FOUR O’CLOCK, STABLES
I SHOULD be sorry for my reader to suppose that John Standish Sawyer was
what is termed “a susceptible man.” On the contrary, since his
well-remembered rejection by Miss Mexico, an event of which it is
unnecessary to specify the date, he had steeled himself resolutely
against the fair, and devoted his energies, if possible, more
exclusively than ever to the worship of Diana. Cold as she is at times,
and rigorous as are her icy frowns, corrugating that beaming face into
unpropitious wrinkles, at least she is a mistress who never deceives.
The thermometer at your dressing-room window tells you exactly the
humour in which you will find her, and we do not hear the old, whose
season of enjoyment has passed away, regretting the hours and days they
have spent in her service. “If I had my time to come over again,” I
heard a hale octogenarian declare not long ago, “I should make _one_
alteration. I should flirt a little _less_ and hunt a great deal
_more_.” He had been a four-days-a-week man all his life, and in his
youth a fierce admirer of the ladies. The foregoing, nevertheless, was
the result of his experience.
Mr. Sawyer, like any other male biped, was not above being flattered and
pleased by the notice of such a girl as Miss Dove. It smoothed his
feathers, so to speak, and encouraged him to think better of himself.
The Honourable Crasher, too, who had quite taken a fancy to his new
friend, asked him to a _tête-à-tête_ dinner at his lodgings on the night
after the Tilton Wood meet; and as the wine was remarkably good, and the
host, in his sleepy, quiet way, rather pleasant company, he spent an
agreeable evening enough.
For the next two or three days there was a catching kind of frost, of
the most provoking description, just hard enough to stop hunting, yet
with a deceitful appearance of “going” which prevented sportsmen from
leaving their quarters for London. During this interregnum Mr. Sawyer
had leisure to unpack his things, arrange his books—consisting of
“Colonel White’s Observations on Fox-hunting,” “Ask Mamma” (illustrated
with coloured prints), and a few back numbers of the _Sporting
Magazine_,—inspect his stables, watch the roan putting on flesh, and the
departure of the grey’s cough, besides making acquaintance with the
persons and studs of Mr. Savage, Captain Struggles, and Major
Brush—gentlemen possessing, one and all, an inexhaustible fund of
spirits, an untiring delight in horseflesh, numerous suits of wearing
apparel, such as nearly approached the character of fancy dresses, and,
to all appearance, a lack of nothing in the world except ready money.
They fraternised willingly enough with our friend, smoked cigars with
him at his hotel in the morning, took him over their stables at dusk,
did _not_ try to sell him any of their horses, which would indeed have
been a hopeless enterprise, and generally made the world as pleasant for
him as was in their power. Mr. Sawyer began to think he had landed in
Utopia at last—that he had reached the Happy Land, where, metaphorically
speaking, it was to be “beer and skittles” all day long. The only
drawback to his felicity was the sustained discontent of old Isaac, and
an increasing tendency to inebriety on the part of The Boy.
Perhaps my reader will best understand his situation from a description
of a visit paid, according to custom, by the whole gang to the stables
of the Honourable Crasher. Time 4.30, on a dark afternoon, with every
appearance of a thaw.
Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue Light, is being stripped for Mr.
Sawyer’s inspection. As a compliment to the stranger, he is further
invited to “walk up to the mare, and feel how fit she is!” at the risk
of having his brains dashed out; Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue
Light, resenting such liberties with the ferocity of her British
namesake, and kicking with considerable energy when her ribs are
tickled. Mr. Tiptop, by far too great a man to touch a rug or hood,
gives his directions from the offing, with his hat very much over his
eyes, removing it only when addressed by his master, his legs very wide
apart, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his tight trousers.
Captain Struggles, a heavy gentleman, who rides light-weight horses, and
wears a shooting suit of the broadest check fabricated, takes a straw
out of his mouth, and observes, “That’s about the sort, I think, when
you want to do the trick over _this_ country. Ain’t it, Tiptop?”
Mr. Tiptop is always mysterious and oracular concerning the Honourable’s
stud. Somebody, he thinks, ought to preserve the secrets of the stable,
and Crasher himself is the most indiscreet of mortals on such subjects.
