capable of such performances. For many years we have been studying to
acquire increased _power_, and consequently _pace_, to the disregard of
_stamina_. It stands to reason that the _larger_ a horse is, _cæteris
paribus_, the _faster_ he can go; but it does not the least follow that
his size should enable him to _go on_. Doubtless the object for which we
get into the saddle is _dispatch_, and “the slows” is the worst disease
our horse can be troubled with; nevertheless, there is a good old rule
in mechanics which affirms “_nil violentum est perpetuum_;” and if your
engine is to go with the weight and _momentum_ of an express train, you
must calculate on a considerable expenditure of fuel, and great wear and
tear on the nuts, screws, and fittings of the whole. Now, Nature,
although the neatest and most finished of workers, will not submit
herself to the laws of commensuration. She will not make you a model in
_inches_, and supply you with a work on a corresponding scale in _feet_.
It would seem as if she only issued a certain amount of stores in the
aggregate, and if you are to get more iron, she gives you less steel;
you shall have plenty of coke, but in return she stints you in oil. So,
if the living creature she turns out for you on your estimate is to be
very magnificent in its proportions, the chances are that it will either
fail in activity, or be deficient in endurance.
We have now established half-mile races for our two-year-olds, as, with
some few exceptions, the most important events of our English turf—our
very Derbys and St. Legers—are but a scramble of a dozen furlongs, with
little more than the weight of a child on a _very_ young horse’s back.
With all the forcing by which art strives to expel nature, it returns,
in this instance, as Horace says, literally with a stablefork,[3] we
cannot get an animal to its prime at three years old, who ought not to
arrive at maturity till twice that age. Still we continue to breed more
and more for a “turn of speed,” utterly regardless of endurance, till
our famous English racehorses have degenerated into such galloping
“weeds,” that I myself heard an excellent sportsman and high authority
on such matters affirm, in discussing the hounds-and-horses match, which
was to have come off last October, that “he did not believe there was a
horse at Newmarket that could get four miles _at all_; no, not if you
trotted him every yard of the way!”
Footnote 3:
“Naturam expellas _furcâ_, tamen usque recurret.”
This, of course, was a jest; but, like many a random shaft pointed with
a sarcasm and winged with a laugh, it struck not very far off the centre
of the target. Even our hunters, too (and surely, if you want endurance
in any animal alive, it is in a hunter), we are _improving_, year by
year, into a sort of jumping camelopard. Where are the strong,
deep-girthed horses on short legs of thirty years ago? horses that stood
just under sixteen hands, and could carry sixteen stone. Look at what
people call a first-class hunter now! (and it must be admitted that, for
the high price he commands in the market, he ought to be as near
perfection as possible.) Look at him, as you may see him in fifty
different specimens with the Pytchley or Quorn hounds, any hunting-day
throughout the winter! He is a bay or a brown—if the latter, more of a
chocolate than a mottled, with white about his legs and nose. He stands
sixteen two at least, with much daylight underneath him. He has either a
very long weak neck, with a neat head; or more often a good deal of
front and throat, with a general bull-headed appearance, that conveys
the idea of what sailors term “by the bows,” and argues a tendency to
hard pulling, which, to do him justice, he generally possesses. He has
fine sloping shoulders, and can stride away in excellent form over a
grass-field, reaching out famously with his fore legs, which, though
long, are flat, clean, and good. Somehow you are rather disappointed
with him when you get on his back. With no positive fault to find, you
have yet an uncomfortable conviction that he does _not feel like it_;
and, for all his commanding height, you are subjected to no irresistible
temptation to “lark” him. When Mr. Coper asks you three hundred and
takes “two fifty,” as he calls it, alleging the scarcity of horses, the
excellence of this particular specimen, his own unbounded liberality,
intense respect for yourself, and every other inducement that can
mitigate the painful process of affixing your name to a cheque, you seem
to give him your money without exactly knowing why; but when the new
purchase _stops_ with you in deep ground the first good scenting day,
after you have bustled him along honestly for two-and-twenty minutes,
you think you _do_ know why exactly; and, although you may be, and
probably _are_ disgusted, you cannot conscientiously admit that you are
surprised.
I have not seen these sort of nags, though, in the Soakington country; I
presume they all go to “The Shires;” and this brings me back, after a
long digression, to Tom Turnbull and Apple-tree Farm.
There never was such a farm for coziness and comfort as that. Surrounded
by an ugly though sporting-looking country, it possesses the only
undulating fields for many miles round, and consequently boasts a view
from a certain eminence called Ripley Rise, that commands half-a-dozen
of the Earl’s best fox-coverts, the distant towers of Castle-Cropper
itself, and no less than seventeen church-steeples. There are stately
old elms close to the dwelling-house, and a rich and plentiful orchard,
from which it takes its name, adjoins a snug little walled garden,
celebrated for the earliest summer fruit, and the best plums in the
district—thanks to the late Mr. Naggett, a far-seeing, shrewd old
agriculturist. Apple-tree Farm is a good deal better drained than most
of the adjoining lands; consequently its acres of arable return a
heavier produce, and its upland fields are more calculated for rearing
young horses than any in the country.
Nothing gives a colt such a chance as a fine high and dry pasture, on a
slope, where he can exercise himself in the practice of going up and
downhill, unconsciously strengthening his hocks and acquiring liberty in
his shoulders whilst he is at play.
