“TEMPTED TO BUY”
AND now for the well-pleased John Standish Sawyer, came in what may be
called the “sweet of the day.” His horse disposed of, two hundred and
sixty-two pounds ten shillings in his pocket (for the Honourable
Crasher’s word was as good as a bank-bill), and the wiry little grey
under him, an animal for which he had not given a fourth of the above
sum, and yet in whose pace and fencing he had the utmost confidence,
with the additional delight of a certain find for the second fox—all
these influences combined, were enough to put a man in thorough
good-humour with himself. To do our friend justice, he was not of a
mercenary disposition; but having been kept exceedingly short of funds
during his youth, and in those hard times hunted under considerable
pecuniary difficulties, he had insensibly imbibed a horror of what he
called “riding upon too much money.” “A man must have good nerve,” he
used to say, “who is not afraid to risk a couple of hundred every time
he jumps a fence;” and I really believe he would shove a forty-pound
screw along with greater satisfaction than the winner of the Liverpool.
The grey was a right good little nag, easy to turn, quick at his fences,
and thoroughly accustomed to his master’s hand. It is wonderful what a
deal of time is saved by a horse that is pleasant to ride, and how
rapidly a moderate galloper, with a fine mouth, and quick upon his legs,
can slip over a country compared with an animal that may have the pace
of a racehorse, but requires a segundo bridle, and a hundred-acre field
to turn him in. Mr. Sawyer drew the curb-rein gently through his
fingers, struck his heels down, and mingled in the crowd upon the best
possible terms with himself.
As the smoking, laughing, chattering cavalcade trotted merrily along, he
had an opportunity of scanning many well-known individuals whom his
business avocations of the morning had prevented his hitherto
recognising. “The talent,” as it is called, was present, from
Melton,—Melton, once the very metropolis of the hunting world, now,
thanks to railroads, rivalled, if not surpassed, by Leicester and Market
Harborough; and yet, what a nice place it is! Who that has ever spent a
season in the cosy, cheerful, joyous little town, but would wish to turn
the stream of time, and live those golden days and pleasant nights over
again?—would wish to be galloping his covert-hack once more through the
fragrant air and under the dappled sky of a February morning, with a
good horse to ride from Ranksborough Gorse or Barkby Holt, as his day’s
amusement, and a choice of at least a couple of invitations, offering
him the pleasantest society _and_ the best dinner in England, for his
evening’s gratification?
It is not more than thirty years since Nimrod wrote his celebrated
“Quarterly Review Run”—the best description of _fashionable hunting_
that has ever yet been printed, though many a hand, as light upon the
bridle as the pen, has portrayed the same subject since then—not more
than thirty years, certainly, and the ways of Melton are but little
changed, only, of the _dramatis personæ_ there are not many left. Of
those who charged the flooded Whissendine so boldly, the majority have
already crossed the Styx. Nevertheless, a few of the old lot may still
be seen ready, when the hounds run, to face “wood and water,” as of
yore.
Mr. Sawyer, for an unimaginative man, was the least thing in the world
of a hero-worshipper. As he rode along, contemplating from behind them
the fine powerful frame and the slim and graceful figure of two
Meltonians, who for many years have shone, a couple of _lucida sidera_,
in the front rank, and of whom, indeed, so fast have they always gone,
it may almost be said that
“Panting Time toils after them in vain,”
he was accosted by the pleasant, gentlemanlike personage with whom he
had spent an agreeable quarter of an hour in the hovel, on that
memorable day when his ambition had so completely “cooked the goose” of
Hotspur with the Pytchley.
“Good-morning, sir,” said this affable individual, bringing his horse
alongside of our friend, with a bow such as nobody in the Old Country
could ever have perpetrated. “I thought you’d be out to-day, so I’ve a
couple here for you to look at.”
When a nobleman not only touches his hat, but takes it off to you, at
the same time offering you “a couple of horses to look at,” as if he
were about to make you a present of them, such politeness, thought Mr.
Sawyer, is rather overwhelming than reassuring. He returned the
greeting, however, with his best air, and took off his hat in return,
somewhat disconcerted, however, by the rude behaviour of Struggles and
Brush, who were riding beside him, and who both burst out laughing.
The illustrious stranger, too—who, by the way, though still in a black
coat, was “got-up” with the utmost splendour of which a hunting costume
admits—looked rather surprised, and winked at the two irreverent
laughers as they are certainly _not_ in the habit of winking in the
House of Peers.
