Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  We will now take a glance at the internal arrangements of Cavil House.

  Mrs. Bluff is any thing but what the name indicates. Indeed she seems to have made a serious mistake in changing her maiden one of Green — Rosamond Green — for that of Bluff. The roses and lilies of youth having fled, she is left the most nervous, pallid, washed-out looking creature that ever was seen. The slightest thing throws her into convulsions. She is one of those ailing sort of bodies with whom nothing is really ever the matter. Still she always lives in dread; and whatever ailment happens to be uppermost, she immediately invests herself and family with it. When the cholera was astir, she had it many times; typhus fever is a standing dish with her, and meazles, hooping-cough, influenza, are all frequent visiters. She buys all the quack books that are published, and all the quack medicines that are sold, and experimentalises upon the poor people in the neighbourhood.

  No sooner did the news of the men having been bit reach her than she conjured up all sorts of horrors respecting hydrophobia, and resolutely barricadoed herself and children into her room. Even poor Bluff was only permitted to hold communion sweet through the key-hole. Of course the party at Cavil House had not her company at dinner; and almost equally of course, Bluff, Tom Scott, and the few neighbours Bluff had assembled, drank more wine than they ought. We don’t mean to say they got drunk; but having no break, caused either by the retirement of the ladies or by their summoning them to tea, they settled more determinedly to the bottle, added to which, they drank the first three bottles as two, without finding out the mistake. Indeed it was not until he got three quarters of a bottle aboard, that Bluff could fairly be said to be himself again, when, having got his waistcoat loose all but the two bottom buttons, they gradually got his conversation coaxed through the medium of his favourite subject, draining, on to that of fox-hunting itself. It was plain, however, that his inclination was for the destruction, and not the pursuit, of the animal. He was uncommonly blood-thirsty. The blood of his lambs and his leverets seemed to call for vengeance, and the number of victims increased as the evening advanced, until he got the lambs up from ten to near thirty. The shepherd told Tom in confidence that they had lost three, but one he believed had been worried by a greyhound. The neighbours gradually dropt off until Bluff and Tom were at last left alone, when, having fixed the time for turning out, said every thing they could think of, and some things twice over, they both seemed to think they might as well save the fatigue of further conversational effort by going to bed; and pulling out their watches simultaneously, they found it was on the point of striking twelve.

  Accordingly off they bundled.

  Tom had scarcely got into bed when the violent bang of the door in the next room, which was only separated from his by a thin lath and plaster wall, followed by a heavy footstep, and an ejaculation that sounded very like “D — d fool,” announced that his host was hard by. Bluff stumped and banged about, hitting this, knocking that, occasionally letting fall an oath or an observation, such as, “Curse the table”— “Absurd nonsense”— “Women such fools”— “D — n the boot-jack!” — until at length a creak and a heavy souse proclaimed that he had turned into bed.

  The poor man was condemned to sleep in his dressing-room, for fear he might be mad. Tom Scott might be included in the list of unfortunates, for he was victimised by the arrangement. His room, though an extremely good one, was not that terrible bugbear, the best one, with a lofty bed as big as a field, but a cozey, comfortable, easily-got-ready one, looking to the north, or back of the house. It so happened that the Scratchley dogs were lodged in the brewhouse just below; and these unruly spirits, unused to the restraint of civilised packs, kept howling and yelling throughout the night. It was not the cheery chorus of hounds in kennel filling the air with their merry voices, but a sort of melancholy drawl resembling what is called the death howl. This they set up about every half hour, bursting out in full chorus at first, with the sound of scratching and gnawing at the door and wood-work, until the howl gradually died out in a moan. Nor was this the worst; for Tom’s host could hear them also, though not so distinctly as Tom did; and what with the drink, the noise of the hounds, and the strange bed he was in, Bluff evidently could not get to sleep. This was plainly indicated by his tossings and talkings. First he began calculating the number of draining tiles to an acre, at various distances, a calculation that was interrupted every now and then by abusing the hounds, wishing they were all in a warmer place than the brewhouse; then he banged over against the wall, and snorted, as if trying to get to sleep with a shore. The next thing Tom heard was, “Curse the thing,” and apparently stripping off the counterpane. Then there was another lull, and the dogs had their turn; after which Tom heard his friend at the novel recreation of saying his multiplication table — twice two’s four, twice three’s six, twice four’s eight, and so on. This Bluff carried on very perseveringly till he got into the fifth column, when, after boggling at five times six, he was regularly brought up at five times eight, and the multiplication table seemed to die away in a mutter. Tom really thought they would both accomplish a sleep about this time, and he was as near dropping off as could be, when the vagabonds in the “lock-up” fell a fighting, and if there had been fifty couple they could not have made a greater noise. They yelled, and they tore, and they bit, and they worried, and they howled, and they growled, and they rattled and knocked the butts, and tubs, and casks about, as if they would destroy every thing in the place.

