Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  Doiley was in the middle of a game at billiards with “my lord’s gentleman,” and Jug had to repeat the summons ere Doiley took any notice of it.

  “That’s that old divil in the dinin’-room,” said he to his companion, putting on his coat; “just leave the balls as they are till I come back.” So saying he lit a candle by the billiard-table lamp, and proceeded leisurely to answer the summons. “Did you ring, mum?” asked he in a sort of tone of astonishment, speaking at the heap of fur that alone was distinguishable in the gloom.

  “Yes — no — yes, that’s to say, Colonel Blunt — I mean Captain Jug did,” replied she, not yet fairly recovered from her sleep.

  “What might you please to want, sir?” asked Doiley, addressing himself more respectfully to the comet, who he knew was the grandson of a lord — though only a Baron one, as he told the earl’s gentleman.

  “W-a-a-nt,” drawled Jug—” w — a — a — nt,” repeated he, stretching himself out all fours. “Why, I should say, in the first place, we w — a — a — nt candles.”

  “Certainly, sir, certainly,” replied Doiley, retiring to bring them.

  When he returned, followed by a footman bearing the requisite illumination, he asked, in an offhand sort of way, as he began gathering up the napkins, if they would be dining there.

  “Dinin’ — why, haven’t we dined?” asked Mrs Blunt, staring wildly about, like an owl suddenly exposed to the sunshine.

  “No, mum, no; it was luncheon you took,” replied Doiley contemptuously, thinking what a snob she must be to dine at two o’clock.

  “Luncheon, was it?” said she. “Well, I’m sure I thought it was dinner.”

  “Oh — yes — we’ll dine, I s’pose,” drawled Jug, who had been cogitating the matter over; “may as well dine,” added he.

  “Then I’ll tell monsieur you dine?” observed Doiley interrogatively.

  “You may,” responded Jug firmly.

  “P’r’aps you’d like to go into the music-room or the drawing-room,” suggested Doiley, thinking he might as well be getting the table laid.

  “No, we’ll do very well where we are,” replied Mrs Blunt, yawning. “Is his lordship there?” asked she.

  “No, mum, no — his lordship’s out, I think — not come in yet.”

  “Well, but where’s my daughter — where’s Angelena?” demanded she, again returning to the charge.

  “Oh, Angelena’s safe enough,” replied Jug.

  “Not so sure of that,” rejoined Mrs Blunt, who understood these gay old gentlemen better than the cornet. Then she began to think of all the colonel had said, and all she had heard about Lord Heartycheer’s doings, which were not of a character to inspire much confidence in his discretion. However, she relied upon Angelena’s prudence, and proceeded to recall all the conquests Angelena had made, and all the delicate positions she had been in.

  Ere she had got half through the list, and just as Jug was dropping asleep again, Mr Doiley reappeared, and intimated, in the most respectful manner, that his lordship wished to speak to Captain Jug. Accordingly the sucking captain rose, and, shaking himself awake, proceeded to follow the servant along well-lighted corridors and passages, with scarlet cloth-covered outer doors, betokening the luxury within. Having reached one, at which another gentleman in full evening-dress stood sentry, Mr Doiley’s jurisdiction ended, and with a respectful bow he transferred Jug to this second groom of the chamber, or whatever he was designated in the tax returns, who forthwith opened the doors, and ushered Jug into a sumptuously furnished room, where, amidst a splashing of water, a mournful voice was heard groaning —

  “Come in, my dear Jug — come in.”

  It was his lordship getting parboiled after his soaking; and in the midst of his turnings and splashings he proceeded to broach his misfortunes, talking as if he had been suffering martyrdom on account of the cornet.

