by R S Surtees
“Hacks!” repeated Tom, as his lordship clonked out of the room, “I thought it was close by.”
“So it is,” replied Lampoil, “at least what his lordship calls close by — four or five miles, perhaps; his lordship thinks nothing of eighteen or twenty — desperate man on the road.”
“It’s to be hoped he finds hacks for his friends,” observed Tom, not relishing the idea of galloping the old mare to cover, and hunting her after.
* * * * *
It was full half-past ten ere his lordship re-appeared, and then he had to get his sherry flask filled and his pocket stuffed with sandwiches and gingerbread nuts.
* * * * *
Just as they were crossing the great hall on their prolonged departure, her ladyship was descending the spacious staircase followed by her youngest child in the nurse’s arms.
“Oh, Lionel!” exclaimed she, without taking the slightest notice of poor Tom, “what you got that fright of a neckcloth on for?”
“Fright!” repeated his lordship, “why Jowett sent it down as the newest fashion; he says George Ringlets wears it with the Queen’s, Beau Sarsnet with the Duke, and I don’t know who else besides.”
“Never mind who wears it,” snapped her ladyship, “yellow, with black spots, don’t become you, so pray take it off.”
“But I shall be keeping Mr. Scott waiting, my dear,” replied his lordship, intimating Tom’s presence by laying hold of his arm.
“Oh, Mr. Scott won’t mind waiting a minute or two, I’m sure,” replied her ladyship, deigning him a sort of bow at last.
* * *
“Well, if you wish to have him all spotted like a leopard,” said her ladyship, with a significant glance and shake of the head, as her spouse still hesitated, “you’ll go as you are.”
His lordship then commenced a rapid ascent of the staircase, taking three steps at a time.
We don’t know whether ladies look upon neckcloths in the same light as they do their own ribbons — things that can be changed in a minute — but we can assure them neckcloths are much more serious affairs. It was full five minutes ere the clonk of his spurs announced his lordship’s arrival on the landing in a skyblue satin cravat, instead of the proscribed yellow and black spot; and though we could have changed in half the time, yet for his lordship we don’t think it was long.
“Will this do, my dear?” asked he, buttoning his waistcoat, and adjusting his shirt collar, as he descended the staircase, and her ladyship having received the parting kiss for her assent, and the child having lisped its “ta, ta,” our sportsmen at last found themselves among the body of the servants in the outer hall.
If they had been two Daniel Lamberts they were going to hoist on to their horses by sheer strength, they could not have required more. Numerous as they were, however, the opening door disclosed more outside.
There was Tom’s plummey, over-night friend, the stud-groom, in his brown cut-away, toilanette waistcoat, drab kerseymeres and gaiters, ready to take the cover hack from an attendant in fustians the moment his lordship appeared, and there was a swell groom in leathers and livery, whose gold-laced hat alone would have furnished half an outfit for Sleekpow.
That worthy individual’s face showed the displeasure he felt at having been kept three quarters of an hour on the gravel, his vexation being heightened, perhaps, by numerous little anecdotes he would pick up relative to his lordship’s pace on the road, and the distance they had to go.
“It’s five miles,” groaned Sleekpow, handing Tom the mare, with which dread intelligence the clock tolled the quarter.
“We haven’t much time to spare,” said his lordship, who, having now mounted a prancing grey barb, was
“Provoking the caper that he seemed to chide,”
to the admiration of her ladyship, who was pointing out “Pa’s” feats to the child, and also to the edification of sundry housemaids and dolly mops looking out of the windows above.
Having performed in a style that would have done honour to Astley, or to the Champion at a coronation, he at length kissed his kid-gloved hand, and sticking spurs into the barb, dashed off in a gallop.
“D — n the fellow! How does he ever suppose can keep pace with him!” exclaimed Tom, gathering the old mare, who, thoroughly disgusted with her long wait, was now kicking, and imitating the feats of the barb.
“You had better get forrard, sir,” said the groom, coming up full canter, hands well down, as though he were setting to for a race. —
“His lordship rides very fast,” added he, shooting past.