  Fortunately their din had the effect of waking Joshua, and presently he began clattering with a broomstick at the door, and rating and calling to them by name. “Miscreant!” shouted he; “Miscreant!” he repeated in a still louder tone. “MIS-CREANT!” roared he, with a tremendous rat, tat, — tat, — tat tan, of the broomstick against the door, adding, “Ord, dom ye, ha don! Ord, dom ye, be quiet! Oh! PROWLER, it’s you, is it! PROWLER! ar say, ha don! PROWLER, for shame of yoursel! PLUNDERER! what are you after there?” inquired he, as the scene of action shifted to another quarter. “Whistler! WHISTLER! ar say, Flasher! for shame! TOWLER, be quiet! GUIDER, ha don! ord dom ye! ar’ll hang ye all, and put the rest i’ the small debts coourt!” added he, with a kick at the door that made it shake again; and after rating, and rat, tat, tanning, and kicking and clattering for some quarter of an hour, peace was at length restored.

  Still Bluff couldn’t get to sleep. He, however, abandoned the multiplication table, and tried another tack: he took to saying over the kings and queens of England — William the Conqueror, William Rufus, William Rufus, William the Conqueror, and so on down to Stephen, where he stuck. He then skipped on to Edward the Fourth, from whom he-brought them on with a very fair hunting scent down to Queen Victoria. Still that wouldn’t do. He then began spouting— “My name is Norval! on the Grampian hills,” &c., but that did not seem to answer any better, and he presently struck off with —

  “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

  The lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea;

  The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

  And leaves the world to —— —”

  “D — n those hounds!” roared he, as the brutes again fell a fighting. Tom then heard him groping for his bell, which having found, he gave such a pull as left the rope in his hand. This presently went smash through the window.

  Bluff then lay quiet for some time, and Tom was in hopes he had fallen asleep; but he had most likely only been listening if his footman was coming, for in less than ten minutes he was back at his multiplication table, trying to put his memory over the leap it had stuck at before. It wouldn’t do, however, so he at last turned away from it again, and began spouting; and two o’clock found him most appropriately rehearsing Henry the Fourth’s soliloquy to sleep: —

  “How many thousands of my poorest subjects

  Are at this hour asleep! O, gentle sleep,

  Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

  That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
,” &c.

  which really seemed to operate beneficially, for a few incoherent noises were followed by a deep snore; and having got rid of his nearest persecutor, our friend dropped asleep too, though when the servant called him at five, he was ready to swear that he hadn’t had “a wink of sleep.”

  Poor Sylvanus looked ten years older when he came down the next morning than he did when he went to bed. Instead of the healthy, ruddy complexion he generally has, and the full bright eye, he was a sort of a bad green, much of the colour of the cushions in the library of the Conservative Club, with eyes like boiled gooseberries. His chin was all jagged and hacked with the scrapings of a blunt razor, or the shakings of an unsteady hand. Nevertherless he had got himself into the old swallow-tailed scarlet and yellow ochres that Tom Scott remembers ever since he (Tom) was a boy. A red coat is a red coat with some people, and year after year we see them putting themselves into the most old-fashioned, extraordinary articles with the most self-satisfied air. Sylvanus’s had been made when mother-of-pearl buttons were the fashion, and he had great black animals engraved upon them that might pass either for wolves or foxes. The collar stood right up, in a sort of Gothic - arch, half way up his head, and the closely set on waist-buttons were about half way between his shoulder blades and where the small of his back would be, if it had any small — Bluff’s outline is pretty straight.