Horses bred on uplands, too, have a far harder and sounder description
of hoof than those that have been accustomed in youth to splash about in
rank, marshy meadows; and, strange to say, their very coats are finer,
and their whole appearance denotes higher blood than can be boasted by
their own brothers, reared on lower grounds. Those who profess to be
acquainted with the physiology of the horse, affirm that the produce of
Arab stallions and mares, if suffered to breed in the rich wet marshes
of Flanders, would, in half-a-dozen generations, without any sort of
cross, and from the sheer influence of keep and climate, lose every
trace of their noble origin. The Prophet himself would not recognise the
dull-eyed, coarse-shaped, heavy-actioned progeny, for the lithe and
fiery children of the Desert.
Here, then, Tom Turnbull breeds and rears many a good nag, taking care
never to have above one or two at a time, so that sufficient attention
may be devoted to the yearling, and, above all, that it may have plenty
of keep.
The Arabs, to go eastward once more for our proverbs on this subject,
have a saying, that “the goodness of a horse goes in at his mouth,” and
it is incredible by those who have not watched the result, what
improvement may be made in the animal by the very simple recipe of old
oats and exercise, plenty of both; indeed, of the latter, in
contradistinction to _work_, a young horse can hardly have too much. It
is exercise that forms his shape, strengthens his joints, hardens his
limbs, produces action, and clears his wind. All the time a young one is
out, he is acquiring something—either how to use his legs, or to obey
his bit, or to conform his inclinations to those of his master; whilst,
even should he be standing still and unemployed, he is at least learning
to see and hear, accustoming himself to sights and sounds with which it
is of the greatest advantage both to himself and his rider that he
should be familiar. Also, it is far better for him to be breathing the
cold outward air than the more luxurious atmosphere of his stable; and
it is not too much to say, that a horse of three or four years old
cannot be brought out too often, so long as you take care that he shall
never go home the least bit fatigued.
Tom Turnbull begins handling the foals as soon as they are born. By the
time they are weaned, he has accustomed them thoroughly to the halter;
and although he never backs them till three years old, they have been
bridled and saddled long before that period, and are so accustomed to
the human form and face, and so confident no evil is intended them, that
you may do almost anything you please with such willing and
good-tempered pupils.
Consequently, there is none of that rearing, and plunging, and
buck-jumping, which usually make the mounting of an unbroken colt such
an affair of discomfort, not to say danger, to the two parties
immediately concerned. By the time Tom Turnbull has hoisted his fourteen
stone of manhood on to his colt’s back, the pupil is quite satisfied of
the _bonâ fide_ nature of the whole performance, and walks away with him
as quietly as any elderly gentleman’s cob who comes round to the door
regularly every afternoon, for the sober and digestive exercise which
elderly gentlemen are apt to affect.
Tom Turnbull, though he puts a strong bridle in his mouth, then takes
his young friend lightly by the head, and proceeds to ride him leisurely
about, as he overlooks his farm. There are, of course, many gates to
open, and the horse in learning this very essential accomplishment,
receives at the same time a valuable lesson in the _moral_ virtues of
patience and obedience. If he see anything to alarm him, a scarecrow, an
old man pulling turnips, or a sheep-trough on its beam ends (the latter,
like all inverted objects, being much dreaded by the animal), he is not
whipped, and spurred, and hurried by it in a matter that agitates his
nerves for the rest of the day, but is coaxed and reassured, and
persuaded gently and by degrees to examine it for himself, and so
discover its innocuous nature. The next time he observes the same
bugbear, he probably shies for fun, but that is a very different thing
from shying for fear; and the same practice repeated will make him pass
it the third or fourth time with no more notice than he would take of
his own currycomb. He is by this time getting accustomed to his rider’s
hand, has learned to put his head down, and toss the bit about his
mouth, and is beginning to feel some confidence in his own activity, and
a certain pleasure in doing what he is bid.
There are short cuts on Apple-tree Farm, like every other, which lead
from field to field without going round by the gate. These entail the
necessity of crossing certain gaps, which are periodically made up, and
gradually destroyed again as the year goes round. Here the colt takes
his first lesson in fencing. He is permitted to do the job exactly in
his own way, without interference from his rider, except so far as a
continual pressure of his legs warns the young one that it must be done
somehow. Generally, after poking his nose all over it, and smelling
every twig of the adjoining hedge, he walks solemnly into the very
bottom of the ditch, and emerges somewhat precipitately on the farther
side; then his rider pats and makes much of him, as if he had done his
work in the most scientific form possible. Thus encouraged, he tried
next time to improve for himself, and soon jumps it standing, without an
effort. Ere he has been ridden half-a-dozen times he will trot up to any
ditch about the farm, and, breaking into a canter the last stride, bound
over it like a deer, perhaps giving his head a shake and his
hind-quarters a hoist on landing, in sheer exuberance of spirits at the
fun. In this manner he soon learns to do the fences equally well; Tom
Trumbull’s plan being, in his own words, as follows:—“First, little
places at a walk, then at a trot, then at a canter, and then bustling of
them off their legs to make them _quick_. After that, fair hunting
fences the same way. To my mind, a hunter ought to jump upright places,
such as walls and timber, at a slow trot; but he ought to be _able_ to
do them if required, at speed, not that I, for one, would ask him for
that, except as a lesson. All fair fences he should do with a loose
rein, at an easy canter.”
But he is no theorist, my friend Mr. Turnbull. It is a treat to see him
get away with the Castle-Cropper hounds on a good scenting day and in a
stiff country, say for instance the Soakington Lordship. Though there is
hard upon fifteen stone on his back, his horse seems to make no extra
exertion, and though the rider keeps very close to the hounds, and
follows no man, not even the Earl himself, he never appears to be out of
a canter. How well he brings his horse (probably a five-year-old, who
has done very little hunting, but has had plenty of practice,
“shepherding,” and consequently jumping over the farm) up to his leaps!
