MARCHING ORDERS
ISAAC was a character in his way—quite an institution at The Grange,
where, by dint of indomitable tenacity of opinion, and a singular talent
for silence, he had contrived to extend his influence over a good many
matters not in the least connected with his department. For instance,
not a sheep could be killed without consulting Isaac. His word on the
subject of pigs was law; and it needed but a wave of his hand to
substitute for the useless, hideous, gigantic Cochin-Chinas of the
poultry-yard, a certain breed of plump Dorkings, that laid diurnal eggs
in their lifetime, and, after death, made almost as handsome an
appearance as Norfolk turkeys on the dining-table.
Perhaps the old groom was less omnipotent in the stable than elsewhere.
Mr. Sawyer, like many other proprietors of small studs, chose to have
his own way with his horses, and would no more have omitted to visit
them after breakfast than he would have neglected to smoke his cigar. It
is only the tip-top swells, with whom our friend had not yet scraped
acquaintance, who “suppose their _fellow_ will have ‘_two_ or _three_’
at the place of meeting.” But although it is doubtless a great luxury to
own plenty of hunters, this very plurality often prevents a man from
finding out which is his best horse. There are not a great many _good_
runs over any country in one season. It is a long time before you have
treated each one of your dozen to a clipper; and, till then, you only
know you have a good _hunter_, but cannot tell you have got a good
_horse_.
Mr. Sawyer, however, knew the merits and the failings of his own two or
three nags but too well. He was pretty often on their backs, and, when
off them, constantly in and out of the stable. Isaac would no more have
dared to give one of them a gallop, or a dose of physic, than to have
inflicted the same discipline on his master. Nevertheless he grumbled
always and continuously. As I have said before, it was the one
relaxation he permitted himself. Perhaps he never had a better
opportunity than on the morning after the new horse came home, when Mr.
Sawyer, according to custom, but with a trifle more eagerness than
usual, visited his favourites in their comfortable quarters. According
to custom, too, he felt their legs all round; expressed his satisfaction
that the grey’s had got “quite fine again,” and passed over a certain
thick-set underbred bay horse without a remark. Indeed, it would have
been difficult to say anything complimentary of this animal; and his
remaining so long in Mr. Sawyer’s stable was less the consequence of his
merits than that strangers seemed to have the same opinion of him as was
entertained by his own master. It _is_ somewhat galling, when we cannot
get rid of a bad one, to reflect that it should be so difficult to find
a bigger fool than ourselves. The bay, who rejoiced in the classical
appellation of _Marathon_, was a slow horse, a sulky horse, and by no
means a safe fencer—about as unpleasant a hunter as a man would wish to
get upon, but rather a favourite with Isaac notwithstanding, as he was
sound, and a voracious feeder. These three, the roan, the grey (who had
no name), and the bay, with a little three-cornered jumping hack called
Jack-a-Dandy, now constituted Mr. Sawyer’s stud; and, as he contemplated
them all hard at work with their eleven o’clock feed, he felt that spark
of ambition glowing in his bosom which has lured so many great men to
their destruction.
“He _looks_ a clipper! don’t he, Isaac?” observed the master, nodding
towards the roan’s long shapely quarters and square tail. “The rarest
shaped one we’ve had in _this_ stable for many a day,” he added, seeing
his servant’s features screwed into the well-known twist that denoted
disapprobation.
“Looks!” grunted Isaac, who never called his master “sir.” “Looks! Ah!
he’d be a nice thing enough to knock a light trap about, or do you a day
now and then when the country gets dry. He’ll never be fit for our
ploughs—you see if he will! They’ll pull him to pieces in a
fortnight—you see if they won’t!”
“I don’t _want_ him for our ploughs,” answered Mr. Sawyer, waxing
somewhat impatient. “I don’t think I shall have another day in the Old
Country this year. Look ye here, Isaac. I’m going to move the horses.
I’ve three now, let alone ‘Jack’” (this was an abbreviation for the hack
who seldom enjoyed his fall name, being generally designated as above,
or as “The Dandy”)—“three right good ones. I can easily pick up another,
when I’m settled. I’m going down to the grass.”