“Is that a favourite one you are riding?” inquired Mr. Sawyer, who
fancied he must say something, and could think, at the moment, of no
more apposite remark.
“I don’t know much of him,” was the reply. “He’s only a five-year-old;
and I haven’t had him a fortnight. A thundering well-bred one, though,
and can jump like a deer! I gave a hat-full of money for him, without
getting on his back; but we’ll see what he’s made of this afternoon, I
hope. I should say, now, that he’d carry _you_ alarming!”
Mr. Sawyer, whose conversational powers were soon exhausted, made no
reply, but, more out of civility than curiosity, contented himself with
scanning the five-year-old from his ears to his tail.
The illustrious unknown seemed to have no dislike to inspection: on the
contrary, he courted further companionship, by producing the gorgeous
cigar-case, and offering Mr. Sawyer a weed.
“You will find them pretty good,” said he, striking a light from a
little _bijou_ of a _briquet_ that hung to his watch-chain. “I import
them myself: it’s the only way to ensure getting them first-rate, and it
certainly is the cheapest in the long-run.”
The cigar was indeed excellent. Mr. Sawyer thought this would be a good
opportunity to draw his noble friend for a box. He might perhaps make
him a present of a couple of pounds or so. At all events (as he said, it
was the cheapest plan) there was no harm in risking the chance of having
to pay for them. He asked him, accordingly, with some little hesitation,
if he could do him the favour of procuring him a few?
“Certainly, certainly,” replied the other, in the most off-hand,
good-humoured way possible. “You shall have them from my man. I’ll write
to him to-night. How much shall I order? You can’t get anything like
them at the money: they only stand us in _five guineas a pound_!”
Mr. Sawyer modestly opined “one pound would be quite sufficient for the
present;” but he felt as if he had just lost a large double tooth.
Without being stingy, it was not the custom in the Old Country thus to
throw money away. He fell back upon Brush, sucking at the costly tobacco
with considerable vehemence.
“Who is he?” said he, nodding towards the rider of the five-year-old,
then cantering on ahead, and sitting well down in the saddle, as he
prepared to “lark” over a large fence, to the admiration of the field,
instead of defiling through the hand-gate.
“Why, you seem to know him very well,” rejoined Major Brush, smiling (as
well he might) at the query: “I thought you seemed very thick, and were
going to give him your custom.”
Mr. Sawyer had not the heart to repudiate the soft impeachment. He liked
to be “very thick” with a peer, and to have the credit of “giving him
his custom” as a visitor and intimate.
“Yes,” he said, “I am; but, somehow, I cannot, for the life of me,
remember his title. I’ve no ‘Debrett’ at Harborough; and I’ve such a bad
memory for names. Lord—Lord—what the deuce is it? Some Irish peerage, if
I remember right?”
Major Brush fairly burst out laughing. “No more a lord than _you_ are,
Sawyer,” said he, “though, I grant you, he _ought_ to be a Duke. I
thought everybody knew Mr. Varnish, the horsedealer!” And the Major went
off at score again, thinking what a capital story he had got against
Sawyer for that day at dinner, and a good many days after. A joke, you
see, lasts a long time in the hunting season, when the supply is by no
means equal to the demand.
And Mr. Sawyer turned his horse’s head out of the crowd, feeling a
little humiliated, and not a little disgusted. The five guineas for the
cigars stuck horribly in his throat. However, he and Mr. Varnish, as
will presently be shown, had by no means closed accounts yet.
But where are the low spirits, blue devils, or uncomfortable reflections
that can hold their own for an instant against the cheering sound of
“Gone away!”? Three notes on the huntsman’s horn, five or six couple of
hounds streaming noiselessly across a field, the rest more clamorous,
leaping and dashing through the gorse, a rush of horsemen towards the
point at which the fox has broken; and the man who is really fond of
hunting has not the vestige of an idea to spare for anything else in the
world.
John Standish Sawyer could ride “above a bit.” Even in a strange
country, and with hounds running “like smoke,” he was not a man to
shrink from taking his own line; and scarcely valuing the grey, perhaps,
according to its deserts, he had no scruple in risking that good little
animal at whatever came in his way.
