Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  “Indeed!” said his lordship, seeing Dicky was making one of his usual casts. “Is she as fat as her father?” asked he.

  “Fat! bless you, no,” replied Dicky, his eyes sparkling as he spoke—” fat, no; nice, slim, spicy lass as ever you seed.”

  “Indeed!” smiled his lordship, brightening up as Dicky’s object began to disclose itself.

  “Rides like a fairy,” added Dicky, shooting his right arm forward, as if using a sling.

  “You don’t say so!” observed his lordship, who liked anything game.

  “Fact, I assure you,” said Dicky, with a knowing jerk of his head. “They say they’ll back her to beat most any man in our hunt.”

  “The deuce they do!” exclaimed his lordship; “I should like to see her take the shine out of some of them uncommonly—”

  “That saucy Mr Healey, for instance,” suggested Dicky, with a touch of his cap.

  “Ay, or that Mr Beale; he’s as bumptious a beggar as any we have,” observed his lordship.

  “So he is,” said Dicky, with another touch of his cap; “Brassey too’s a beggar,” added he.

  “Head-and-shoulders Brown’s as bad as any of them,” observed his lordship, admiring his own pink tops, and thinking of the mahogany ones of his horror.

  “So he is,” said Dicky tartly; “pity he has no neck that he might break it.”

  His lordship then reverted to Angelena.

  “Is Miss Blunt pretty?” asked he.

  “Nice-lookin’,” replied Dicky—” nice-lookin’; not zactly what you call a beauty, but a smart well-set-up gal,” Dicky holding himself up, and sticking in his back as he spoke; “much such a gal as little Lucy Larkspur, in fact.”

  “Indeed!” replied his lordship, who had patronised Lucy extensively at one time.

  “They say Miss — what-d’ye-call-her — Blunt’s goin’ to marry the fat boy at Fleecyborough,” observed Dicky.

  “What, the banker’s cub?” asked his lordship.

  “The same,” observed Dicky, with a rap of his forefinger against his cap-peak.

  “Well, there’ll be plenty of means,” said his lordship.

  “Plenty,” said Dicky, “plenty; but the lad’s a lout.”

  “She’ll lick him into shape, p’r’aps,” replied his lordship.

  “Here she is,” whispered Dicky, as the brown Garibaldi now appeared above the hedge on the left. Lily-of-the-Valley slightly rearing on being reined in to let the hounds pass, Tom and the lady emerged from Rushworth-lane into the high-road the hounds were travelling.

  Although his lordship, as we said before, made it a rule never to speak to any sportsman who was not properly introduced, he relaxed it in favour of the ladies — if they were good-looking, at least — and introduced himself, or let Dicky introduce them, if that useful functionary had established a previous acquaintance. His lordship, having known the colonel as the corpulent captain, who had reintroduced himself in the free-and-easy way described in a previous chapter, was at no loss on this occasion; and seeing at a glance that Angelena answered very accurately to Dicky’s description, he cleared himself of the hounds, and putting his horse on a few paces up Rushworth-lane, with loftily-raised hat and low bent head, proceeded deferentially to greet her.

  The unexpected and gratifying compliment, coupled with the excitement of the scene and the bracing freshness of the morning air, imparted a glow to the fair one’s cheeks, and made her look quite lovely.

  “I was very sorry, Miss Blunt, to hear of your father, the colonel’s, accident, when he was good enough to come to see my hounds the other day. I hope he is quite recovered?”

  “Oh, thank you, he’s a great deal better, my lord,” replied Angelena, with a sweet smile, that disclosed a beautiful set of pearly teeth, with playful dimples hovering on either cheek. “He’s a great deal better, I thank you, my lord,” repeated she.

  “I’m afraid he would think me very rude — very unfeeling indeed,” observed his lordship, having now turned his horse round, and, with Angelena, regained the hounds, who had rather hung back for him, “never sending to inquire after him; but the fact is I never heard of the accident until this morning, and that by the merest chance in the world.”

  “Indeed!” smiled Angelena; “I thought everybody had heard of our roll.”

  “Well, one would have thought so,” replied his lordship, raising his white eyebrows, with a shrug of his shoulders—” one would have thought so. I suppose everybody had heard of it except your humble servant. I was just rating Mister Thorndyke for not telling me of it,” added he, raising his voice at Dicky’s back, to get him to help him on with his story.