“Grass!” grunted the listener. “Where be that?”
“Well, I’m going to see what sport they have in the Shires,” answered
his master, warming up with the subject—“going to have a look at Mr.
Tailby and the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, and try if I can’t make
a fight good enough to see those Pytchley bitches run into their fox.
I’m going to Market Harborough, Isaac. Such horses as mine are wasted in
this out-of-the-way country. Why, the grey’s the best I’ve ever had; and
the roan ought to be faster than he; and even the bay would carry me
better, I think, in that country than he does here.”
A gleam as of pity softened old Isaac’s hard blue eyes, as it rested on
Marathon tucking in his feed, and he pictured that devoted animal
rolling and lurching, disconsolate, over the ridge-and-furrow of a
fifty-acre grass-field. But he only observed sardonically,
“Markit Harboro’, is it? To stand at the sign of the ‘Hand-in-Pocket,’ I
suppose?”
“Never mind what you suppose!” answered Mr. Sawyer, now positively
angry. “You do what I bid you. Move the horses down to-morrow by the
rail. Take The Boy with you; and mind you keep him out of mischief. I’ve
written to a friend of mine to engage stables. Next week we’ll begin
work in right earnest. Come into the house, with your book, after your
dinner; and hold your tongue!”
Old Isaac knew better than to pursue the subject any further; and, truth
to tell, the old fellow had a spark of his youth’s adventurous spirit
lingering about him still, which made him not averse to a change,
although he thought the scheme wasteful, imprudent, and extravagant. He
looked after his master, strolling leisurely towards the house, and
observed very slowly to himself and the stable-cat:
“Market ’Arborow! Market ’Arborow! Five days a week, bullock-fences, and
a wet country! Thorns, stubs, cracked heels, and hawful wear-an’-tear of
horses! No—I couldn’t have believed it of him!”
Eight-and-forty hours more saw old Isaac stamping drearily about on the
wet pavement of that excellent sporting locality. Market Harborough,
though perhaps the best head-quarters in the world for fox-hunting, can
scarcely be termed a gay or very beautiful town. On a wet, drizzling
afternoon in early winter, when twilight begins somewhere about 2.45,
with no movable object visible save a deserted carrier’s cart, and a
small rain falling, which dulls the red-brick houses while it polishes
the paved and slippery streets, it is, doubtless, a city suggestive of
repose, not to say stagnation. Isaac’s was a temperament sufficiently
susceptible of all unpleasant influences; and he began to wish heartily
he hadn’t come. A variety of disadvantages had occurred to him since his
arrival. The price of forage and stabling he considered enormous. The
conveniences for hot water were not what he was accustomed to at home.
Hotspur did by no means feed well in a strange box: the horse had begun
to look poorer day by day since he left the dealer’s. And last night The
Boy, who had never been from home before, certainly smelt of gin when he
came to bed.
This youth—who, if he once had a name, must have long forgotten it,
since he was never called anything but “The Boy”—was a continual thorn
in the head groom’s side. He had originally been taken solely on Isaac’s
recommendation, and had caused that worthy more trouble than all the
rest of the establishment put together, horses, pigs, and the
Cochin-Chinas to boot. He was a light, lathy lad, with a pretty face; a
good horseman, considering his strength, or rather weakness; and had a
knack of keeping his hands down: but he owned the usual faults of
boyhood—carelessness, forgetfulness, “_imperence_” (as Isaac called it),
a great love of procrastination, and general insensibility to the beauty
of truth.
“If he takes to drinking, the young warmint!” thought Isaac, “I’ll
larrup the skin off him!” And thus consoling himself, the old man turned
his cheek once more to the chill, misty heavens, and shook his head. His
horses were done up; the door locked, and the key in his pocket; The Boy
also secured by the same means in the loft. Master could not arrive till
eight or nine o’clock. It was the hour when, at The Grange, he was
accustomed to see the pigs feed and the chickens to roost. He wished he
was back in the Old Country: the time hung heavily on the old groom’s
hands.