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” bubbled he, with his mouth and nose only above water—” oh, my dear fellow! you’ve let me in for such a mess! — you’ve let me in for such a mess! — bol-lol-lol-lol,” as the water here came into his mouth. Having spluttered it out, he then proceeded with, “Never was so regularly taken in in my life — bol-lol-lol-lol,” as he again got a mouthful of water. He then raised his old white head up a little, and proceeded to recount how that, to oblige the young lady, he had let Dicky draw for a fox; and how that the unreasonable animal had led them such a dance as never was seen; how wet he had got; how he dreaded such an imperious domineering cold as he had the winter before last; how he would have to go to bed as soon as he was enough boiled; and how he should not get up till the next morning, if, indeed, he ever got up again; and how he hoped Jug would make himself and the ladies quite at home, order whatever they liked, and stay all night if they liked — all of which Jug promised faithfully to do, and retired to carry out the intention.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Blunt had been summoned to her dripping, draggle-tailed daughter; and as she helped to take off each spoiled saturated garment, she felt an inward conviction that the sport of the day had not contributed at all to her “chance.” Angelena was then boiled and put to bed; and we are sure it will be satisfactory to our readers to learn that on the morrow this pattern old peer stole away by the back of the castle to hunt just as Mrs Blunt and her party drove away from the front.

  CHAPTER XLVIII.

  LORD LAVENDER’S BANK ACCOUNT.

  CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS! THAT period to which some look forward with such pleasure, others with such dread. Christmas! that period when our blunt, outspoken country friends take the conceit out of one by exclamations at one’s increasing age and altered looks, and our once obsequious tradesmen no longer “any time that suits you, sir,” us, but, on the contrary, will trouble us for that little account “on or before.” Christmas, we say again, drew on, bringing in its train the usual concomitants.

  Among other parties interested in the period was our old friend “sivin and four,” whose peace of mind had lately been greatly disturbed by the inundation of Lord Lavender’s cheques, who kept firing away on the strength of having given Tom the Yeomanry commission, just as if he had a balance to the good in Hall’s hands. Day after day old Trueboy came dribbling into the little pen of a sweating-room, now bearing a cheque for a hundred and fifty for a horse, now of ninety for a mare; now for a hundred and eight for a highly finished pony-chaise, until the old banker began to dread the result. A cold shiver came over him as the cautious cashier sidled from his post at the counter for the sash-door, outside of which, on a large board in white letters on a black ground, hung the following pithy notice: “Call on a Business man in Business hours, only on Business. Transact your Business, and go about your Business, in order to give him time to finish his Business.”

  “Sivin and four’s elivin and twenty-nine is forty, and thirty-three is sivinty-three, this’ll niver do!” exclaimed the old gentleman, as Trueboy, with his scratch-wig all awry, and perturbation on his brow, now came in with one for three hundred and eighty in favour of Sillery and Fizzer, the accommodating wine merchants of — .

  “Sivin and four’s elivin, and eighty is ninety-one, and ninety’s a ‘under’d and eighty-one, the man’ll break the bank if we let him have his own way. Sivin and four’s elivin, and sixty is sivinty-one, I’ll put a spoke in his wheel.”

  So saying, Hall took a sheet of foolscap paper of the dimensions that he wrote his London letters of advice upon, and beginning at the very top of the page, as if he thought he should have a difficulty in getting in all he had to say, he wrote as follows: —

  “Hall and Co present their compliments to Lord Lavender, and beg to call his lordship’s attention to his lordship’s account, which is considerably out of cash.

  “The Bank, Fleecyborough,

  Dec...

  And having given it to Trueboy to copy, who did it with evident satisfaction, old Hall folded it with a very diminutive double, and directing it to the Right Honourable Lord Lavender, sealed it with a l
arge butter-pat sort of seal, bearing the ominous, awe-striking words, “Hall and Co.,” in good, plain, bold, unmistakable letters — letters that had struck terror into the mind of many a recipient.

  CHAPTER XLIX.

  A CARD FROM HYACINTH HALL.

  “ROT THIS OLD reprobate!” exclaimed Lord Lavender, as the banker’s missive reached him—” rot this old reprobate!” repeated he, staring at the ill-written omened document; “how can we give our Christmas festivities if this old usurer won’t let us have money? Oh dear! oh dear!” continued he, dashing his hand among his slightly silvery-streaked locks; “what the deuce are these sort of people sent into the world for but to administer to the wants of the great. This, too, from an old snob, whose son I honoured with a commission in our regiment. Ingratitude’s the worst of sins!” exclaimed he, crumpling up the great letter, and making a mis-shot with it at the fire.

  Lady Lavender, too, was shocked, for she had a neat little file of the expiring year’s bills that she had been waiting for a favourable opportunity to present, to say nothing of several most “enchanting” shops that she wanted to do business with, by tantalising the keepers, in the first instance, with a little ready money.

