by R S Surtees
“Crème de Parfait Amour,” spelt the man from the label.
“Perfect amour!” responded the colonel; “tell me, have you any perfect brandy?”
“Plenty, sir,” replied the men;— “old champagne brandy, choice old pale cognac, choice brown, and all.”
“Ah! give me choice brown,” said he. “I’ll make it pale myself — haw, haw, haw! — ho, ho, ho! — he, he, he! Old soldier — up to the pale dodge — up to the pale dodge — haw, haw, haw!”
Although there were all sorts of choice liqueurs in the room, the footman had to make another expedition to Mr Snuffertray, which gave Mrs Blunt an opportunity of attempting a diversion in favour of the hunt.
“Well, but you should be going to the dogs, shouldn’t you?” asked she. “The general — I mean his lordship — will be wanting you to keep the ground for him, or somethin’ of that sort.”
“Oh — ah — yes,” replied the colonel, scratching his bald head. “All in good time. I don’t know, either — Cheer’s a good chap, and all that sort of thing, and one’s glad to countenance field sports in all their various ramifications, but hunting in the ‘upper countries,’ as Gentleman Smith calls them, spoils one for these d — d little cramped provincials,” the colonel striking out with his right fin, as if he didn’t want to be bothered about hunting.
“Well, but Mr Hall will want to go and show his nice red coat and new horse,” observed the pertinacious Mrs Blunt.
“Mr Hall is very happy here,” observed Angelena tartly; “arn’t you, Mr Hall?” asked she, glancing one of her most bewitching smiles at our hero.
“Quite!” exclaimed Tom, who really was extremely glad to exchange the dread vicissitudes of the chase for the pleasant tranquillity of the lady’s smiles.
And she gave him another sweet look, with a gentle inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his coincidence in her views.
The door then opened.
“Ah, just a thimbleful, just a thimbleful!” exclaimed the colonel, as the man now appeared with a tapernecked bottle on a massive silver salver, to which having added a very elegant but extremely diminutive Bohemian liqueur-glass, he stepped onwards to where the colonel sat.
“Oh, come,” roared our friend in disgust when he saw the glass, “that is a child’s measure — that is playin’ with one’s stomach with a vengeance. No, no, man,” shouted he, “give me somethin’ that I can get a taste out of, at all events.”
“Perhaps you’ll help yourself, sir,” replied the man, placing the salver at his side.
“Ah, that’s the best way,” assented the now pacified colonel— “that’s the best way — a man knows his own internals best. Now, give me one of those frosty-stomached gentlemen,” pointing to some capacious tumblers flanking a beautiful cut and engraved water-jug. “Ah, that’s somethin’ like, now,” said he, handling it. “I hold a large glass to be an excellent thing. It doesn’t follow because one has it that one must necessarily fill it,” added he, as he poured out such a quantity as made a very visible impression on the bottle.
Mrs Blunt sat in fear and trembling, dreading the consequences, but not daring to interfere; while Angelena and Tom kept up a renewed fire with bon-bon crackers, out of whose sentimental mottoes the fair one extracted some very appropriate hints.
“Capital brandy!” observed the colonel confidentially to his wife; adding, “Hadn’t you better take a drop — nothin’ to pay, you know.”
Mrs Blunt, however, declined, and knowing that remonstrance was in vain when once he began, she sat patiently by, watching the disappearance of the beverage and the liberal replenishment of his glass, making mental wagers with herself as to how many he would take. As he warmed with his eau-de-vie, he waxed eloquent on the subject of hunting, talked of John Warde, and Osbaldeston, and Jack Musters, and the days when he beat everybody — when no one could hold a candle to him — running his runs, leaping his leaps, and selling his horses over again, till a most skilfully-sounded gong, beginning like the rumbling of distant thunder, and gradually rising till it filled the whole castle with its roar, acted the part of the merchants’ ringing-out bell on’Change, and completely put a stop to his bragging. He could scarcely hear himself speak, let alone any one else. Finding it was of no use contending with the gong, he hastily finished his glass, and buttoning his pockets with a slap, to feel that his purse was inside, proceeded to waddle into the entrance-hall, whence the sound proceeded.
