“AFTER DARK”
I NEVER can understand upon what principle the rate of a groom’s wages
is always inversely proportioned to the work he performs. For instance,
Major Brush’s excellent domestic—a bât-man, of lengthy proportions and
military exterior—brushed his master’s clothes, prepared his master’s
breakfast, took the first horse to covert, and rode the second on
occasion, cleaning either or both, if necessary, when they came in, upon
a stipend which would barely have kept Mr. Tiptop in Cavendish and
blacking.
The latter worthy, with a whole troop of helpers under his command,
never seemed to have a moment to spare for anything but the routine
duties of his station. As for riding a second horse, or remaining out on
a wet day, beyond his accustomed dinner-hour, his master would as soon
have thought of bidding him dig potatoes! No: if Mr. Tiptop went out
hunting at all, it was generally on a _third_ horse in excellent
condition, that wanted a couple of hours’ preparation for the day after
to-morrow, when the rider, in a long-backed coat, a shaved hat, and the
best boots and breeches the art of man can compass, might be seen at
intervals, during a run with the first fox, now opening a hand-gate, now
creeping cautiously through a gap, and anon cantering, with a Newmarket
seat, and his hands down, up some grassy slope, in front of soldiers,
statesmen, hereditary legislators, and justices of the peace, as if not
only the field, but the country, was his own.
Old Isaac, on the contrary, though subject to occasional “rustiness,”
and imbued with a strong aversion to what he called being “put upon,”
was ready and willing to turn his hand to anything, if he thought such
versatility would _really_ conduce to Mr. Sawyer’s advantage. With the
assistance of The Boy—who, indeed, since his arrival at Harborough, had
been constantly inebriated—the old man looked after the three hunters,
the hack, and his master, with considerable satisfaction. He had even
spare time on his hands, now that he was removed from the responsibility
of the pigs, the poultry, and potatoes at The Grange.
It was in one of these moments of leisure that the bold idea of getting
the better of Mr. Tiptop entered the old groom’s mind. I need not,
therefore, specify that, under his calm demeanour, Isaac concealed a
disposition of considerable enterprise and audacity.
Now the manner in which he proposed to take advantage of the
acquaintance he had lately struck up with Mr. Tiptop was as follows:—By
dint of his own sagacity and diplomatic reticence, he resolved that he
would prevail on that gentleman to persuade his master that the
redoubtable bay horse Marathon should be transferred to his own stables;
and, to explain Isaac’s anxiety for this consummation, I must be
permitted to describe the appearance and general capabilities of that
peculiar animal.
Marathon, then, was a long bay horse, about fifteen-two, with short
legs, a round barrel, well ribbed up, and an enormous swish-tail, of
which he made considerable use. He was one of those doubtfully-shaped
animals which are condemned alike by the eye of the totally
inexperienced and the consummate judges of horseflesh, but which are
much coveted by that large class of purchasers with whom “a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
And here I must remark how correct is usually our first impression of a
horse; and how seldom ladies—who judge of these, as of all other
articles, at a glance—are mistaken in their opinion of the noble animal,
if indeed they condescend to turn their attention to his
“make-and-shape.”
The worst point about Marathon was his head, which was coarse, and
denoted a sulky temper; but he carried a beautiful coat; could stride
away for a mile or so, on light ground, with his hind legs under him, in
the form of a racehorse; and in short was never so graphically described
as by Mr. Job Sloper, when he sold him for sixty guineas and a set of
phaeton harness to his present owner: “If that there horse aint worth
five hundred, why, he aint worth fifteen sovereigns—that’s all.”
And Mr. Sawyer has since confessed to himself, on more than one
occasion, that Job Sloper was right.
Mr. Tiptop liked Isaac, because he thought him an original; and the
swell groom, who was as epicurean in his tastes as if he had been a
Peer, took the pleasure of his friend’s society over a can of egg-flip
and a pipe of Cavendish daily, after evening stables; during which
convivialities, the hard-headedness peculiar to the aborigines of the
Old Country was of infinite service to the latter, who wormed out all
the secrets of the Honourable Crasher’s stable, without betraying his
own.