How he screws him through the thick place under the tree, and hands him
in and out of the blind double, as you would hand a lady into an outside
car! When you come to the rails in the corner, which he trotted up to so
quietly, and seemed to rise at with such deliberate ease, you are
surprised to find a dip in front of them, a bad take-off, a ditch
beyond, and a general uncompromising appearance about the timber, that
makes you wish that you were halfway across the next field, and “all
were well.”
If you mean to see the run to your own satisfaction, and belong to that
numerous and respectable class of sportsmen who are unable to ride for
themselves, you cannot do better than follow Tom Turnbull; and should
you cross the Sludge, which in that district you will probably do more
than once, you will acknowledge that it is a treat to see him get
triumphantly over that obstacle where its sluggish waters are deepest,
and its banks most treacherous and rotten.
But it is not for a man with a broken collar-bone and his arm in a
sling, to call up such dreams of enjoyment as a quick thing across the
Vale with the Castle-Cropper hounds; so I took my chamber-candlestick
once more, and wishing Miss Lushington a courteous “good-night,” which
she returned with a gracious politeness, that would drive sleep for many
an hour from the pillow of a younger and more inflammable swain, I shook
Mr. Turnbull by the hand, and paused on my way to my dormitory to see
him get into the saddle for his homeward ride.
“It’s a very dark night,” I remarked, as I watched him stuffing a
well-filled note-case, the produce of his sale at to-day’s market, into
his breast-pocket. “I wonder you like to travel these bye-roads with all
that money about you, and such a lot of ‘roughs’ hereabouts, always on
the tramp.”
Turnbull grinned, and taking me by the sound arm, pointed to the mare’s
head—“They’ve tried that on, once before, sir,” said he; “and within
half-a-mile of the Haycock. Look ye here, sir! that’s the way I done ’em
that time: that’s the way I’ll do ’em again.”
Following the direction of his glance, I saw that he had run his bridle
(a single snaffle) through his throat-lash, so that no part of it when
he mounted would hang below the mare’s neck.
“There, sir,” said he; “that’s the way to keep ’em at out-fighting. When
they tried it on, last winter, there was a pair on ’em. One chap he run
out o’ the hedge on the near side, and makes a grab at the reins. He
didn’t catch ’em though, but he caught something else, I expect, as he
wasn’t looking for, right across his wrist, fit to break his arm. He
sung out, I can tell you, and bolted right off without waiting for his
mate. T’other had gripped my right ankle at the same time, to give me a
hoist out of the saddle; but you see, sir, I knowed the trick of it, and
just let my leg double up at the knee quite easy, and came down upon his
head with a back-hander, from a bit of stick I had in my fist, that
felled him like a bullock in the road. So I took him easy, and by that
means we got the other one in a day or two, and they were both
transported. So that’s the reason, whenever I travel this way, I always
run my reins through my throat-lash. I wish you good-night, sir, and
pleasant dreams, if so be as your arm will let you sleep!”
With these words Mr. Turnbull trotted off, and I betook myself leisurely
to the privacy of my own room, and the tedium of a somewhat restless
couch.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
OLD IKE, THE EARTH-STOPPER
IN a day or two, with the constant attendance of my medical man, himself
rather a character in his way, and the considerate cares of Miss
Lushington, I was sufficiently recovered from the effects of my accident
to crawl to the stable and visit those now useless animals which I had
reviewed with such pride and pleasure on the first Sunday afternoon that
I had taken up my quarters at Soakington. In my opinion, there are few
more unsatisfactory performances than these inspections of a stud thus
thrown out of work. The horses all look so blooming in their coats, so
high in their condition, and altogether so fit to go, that it seems a
pity that they should be disappointed of _their_ hunting, and compelled
to limit their energies to that exploit which is called “eating their
heads off”—a feat never performed with such an appetite as during a
course of enforced idleness either from frost or any other cause that
stops the fascinating pursuit for which they have been bought, and
summered, and got into condition. Also, on these occasions, partly from
their actual fulness and vigour consequent upon losing a turn, partly
from that peculiarity in the human mind which enhances the value of
everything out of reach, we cannot help fancying the nags a good deal
better than they are, and ourselves much more enthusiastic and skilful
than we know ourselves to be, in our cooler moments, say, for instance,
when mounted and at the covert-side, a fine country before us, every
probability of a run, a north-east wind rather keener than agreeable,
bathing our uncovered face like cold water, and a chill misgiving that
last week’s frost is not thoroughly out of the ground, particularly just
under the fences, and that the thaw which rejoiced us so exceedingly
after dinner, has only succeeded in making the surface greasy, and not
in rendering it soft. Ah! if we could always feel as we do for that
glorious hour from about seven to eight P.M., when we stretch our
napkin-covered legs towards the cheerful fire, blazing and crackling,
and sparkling into rubies, as it reflects itself in our brimming glass
of Bordeaux, what good fellows we should all be! how generous, how
open-hearted, and how successful in our avocations and pursuits! The
process of digestion, that highly important function, when properly
performed, seems to endow us with all the most admirable qualities of
manhood. We become conscious that we are possessed of sagacity, courage,
humour, and general benevolence. We could lend a friend a hundred pounds
willingly, _if we had it_. We could go the best run that ever was seen,
on the very backs of the hounds, if that was only an actual existing
country, which we trace in the glowing embers, instead of a dream of
fairyland, the offspring of Newcastle coal and Château Lafitte. Then how
we can converse on the inexhaustible topic, of “The Horse and how to
ride him!” We are never tired of laying down the law “what to jump,
creep, and avoid.” We do not believe we are deceiving ourselves, or our
listeners, when we profess our partiality for high timber, or our
proficiency and personal experience in water-jumping. We combine, in our
heated imaginations, the “science of Meynell,” with the courage and
dexterity of the late Mr. Assheton Smith. We believe, for the nonce, in
many fallacies that our better judgment has so often proved to be such
by the testimony of sad experience; to wit, that “if a horse can only
gallop, he is sure to jump;” that, “what one hunter can clear, another
can;” that, “if a man’s heart is in the right place, his horse is sure
to carry him well with hounds:” and that, “large fences are the safest
to ride at”—established positions which nobody thinks it worth while to
dispute, laid down as they are by retired sportsmen, confirmed
valetudinarians, and other non-hunting members of the community, but
which to-morrow morning too clearly demonstrates to be mere after-dinner
sentiments, unsafe to act upon, and in practice but a delusion and a
snare.