  In these emergencies the steward is generally the first person applied to, because on him devolves the onus of supplying the bank-hopper with coin, and so long as there are any arrears on the estate — no matter how small the amount — he is justly liable to censure for not getting them in, and so keeping the bank account square. How was his lordship to know that Jacob Browntops hadn’t paid his rent, or that Mr Shuffler had decamped in the night carrying away all he had to Australia?

  Accordingly, Mr Gillyflower, his lordship’s “commissioner,” as they called him, was sent for, who, having made himself smart enough to wait upon her Majesty herself, was duly ushered into the presence, with a fine bunch of geraniums sticking in his button-hole.

  Gillyflower was a great man of business — a great pen-and-ink man of business at least. Nothing was done on the estate without the most elaborate surveys, reports, plans, estimates, specifications, and detail. Not a barn was built, or hovel razed, without the minutest record of the whole transaction, and interminable negotiations relative to the purchase and disposal of the material. Everything was done through Mr Gillyflower, who issued instructions to poor Drearyman and his other subordinates to inspect, and report, and suggest, and confer, and compare, and contract, so that in nine cases out of ten the season for doing the particular act was lost. Still, he had plenty of paper to vouch for his assiduity, and if pens and ink would have done as well as bricks and mortar, his lordship’s would have been the best-managed estate in the county.

  For all this unprofitable labour, and for smoothing over obdurate unreasonable creditors, Gillyflower had a thousand a year — a thousand made up in the following manner: —

  A house and coals found, and bed.....£700

  Keep of a cow...................................100

  Cash................................................200

  Total.............................................. — £1000

  So that when anything went wrong his lordship blew up (behind Gillyflower’s back, of course) at the rate of a thousand a year, expatiating on the absurdity of keeping such a highly salaried gentleman to “do nothing,” verily believing he could get a man to do all he wanted for half the money.

  The reader will now have the kindness to consider this elegant extract ushered into the library, in which were Lord and Lady Lavender, in the high state of indignation peculiar to great people when low-bred ones presume to ask for their money. His lordship briefly “opened the pleadings,” as the lawyers say, by a mincing but vehement denunciation of that old humbug at Fleecyborough, a definition that Gillyflower’s ready imagination immediately appropriated to old Hall, to whom he proposed Gillyflower’s making a propitiatory visit and see if he couldn’t get him to look benevolently on a few more cheques, which he had promised certain parties to draw in their favour.

  Gillyflower had had so many conferences with old Hall, and knew his firm inflexible mode of doing business so well, that he felt it would be an absolute waste of time to go near him, unless he had money to pay in, so he at once recommended his lordship to give up all idea of anything of the sort, unless he could hit upon some expedient of mollifying the old cormorant apart from his beloved £ s d.

  “How would it do to send his son a ticket for our ball?” asked Lady Lavender after a long pause, during which she recollected the favourable influence the Yeomanry commission had had on Madame Dentelle’s bill.

  His lordship shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows, looking as if he thought it a desperate remedy — if not utterly impossible.

  “Do no harm,” rejoined her ladyship soothingly—” do no harm; may make some fun for the Thistlewaite, the Ventnor, and Runnymede girls.”

  His lordship stood thinking the thing over, considering how it would do to have our Tom as a butt for his Christmas party.

  “What sort of a cub is he?” at length asked he of Gillyflower.

  “Oh, the young man’s very well — really very well,” replied the commissioner, attitudinising; “a great improvement on the old one, who hasn’t an idea in his head but that of making money. The young one seems to have a turn for sporting — hunts with Lord Heartycheer — dines at the barracks — buys horses — does everything that a young man ought to do.”

  “Does he shoot?” asked his lordship, who was all for the trigger in opposition to the chase.

  “Shoot,” replied Gillyflower—” shoot,” repeated he thoughtfully—” well, I don’t know whether he shoots or not. I should think he did, though — most men do.”

  “Ah, but if there’s any doubt about it, it wouldn’t do to have him at a battue,” observed Lord Lavender, recollecting the peppering he got in the legs from young Mr Swellington, who thought he could shoot.