“And there _is_ some talk of a steeple-chase amongst these nobs, is
there?” said Isaac, ordering at the same time a third call of “the
flip,” and knocking the ashes from his pipe with an exceedingly horny
finger.
“_Talk_ of it! indeed there is,” answered Mr. Tiptop, whose face was
beginning to redden with his potations. “And a precious exhibition it
will be, too. Ride! There isn’t one of ’em as don’t believe he’s down to
every move in the game; and I’d take that boy of yours—though he _is_
but a boy, and not the best of hands, neither—and teach him to outride
every man of ’em in a fortnight! Such a mess as they made of it last
year! Blessed if I wasn’t quite ashamed of the Honourable, to see him
rollin’ about in a striped jacket, like a zebra in convulsions! What’s
the use getting a horse fit, when the _man’s_ blown in three fields? But
I don’t mind telling _you_, now,” added he, confidentially, and fixing
his eyes on the tallow candle that stood between them—“I don’t mind
telling _you_; for there’s money to be made of it. He’ll win it this
year, if he’ll only sit _still_!”
“Win it, will he?” rejoined Isaac. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder, so as he
comes in first. But it takes a smartish nag, Mr. Tiptop, to win a
steeple-chase. Have you _tried_ yours to beat everything in the town?”
“Well, I think I’ve the length of most on ’em,” answered Mr. Tiptop,
smiling at the candle with a most reflective expression of countenance.
“You’ve got a bay as might run up, if he was lucky. Why don’t you make
_your_ master put him in?”
“He’s as deep as a well, is _my_ master,” answered old Isaac. “Nobody
never knows what _he’s_ up to. Bless you! I can’t help thinking as he
must have bought the bay a-purpose for this here race: but _I_ don’t
know, no more than the dead; and I dursn’t ask him, neither.”
Mr. Tiptop reflected profoundly for several minutes, during which period
Isaac’s countenance would have been a study for an artist who wished to
represent a face totally devoid of thought. Then he asked—
“Have _you_ ever tried the bay?”
“_Never_,” answered the senior, who piqued himself on his veracity.
“Master brought him back from Stockbridge, last spring, pretty nigh
done; and when I asked him what he’d been up to, he bid me mind my own
business. The poor critter! he’d had a benefit, _sure-lie_!”
This was undoubtedly true, Marathon having turned restive at a
cross-road on the occasion in question, and, after a quarter of an
hour’s fight, given in, completely exhausted.
“If he can beat our mare a mile, at even weights, he’ll win it, as safe
as safe!” observed Mr. Tiptop, now speaking very thick, and with a good
deal of gravity.
“I dursn’t give him a _mile_,” answered Isaac, with an emphasis on the
substantive which argued that he was open to persuasion for a shorter
distance.
Mr. Tiptop regarded him attentively for several seconds, during which
time he thought him first a flat, then the sharpest customer he had ever
come across, and lastly an ignorant yokel and greenhorn once more.
“If _you’ll_ chance it,” said he, “I’ll chance _our_ mare. We might try
them early to-morrow morning.”
Old Isaac pretended not to understand. Mr. Tiptop, with many flourishes,
rose to explain.
“You go to exercise,” said he, “a little before it’s light, in the big
close just outside the town. Put a fourteen-pound saddle on your nag;
and don’t say nothing to nobody. I’ll be there in good time, just to
give our mare a turn up the close. Nobody needn’t be a ha’porth the
wiser. Once we know the rights of it exactly, we can do what we like.
You’re game to the back-bone, old cock, _I_ know! _You_ won’t split!”
“But master’s going to hunt the bay horse to-morrow,” interposed Isaac,
preserving his appearance of puzzled integrity with admirable composure.
“Never mind,” answered Mr. Tiptop: “you come all the same.” And, leering
grimly at the tallow candle, Mr. Tiptop made his exit, and betook
himself heavily to bed.
In the meantime, the hunting gentlemen, at their hotel, had been talking
over the probabilities of getting up a steeple-chase, and the chances of
the different horses and riders, whose merits they discussed with
considerable freedom, and no small amount of that playful _badinage_
which moderns term “chaff.”