If we were to pin our faith on what we hear, and what we read,
concerning the engrossing theme of horsemanship, we should ere long be
led to believe that nothing was so easy as to keep alongside of a
clipping pack of fox-hounds running hard over a grass country
intersected with those formidable impediments which defend such verdant
districts. Poor Nimrod tells us how to get our horses into condition;
Beckford, Cooke, Delmé Radcliffe, Grantley Berkeley, Smith (not
Assheton), and a host of others, instruct us patiently and at
considerable length, in the scientific details of our favourite
amusements. The author of “Soapy Sponge” presents to our delighted view
the humours and ridiculous side of the question, conveying, by means of
Mr. Jorrock’s inimitable vein of absurdity, many home-truths and
incontrovertible reflections; whilst last of all comes Sir Francis Head,
with the brilliancy of his reputation, and the weight of his personal
experience, to give the finishing touches to our education. He tells us
in the simplest language, and as if it were the easiest thing in the
world to do it as well as himself, how we are to saddle our horse and
bridle our horse, how to dress and how to feed, how to go out in the
morning and how to come at night, how to transform our hack into a
hunter, and, when so metamorphosed, how to ride the astonished animal
over the highest gates and the widest brooks that can be found in the
midland counties of merry England; the whole performance to be achieved
in a jovial off-hand style, as if it were the simplest and safest thing
in the world. Now this is all very well in theory, but becomes a more
complicated question when reduced to a matter of practice. It seems to
me that to achieve excellence in riding to hounds, something more is
required than a hard heart and a light pair of hands; that with all the
advantages of courage, strength, and activity, being good horsemen, and
with excellent hunters to ride, many men go out day after day, and
season after season, without ever seeing a run to their own
satisfaction; nay, with a certainty, unless they are piloted by some
more gifted sportsman, of losing the hounds in the first three fields. A
man may be as bold as Alexander, and as well mounted too, never giving
less than “three figures” for his Bucephalus, and yet unless he be
possessed of a peculiar knack of finding his way over a country which it
is almost impossible to explain, he will invariably be left behind in a
quick thing.
This knack is a sort of instinct rather than an acquirement, an
intuitive sagacity, akin to that faculty by which the Red Indian, in
common with other savages, takes the right direction through the
pathless woods, and over the monotonous prairies of the West. We will
suppose a man to be riding his own line, fairly with a pack of
fox-hounds, in a country he has never seen before, with a good scent,
and a fox’s head set up-wind. He jumps into a field from which there are
but two possible egresses, a quarter of a mile apart, the one to the
right, the other to the left; he goes unhesitatingly to the former, and
the hounds bend towards him almost as soon as he is clear of the
obstacle which has obliged him to diverge from his line. He could not,
probably, explain why he thus acted; yet he _did_ it, and he was right.
All through a run you will see some men gaining every turn upon the
hounds, just as others lose them. This happy facility is but a
modification of that which makes the difference between a bad huntsman
and a good one. The latter seems to possess an intuitive knowledge of
the run of a fox, independent of all extraneous accidents, such as wind,
sheep, dogs, people ready to head him at every turn, and the thousand
obstacles that are always present to destroy the chance of a good
run—nay, even of country, for such men exhibit it in districts with
which they have no acquaintance. I begin to think people are _born_
sportsmen, just as they are born poets, painters, and peers of the
realm. We see them in every class of life; and there is many an honest
fellow who loses half a day’s work, and wears out his shoe-leather, to
make the best he can of his fox-hunting on foot, who, in a higher
position, would have achieved a brilliant reputation in the eyes of the
sporting world.
What leads me to this reflection is the glimpse I had of Miss
Lushington, at the window of her sanctuary commanding the stableyard,
pouring out a wineglassful of a fluid that _looked_ like water, but
_smelt_ like gin, and handing the same to one of the most dilapidated
individuals it has ever been my fortune to encounter.
As I entered the back-door of the “Haycock,” he touched an extremely
damaged hunting-cap, and greeted me with much cordiality. I then
recognised a character with whom I could not fail to have made
acquaintance, even during my short stay in the Soakington country, and
whom I never heard called by any other name than “Old Ike, the
Earth-stopper.” As an example of what I have above alluded to—the
creature in whom the sporting instinct seems fully developed, the man
who must obviously have been intended by Nature for a sportsman—Old Ike
deserves to have his portrait taken, more especially as the office he
fills so well is the only one in which he could have found his
appropriate place in the world.