“Well, this is the most confounded wild-goose chase I ever rode!” exclaimed Tom, as his lordship charged a flight of rails, followed by the lad, who could now hardly get forward in time to unlock the private park door.
Having passed this and so cleared the park, they were now upon the road, a place not at all suited to Tom’s old mare’s legs, which, though sound in the soft, are only what Sleekpow calls rather “crambley” on the hard.
“Gently, old lass,” continued Tom, patting her neck, to try and get her to ease herself down to a trot, “gently, old lass; it’s no use fretting; you are both hack and hunter to-day.”
But the old mare’s monkey was up, and she clattered and battered along as if she had two or three sets of legs at home.
Finding he would take as much out in fretting as he saved in restraining her, Tom at last let her go, and Wideopen Common shortly intervening, he kept his lordship in view, and sailed away at what would have been called an “excellent pace,” had hounds been running.
After clearing the common, they again got upon the road, and meeting two or three cover hacks, Tom saw the hounds, at all events, had come.
In close shaving, either for railway time, or dinner time, or fox-hunting time, or indeed almost any time, it is bad policy stopping to ask questions, for, if one is not past time already, the stoppage may make one so. The only plan is to “keep moving,” and hug oneself at each person one gets past, without hearing, “Ah! the train’s gone!” or, that most appalling sound of all, “they’re away with him!”
Tom got past three return grooms, with a stare from two, and a touch of the hat from the third, and, following his noble friend with his eye towards the rising ground, up which their course now lay, we saw him dash among a dark crowd on the hill top, dismount, and in the twinkling of an eye disappear on the other side.
“That’s all very well,” sighed Tom, “for a man with a stable full of horses; but I, who ride my own to cover, can’t afford to blow it on the road.”
So saying, he eased the old mare down into a trot, and just jogged up to the group on the hill with as unconcerned a face as a man in scarlet can assume, when the hounds have gone away with their fox.
“Your o’er late, sir!” said a kindly-disposed horsebreaker, with a shake of the head, as he backed his three year old out of Tom’s way; “they directly they put in, and have been away with him this ten minutes.”
“The deuce they have!” exclaimed Tom, pulling up in full panoramic view of the scene — Deep Dean, where-they found him, the end at which he broke, the still open gate through which the field had past the bothering brook, the kindly bridge, and the boundless expanse of noble country over which they were now careering.
Nothing could be finer.
“’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,” wrote the poetic Campbell, speaking of general scenery, and surely it holds good with-fox-hunting scenery too, for distance reduces the leaps, so as to make all countries look pleasant and practicable. This one did so particularly, and the last brimstone-coated whip seemed to glide over the plain, as he took on the tail hounds, as though there was nothing bigger than a water furrow.
Poor Tom was never so vexed in his life! He could have cried, if no one had been there. “All that hanged neckcloth!” exclaimed he.
* * * * *
“There was a gentleman just before me,” observed he, as soon as he recovered his articulation.
; “Ah, that’s my lord,” replied the breaker, with a sneer, “You musn’t follow him.”
“Why not?” inquired Tom, as his lordship’s brimstone-coloured coat now appeared careering on the line.
“Hoot! he just rides after anything,” replied the man. “All he cares for’s a gallop.”
“But he rides hard,” observed Tom, looking at his Lordship crashing at a big fence with an open gate close at hand.
“Oh! he’ll ride hard enough,” replied the man, with a knowing leer, for there are few better informed persons in these matters than horse-breakers. “He’ll ride hard enough,” repeated he, “especially if there are any ladies looking on; for his great pleasure is in dressing up and showing off; and he certainly does make as good a turn-out as any nobleman in the land. He had two as fine horses here this morning as ever were seen, the one he’s riding, and the one his pad groom’s on with; and last Wednesday he had two horses with these hounds, and two with the Dazzlegoose, and managed to be with both packs without seeing a run with either. He’s a rum’uns, my lord.” —
CHAP. VI.
THE GOLDTRAP ARMS.