Struggles, who rode over sixteen stone, was repeatedly entreated to
enter, and cordially assured that he would carry all the money of the
party; but Struggles, besides his enormous weight, was too good a
sportsman to take pleasure in such a mongrel affair as a horse-race
across a country.
“I’d sooner go to a badger-bait,” said he, “or a cockfight. I’d sooner
hunt a cat in a kitchen, or a rat in a sewer. It’s neither one thing nor
the other; and I’ll have nothing to do with it!” an announcement which
was received with derisive cheers by his companions, amongst which
Struggles calmly lit a fresh cigar, and filled his tumbler once more
with brandy-and-soda.
The Committee, as they called themselves, had met, according to custom,
for their nightly _weed_. They were indulging freely in the use of
narcotics and stimulants, to the detriment of their digestions, and the
destruction of their nerves. They lived by rule, these choice spirits,
and restricting themselves, as they believed, with considerable
self-denial, to about a bottle-and-a-half of wine apiece at dinner,
considered that such abstinence entitled them to smoke any quantity of
cigars, and drink any amount of pale brandy, choice Hollands, and such
alcoholic fluids diluted with soda-water, out of glasses the size of
stable-buckets.
Men who spend their evenings after this fashion, are apt to be surprised
that they cannot cross a country with the coolness and judgment of their
earlier years. They wonder why they are beat by Farmer Styles, who rides
a raw four-year-old, but who gets up with the sun, and has his beer with
his dinner at one o’clock. They envy my Lord’s iron nerves and
fresh-coloured face, notwithstanding his grizzled hair, and do not
consider that the peer has gone to bed with a clear head and a good
conscience every night for the last forty years. Some days they get
their courage up, and go as well as ever; but these inspiriting
occasions become fewer and fewer, and at last they either give up their
favourite amusement altogether, or, worse still, spend a large
proportion of their time and income in a pursuit from which they have
long ceased to derive either pleasure or profit.
The Honourable Crasher, though he smoked a great deal, had neither
spirits nor inclination to drink much; consequently, notwithstanding his
languor and apparent debility, he had preserved the integrity of his
nervous system. Mr. Sawyer too, with a vigorous constitution, unimpaired
by previous excesses, was not materially affected by these orgies,
although his mouth was very dry in the mornings. All the rest, for the
first ten minutes, rode more or less in a funk.
Nevertheless, volumes of smoke curled around the Committee, and the
thirst for brandy-and-soda seemed unquenched, unquenchable.
They had discussed the usual topics which enliven the dullness of a
bachelor party. They had gone through the different subjects which arise
in inevitable rotation. From the merits of horses and the shortcomings
of riders, they had proceeded to the fascinations of the other sex, and
from that again had, of course, returned to the inexhaustible theme, the
merits of horses, once more.
Major Brush, slightly excited, was the first to cross-question Mr.
Sawyer about his stud. Hitherto they had treated our friend with the
deference due to a stranger; but he was now to be considered one of
themselves, and bantered or otherwise accordingly.
“You never ride that bay horse of yours, Sawyer,” said the Major, in an
off-hand, free-and-easy sort of way. “I like him in the stable, better
than anything you’ve got.”
“Good horse,” replied Mr. Sawyer laconically. “Goes as fast as you can
clap your hands.”
Now considerable anxiety had already been excited amongst the grooms of
Harborough concerning the powers of the said bay horse. Old Isaac, by an
affectation of extreme secrecy, had led one and all to believe there was
what they termed “something up” about Marathon; and it was but that
morning the Major’s faithful bât-man had thought it right to give his
master a hint that “Muster Sawyer had one as they were keepin’ _dark_,”
so that the subject created immediate interest amongst the party. Mr.
Savage put down the evening paper, behind which he had been observing
his friends, with a certain satirical amusement; Struggles paused in the
act of raising his tumbler to his lips; and even the Honourable Crasher
roused himself sufficiently to turn in his rocking-chair, and gaze with
an expression of sleepy curiosity at the owner of the mysterious bay
horse. Major Brush pursued his inquiries:
“Have you ever hunted him?” said he, “or do you keep him to look at?”
