by R S Surtees
The humbug then commenced by drawing several belts of plantations, and clumps of trees and tufts of brushwood, scattered and dotted about the park, from whence issued hares, pheasants, rabbits, deer, wood pigeons, partridges, tomtits, every thing except a fox. Meanwhile, his grace availed himself of the opportunity for pointing out to the prince and Mynheer Von Cled the vast extent of his park and territory, and the most remarkable of the distant views.
Here, there, and every where, Lord Harkaway tried with a patience and perseverance deserving of a better fate. At length he neared Gullington Wood, where fox No. 1. had to be turned down. Turned down he had been; but the supine keepers having omitted to spring the rabbit traps, they found poor reynard in one of them, when a hound very quietly finished him.
Clumps and belts intervening between Gullington Wood and Poppington Dean, and his lordship anticipating no better luck with the second fox, desired his pad-grooin to drag the carcass of the one they had killed at the back of the hill, while the company were staring and gaping in front. “Just drag him alongside your horse,” said his lordship, “keeping on the far side of all the plantations and places, so that they mayn’t see you, and after making a good round of the park, finish in old Absolom Brown, the keeper’s garden, by the South Lodge, where we can bury him, if the hounds won’t eat him, and come out with the brush and pads, and all things proper.”
This was a very good instruction; for though “No. 2.” did raise a cry in cover, the melody was very soon terminated by a kill, which his lordship seeing, he out with his horn and blew for hard life, while Tiptop and the three whippers-in set up such screeches and yells, and made such cracky with their whips, that the whole cavalcade seemed to be suddenly electrified, and soldiers, and fox-hunters, and gigs, and carriages, and omnibus, and grooms, and prince, and duke and duchess, and Mynheer Von Cled, were all mixed up in a minute in one glorious state of indescribable confusion.
“Yonder he goes,” roared Jemmy Fitznoodle.
“Hold hard!” screamed Tom Crawley “Halt!” roared Billy Bobbinson.
“Go it, ye shavers!” exclaimed Jack Hobler, pushing through the crowd, as all eyes were strained after his lordship, in hopes of viewing the fox.
The hounds poured out of cover, down went their sterns, and out came the music, as they crossed the line of the drag, and settled like a swarm of bees on the scent.
Away! away! away! went the field, the bold dragoons mixing up with the rest, leaving the prince to look after himself, while gigs, and cars, and phaetons, and landau, and all strained over the green sward as best they could. It was a splendid burst!
The prince’s Flemish punch even seemed to catch a little of the infection, and gave two or three squeals and hoists up behind, indicative of what he might do if his highness did not loose his head a little. This the nag accomplished just as the Duke of Tergiversation, who had been nearly capsized by a dog-cart, came alongside, and suggested that they ought to be getting forward if they meant to see the sport.
On then they bumped together in about equal enjoyment of the run, which was dexterously prolonged by sundry doubles, that would have led the knowing ones to think it was a hare if Jemmy Fitznoodle had not had ocular demonstration of the brush.
At last the conical roof of old Absolom’s thatched cottage was seen peering from among the laurels and evergreens in which it is stuck; and when the great guns arrived, it was announced to the duke, who put it into French for the prince, that the fox was at bay in the garden.
Great were the rejoicings thereat, great the exultations of each party on coming up “piping hot” to the finish. “Glorious run! splendid sport! finest sight that ever was seen.”
“Who shall say there are no foxes at Fast-and-Loose Castle!” exclaimed his grace, wiping the perspiration from his brow.
“Who, indeed!” echoed Jemmy Fitznoodle, adding, this is the biggest one I ever set eyes on!”
“WHO-HOOP!” screeched Lord Harry Harkaway at last, poking his way under the ivy-twined arch of the little garden-gate, with the brush and pads high in hand.
“Who-hoop!” echoed half a hundred outside.
“Give the brush to the prince, my lord!” exclaimed the duke, as the outburst of joy subsided— “give the brush to the prince, my lord: he rode like a hero and deserves it!”