He is a tough, spare old man, very lean and very wrinkled, who looks as
if all the juices had been exuded from his body by severe and
unremitting exercise, till nothing has been left but sinew, gristle, and
a pair of keen, dark eyes, like those of a hawk. It is as if the
original Isaac had been boiled down to what chemists call a _residuum_,
and “Ike” was the result. He must have been a tall fellow in his youth,
although he is now so bent, and twisted, and knotted, that he carries
his head at a much lower elevation than was intended by Nature, and his
light, wiry form still denotes the possession of considerable strength.
To look at him, you could swear he was the sort of fellow who was the
best runner, leaper, cricketer, and fisherman of his parish; who could
throw a stone further, and consequently hit harder, than any of his
brother-yokels, and who was sure to be at the core of all the
merry-making, and half the mischief that angered the squire and made the
parson grieve. There is always one such scapegrace in every hamlet. As a
boy at the village school, he climbs the tallest elms, takes the
earliest birds’ nests, and is constantly prowling about the belfry, to
curry favour with the ringers, and interfere, with unspeakable interest,
when anything is done to the church clock. As a lad, he turns out a
swift bowler, a dead hand at skittles, and a very useful fellow at all
odd jobs; yet somehow, continually out of work. By degrees, he becomes
an irregular attendant at church, and is always hankering about the
stream, partly to make love to the miller’s daughter, and partly (as the
squire’s keeper—a wary old bird, who began in exactly the same way
himself—has found out) to set night-lines, trimmers, and such
abominations, thereby entering unfailingly on the downward career of the
poacher, to which “the contemplative man’s recreation” is apt to be the
first step. After that, he gets thoroughly inoculated with the fatal
passion. Then come the “shiny nights,” the slaughtered pheasants, and
the netted hares; the sleep by day; the pot-house rendezvous; the
covered cart driven to a poulterer’s, who ought to know better, in the
neighbouring market-town; the general laxity of principle, and utter
demoralisation consequent on a life of habitual crime—perhaps the
irresistible temptation of too heavy a sweep, the conflict with the
keepers, fought out fiercely and unsparingly on both sides, to result in
a verdict of manslaughter, and transportation for life.
Old Ike’s beginning, however, although sufficiently unpromising as
regarded steadiness of habits, or the prospect of ever doing well in
some settled trade or profession, was not destined to end in so fatal a
catastrophe. Moreover, his was one of those characters so often met
with, of which it is difficult to reconcile the apparent contradictions.
With a tendency amounting to a passion for every pastime that could
possibly come under the category of the term “sport,” he was yet the
gentlest and most amiable of created beings, where his fellow-man was
concerned. Although as a boy he would risk his neck with the greatest
delight to get a bird’s nest, and when obtained seemed utterly pitiless
of the poor parents’ anxiety for their offspring, the same reckless lad
would sit still for hours to rock the cradle of a suffering child, or
run any number of miles in the wet and the dark to bring home the
medicine for itself or its mother.
Though he could handle a game-fowl with remarkable coolness in the pit,
and, what is a far more brutal and debasing amusement, look on with
excited interest whilst two faithful and high-couraged dogs tore and
worried each other for a five-shilling stake, he could not bear to see a
fellow-creature in pain, and would soothe any of the village urchins,
with whom he was a prime favourite, under the infliction of a bruised
knee and cut finger, as gently and tenderly as a woman. “Ike” was made
up of contradictions, both within and without, nor was his moral being
less twisted, and toughened, and knotted, than his frame.
Like a good many other persons in a higher sphere, “Ike” was ruined by
the agreeable process of having a small fortune left him. This legacy
acting on a temperament in which the love of approbation largely
predominated, made him for a time an exceedingly conspicuous and
remarkably popular individual in his own humble circle. He was not an
idle man—far from it; but his habits were desultory—a much more
dangerous characteristic. In fact, an idle man seldom does himself great
positive harm. Like a vegetable, he may run to seed, or he may be
trampled down; but he will not seek misfortune, and that unwelcome
visitor is often a long time before she finds a tranquil person out.
Now Isaac must always be doing something; only, unluckily, it was the
profitable work that ever seemed to him the most laborious. To set-to
with a will, and earn a shilling by six hours’ labour, would have been
the most unwelcome proposal you could have made him; yet he would
readily have paid you the same money, if he had it, to carry a game-bag
for fourteen or fifteen hours, over the roughest country you could
choose. You see the game-bag was _unproductive_, and therefore attracted
him irresistibly.
Ike’s fortune was not a large one. It consisted of two hundred pounds,
and this he spent in about fourteen months, during which period he
constantly treated some of the worst characters in the parish, and lived
almost entirely in the open air, undergoing great hardship, both of work
and weather, in the pursuit of that sport which to him was certainly
synonymous with pleasure.
Just as he arrived at the last five-pound note of his two hundred, an
Irish gentleman who was staying at Castle-Cropper, and delighted the
whole neighbourhood with the breadth of his brogue, the daring of his
horsemanship, and the vivacity of his manners, took a great fancy to
Ike, from the masterly way in which he saw the latter fishing a pool
below the Mill, and easily persuaded him to accompany him back to
Ireland, as a sort of humble sporting companion. There being no profit
and nothing definite to do, the situation was exactly suited to our
friend; and as he could neither read nor write, it is needless to state
that his patron called him his private secretary forthwith.
Most men have some period in their lives—not always the happiest while
it was actually present—on which they are continually looking back, and
to which they lose no opportunity of reverting, as a sort of Utopian
existence, rendering everything else tame and desolate by comparison.
Such, it would appear, was Ike’s residence in the county Galway.