  “Yes, my lord, yes,” replied Dicky, looking round and weaving away at his cap. “The fact is, my lord, if you recollect, you were going to dine at my Lord Lofty-chin’s, and left us as soon as we broke up our fox; and I never saw your lordship again till the Thursday, when I concluded, in course, your lordship know’d ail about it.”

  “Ah! exactly so,” said Lord Heartycheer; “that was the way of it, I believe. However, Miss Blunt, you’ll perhaps have the kindness to explain to the colonel how it was, and say I should have made a point of coming over personally if I had known, which I shall now take the earliest opportunity of doing.”

  “Most happy to see you, I’m sure,” smiled Angelena, more delighted than ever at the turn things were taking. Who knew but Lilia might be a lady?

  “Won’t you introduce me to your brother?” asked his lordship, glancing at our fat friend, sitting, mouth open, like a sack on his horse, lost in astonishment at the greatness of his intended’s acquaintance. “Won’t you introduce me to your brother?” repeated his lordship.

  “Oh, my brother! he’s not my brother!” laughed the fair flirt; “he’s my — he-he-he!” going off again in a giggle. “Mr Hall, Lord Heartycheer wants to know you,” observed she, touching Tom slightly with her light riding-whip; whereupon, off went his lordship’s hat, which Tom imitated with as much grace as could be expected from the lessons of a cheap dancing-master.

  “Fond of hunting, Mr Hall?” asked his lordship, in a sort of lofty-actioned tone of supercilious condescension.

  “Very, my lord,” replied Tom, thinking that would be the ticket.

  “Hope you’ll not have the usual luck of a new coat,” observed his lordship, eyeing Tom’s country-made thing, and wondering at his impudence in mounting his button.

  “Hope not,” muttered Tom, wondering that they should “nip for new” out hunting. He now wished he had taken Padder’s advice, and steeped the laps in water.

  While all this was going on, the crowd was increasing behind; and ere the hounds reached Silverspring Firs — a clump of trees on a perennially green mound on a gently rising hill on the outskirts of a fine country — the field had swelled into more than usual Heartycheer-hound dimensions; gentlemen were still coming up on hacks and in dog-carts, the latter discarding their dingy-coloured wraps, and joining the scarlet-coated throng who encircled the pack, while the usual “Good-mornings!”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Who’s got a cigar to spare?”

  “Where shall we send the hacks to?”

  “Who’s seen my horse?” passed current in the outer circle.

  At length, all things being adjusted, and his lordship having exchanged his hundred-guinea chestnut hack for a three-hundred-guinea black hunter, and spoken to such of the field as he deigned to recognise, gave the signal to Dicky Dyke, who forthwith whistled his hounds together, and, preceded by the first whip, wormed his way politely through the crowd, “by your leave”-ing to gentlemen, and exchanging civilities with farmers and others who were not exactly adapted for capping. “Goodmorning, Mr Heathfield — and how are you, sir?”

  “Allow me the pleasure of shaking hands with you, Mr Light-body,” tendering an ungloved right hand; “hope Mrs Lightbody, and all the little Lightbodys, are well” (this to a man who generally sent him a goose). “Well, Mr Barlow,
have you got your gate mended?” (this to a man who had been kicking up a row about a gate the second whip had broken). “Now, Mr Hubbard, you’ve got the kicker out again” (this to a man who wouldn’t like to buy Dicky at his own price).

  Dicky, we may here observe, was an aristocrat in his way. He didn’t take tips — sovereigns or small coin tips, at least. “Oh, thank you, sir, no,” he would say, bowing with the greatest blandness—” thank you, sir, no; you are very kind — very good, and I fully appreciate the compliment intended by the offer; but my lord is very gracious, and his salary is abundantly adequate to my limited wants — no occasion for anything of the sort,” he would add, as the yellow boys went back to the offerer’s pocket. Five-pound notes he treated differently — perhaps he didn’t look upon them as the current coin of the realm, and Dicky just bowed as he crumpled them up in his hand and stowed them away in his waistcoat-pocket, as if he meant to light his pipe with them at his leisure.