His grace then interpreted the compliment, while the great phlegmatic Dutchman sat on his horse looking as unconcerned as a cow. Mynheer Von Cled got a pad, (rather an equivocal compliment, considering his deficiency in that line,) and the compliments and congratulations being at length exhausted, the duke capped the performance by exclaiming, “My Lord Harry! you’d better come to the castle and have a little refreshment after your fatigue.”
Lord Harry thought otherwise, and having paid the last tribute of respect to poor reynard’s remains in the garden, he groped his way through the now squeezing and jostling crowd to his horse, which having mounted, the brass music of the horn and bugle drew off their respective cohorts, the hunters passing outside the park, while the soldiers again formed into something like line to conduct the heroes back to the castle.
In ten minutes the lately distracted park had resumed its usual placid grandeur. The grey-headed, green-coated gate-keeper rolled the heavy iron gates back as the last donkey cart took its departure, closing the fox-hunting scene, let us hope, “forever and for aye!”
“Well, but where’s your blank?” we fancy we hear the reader say. “You’ve killed a brace of foxes! how’s that? that’s no blank!”
Gentle reader, we admit it; it wouldn’t be a blank to some, but it was to Lord Harkaway and many of the gentleman who “hark, away” with him. Will you, however, take it seriously amiss if we tell you that all this is merely preliminary to the “blank day?” We hope not, for unless you close the book, you have all your medicine to take yet.
Perhaps, however, unlike Lord Harry Harkaway, the reader may require a little refreshment after such a run, so we will reserve the real blank for another chapter.
CHAP. XIV.
THE BLANK DAY — (continued).
THE DUKE OF Tergiversation’s park-wall encroaches so on the township road outside, that the field was lengthened into something like military line until they cleared its precincts. Indeed it was not until they got upon the liberal width and grass-sidings of the Cockington Fort road, that Tom Scott had an opportunity of diving into the melée, and seeing “who was who.” Others had been in the same predicament, for Tom had not advanced far into the crowd of horsemen, ere he was hailed by some of the “best fellows under the sun,” exclaiming, in the wild outburst of surprise, “Damme, here’s Tom Scott!”
“What the deuce has brought you here, old boy?”
“Well, Tom, did you ever?”— “No, I never!” and so on, alluding to the recent Fox and Goose exhibition in the park. —
Despite the retirement of the prince, and the carriages, and the cavalry, and the costermongers, there was still an immense field: from a hundred and fifty to two hundred horsemen at least. The country papers of the next week, who devoted three columns and a half each to the details of the pageant, “Grand Sporting Pageant at Fast-and-Loose Castle, in honour of his Serene Highness the Prince of Spankerhausen and the great Dutch merchant Mynheer Von Cled,” declared there were a thousand — a thousand, exclusive of the handful of yeomanry, whom they magnified into “two hundred of the flower of the country.”
And here we may observe, how much better it is for a respectable paper to have a regular cut-along correspondent, who sticks to the truth, and tells what he sees, calling things by their proper names — fools, fools — humbugs, humbugs — and so on, instead, of one of your word-sprawling gentry, who are perfectly bewildered when they come to handle a hunt, and who only make absurdity more ridiculous.
Who doesn’t remember the mess they made when her Majesty went out at Belvoir, and again when glorious Tom Smith revisited the green haunts of Leicestershire!
But to the adjourned hunt.
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“Why didn’t you come in to breakfast at the castle, Mr. Scott?” asked Sir George Stiffenecke, who had got straggled all the way down to the “duke’s,” and was still prosecuting the chase, notwithstanding his grace’s return, in hopes of gaining an appetite for dinner. “Why didn’t you come in to breakfast at the castle?” repeated he, adding, “The duke would have been happy to see you.”
“I dare say would he,” replied our uncourteous Tom; “just as happy as I am when I find a straw. Dukes are only for such great men as yourself, Sir George,” added he, thinking to smooth over the roughness of the former part of the speech.
“Well, but his grace is extremely affable and condescending, I’m sure,” rejoined Sir George.
“Oh! devilish affable — especially about election times,” replied Tom. “Then one may expect a visit from his agent, Mr. Saucyjaw, with his forty-horse power of impudence, reminding one of the breakfast, and his grace’s condescension, and saying that his grace having just discovered ‘black’s white,’ hopes Mr. Scott won’t object to voting in the affirmative; and if one refuses, the duke storms and fumes as if he had been robbed of his birthright. I don’t buy my groceries quite so dear, Sir George,” added Tom: “if great men wish to retain their influence over little ones they must be consistent.”