Whenever the old man’s heart was warmed and his nose reddened by his
usual potation, “a little gin-and-cloves,” he would enlarge upon his
favourite theme. He was never tired of detailing the glories of
Bally-Blazer, the improvidence of the housekeeping, the liberality and
general recklessness of “The Master.” The latter, by Ike’s account
(although the narrator, it must be admitted, varied a little in his
statistics), seems to have kept more young horses and old servants,
drank more claret, and betted more freely on the Curragh, than any other
gentleman in the West of Ireland. Here Ike acquired his principal
knowledge of hunting, and a taste, which rapidly grew into a passion,
for that amusement. Mounted by The Master upon what he was pleased to
call “the pick of the stable,” Ike, by his own account, distinguished
himself for his daring feats of horsemanship as well as by his
scientific knowledge of the chase.
It is difficult to make out whether the aborigines of the country
believed him to be an English relative of The Master’s, or a foreigner
of distinction on a special mission from his Holiness the Pope. Isaac
rather leads us to infer that the latter supposition was the favourite
theory in and about the demesne. Be this as it may, under the auspices
of his patron he soon became, in every sense of the word, a leading
characteristic with “The Flamers,” that celebrated hunt, which has so
often been immortalised in song and story. “Mr. Isaacs,” as he vows he
was always called, drank, talked, and rode with the boldest, the
loudest, and the thirstiest of them. He seems to have ridden in and out
of the celebrated Pound at Ballinasloe, on an average, once every
half-hour, during the two days and nights that well-known horse-fair is
supposed to last; and it was here that Ike distinguished himself by the
great and crowning exploit of his life.
It was in the old fighting, roistering days. Captain Bounceable
quarrelled with Major O’Toole, upon the merits of a “harse,” as each of
the belligerents was pleased to term the noble animal that originated
their differences. The lie which had been _told_ pretty frequently
during the dispute, was at length _given_ with offensive directness; and
nothing but “thunder an’ turf:” pistols and coffee, could be the result.
The time was hard upon midnight; the next morning was Sunday; the
principals, men of the strictest orthodoxy and the soundest
Protestantism. The quarrel could not possibly keep till Monday morning.
Major O’Toole was impatient for action: Captain Bounceable thirsted for
blood. They must have it out then and there, in the inn-garden, without
waiting for daylight.
Except at the two ends of a handkerchief, however, even Irishmen cannot
conveniently fight a duel in the dark. It was proposed, therefore, and
agreed to with considerable cordiality, that each combatant should hold
a lighted torch in his left hand, to direct his adversary’s fire; a
loaded pistol in his right, to return it. But here arose an unexpected
difficulty. Major O’Toole had but one arm; and, although Captain
Bounceable had but one eye, the advantage was obviously on the side of
the latter, in a case of steady pistol practice.
The duel might now have been postponed—perhaps even prevented
altogether—had it not been for the self-devotion of Mr. Isaacs.
“The gentlemen shall not be disappointed,” said Ike—“_I’ll_ see fair,
and hold the candle for both of ’em.”
“Where will you stand?” asked Major O’Toole.
“Halfway between ye,” replied the daring Englishman, “and take the
chance of both of ye missing me. Give us a lantern, though,” he added;
“for the wind’s rising from the south-west.”
“Faith, if it’s a bull’s-eye,” quoth Bounceable, “I’ll be safe to snuff
it out; and we’ll be worse in the dark than ever, for a second shot.”
So Mr. Isaacs placed himself in a cross-fire, at five paces’ distance
from the muzzle of each pistol; and it is not surprising that one bullet
should have gone through the tail of his coat, and the other grazed his
elbow, so as to incapacitate him for ever for that hard work to which he
had always shown such a profound disinclination.
After this truly Hibernian satisfaction had been given and received, the
party all sat down again, and drank claret till church-time.
But these days could not last for ever. One rainy morning, Ike’s
good-humoured patron sent for his old nurse, his huntsman, his trainer,
and the parish priest, bid the three first an affectionate farewell, and
took his own departure very peaceably under the offices of the last. He
left a handsome amount of debt, accumulated during many years, but no
ready money, except a crooked sixpence on his watch-chain. Mr. Isaacs,
returning to England without a shilling, became plain “Ike” once more.
He tried life in towns, under many different characters. As a
billiard-marker, a light porter, an assistant-ostler, and a
penny-postman; but the temptation to the copses and hedgerows was too
strong for him, and the receipt of regular wages so unnatural as to be
almost unpleasant. Even the tinker’s nomadic profession, which he
adopted for a time, was of too settled and business-like a nature; and
he gave it up ere long, in a fit of impatience and disgust.
This wandering trade, however, brought him one winter into the
neighbourhood of Soakington; and a day with the Castle-Cropper hounds,
beginning on the old pony that drew his cart, and ended on his own
active and enduring feet, revived all his smouldering passion for the
chase.
From that time, he took up his residence in one of the tumble-down
cottages near The Haycock, of which he rented a little apartment like a
dog-kennel. Hence he hunted as regularly as any other sportsman with
half-a-dozen horses and a covert-hack. No distance was too great for him
in the morning; indeed he generally travelled to the meet with the
hounds, stayed out all day, and came home in the same good company.
Whatever might be the pace he contrived to live with them, even before
he became thoroughly familiar with the country, and would face the large
Soakington fences—ay, and clear them, too—in his stride, as gallantly as
a thorough-bred horse sixteen hands high, and up to fourteen stone.