  “Well Scott, old boy, how are you?” exclaimed he, with ill-assumed gaiety, extending a feverish hand as they met in the passage leading into the breakfast-room; “hope you slept well.”

  “Pretty well, thank you,” replied Tom, adding, “the hounds rather disturbed me at one time.”

  He sunk “my name is Norval,” the “kings and queens,”

  “multiplication table,” and all that sort of thing.

  “Curse the hounds!” muttered Bluff, adding, “they disturbed me too. One would have thought all that pigs’ meat would have kept them quiet; however, let’s to breakfast, and go and take our change out of them.”

  Very little breakfast did for Bluff. A devil’d kidney and two cups of coffee were all he could master, though, as Tom slipped up the back stairs for his gloves, he detected him in the butler’s pantry, getting a bottle of soda water on the sly.

  It was fortunate Mrs. Bluff’s room did not command a view of the back yard; for if she had seen the great bloody, dirty, sooty, unruly devils rush out full cry, and scour the yards and courts, and outhouses, tearing here, there, and every where, regardless of Joshua’s yells and threats, and screams and tootles, and the cracks of his great flail-like whip, she might well have thought they were mad.

  “Give us a leg up!” exclaimed Joshua, as, after shooting the bolt of the brewhouse door, he stood beside a wretched, iron marked, bay Rosinante, whose galled back was protected from the puddingy saddle by a piece of old green and yellow Scotch carpeting.

  “Which way’s the cover?” inquired he as he thrust his great feet into the rusty stirrup irons.

  “Up the hill,” replied the gardener, telegraphing with his arm; and forthwith Joshua tickled the old nag with his solitary spur, and hobbled off the stones at a most woe-begone shuffle, blowing, and hooping, and hallooing as he went. It was, hard, to say which leg the old nag was lamest on.

  “They certainly are very unsteady, those hounds, I should say,” observed Mr. Bluff, whose black cob seemed to have caught the infection, and began kicking and capering, regardless of Bluff’s remonstrances and the diggings of his spurless heels. —

  “Quick” was the word, and having mounted, our friends hurried after the noise made by Jos as he led the charge.

  “D — n the fellow! he’s not going to put them into Reislip plantation, surely!” exclaimed poor Bluff, as, on clearing the well-wooded avenue, they saw Joshua careering over the turf in that direction with some six or seven couple of hounds apparently hunting his horse, for they were going full cry —

  “Oh my God!” exclaimed Bluff, looking the very picture of misery: “they’ll kill every hare in the place. Oh dear! oh dear! whatever shall I do! Scott, my good fellow! Scott, my good fellow! your horse can gallop! do get forward and turn them, or they’ll utterly ruin me.”

  Tom shot off at best pace, and just got within ear-shot of Joshua, as the resolute devils tore past his horse, and rushed full cry into cover. Stopping them was quite out of the question; half a dozen Jos’s couldn’t have done it; no, not even a Jos to each hound, mounted at least as this Jos was.

  In they went as if they would eat it.

  “A! they gan in bonny!” exclaimed Jos, pulling up his cripple, apparently pleased at the feat. “If he’s there, they’ll soon rout him out. Forrard in! forrard in, Tapster, old boy!” continued he, as a great black and white devil came lobbing along, fowling and howling as he went.

  “They’ll all be here enow,” added Jos, looking down upon the surrounding country, where one hound was baying the cows, another chasing a jackass, a third running a muck at the geese, and a couple of beagles that had been beat by the pace of their great four and twenty inch cousins were establishing a little rabbit hunt of their own.

  Poor Bluff’s prophecy was speedily fulfilled; for the hounds had not been in cover a minute ere the most lamentable screams and cries began to issue from all parts, as first one poor hare and then another was chopped by the savage invaders. Pheasants rose in clouds with noisy whir, and hares streamed wildly out in all directions, some rushing into the very jaws of the arriving stragglers; and when Bluff’s cob got him to the scene, every dog had his hare, either dead or alive.