  A quick eye, coupled with long experience in the field, had enabled Dicky to discriminate between the metallic and paper currency men, and we believe there is no instance on record of his mistaking one for the other.

  Fish, game, poultry, sucking-pigs, fruit, wine, cheese, we may add, were acceptable from any one — Mrs Dyke was open to groceries, and things of that sort; flattery didn’t come amiss to her — she had been a beauty, and hadn’t forgotten it. But to our sport.

  The head of the cavalcade being thus formed by the pack, his lordship, after leaving a liberal space between the second whip and himself, bowed affably to the fair equestrian, and, motioning her to advance, reined his horse up beside her and proceeded; while the hatted groom in scarlet and the dark-clad second horseman interposed a barrier between the giggling, nudging, winking, well-done-old-boy-ing crowd behind them. Thus they turned up Lovecastle-lane, the field lengthening like the sea-serpent as it proceeded.

  “It’s a fine day,” observed his lordship, looking up at the now sunbright sky.

  “Very,” replied Angelena; adding, “when I first looked out this morning I thought it was going to rine.”

  “What, you were up early, were you?” asked his lordship; adding, “are you fond of hunting?”

  “Oh, I don’t hunt! — I don’t hunt, I only go to see them throw off,” replied Angelena, who rather reproached herself with having lost Tom Softly of Nettleworth, in consequence of beating him across country.

  “I’d go till I came to a difficulty at all events,” observed his lordship, who wanted to test Dicky Thorndyke’s report—” I’d go till I came to a difficulty, at all events; the country’s easy, and my lad can ride you through it, if you are afraid of jumping.”

  “Oh, of course I’ll go till I’m stopped,” replied Angelena, recovering her courage; adding, “I’d rather ride over than open a gate, any day.”

  “Well done you,” said his lordship to himself, looking back to see where he had the “crammers” of his country; and in the line he saw the caps of Jacky Nalder and Billy Dent and Major Ryle bobbing up and down, and the knowing “shallow” of Mr Woodcock stealing a march on the soft inside the adjoining field. Brassey, too, he thought he saw; and farther back the frog-on-a-washing-block-figure of the detested head-and-shoulders Brown. “I’d give a guinea — I’d give a five-pound note — I’d give fifty pounds to have the conceit taken out of some of you fellows by a woman,” thought his lordship, eyeing the cavalcade.

  He then resumed his attentions to Angelena, complimenting her graceful seat, her quiet way of handling her lovely horse, and the becoming plume in her brown Garibaldi. He said he felt greatly flattered by her coming out, and he pulled up his gills, and fingered his frill, and flourished and simpered and smirked, just as he simpered and smirked at the close of the last century. Angelena, on her part, was all eyes and vivacity. Thus in the full glow and excitement of newly-formed acquaintance they arrived at the cover, a well-fenced gorse of some two or three acres in extent, with cross-rides situated in the middle of a large undulating pasture, surrounded by others of similar extent.

  “Now, gentlemen,” cried Mr Thorndyke, rising in his stirrups, and facing the approaching field—” now, gentlemen, my lord will take it as a ‘tickler favour if you’ll all stand at the high corner of the cover,” pointing to it with his whip.

  “I s’pose you mean to say you’ll give us a tickler if we do,” observed Mr Bowman.

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” replied Dicky, with a slight bow and a touch of his cap; for Mr Bowman occasionally complimented him with a brace of pheasants or a hare.

  “And you fut people,” continued Dicky, addressing the panting pedestrians, “you do the same, and don’t halloa the fox, whatever you do, or you may head him back into the mouths of the hounds.” So saying, Dicky passed through the bridle-gate into the cover, and, cap in hand, was presently “Yoicking” and cheering the hounds. “Yoicks, wind him! yoicks, rout him out!

  Have at him, all of ye!” with a loud reverberating crack of his whip, enough to awaken a fox in a trance.

  All hands clustered at the appointed corner, at a respectful distance from my lord; some watching the hounds trying for the fox inside, others watching the “old fox,” as they called his lordship, “trying it on” outside.

  “Do you know the country, Mr Hall?” asked his lordship of our fat friend, who, having emancipated himself from the crowd, where he had heard some unpleasant jokes cut on the fair Angelena and her prospects, now appeared to join his prize.