“Old Ike,” as he began in the lapse of time to be called throughout the
Hunt, must have made a good thing of it during the winter season, in the
many half-crowns and shillings with which he was presented by his riding
friends, to whom he was often useful, in the way of pulling up girths,
tightening curb-chains, and catching loose horses. Nay, on one occasion
he is reported to have ridden a young one over the Sludge, on behalf of
a cautious sportsman following his property on foot, but who, not
calculating on the difficulty of clearing some fourteen feet in boots
and breeches, _landed_ (if we may use the expression) up to his chin in
water, and was extricated, at great personal inconvenience, by the
daring pedestrian to whom he had entrusted his horse. Old red-coats,
too, were amongst the perquisites freely bestowed on Ike. At one time, I
have been informed, he had no less than forty of these cast-off garments
in his wardrobe—the origin of many jests and much amusement, at the
expense of their previous wearers.
It may be supposed that Ike’s Irish experience had not failed to sharpen
his powers of repartee; and many anecdotes were current anent the
“retorts courteous” with which, on several occasions, he had turned the
laugh against those who thought either to brow-beat or what is vulgarly
termed “chaff” him.
One frosty morning, at the covert-side, bidding a cordial “Good-morrow”
to a certain patron not distinguished for sweetness of temper, the
gentleman, who seemed to have forgotten the universal courtesy which
alone gives a man a title to the name, replied by telling him to “go to
——” a place not mentioned in good company.
“Faith,” says Ike, “it’s warmer there than here, at any rate; for I’m
just come from it.”
Struck by so strange an answer, the mounted sportsman asked the one on
foot “How things were going on in those lower regions?”
“Much as usual,” replied Ike, with a sly twinkle in his eye, and a
glance at his interrogator, who had lately inherited a large
fortune—“much as usual, and terribly crowded about the doorway. The poor
all coming out, and _the rich all going in_!”
The wealthy man struck spurs into his horse, and forbore to ask Ike any
farther questions.
But Time, which, as the poet tells us, will “rust the keenest blade,”
did not fail to leave the marks of his progress upon old Ike. Hard work,
hard fare, and the lapse of years eventually disqualified him for such
severe exertion as that of following fox-hounds on foot; and the Earl of
Castle-Cropper, with that consideration which, under his calm exterior,
has always attested the warmth of his heart, gave him the appointment of
earth-stopper in his establishment—an office which the old man fills
thoroughly _con amore_, and for which his exceedingly active habits, his
utter disregard of all conventional hours or customs, and his
extraordinary familiarity with the habits of wild animals, render him
peculiarly fitted.
It is not often he indulges, as I saw him at the bar-window, in the use
of stimulants; but when he does “take a drop of anything, it is always a
glass of gin-and-cloves.” In this fragrant compound he invariably drinks
the same toast—an old-world sentiment almost forgotten—
“Horses stout, and hounds healthy;
Earths well stopped, and foxes plenty!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
MISS MERLIN
I ALWAYS think convalescence is a more tedious process than actual
illness. A man of active habits, who has lived a great deal
out-of-doors, pines to be at work in the open air again; and although
intellectual pleasures are doubtless very delightful, there is something
in the sense of rapid motion, and strong physical exertion, which
“leavens the blood” far more effectually than the richest mental food
the Bodleian itself can afford. Before I had been confined to the inside
of The Haycock for a week, or had digested a tenth of the contents of
such new books as I had brought down with me in anticipation of
occasional frosts, I had begun to loathe the very sight of the
dust-coloured curtains in my bedroom, the staring paper in my sitting
apartment, the smell of coffee that pervades the passages of an inn at
all hours of the day and night—none the less because that beverage is
seldom consumed within its precincts—and the general features of the
prison I had chosen of my own accord. Nay, I almost caught myself, on
more than one occasion, doubtful of my loyalty to Miss Lushington
herself, censorious as to her appearance, sceptical on her excellence,
and even insensible to her charms.
In this frame of mind I descended the stairs about ten days after my
accident, with a strong feeling in favour of any novelty that might
accidentally turn up, to divert the current of my thoughts.
During my late and protracted toilette, no whit accelerated by the
difficulty of shaving in my crippled state (for I am no Volunteer,
beared like the pard, and hold that a smooth chin denotes a respectable
man), I had been disturbed and a little irritated by sundry bumpings and
thumpings on the stairs and passages, which I attributed on reflection
to the awkwardness of a new chambermaid. Expecting to meet, in my
descent, nothing more formidable than this red-armed personage, I was
surprised, not to say startled, to encounter on the landing one of the
smartest ladies’-maids I have ever seen, who started—as ladies’-maids
always do, at the unprecedented apparition of a stranger in the
principal thoroughfare of an edifice erected for the accommodation of
travellers—screamed faintly, placed her hand on her side, and turned
away in an attitude of graceful and elaborate confusion.
Such a functionary, with the trimmest of figures, the most voluminous of
crinolines, the neatest of boots, and a silver-spangled net gathering
“the wandering tresses of her sun-bright hair,” was sufficiently in
character with a couple of wide imperials, an enormous wicker basket
covered with black oilcloth, looking like a trunk of considerable weight
and substance, but which, instead of containing family jewels, plate,
and valuables to a high amount, enclosed huge volumes of some cloudlike
fabric, and when lifted, proved as light as a feather; two or more
cap-boxes, a writing-case, a dressing-ditto, a leather bag, a square
portfolio, several wraps, rugs, and shawls fastened together by a strap,
and a bundle of parasols, _en-tout-cas_, and attenuated umbrellas, from
the midst of which peeped an unaccountable but suggestive apparition in
the shape of the sweetest little apology for a hunting-whip I have ever
set eyes upon.