Dark and grim on Mr. Sawyer’s mind rose many a vision of disappointment
and discomfiture, and sporting casualties, such as come under the
generic term “grief,” originating in Marathon’s incapacity; but he only
replied—
“I’ve too few to keep any for show. I leave that to you swells with your
large studs. All mine are forced to come out in their turn.”
The careful ambiguity of our friend’s answer put the whole company on
the _qui vive_. There was evidently something about this nag that was to
be _kept dark_. Even Struggles, the simplest and frankest of men, began
to think Mr. Sawyer was what he called “a deep ’un.” The astute Savage
now stepped in for cross-examination.
“Shall you enter one for our steeple-chase, Sawyer?” said he, with an
off-hand air. “Anything that can _really_ gallop would be sure to win;
and as it is to be entirely amongst ourselves, and we shall all ride, it
will be rather good fun.”
“When is it?” asked Mr. Sawyer, with admirable simplicity, as if this
very steeple-chase, and a certain ball which he had made up his mind to
attend, were not the two topics by which he had of late been chiefly
engrossed.
Everybody now spoke at once. “Time not fixed,” said one. “Directly the
weights are out,” said another. “Whenever we can find a handicapper to
give _universal_ satisfaction,” sneered a third; whilst the Honourable
Crasher, turning once more in the rocking-chair, and losing a slipper in
the effort, quietly remarked, he “would take ten to one even then that
he named the winner.”
“Take him, Sawyer!” exclaimed Major Brush. “Take him at once! and enter
the bay horse. Owners to ride, of course. He’s got nothing but Chance,
now that Catamount’s lame,” added the gallant officer, in a stage
whisper, and with a degree of friendly _empressement_ born of rosy wine.
The Honourable smiled feebly, but vouchsafed no reply. It was indeed too
true, and as he had rather set his heart on winning this steeple-chase,
the truth was unacceptable, as usual. Mr. Sawyer seemed to ponder deeply
on what he had heard.
“I should lose so much hunting,” said he, after a pause, during which he
had smoked with considerable perseverance and an aspect of profound
reflection. “Why, a horse would not have the ghost of a chance, would
he, unless he was put to training?”
Doctors differ upon most subjects. “No training like regular hunting,”
said Struggles, who meant to have nothing to do with it. “Take him out
often, and send him home early,” advised Major Brush, who was generally
of opinion that nothing more would be done after 1 P.M. “The half-bred
ones seldom stand regular preparation,” opined Mr. Savage, “I should
keep him here under my own eye;” while the Honourable Crasher murmured
something about “Newmarket being the only place to get a donkey fit.”
Mr. Sawyer turned from one to the other, as if weighing carefully what
each had said; then he flung his cigar-end into the grate, finished his
liquor at a gulp, and observing, “Well, I must think about it; in the
meantime I’m going to hunt him to-morrow,” wished his friends
“Good-night,” and departed for what he was pleased to term his “downy.”
As Struggles and Brush, who occupied adjoining bedrooms, shouldered each
other up the narrow passage that led to their apartments, the former
declared with a stupendous yawn, “He didn’t quite know what to make of
their new friend, but fancied, whether the bay was a _dark_ one or not,
his owner was well able to take care of himself.” To which the Major,
whose eyes seemed much dazzled by the candle in his hand, of which he
was spilling the wax with considerable liberality over the
passage-carpet, replied, “We shall find out all about him to-morrow, old
boy, if we keep our eyes open—that’s all: if we only keep our eyes
open!” And for the better furtherance of this wide-awake scheme, the
Major, whose eyes were already nearly closed, proceeded to turn in,
after an attempt to undress, in which he only partially succeeded.
Mr. Sawyer, winding up his watch and depositing it carefully on his
toilet-table, observed a face of considerable wisdom in his
looking-glass, as he reflected on the interest which seemed to have been
created about Marathon. He balanced the pros and cons: he enumerated,
not without disgust, the numerous failings of the horse; then he shook
his head twice or thrice, gravely, as was his habit, when, to use his
own expression, “he thought he saw his way.”
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