A quick turn to the five couple of leading hounds, that he spied racing
down the side of a hedgerow, and the happy negotiation of a very nasty
place, with a stake in it that would certainly have impaled a more
costly nag, placed our friend on terms with the pack. A fine grass
country lay spread out before him. The fox, evidently a good one, bore
straight across the middle of the fields. The hounds, without forcing
any extraordinary pace, appeared well settled to the scent, and not
inclined to flash over it a yard. A large fence and a little brook had
combined to afford them more room than usual. Everything seemed to look
uncommonly like a run; and the Honourable Crasher, shooting by our
friend, on Confidence, whom he rode with a shamefully loose rein,
observed that “It was all right; and he shouldn’t wonder if they were
going to have a gallop.”
Mr. Sawyer laid hold of the grey, and determined to assume a place in
the front rank—of which the occupants would have been equally at home in
the rows of stalls nearest the orchestra at the Opera. There was more
than one lady riding as he never saw lady ride before—perfectly
straight; turning aside from no obstacle; jumping a gate with extreme
cordiality, if it should be locked; and taking it all in the earnest,
yet off-hand, graceful manner, with which a woman sets about doing what
she likes best. The Meltonians, stride for stride, and fence for fence,
were sailing away with perfect ease, looking as if they were scarcely
out of a canter; yet, do what he would—and it must be owned he was
_very_ hard upon the grey—Mr. Sawyer could not, for the life of him,
decrease the distance between himself and these leading horsemen.
The Honourable Crasher, having got Confidence amongst some very
intricate fences on the right, though a little wider than he liked of
the hounds, was disporting himself therein with considerable
gratification. Struggles and the Reverend Dove (to-day without the
daughter) were forward with the flyers, though the former was already
beginning to calculate on a check.
The double posts and rails about Norton-by-Galby were already visible:
but the fox had evidently no intention of entering the gorse. Albeit
much against the grain, and what he was totally unaccustomed to in the
Old Country, when hounds were running, Mr. Sawyer found himself obliged
to ride to a leader. That chestnut five-year-old was for ever in front
of him, now doing an “in-and-out” cleverly, now topping a flight of
rails gallantly, then creeping under a tree, with a discretion beyond
his years, and anon facing and rasping through a bullfinch, in the
successful temerity of youth, Mr. Varnish sitting very far back the
while, with the graceful ease of a man who is playing a favourite
instrument in an arm-chair.
Presently the hounds checked, under Houghton-on-the-Hill; and Mr.
Varnish, turning round to our friend, and casting his eye pitifully on
the grey’s sobbing sides, consigned them to reprobation for so doing,
“just as the crowd was shook off, and the horses getting settled to
their work!”
Mr. Sawyer’s _dander_ was up. It had been rising for the last two or
three fences. He vowed, in his wicked heart, that chestnut should be his
own before nightfall; and the way in which the young one jumped out of
the Billesdon Road, when they got to work again, only confirmed him in
his determination.
Long before the crowd could come clattering up the high-road, the pack
and the first flight had put a couple of grassy slopes once more between
themselves and their pursuers. Considerable grief and discomfiture took
place amongst the sportsmen, as must always be the case when hounds run
straight, over Leicestershire. The holding pace at which they kept on,
and the straight running of the fox, forbade the slightest chance of any
but such as had got a good start at first, and stuck to them through
thick and thin. Even these, well mounted and skilful as they were, had
enough to do. The fox never turned but once, under the Coplow; and five
minutes afterwards he was in hand, held high above the huntsman’s head,
with the pack baying round him in expectation of their reward.
Those who were there to see, it would be invidious to name. Sufficient
for me to say that Mr. Sawyer was _not_, though he came up whilst
Warrior and Woldsman were disputing the last bit of a hind-leg.
Despite his judicious riding and undeniable nerve, he had not the
material under him that was quite adapted for so severe a country. The
grey had neither pace for the extensive fields, nor scope for the large
fences, each of which, though he did them so gallantly, entailed too
great an exertion to bear frequent repetition. Notwithstanding two
falls, however, he struggled gamely to the end; and it speaks well both
for man and horse, that they should have got there at all.
Mr. Sawyer, however, was now thoroughly bitten. He had never felt so
keen in his life. He would never hunt anywhere else. He could ride with
any of them, he thought: he was determined to be as well mounted. Mr.
Varnish and he discussed the subject in all its bearings, as they rode
home; and the result of their conversation was—the arrival of the
chestnut five-year-old and a good-looking brown at Mr. Sawyer’s stables,
and the transference to Mr. Varnish, in lieu thereof, of the Honourable
Crasher’s cheque, and another signed in full with the perfectly solvent
name of John Standish Sawyer.
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