“YOU WERE OUT of luck,” observed Esau Broadback, Tom’s host, or rather his horse’s host, as Tom arrived on foot on the morning after the Ecclesford Green day, with the intention of getting his horse to go home.
“Yes,” grunted Tom, with the tone of a man who doesn’t want to be questioned.
“You might get a day to-morrow,” observed Broadback, with the sagacity of an innkeeper towards his own interest. “The Stout-as-steel hounds are within reach.”
“Where are they?” inquired Tom.
At the Bridge of Bevis Mount, about ten miles from here,” replied Broadback.
“Tenmiles!” hiccuped a drunken voice, “it’s more like twenty!”
This was Tom’s friend the horse-breaker, who had been drinking ever since they parted, and had got through a half-crown Tom gave him, and several of his own to boot.
It won’t be above fifteen, any how,” resumed Broadback, amending his geography.
Fifteen’s as good as fifty, in Tom’s estimation at least, in as far as sending on in the morning is concerned, and if a man has to move his horse from one country inn to another, he may as well be sociable, and go too.
It so happened that our friend Tom had a great desire to see the Stout-as-steel hounds, having heard no little of them in his early days. They were originally a miner’s pack, hunting the beautiful but hilly region so favourably known to all tourists and scenery hunters as the Kiss-sky mountains. The pack has been in existence above a century, not exactly as an advertising one, with a huntsman and whips, but a good useful cry of dogs, never under five, and sometimes as high as ten couple. After towling about the valleys, and the bases, and the middles, and the summits of the mountains, with the usual pony and pedestrian fields of “peep-o’-day packs,” they got a piece of vale country, which they gradually extended, and in the course of time came out in type, looking (upon paper) as big as the best. At length they got weaned from the view-hallos and cow-horns of the miners, and under the mastership of Tom’s late cousin, Simon Squander, who in the handsomest manner ruined himself by keeping them, they acquired considerable renown.
After his death (which took place some ten years ago, and was caused, as many of our readers will recollect, by his drinking a glass of oxalic acid in mistake for gin, being at the time rather overcome with brandy), the hounds floundered on for some time in the hands of a committee, and at length passed into those of Captain Cashbox; a gentleman, who, we believe, was caught at the “Corner,” and most likely adopted on the strength of his name, though, if he was, it has turned out a failure, the captain’s talent consisting in walking into other people’s cash-boxes, and saving his own.
This little episode will explain why it was that Tom was anxious to see the Stout-as-steel hounds; an anxiety that caused him to ponder in the stable, and consider whether, now that he had got so far, he had not better go a little further, and gratify his inclination.
The meet, the bridge at Bevis Mount, sounded quite familiar to his ear, or rather, perhaps, looked quite familiar to his eyes — just as familiar as the “Devil’s Dyke” or “Telscombe Tye” of the old Brighton or Brookside harriers, look to the eye of a Sussex squire. Indeed, the column of “Hunting Appointments” is not the least interesting one in the papers, and through its medium one establishes a sort of hunting acquaintance with all the packs in the kingdom, assigning to each meet such a country as we think the name indicates, and not unfrequently indulging in an imaginary run from it. If the mesmerisers would only invent a process for taking off one’s thoughts when half asleep, we could produce some astonishing runs, far better than anything we can write.
But to our friend Tom.
Having taken a look at the map in the traveller’s room of the Lazytong Arms, and run his eye from the great greasy thumb-mark denoting the “here we are” of Dawdle Court into the intricacies of the hills, Scott saw that Bevis Mount was quite beyond distance for a morning’s start; but observing the town of Sludgington on the line, which he remembered to have heard his late cousin extol, our independent friend determined to dispense with the services of Sleekpow, and go “bags and all,” feeling that it would never do to return to Hawbuck Grange without being able to tell Mr. Neville and “their chaps” what sort of dogs either the Tear Devil or the Stout-as-steel ones were.
That point being settled, he was very soon on the back of the old mare, and after divers twistings, and turnings, and crossings, and missings, and askings, the curtailed proportions of a winter’s day found him gazing at the chubby tower of Sludgington Church. —
Having cleared the toll-bar, he presently entered the town.