Sir George was rather posed, for he’s a short-noticed Jem Crower himself.
The Stiffenecke conversation was here interrupted by a most dislocating thump on the shoulder from Tom’s very sincere, but very heavy-fisted friend, Foxey Wollop, of Tod House, a ginger-haired gentlemen, with a coarse cane-coloured beard, and a strong cross of the fox in his face.
“Why, what the deuce has brought you to this scene of absurdity?” inquired Wollop, after he had followed up the blow by nearly crushing Tom’s fingers in his vice of a hand.
“You may ask that,” replied Tom, wringing his tingling hand against his horse’s side: “I came to hunt, but we don’t always get what we come for.”
“Indeed we don’t,” replied Foxey Wollop. “However, if you’ll come home with me, I’ll tell you what you’ll get, and no mistake — you’ll get a cut off a beautiful round of beef, three weeks in the salt, with the gravy springing out of the centre, like a fountain, and a pie or a pudding, or something of that sort.”
“That’s a very good offer,” said Tom, “but at present I’m for the fox, et preter nihil.”
“Oh, fox! we shall find no fox,” replied Wollop, with a smile, “unless it is such another as we had in the park.”
“That’s a pity,” said our friend, “for I’ve come a long way to see these hounds, and should like to have a round with them of some sort.”
“Ah! then you must come another day; or, I’ll tell you what do — stay over to-morrow with me, and hunt Saturday at Crashington brake; a sure find, and a capital country.”
“Can’t,” replied Tom with a shake of the head; “got to be at home; but tell me,” added he, “what are they going to draw now?” as a whip opened a gate on the left of the road, for the hounds to pass into a field.
“Oh! it will be Thorneyhalf Dean, one of the duke’s,” replied Wollop; “one of the duke’s — might as well draw the turnpike — Lord Harry, I suppose, thinks he may as well make a day of it, and go through the form.”
‘ Nevertheless, “a lively-faithed” field ranged themselves orthodoxly for reynard to break: the whips scuttled to their respective points, and the swell huntsman yoicked his hounds into cover, and stood erect in his stirrups eyeing the Dean, as though he really expected to find.
“Have at him there, good dogs!” holloaed he; “yoicks, wind him! yoicks, push him up!” and then he gave his own patent note, something between a screech and a demi view-holloa; a cheer, however, that we are sorry to say is not reduceable to paper.
Most huntsmen have a pet noise of their own, and that was Mr. Tiptop’s.
While this make-believe work was going on, Gurney Sadlad came up grinning from ear to ear, with a “I say, Scott, old boy, they’ve been hoaxing the ‘cretur’ that you are the Duke of Devonshire, and we want you to carry on the joke.”
“They’ve been what!” exclaimed Tom in astonishment.
“Hoaxing the ‘cretur:’ you know the ‘cretur,’ don’t you?” inquired Sadlad. “Everybody knows the ‘cretur,’ Toe Tugtail. Well, they’ve been hoaxing the ‘cretur’ that you are the Duke of Devonshire, and we want you to let us introduce him to you in form.”
“Nonsense,” replied Tom; adding, “I can’t do Duke at short notice — I can’t personate the Duke of Devonshire, a man I never saw in my life.”
“Oh! that’s nothing,” rejoined Sadlad; “the ‘cretur’ never saw him either; therefore you’ll be matched in that respect.”
The gentleman thus indicated, although then a perfect stranger to Tom, was so well known by the field as to make them suppose he must at all events have heard of him; and so, lest we should fall into a similar error with the reader, we will here give a slight sketch of him from the knowledge Tom afterwards obtained.
