” said Romford, eyeing him.

  Whiff, puff, whiff— “Gave a vast of money for him,” observed Hazey.

  “Fifty, p’r’aps,” puffed Facey.

  “Fifty!” ejaculated Bill— “four fifties, I should think, would be nearer the mark.” They had given eighty, and got two back.

  And the ladies on their parts having equally interesting subjects to discuss, dawdled and sauntered; and Mrs Hazey, in return for a delicate compliment on her daughter’s beauty, having favoured Mrs Somerville with a recital of her many eligible offers, knights, baronets, honourables, our fair friend, thinking her hostess seemed like a good conduit pipe, wherein to convey spurious information, essayed to return the compliment, by giving her a slight sketch of herself and her own career. To this end she informed Mrs Hazey that she had two thousand a-year jointure, besides a pension as a field officer’s widow, but that one thousand a-year would go from her if she married again; that her nephew Charley Somerville, of the Lady Killer Lancers, to whom the thousand a-year would go, would gladly compound with her for five hundred a-year, but that he was a very profligate young man, much addicted to casinos and sherry-coblers, and she would not further his extravagance by any such arrangement; all of which Mrs Hazey imbibed with great interest, but seemed to think there was no occasion for Mrs Somerville to sacrifice herself to her naughty nephew. And having, like her husband, a keen eye to business, she began asking about the nephew’s age and position, thinking perhaps her daughter could reclaim him from casinos and coblers, all of which Mrs Somerville answered satisfactorily; whereupon Mrs Hazey very adroitly, as she thought, suggested, that if Mrs Somerville felt a real interest in the young man’s welfare, it might be the means of retrieving him from bad connections, to bring him down to Beldon Hall and give him some hunting. And Mrs Somerville seemed at first to be rather taken with the idea, but on second thoughts, she felt it was of no use complicating matters, so she quashed the idea altogether, by saying he had a washball seat, and couldn’t ride across country; adding that she never knew a casino frequenter who could; besides which, the Lady Killer Lancers were ordered to Dublin; so there was an end of the matter.

  The mention of hunting, however, opened out the question how long Mrs Somerville was going to stay in Doubleimupshire, — a point that she was not at all inclined to enlighten Mrs Hazey upon; so looking at her pretty Geneva watch,
set with brilliants (the unconscious gift of a west-end watchmaker), she exclaimed, “Oh, dear, do you know what o’clock it is? I declare Mr Romford will think I am lost. Oh, do let us go to the gentlemen; I’d no idea it was half so late.” So saying, she gathered up her habit very scientifically, and, piloted by Mrs Hazey, proceeded to the stables by the short cut through the back yard, under a chain-rattling salute of Bow-wow-wows from a great black-and-white Newfoundland dog.

  Entering the court, Mrs Hazey made direct for her husband’s stable, where, seated on the corn-bin, she found the gentlemen still continuing their smoking discussions.

  “Ah, here you are at last!” exclaimed Mr Romford, as he got a glimpse of the habit, “here you are at last!” adding, “thought you’d gone to bed. Well, now,” continued he, “let us be moving. Where are the horses? Bid them put on the bridles, and turn their heads where their tails should be.”

  So saying, he got off the bin, and, pocketing his pipe, proceeded to stamp in a very would-be-doing sort of way.

  “Oh, there’s no hurry,” observed Mr Hazey, “no hurry.”

  “Oh, no, no hurry,” assented Mr Romford; “only the days are short, and one should make the most of what there is.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to come and see our Dorking fowls and Dorsetshire ewes?” now interposed Mrs Hazey.

  “After a bit,” replied Romford, “after a bit, when one can have some mint sauce with them, you know,” added he.

  The sight of the habit had set the stable-men on the alert, and the bridles being adjusted, the horses were presently wheeling round in their stalls to be ready for mounting. And as Leotard’s Arab-like head and snakey neck were followed by his elegant figure, Hazey stood by, drawing his breath, thinking how he would like to have the selling of him. There is nothing so lucrative, so money-making as a showy lady’s horse. If the lady says “buy,” it must be buy, whatever the price; if she takes a dislike, the horse must be got rid of, whatever the sacrifice.