It consisted of one long, narrow street, formed of all sorts of houses, and cottages, and shops, and premises ranged in a most higgledy-piggledy state of confusion — a good house here, a bad one there, a dirty cottage next, a public house after it; then a coy freestone-faced mansion, retiring within its own iron railings, followed by a smithy adjoining a cowshed. The street was one continued bed of hard, loose, whinstone, whose roughness and sharpness was only relieved by a plentiful covering of cold, bleak-looking mud.
In passing along Tom could not help thinking if the old mare was to fall, what a state her knees and his clothes would be in. Fortunately no such catastrophe befel Mr. Scott, and a ragged urchin with a ladder having lighted a glow-worm sort of oil lamp, a little in advance of where he rode, he deciphered the words “Goldtrap Arms” below one of those resplendent shields that indicate the great man of the country. —
In truth the sign was a perfect extinguisher on the house, making it look like a boy in a man’s hat. However, there it was, and being about the centre of the town, there was no doubt about its being the head inn, even if Tom’s friend with the ladder had not proclaimed it.
He did more, he rang the bell for the ostler.
There is no saying, if our friend was advertising in “Grandmama,” the Sunday Times, or any of the matrimonial mediums of communication, what compliments he might pay to his person, but in this bit of confidence with our numerous readers, we don’t care admitting that it isn’t everybody that takes Tom for a gentleman.
So on this occasion Sam Beer, the ostler, answered the summons in a way that plainly showed he thought our traveller and he were about equals — at least would be, if the latter had his Sunday clothes on, instead of a pair of rotten-looking fustian trousers, a tattered waistcoat, and a dirty shirt. Top-boots having about devolved entirely upon fox-hunters and servants, a man perhaps may be excused not knowing “which is which,” without the red coat; at all events, Tom consoled himself with that supposition.
“Stop all night!” said Sam, laying hold of the reins, as Tom rode under the wretched low archway (filled with unwashed gigs, empty barrels and hens) leading into the close contracted passage of a stable-yard.
“Yes,” replied Tom, adding, “You’ve room I sup
pose?”
“Plenty of room!” replied the man; and truly when Tom lighted on a veteran dung heap at one stable door, and saw the broken panes and gaping deals of the other, he didn’t wonder at it; and he almost wished he’d brought Sleekpow, when he saw the place, as well to relieve him from the trouble of superintendence, as to teach Sleekpow not to grumble unnecessarily in future.
Having loosened the saddle-bags and chucked them over on the far side, in the way that guards and other disinterested parties deal with luggage, Beer gave Tom the mare to hold, while he slunk into the kitchen in search of a candle.
After two unsuccessful attempts to bring it past the draught of the gateway in his hands, he had recourse to an old hat, and at last succeeded in planting it triumphantly against the wall in a holder formed of its own grease.
He then led in the old mare, and commenced the usual chilling, temper-trying, fistling and fumbling of the slovenly slatternly stableman.
We have often thought, when at places of this sort, of Nimrod’s account of the metamorphose — a pair of boot-trees turning out of his buggy, effected in the manners of the landlord and servants of an inn he drove up to in Scotland — Kelso, we think, — during his “Northern tour,” and the tip of a scarlet coat-lap peeping out of the corner of the saddle-bags, which we omitted to mention, were taken into the kitchen when Beer went for the candle, operated similarly in Tom Scott’s favour.
Cornelius Cake, the landlord, having been a gentleman’s servant — a baronet’s we should say — butler to Sir Digby Goldtrap, whose arms his house bears, thought himself a judge of gentlemen; and, being struck with the cloth, came into the stable to, see who had brought it.
Tom saw as plainly as if Cake said it, that he was bothered with his appearance, not knowing whether he was master or man.
He glanced first at Tom’s boots, then at his bottle-green cut-away, with bright buttons, and having carried his observations up to his hat, without having come to a satisfactory conclusion, he turned his attention to the old mare.