So the groom raises his hat with both hands, puts it on again, and
replies, “We like to get all of _ours_ as nearly as possible about that
mould. There’s a young horse as is quite one of _your_ sort, Captain, in
the next box.” Whereupon Mr. Sawyer, who had no patience with Tiptop,
winks at Major Brush, and the latter bursts out laughing.
The conversation now becomes general, and not altogether devoid of
personality.
“_Your sort_ are rather of the weedy order, Struggles,” observes the
Major. “Too light for _this_ country, as you’ll find out before you’re
many days older, now that we’ve got the ground to ride as it should do,
up to our girths. Besides, those thorough-bred rips never have courage
to face large fences. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Sawyer?”
The Major has not yet forgiven Struggles for stopping him on the last
day they were out, at the only practicable place in a bullfinch, on
which the heavy weight and a very little chestnut stallion were
see-sawing backwards and forwards, like some exquisitely-balanced piece
of machinery. Mr. Sawyer, thus appealed to, gives his opinion, thinking
of the roan the while: “They _must_ have power, I fancy, for these
flying countries, but they must have blood _too_. I should like to show
you a horse I’ve just bought, that I mean to hunt to-morrow if the frost
goes. My stables are ‘close at hand.’”
It is resolved that Mr. Sawyer’s shall be the next stud inspected; but
such an unheard-of breach of etiquette as leaving their present haunt
until every individual horse has been stripped, cannot be entertained
for a moment; so Mr. Savage, in his turn, enlivens the process by
attacking poor Struggles: “You never got to the end that Keythorpe day,
after all,” says he. “What’s the use of these long pedigrees of yours,
if they can’t stay? I have always understood their only merit as hunters
is, that you can’t _tire_ the thoro’-bred ones. But confess now,
Struggles, you stopped before the hounds ran through the Coplow!”
“No distance at all!” chimes in Brush.
“And the ground must have been quite light before the rain,” adds Mr.
Sawyer, who thinks he _must_ say something, and who has not been
permitted to remain in ignorance of this Keythorpe day, now more than a
fortnight old.
Struggles turned from one to the other of his tormentors, with a grin on
his jolly face. “Little Benjamin couldn’t have been so beat, when I
caught your horse for you,” said he to Brush; “or when I went by _you_,
Savage, in the lane, and that was after five-and-twenty minutes, with
fifteen stone on his back, amongst those hills. No, no, my boys! Fair
play’s a jewel, and neither of you were there to see whether I’d had my
gruel or not. _Stop_ indeed! I’d lay odds none of old Catamaran’s stock
would cut up soft, if you rode them till the day after to-morrow. Stop!
I’ll be hanged if I didn’t _trot_ when I got on the high-road coming
home.”
“Never mind! we know,” interposed Mr. Savage—a tall pale man, with a
hawk’s eye that nothing escaped. “Why, you were _seen_, my good
fellow!—_seen_ with your own back against your horse’s, shoving him
through a fence. They said if you hadn’t been the heaviest of the two,
you’d have been there now.”
Like almost all stout men, Struggles was the essence of good-humour. He
burst into a hearty laugh, but persevered in his denial. “_Who_ saw me?”
said he; “who saw me? He must have been in a right good place, though I
say it.”
“Parson Dove saw you,” rejoined his accuser. Whereat Mr. Sawyer felt his
heart give a thump. “Parson Dove made a capital story about it. He said
he never saw a horse so _badly in_ with so heavy a backer. I shouldn’t
wonder if he put it in his sermon on Sunday. However, he’ll be out
to-morrow—he and Miss Cissy, and the lot of ’em. I’ll appeal to him if
what I say isn’t true.”
Mr. Sawyer listened attentively. Then he should see Miss Dove again on
the following day, and in the enjoyment of what she had confided to him
was a favourite pastime. Involuntarily he found himself thinking of the
black eyes, with their long eyelashes, and wondering whether she would
look well in a riding-habit.
Meantime the Honourable Crasher, in the last stage of exhaustion, was
endeavouring to discover which of his horses Tiptop would let him ride
on the morrow. The fixture was at a capital place, with the Pytchley,
and promised a large field. Notwithstanding his _insouciance_, the
Honourable C. could not but feel that he should like something both safe
and fast, if, as was more than possible, he would have to ride for his
life during the first few minutes.