Toe Tugtail, whose real name is Anthony, Anthony Tugtail, Esq., derives his appellation, either from the natural abbreviation of his name, or from a propensity the unkind ones say he has of making people’s acquaintance through the medium of their toes. He is a watering-place bird, and has mustered an extensive acquaintance by a dexterous application of his foot. If he sees a ring formed round a quadrille, or a staring circle environing a set of petticoat-whirling waltzers, Toe elbows his way in till he gets beside the party he wants to know, when dropping his hat, or his glove, or his handkerchief, he contrives to touch the person, which is immediately followed up by ten thousand apologies, and a sort of imperceptible glide into conversation respecting the performances, the lights, the music, the any thing that happens to be handy. The foundation of the acquaintance is thus laid. If it is a “don,” off goes the hat the first time Toe meets him alone; but if Toe is in company, he tries the familiar half nod of a bow, and says, “That’s my friend, Sir John, or Sir Tom, or Lord Harry.”
Before Tom Scott had time to arrange his thoughts or ideas, he saw a move among the horsemen about twenty yards lower down the hedge, and presently a little wizened, ugly old man, in a rusty, old scarlet coat and moleskin breeches, backed a mealy-legged, mealy-muzzled, fiddle-case headed, bay horse out of the rank, in answer to Sadlad’s summons, who had gone half way back to give it.
Scott had’ a good view of him as he came primming himself up, and certainly he did not seem undeserving of the name of the “cretur.” It was visible at a glance that he dyed his hair; indeed it does not require a conjurer to see that, for a practised eye may almost tell what o’clock it is by the various shades a dyed head assumes during the day. The pheasant-coloured tint of the “cretur’s” showed that it was long past noon.
Scott had observed Mr. Tugtail in the park; indeed he saw him come out of the castle close on the Prince of Spankerhausen’s heels, but from seeing him running a muck, first at one great man, and then at another, Scott had concluded he was either a great man himself, or an attaché to one at all events. That “birds of a feather flock together” holds as good with peers as with pigeons.
Sadlad, we should observe, is one of those harum-scarum creatures whom it is no use being angry with. He will have his joke, let what will be the consequence; and even if our friend Tom had had presence of mind to ride away, we dare say Sadlad would have followed with Tugtail at his back. It was, therefore, perhaps best to surrender at discretion. Sadlad’s was the fault, Tom’s the misfortune. —
“My lord duke, will you allow me to present my particular friend, Mr. Tugtail,” said Sadlad in a sonorous voice, and the most respectful manner, extending his right arm a little behind to where his particular friend came creeping along.
The “cretur’s” hat made an aerial sweep, finishing at the spur.
“Great pleasure in making Mr. Tugtail’s acquaintance,” replied Tom, raising his hat, string high.
; “Your grace is very fortunate in the day,” observed the “cretur,” after a grin.
“Very,” replied Tom, not knowing whether he meant in the sport or the weather.
“It was a splendid run, indeed,” said Tugtail.
“Oh, splendid,” rejoined Tom, looking at the creases in Tugtail’s coat and the moth holes at his breeches’ knee, and wondering how long it was since they had been aired.
Twang — twang — twang! went Lord Harry’s horn; screech — screech — screech! went Mr. Tiptop’s too, who was not to be done out of his blow.
“To him, hounds — to him! — get away!” hallooed the men, cracking their heavy thonged whips.
“No go, here, I’m afraid, my lord duke,” observed the “cretur,” with pretended concern.
“I’m afraid not,” replied Tom, gathering his reins, thinking to escape from the listening, laughing, gaping, giggling, crowd.
Yain hope! Whenever Tom turned, the “cretur” was at his heels; worse still, the crowd followed to hear the fun. How he did be-duke, and be-grace and be-lord him!
From Thorneyhalf Dean they went to Cressingham Copse, another cover of Tom’s noble brother Tergiversation’s. As they proceeded, the wicked author of his misfortune rode up alongside, and whispered into his ear, “Pitch into him.”
“ — Daren’t,” replied Tom; “he’d have me up for an assault.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Sadlad, but cram him well.”
“Your grace hasn’t much hunting in Derbyshire, I think,” interposed the “cretur,” crushing up on the other side of Tom’s horse. —
“Not much,” replied Tom, thinking the cretur might know more of Derbyshire than he did.
“Noble place, Chatsworth!” observed Tugtail, confirming Tom’s worst suspicions that he had been there.
“Why, yes it is; and yet I don’t know,” replied Tom, doubtfully, as if there were things he didn’t like about it, or his modesty prevented his praising what was his own.