“What’s the row?” asked he of the gigantic footman who was plying the gong with the muffler, making, if possible, more noise than before.
“To drive the rats away,” bellowed the man into the colonel’s ear.
“Drive the rats away! — one wouldn’t think there were any rats in a house like this,” roared the colonel, in opposition to the gong.
“Great many,” shouted the man, as he thundered away.
“Did you say you wanted your carriage, sir?” asked the original gentleman’s gentleman whom we found lounging at the castle door, now shuffling with a sort of half-impudent obsequiousness up to our friend.
“No, I didn’t,” responded the colonel; adding, “I don’t care if I have it, though.”
“Will order it round directly, sir,” replied the man, hurrying away.
The gong still sounding, now rumbling in low tantalising murmurs as if done, and then swelling again into thunder, and the colonel, like most noisy men, being unable to bear any noise but his own, at length roared out, “Now, Johnny, have you had enough of your drum?”
Johnny thought not, and continued to rumble and roar, much to the colonel’s annoyance, who kept shaking his head and kicking out his fins, and looking at him, wishing he had him in the barracks at home. The noise, indeed, was so absorbing as to overpower sundry pretty speeches of Angelena’s as she roamed about the noble hall on the arm of our Tom. Mrs Blunt alone seemed grateful, inasmuch as it had roused the colonel from his brandy; she thought they would now get home safe, which she was by no means so certain of before, the colonel being a desperately rash man on the road when in liquor. We will finish our chapter by getting them under weigh.
The soldier-coachman-footman-groom, who had gone over with the colonel’s hunter, as he called his little elephant-like horse, being unable to turn the vehicle out of the yard, his lordship’s second coachman condescended to mount the box and bring it round.
“Thank’ee,” exclaimed the colonel, as he stood on the steps of the Gothic-arched entrance-hall fumbling on his buckskin gloves as the carriage drew up. “Thank’ee,” repeated he; “I’ll do as much for you another time.” That, or, “I’ll remember you, my man,” being all the return the colonel ever made for services.
“Well, now bundle in,” said he to Mrs Blunt, as a spruce footman stood with the coach door in his hand, making a sorry contrast between its threadbare red worsted-bound drab lining and his own smart scarlet and silver-laced white livery.
“I think I’ll ride outside with you,” observed the prudent mamma, in reply to the colonel’s commands to “bundle in.”
“Ride outside with me!” growled the colonel; “what’s that for?”
“Got a little headache,” replied the lady, touching her forehead.
“Ah, I twig,” said he, in an undertone; “well, come, climb up, and mind you don’t break your neck.”
“Then, Hall — I mean, Jug — no, I mean, Hall — Angelena and you’ll go back inside, I s’pose, and mind you don’t quarrel by the way — haw, haw, haw! — he, he, he! — ho, ho, ho!”
Tight-booted Tom gladly handed the fair lady in, Mrs Blunt scrambled up as best she could, while Tom squeezed himself through the narrow coach door, and the colonel having sorted his ribbons and fingered the crop of his whip, swung himself up in the old coachman style, and putting himself in posture on the box, exclaimed, “Let go their heads!” as if he had four of the friskiest horses in the world before him. Away they ground from Heartycheer Castle door, amidst the roar of the gong, the deputy coachman exclaiming to the fo
otman, as they stood watching the departure —
“Well, that’s as rum a lot as ever I seed in my life!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
LILY OF THE VALLEY, LATE RUMTOUCH.
“HAS JUG — I mean to say Hall — offered?” asked the colonel of his wife, as, having shot down the incline from the castle, they got upon the plain sailing of level road in the park.
“Not that I know of,” replied Mrs Blunt. “What makes you think so?”
“Oh! only from what she said at breakfast about the tea,” replied the colonel, double-thonging his wheelers. “About their not ruining themselves in tea,” added he.
“I think it was a mere slip of the tongue,” replied Mrs Blunt.