“Tiptop,” said his master, raising himself from his seat on the
corn-bin, and taking the cigar from his lips, “Tiptop, as they’re all
pretty fit, you may send on Catamount and Confidence to-morrow.”
“Catamount’s hardly got over his physic yet, and I’m keeping Confidence
for you on Thursday,” replied the master of the horse.
“Well, then, the mare and old Plantagenet?” urged the Honourable. “I can
ride Plantagenet first, and send him home by two o’clock.”
“The mare’s had a gallop this morning, and we wants Plantagenet second
’oss for Friday,” objected Mr. Tiptop.
“Well, then, Life Boat,” pleaded the proprietor. “I haven’t had a ride
on Life Boat this season. And, let me see, the Banker would do very well
for second.”
“I thought of Topsy-Turvy and Chance,” enunciated Mr. Tiptop, somewhat
imperiously; and the Honourable’s face lengthened considerably at the
announcement. To do him justice, he was one of those sportsmen so well
described in the old Cheshire hunting-song—
“To whom nought comes amiss—
One horse or another, that country or this;
Who through falls and bad starts undauntedly still
Ride up to the motto—_Be with them I will!_”
But Bellerophon himself was mortal, and Topsy-Turvy was a _very_ awkward
mare to ride in a crowd. With great pace and jumping powers she had all
the irritability of her high-born race, and more than all the jealousy
of her sex. Horses in her rear annoyed her—alongside, or in front, they
drove her mad: so she was never thoroughly comfortable, unless sailing
away by herself with the hounds—a place, it is only fair to add, that
she was quite capable of keeping. Chance, by Gamester out of
Happy-go-lucky, was no safer a mount. Just out of training, she went
nevertheless at her fences with considerable audacity; but was prone to
over-jump herself when she didn’t run through them. As Struggles
observed of her, “It was a safe bet to lay five to two on the Caster.”
However, the Honourable never dreamed for an instant of disputing Mr.
Tiptop’s _fiat_; so he consoled himself by thinking what a start he
_would_ get! and how he hoped the hounds would keep out of his way. By
the time Topsy-Turvy’s clothes had been replaced, and a handsome pony
examined and approved of, the party, much to old Isaac’s disgust,
adjourned to Mr. Sawyer’s stables, where they were good enough to
express their approval of the roan and his companions in that
conventional tone which is so much less flattering than one of sincere
abuse. These gentlemen hardly knew Mr. Sawyer well enough yet to give
their honest opinion; and perhaps it was fortunate for the sake of
Isaac’s peace of mind that they did not.
“_Useful_ horses, Sawyer!” observed Mr. Savage, considerately sparing
the groom the labour of stripping them.
“_Useful_ horses,” repeated Captain Struggles and Major Brush in a
breath; the latter adding, “and seem pretty fit to go.” While the
Honourable Crasher, who had not ventured further than the door, remarked
that he “thought Jack-a-Dandy the best shaped one of the lot;” but
conceded, in a faint whisper, that the rest of them looked “very like
hunters: remarkably _useful_ horses indeed!”
Our friend was not deficient in penetration, and by no means a person to
have been nearly a week in The Shires without finding out what this
epithet means. “When a man tells me he has got a _useful_ horse,” Mr.
Sawyer was once heard to observe, “I interpret it that he is the owner
of a _useless brute_, which he wishes to sell _me_!” And Mr. Sawyer was
not deceived by the politeness of his companions. He held his tongue,
however; but more than once he caught himself brooding over the
offensive adjective during the evening.
“If the roan is only half as good as I take him to be, and I can but get
a start to-morrow,” thought our friend, “I’ll show them what my _useful_
horse can do! Miss Dove will be out, too, and that cursed fellow of
Putty’s hasn’t sent down my new boots! Never mind—I’ve got the right
spurs at any rate, and it won’t be my fault to-morrow if I don’t ‘go for
the gloves,’ as we used to say in the Old Country.”
He dined at home, and reduced the allowance of sherry considerably; also
consumed but one of the Laranagas before going to roost at the sober
hour of 10.30. Mr. Sawyer seldom took his nervous system into
consideration; but on this occasion, with all his self-confidence (and
he had as much as his neighbours), he was indeed resolved not to throw a
chance away.
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