“Nothing to do, and lots of time to do it in! that seems to be about the
size of it—eh, governor?” said a voice at his elbow; and, turning round,
Isaac confronted a short and dapper personage, whom, by a sort of
freemasonry, he had no difficulty in recognising as one of his own
profession.
At any other time he would have treated this worthy’s advances to
acquaintance with sovereign contempt; but his spirits were depressed and
his heart solitary, so he vented a grunt of acquiescence, which, for
him, was wonderfully polite.
“I think I see you arrive yesterday, with two or three nags,” continued
this affable functionary, “when I was out a hairin’ some o’ mine; and
you’re puttin’ up close by my place. Come in, governor, and take
something hot, to keep the cold off till we become better acquainted.”
With this hospitable offer, Isaac found himself following his new friend
into a cosy little tap-room, with red curtains and a sanded floor, which
apartment they had all to themselves; and whilst “something hot”—a
delicious compound of yolk of egg, brown sugar, warm beer, and cordial
gin—was being got ready, he had time to study the exterior of his new
acquaintance.
Probably the utmost ingenuity of the tailor’s art must have been
exhausted in constructing trousers so tight as the pair which clung to
that person’s legs. Not a crease had they, nor a fold anywhere; and,
unless the man slept in them, it was difficult to conceive how they
could conveniently be used as articles of daily apparel. The person’s
boots, too, were neat, round-toed Wellingtons; his waistcoat descended
far below his hips; and the waist-buttons of his grey-mixture coat were
unusually low and wide apart. A cream-coloured silk neckcloth, secured
by a horse-shoe pin, set off a pale, sharp-looking countenance, speaking
of hot stables and dissipation, while the closest possible crop of hair
and whiskers did justice to a shaved hat with an exceedingly flat brim.
A few splashes of mud on the boots and trousers showed he had been
lately on horseback; and he held up one of his thin little legs as he
took his seat, and contemplated the stains with a grin of morbid
satisfaction.
“Blessed if ever I see this country so deep!” he remarked, after a pull
at the flip. “How _my_ horses will stand it, I know no more than the
dead, the way the governor rides. We’ve _only_ nine this year; and he’s
an awful hard man upon a horse.”
“Nine!” exclaimed old Isaac, smacking his lips after the draught, which
warmed the very cockles of his heart; and being a man of few words, only
added, “Well, now, to _be_ sure!”
“He _is_ awful hard upon ’em—that’s the truth,” continued the narrator.
“It was only last week he says to me, ‘Tiptop,’ says he—_my_ name’s
Tiptop—‘what made Boadicea’ (that’s our bay mare by Bellerophon out of
Blue Light)—‘what made Boadicea stop with me under Carlton Clump to-day?
Either she wasn’t fit,’ says he, ‘or she isn’t worth five shillings.’
‘Well, sir,’ says I, ‘the mare’s a gross feeder,’ says I, ‘and you ride
with _rayther_ a slack rein.’ ‘slack rein be hanged!’ says he. ‘If ever
such a thing happens again, you’ll get the sack,’ says he. So I up and
told him I was ready to go whenever he could replace me; and the upshot
of it was as he apologised quite like a gentleman; for, indeed, he
wouldn’t know whatever to do without me. He’s a good man—my
governor—enough; but he’s hasty—very hasty. Why, to see him coming over
a gate into the turnpike-road, as I did t’other day, on Catamount—that’s
our chestnut, as ran fourth for the Liverpool—you’d say he’d no
discretion whatever; but they’ve all got their faults—all on ’em. What’s
yours? Can he ride?”
Discreet Isaac answered with a counter-question. “What’s your governor’s
name?” said he, peeping once more into the waning pewter measure.
“The Honourable Crasher,” replied Mr. Tiptop, not without an air of
exultation. “A brother he is to the Hearl of Heligoland. Now I’ve told
_you_ all about it, old bloke. There—you ease your mind in return, and
give us _your_ name.”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve seen the register,” answered Isaac. “But
it’s a long way to the parish as owes me a settlement; and I’m afraid
you’ll have to wait, Mr. Tiptop, till I can communicate with you by
post.” Saying which Isaac finished the flip at a gulp, and walked off to
seven-o’clock stables without uttering another word.
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