“A slip of the tongue, was it?” rejoined the colonel, catching old Major Pendennis up short, who now made a slip with his groggy forelegs, and nearly came on his head. “Devilish awkward slip,” repeated he, cropping the old horse about the ears; though whether he meant Angelena’s or the horse’s was not quite apparent.
They drove on for some time in silence.
“Well, I don’t know that she’ll make much of it,” resumed he, flourishing his whip, and then laying the point of it scientifically into the near leader’s flank. “I don’t know that she’ll make much of it,” repeated he, attempting to pay the same compliment to the other, but with less success.
“Oh! I make no doubt he’ll offer to her,” replied mamma.
“Ay, ay, but offerin’s one thing, and gettin’s another,” rejoined the colonel. “An offer, as we all know, is only a very short way on the road matrimonial.”
“It’s the first stage, at all events,” replied his wife. “Yes, and chokes off half the young men that venture,” replied the colonel. “Well,” continued he, cracking his whip, and springing his horses down a piece of sloping ground to which they now came, “we’ll see — we’ll see. Hall’s a good feller — very good feller; may be wiser men — don’t say there’re not — but he’s quite wise enough for a man of his means, and I wish he only had them in possession.”
“So do I,” rejoined his wife; “but it must come in time; they’ve no one else to leave it to, and I make no doubt they’d make him a very good allowance.”
“Ah, that’s the rock we always split upon,” observed the colonel, double-thonging his wheelers—” that’s the rock we always split upon; they always want me to come down with the dust too; and, by Jove! I can’t — I’ve nothing to give — nothing whatever. They think, by jingo! because I’m colonel of a crack cavalry corps, that I have money as well as men at command. However, we’ll see. They say the old mechanic’s rollin’ in money — would skin a flea for its hide and tallow.”
“He needn’t mind about money for his son,” observed Mrs Blunt.
“He will, for all that,” replied the colonel, shaking his head, and dropping the double-thong heavily into his wheelers again, as if to revenge the father’s mercenary spirit on the horses—” he will, for all that. The more these old thieves have, the more they want. It’s a sort of disease,” added he, trying to crop his wheelers, but missing them, and nearly losing his balance.
“Well, we can try, at all events,” observed Mrs Blunt, as he got himself set straight again.
“Try by all means,” assented her husband, flourishing the whip, to pretend that there had been nothing the matter—” try by all means; there’s no sayin’ what you can do till you try. It’ll be all smooth sailin’ enough, I dare say, till we come to the lawyers, with their confounded impittant inquisitive questions.”
“But you might tell the old gentleman that you don’t like that sort of interference, and as all you have will be your daughter’s, and you suppose all he has will be his son’s, you meet on equal terms, and there need be no parchments or inkwork in the matter.”
“Humph!” mused the colonel, flourishing his whip and thinking the matter over, considering whether he, whose fortune consisted of his pay and a floating capital of gambling debts, could face the steady old three-columns-of-figures banker, and carry matters off with a high hand, talk of “love light as air,” and so on. The colonel had been so often worsted by the lawyers, that he had little heart for engaging with them any more, though he thought his wife’s suggestion worth considering. His great hopes, however, consisted in doing Tom in horses. He now directed his observations to that point.
“I wonder if Tom would like to buy Rumtouch,” observed he, now laying the whip impartially — to the best of his ability at least — into all four horses.
“He couldn’t ride her, could he?” asked Mrs Blunt, biting her lips, lest the colonel should upset them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the colonel. “Angelena rides her; don’t see why he shouldn’t — stout, strong young man.”
Rumtouch, rechristened by the colonel Lily of the Valley, as a more taking title, was the Arab-like, silver mane and tailed cream-colour introduced to the reader in the colonel’s stable when Tom went to look at Captain Smallbeere’s horse — my daughter’s horse, in fact — the horse the colonel “couldn’t bear the idea of parting with,” though, like many others, she was only Angelena’s till somebody else wanted her. It is observable that, though people do not like buying officers’ horses, they have no objections to buying ladies’ pads out of a regiment, and the colonel drove a briskish trade in that line.