  “No, I don’t,” replied Tom, pouting at this repeated poaching of the aristocracy on his preserves — Jug, to wit.

  “Ah well,” replied his lordship, chuckling at his bearishness, “that spire you see in the distance is Heyday Church; those hills on the left are Fairmead Downs; that wood — found, by Jove!” exclaimed he, taking off his hat, as a great banging bright-brown fox darted across the junction of the rides, and dived into the green gorse beyond.

  Hoop! hoop! hoop! Screech — screech — screech went many voices. — Tweet — tweet — tweet went the shrill horn, and in an instant there was such a charge of impetuous hounds to the spot, as left no doubt in Tom’s mind that the fox would instantly be torn to pieces.

  The joys and fears that found expression in other men’s faces, therefore, were not reflected in his own; and while others were buttoning their coats, anchoring their hats, adjusting their caps, disposing of cigar-ends, prophesying points, and gathering their reins, Tom sat with an expression of vacancy strangely at variance with those of all around. There was no great fun in hunting, he thought — further than wearing a red coat, at least.

  Angelena, on the other hand, was all joy and excitement — all agog at the sight of the fox, all delight at his lordship’s affability, all dread lest Lily-of-the-Valley should play any of her rum-touchish fantastic tricks, and bring her headlong to grief.

  Hopes, doubts, and fears were speedily dispelled by the appearance of a cap in the air at the low end of the cover, and in another instant a gallant fox was seen going stealthily away over the grass, his ears well laid back, listening to the confused din and uproar behind. Twang — twang — twang went the shrill horn, as Dicky blew his way to the place. An avalanche of hounds instantly answered.

  “One moment,” cried his lordship, who always saw his hounds well settled to the scent before he began to ride. “One moment,” repeated he, eyeing the line the fox was taking. “Ah, he’s away for Vickenford Glen, and we shall have a rare gallop,” added he, settling himself into his saddle, and getting his horse short by the head. “Follow me, my dear,” to Angelena.

  His lordship’s being a well-regulated hunt — none of your equality scrambles, where might makes right — not a soul moved until he set the example; when Paxton, the head groom, having fenced Angelena and his noble master off from the field, his lordship stuck spurs to his horse, and, with Angelena following him, reached the low end of the cover, just as the last hounds crashed over the fence, responsive to Sam, the second whip’s melodi
ous cheer and hurried cry of “On, on — on, on!”

  “Come, Tom, come!” cried Angelena, seeing our plump youth fighting with his horse, with every probability of being overwhelmed by the now pressing crowd, who were little inclined to listen to Paxton’s exclamations of “Room! room! room!” for any one but his master. “Come, Tom! Tom!” repeated she, as an outburst of melody from the now clustering pack drowned all voices but their own. Away they swept like the wind. The ground was in capital order for riding, as well as for holding a scent, and the hounds settled to it with a closeness and energy that bespoke mischief. The long pasture which the fox traversed diagonally, as if to give our friends as much of it as possible, opened upon another of nearly equal extent; and his lordship, bearing a little to the right, to avail himself of the well-accustomed bridle-gate, left a fine ragged fence open to those who never miss a leap. First to go at it, full grin, was head-and-shoulders Brown, who, getting his great raking chestnut well by the head, dropped the Latchfords freely into him, and giving him a rib-roasting refresher with his flail of a whip, was presently up in the air and over.

  “Curse that Brown,” grinned his lordship, as Paxton held back the gate, and Brassey and Beale and Billy Dent all appeared in line, ready to follow Brown. “Curse that Brown,” repeated his lordship, as Brassey bounded over the bullfinch, adding, as he saw his late flying laps subside, “I believe you’d ride into a red-hot fiery furnace if Brown went first. Forrard on!” screeched he, pointing to the still flying pack with his whip, as if the hunting alone occupied his attention. “Forrard on!” repeated he, muttering to himself, “we’ll take the conceit out of some of you before we’re done.” He then smiled on his fair friend, whose horse lay close on his quarter.

  So they passed through Everley fields, over Wick-common, and sunk the hill at the back of Mr Beanland’s farm at Wilford. The enclosures now gradually became less, and Dicky Dyke got Billy Brick, the first whip, to the front, as he said, because Brick was handy at opening gates; but, in reality, because the vale fences were bad to break.