  “But there’d be no occasion to take him out shooting, my dear,” observed Lady Lavender, who, the more she thought of it, the more she was inclined to have our Tom, if it was only to make fun for the girls, young men being very scarce, as, indeed, they are in most countries.

  “There wouldn’t,” replied his lordship, thinking he might couple him up with old Mr Barleymeale, and send him on an agricultural excursion.

  And so, after a little more doubt and hesitation and ineffectual sounding of Gillyflower, whether he couldn’t first try his hand on the obdurate old banker, it was arranged that a card should be enclosed for the ball in a note of invitation from Lord Lavender to our Tom to come and spend a few days at his lordship’s seat, Hyacinth Hall. And accordingly an enormous piece of pasteboard, second only in size to those of a lord chamberlain’s bearing her Majesty’s commands, surrounded with coronets and heraldic devices, accompanied by a most diminutive note, was put into a splendid, highly scented envelope, sealed with the great family seal of state, and sent per post to astonish the letter-carrier and the natives of Fleecyborough generally.

  The portentous document found our slippered, dressing-gowned Tom ensconced in a luxuriously cushioned easy-chair in the drawing-room, brooding over the beauties and attractions of Laura Guineafowle, lamenting his ill-luck in not having seen her beautiful blue eyes before Angelena’s sea-green ones, and wondering whether it was possible to get off his engagement with the latter, so as to enable him to offer his plump self to the former. Angelena, he thought, had stolen a march upon him — kidnapped him, as it were — and he wouldn’t have hesitated about throwing her over if it wasn’t for his fear of her father, who, Major Fibs frequently assured him, was one of the best pistol-shots in the kingdom. Indeed, Tom’s dreams of the lovely Laura were constantly interrupted by visions of the bulky colonel taking his stand with the trifling distance of twelve paces measured out between them. Had Tom but known of the hunt and Heartycheer Castle expedition, he would have had no difficulty in “crying off” with Angelena; but, as usual, everybody knew but the
party most interested. And so Tom grieved and fretted, wishing to be off with the old love before he was on with the new. Worst of all, he had no one in whom to confide — Mrs Hall, in her heart, not favouring Laura a bit more than Angelena. She only looked upon Laura as useful in diverting Tom’s thoughts from Angelena; and in this state of the Cupid mart the Lavender missive arrived. Mrs Hall, who knew of the banker’s letter, and suspected what it was, took it up to her son herself, and shared in the exultation the invitation produced.

  “Well, now, that was nice! that was delightful! that was a high compliment! such a one as had never been paid to any Fleecyborough gent before,” and in her prophetic mind she heard the marriage-bells ringing merrily as our Tom handed the Honourable Mrs Hall into their travelling carriage-and-four. And having exhausted every species of panegyric, she restored the card and note to the cover, and passed through the side door into old Hall’s den in the bank, who received the document with a “Sivin and four’s divin, and twenty’s thirty-one, I’d rayther he’d paid some money to account,” a wish that Mrs Hall proceeded to combat with all the energy of an ambitious woman.

  And now, leaving the old people to discuss and settle the point, we will again follow our Tom to the hunting-field.

  CHAPTER L.

  RIVALS IN THE HUNTING FIELD.

  LORD HEARTYCHEER, WHO had a large property in Glenfordshire, generally availed himself of the period of the Christmas festivities to go and have a little shooting there, a sport that he pursued in the most refined slaughtering manner, leaving Dicky Dyke to amuse himself and the country by rattling the large covers of Spygrove Heath, Fullerby Woods, and Oakhampton Chase, which Dicky did in the usual leisurely way of slack huntsmen when “master’s away.” Nevertheless, it was rather a favourite time with the country, as well on account of the haughty earl’s absence as because Billy Brick always gave them a run, if by any chance he could manage it, Billy, somehow or other, never being able to stop hounds, let him be ever so well mounted, so long as they looked like running. Many and curious were the excuses he framed for Dicky — impossible bottoms, impenetrable bullfinches, impervious raspers, that somehow or other never intervened, or at least never stopped Billy when Dicky was there; but, as Dicky could claim the credit of the feats to his lordship, and, moreover, didn’t find it convenient to quarrel with Billy, he did not inquire too minutely into the facts. So Dicky, and Billy, and Sam careered and capered through the country all very great men in their way.