Rumtouch, as we said before, was a beautifully-shaped animal, quite a fancy thing, with wonderful courage, action, and powers of endurance, but she had a little infirmity of temper that completely overbalanced all her good qualities. She was a gay deceiver. To look at, she was the most mild, placid, easy-going thing imaginable, seeming as if a child might ride her with a thread; and, indeed, in her tantrums, a thread was almost of as much use in her mouth as a bridle, for sometimes, when the creature was cantering leisurely along, apparently in the best possible humour, giving pleasure to her rider, and causing admiration in the beholder, she would stop short as if shot, wheel round and away, when the rider had the choice of letting her go, or pulling her back over upon him.
She had mastered many men — and women too — and been sold for many figures, varying with the intensity of the conflict that caused the separation. Though she never had regularly finished any one, yet many timid and many confident horsemen and horsewomen had thought it well to be rid of her. She had been sold under all sorts of names — Sweetbriar, Carry-me-easy, Queen of Trumps, Heartsease, and other confidence-inspiring titles.
Squire Leapingwell sold her to Mr Springwell, simply because he had no further occasion for her — that is to say, no further occasion for being run away with. Mr Springwell, having been twice let down over her tail in contentions at cross-roads, sold her to Mr Hubbock, the union doctor, because she was up to more work than he could give her. Mr Hubbock, having been made to take a mud-cast of himself in road-scrapings, sold her to Miss Martinshaw, because she was too good to put into the cold stables and out-houses he had to frequent. Miss Martinshaw, having been well run away with over the open downs, and nearly landed in a gravel-pit, sold her to her friend Miss Treslove; who, having nearly had her front teeth sent down her throat in a rear, strongly recommended her to Mrs Sharp for her sons, who were coming home for the holidays. The mare having soon mastered all these, then passed into the hands of several small dealers, getting lower at each change, till she finally became the property of Lucifer Crowbar, a member of a new fraternity that is now fast springing up over the country. Lucifer bought her to travel by night through a long tract of agricultural country, to pick up all the poached game, stolen fowls, stolen pigeons, stolen anything that was left at his different houses of call, to be by him conveyed to the railway station. Though he only gave four pounds ten for her, he expected her to drive as well as ride, in which expectation he was disappointed, for she soon sent her heels through the front of his spring-cart; and the stolen-property trade being an amazingly lucrative and increasing one in all countries, he soon found it utterly impossible to ca
rry on his on horseback; so, after half-riding Rumtouch, as he christened her, to death, he took her to Ripjade fair, where, though high in bone and low in flesh, the sagacious colonel quickly recognised many good points, and bought her for eleven pounds, with five shillings back. Though Lucifer passed “his word of honour as a gentleman” to the colonel that she was perfectly quiet and free from vice, he nevertheless assured a comrade that of all divils he had ever had to do with, she was the biggest; adding, that not content with getting him off, she would stand and consider which eye she should kick out. This was the bargain the colonel bought, just before the regiment marched to Fleecyborough, where the mare arrived, with a fresh field for her now unblemished character.
Having recruited her from her over-exertions with Crowbar, and mashed her and fattened her, he put her into the riding-school, where she soon got into the routine of tractableness, and was pronounced quite fit for the fine hand and nerve of the fair Angelena. And indeed so the mare was, so long as she was in company with any horse she knew. It was only by herself she performed her vagaries. But the fair Angelena, not finding it convenient always to have her fat father at her side, had adopted a very ingenious method of management. She always had her fed at the place they rode to — consequently the mare was always going towards corn — and when she did show symptoms of restlessness or temper, she just humoured her, and played with her mouth in a light delicate way, instead of jagging and hauling at it as if it was made of india-rubber. So the mare passed for a very beautiful spirited animal, and rose greatly in value; and though in the presence of a non-buying spectator the colonel would pretend he didn’t want to sell her, yet he was always ready to do business at fifty, or as much more as he thought he could get. Indeed, Angelena, who could sell a horse almost as well as her father, had offered her to two or three greenhorns, whose parents, or whose prospects, or other entanglements, she thought prevented any idea of their taking her herself. Fifty pounds for a hack, however, is looked upon as a large price in the country, and she had remained “my daughter’s mare” longer than any of her previous possessions.