  Steeltrap, the keeper, was frantic. He abused Joshua like a pickpocket, asking him in the most open way if Joshua “thought he was such a fool as to allow a fox to set foot in the preserves?” It was, however, no time for talking. The screams of the hares still continued; and the keeper and the foot people having armed themselves with sticks and rails, and whatever they could lay hands on, rushed to the rescue, and presently there was a rare battering, and scrambling, and howling, and fighting in the plantation, as the savage hounds disputed the possession of the mangled pussey remains with the assailants.

  At length, by dint of blows from the cudgels and blows from the horn, some six or seven couple of hounds were got out of cover; and the only plan with scratch packs being to keep moving when you get a majority, Joshua again set off over the downs in the direction of Hailweston Woods, which were pointed to him in the distance as the place where he ought to have gone to throw off.

  When they got to Hailweston Woods they found the field consisting of a few neighbouring farmers, a keeper, and a blacksmith or two, who had been waiting some time for the hounds, each man, according to his own account, having winded a fox as he came. Some of them were ardent admirers of the Scratchley dogs, and anticipated their throwing Mr. Neville’s completely into the shade. “Mr. Neville’s dogs are very good when there is a scent,” observed Willie Wanderhead, “but they can’t work a fox in dry weather like these,” said he, eyeing the great bloody-faced savages as they passed.

  “That’s Rollocker!” exclaimed Toby Butcher, as a great mastiff-headed creature, half foxhound half bloodhound, came throwing his tongue as he travelled. “Ah, what a fine note he has!” and so they were severally criticised in detail as they passed into cover. Joshua was already in, “yoicking” and cheering such as were inclined to listen to his voice.

  Several of the stanch dogs giving tongue as they drew, and all being desperately addicted to hare, they had kept up a pretty continuous noise in different parts of the cover before a decided stream of melody indicated any thing better than riot, when a loud, oft-repeated, most masterly “TALLYHO!” to the south, announced that reynard had been seen. Away they all cut to the place, where they found a young ploughman, purple with shouting, in the act of loosing a horse from the harrows to join in the chase, leaving t’other ar’d nag to follow with the harrows, if it liked. The ground was very dry, but there was a good scent in cover, and not a bad one out; indeed, if tru
th must be told, wet is not indispensable to scent, and one of the best scenting days we ever saw was when the ground was as dry as in summer. But to the hunt.

  The great business of a huntsman to a scratch pack is to lay his dogs on the scent—” casting,” and “lifting,” and “throwing in at head all scientific manoeuvres, in short, are only for your fifteen hundred, or two thousand a year packs. What can you expect for eight pound ten? The scratch gentleman puts his hounds on the scent, and it is their business to tell which way the owner of the scent goes, and not his. So it was with Joshua. His poor, half-starved, broken-down steed was quite done by the time it got to the holloa, and, instead of setting to, and riding in the naughty way Mr. Holyoake did in the “Quarterly,” with a couple of hounds or so on the scent, Joshua very deliberately got off, and sitting astride the fence rails, began puffing and blowing his horn to get all the redoubtable dogs out of cover that he could. That feat being accomplished, at least as far as he could judge by the absence of noise, he shifted his saddle back off the poor galled jade’s withers, re-adjusted the piece of carpeting, and proceeded at a gentle trot along the higher ground of the line they had gone; his next business being to catch and couple the dogs at the end, for which purpose he carried two most formidable bunches of couples at his saddle. So he hobbled and jingled away at his leisure. —

  The majority of our readers, we dare say, will have had experience enough of the elongated, straggling style in which scratch packs do their “splendid work the difficulty there is in telling which field has the head, and which the tail. Perhaps some of them may have unpleasant reminiscences connected therewith, so, as our paper is short, and our dinner we sincerely hope nearly ready, we will wind up this part of our sketch by describing the scene that burst on Joshua’s astonished vision as, on rounding Fourburrow Hill, he came all at once upon Woolridge Valley.