I am not a curious man—far from it; but it was to be expected that I
should be at least _interested_ in so extraordinary an arrival at a
place like The Haycock: nor was it entirely unnatural that I should come
to a halt on the landing with such a strategical disposition as brought
me face to face with the well-dressed attendant, and satisfied me that
the countenance over against mine own was an exceedingly pretty one. Ere
I had half scanned it, however, a voice from an adjacent bedroom calling
“Justine! Justine!” prompted me to identify its owner at once as a
foreigner; but the accent in which Justine replied, “Coming in a minute,
ma’am!” was so undoubtedly English, that my speculations were again
completely at a loss; neither was the maid inclined to hurry herself,
till she had given me an opportunity of perusing an extremely pretty
face, with sparkling black eyes and an expression of determined
coquetry, scarcely modified by dark hair dressed “_à l’Impératrice_,”
and two little curls, something like those in a mallard’s tail,
plastered down to her cheek-bones in a mode that I am given to
understand is termed the “_accroche cœur_,” or “heart-hooker,”—not at
all an inappropriate title.
“Justine! Justine!” repeated the same lady-like and pleasing voice, this
time in accents of command rather than entreaty; and Justine, after
thanking me with great sweetness for stopping up the way, was compelled
to obey the summons of her invisible lady.
Completely mystified, I descended to the bar, there to find Miss
Lushington for the first time in the worst of humours, or what that lady
herself was pleased to call “_uncommonly put about_.” She ordered the
waiter to and fro like a drill-sergeant, rang the ostler’s bell with
vindictive vehemence, and mixed a glass of brandy-and-water for a
customer that must have knocked his head off. Also she tossed her curls
so haughtily, and carried herself so uprightly, as to denote she was
prepared at any moment, if I may use the expression, to run her guns out
and clear for action.
Without being a deep student in natural history, I have not failed to
observe, that when a cow begins to put her muzzle to the ground, and
throw the earth about with her feet, she is prepared to toss and gore.
Also, that when a woman cocks her nose in the air, giving at the same
time an occasional sniff through that elevated organ, while a
perceptible rise and fall heaves the snowy cambric that veils her bosom,
it is the forerunner of a breeze. In either case it is advisable to
change the locality as rapidly as is practicable, and without reference
to the ordinary forms of politeness.
Under these circumstances, I made my way forthwith into the stableyard,
and had scarcely weathered the pump which commands its entrance, ere I
came face to face with a very important-looking personage, whom I could
not call to mind as having ever before seen within the precincts of The
Haycock. There was no mistaking his profession, which was that of
stud-groom. Not one of your working servants, who strips to his shirt on
occasion, and straps like a helper; but a real swell groom, always in
review order, just as I saw him now, and rejoicing in the only costume
of the present century which has not varied the least in my
recollection. These men have all the same figure—plump, dapper, and
short-legged: clad in the same attire, to wit—a straight-brimmed hat,
rather high in the crown; a pepper-and-salt cut-away coat,
single-breasted, and of a length in the back only equalled by the
shortness of its skirts; a blue-spotted neckcloth, with a horse-shoe
pin; a waistcoat of the most extensive dimensions; drab breeches, with
gaiters to match; and the old-fashioned watch-ribbon with a key at the
end. Like the Phœnix, the race is immortal and unchangeable. It
possesses its own language, its own customs, its own traditions. As
Napoleon the First said of the Bourbons, it learns nothing, and forgets
nothing. It is reflective, sagacious, sober, and methodical; but on the
other hand, it is opiniate, obstinate, wilful, and deaf to the voice of
reason. You may leave one of the order, with perfect confidence, in
charge of twenty horses, and be sure that everything will go on like
clockwork, and that you will not be robbed of a shilling more than what
he considers the due perquisites of his office; but if you want to
arrange about your nags for yourself, to move them here and there, to
enjoy for a day the pleasure of doing what you like with your own, be
sure that you will reap only vexation and disappointment, confessing at
length, in the bitterness of your heart, that the most accomplished of
servants is but one degree removed from the most tyrannical of masters.
The man touched his hat to me with respectful politeness. Vanity
whispered: “He acknowledges you at once for a gentleman, and perhaps you
even look _a little Crimean_ with your arm in that sling.” I replied to
his salutation by a remark on the weather and the sport; and having
informed him I was staying at the hotel, and detailed to him somewhat
circumstantially the particulars of my accident and progress of my
recovery, to all of which he listened with grave courtesy, I asked him,
“Whose horses occupied that range of stabling?” which I now perceived by
the straw around the door-sills, and hermetically sealed appearance of
the windows, were inhabited by some valuable stud.
“They’re _ours_, sir;” answered the man, as if I must necessarily know
who “_we_” were. “I shall be happy to show them to you before they are
shut up;” and producing the ring-key from his pocket, he called a very
neat light-weight pad-groom to his assistance, and ushered me, without
further parley, into the _sanctum_ of his stud.
Four better-looking animals, even as they showed then and there, with
their clothes on, and littered up to their hocks in straw, it has seldom
been my lot to set eyes on. They were much of the same pattern and
calibre: small heads, large bodies, short flat legs, great power behind
the saddle, and the best shoulders I ever saw. Two of them had been just
run over with the irons, but not sufficiently to create an eyesore; the
others had not a speck or blemish about them. What struck me most was,
that while their appearance denoted they must be quite thorough-bred,
they had none of the wincing, swishing, lifting ways that usually
distinguish these high-born creatures when you approach them in the
stable. On the contrary, they seemed as tame and docile as so many
pet-lambs.
The first that was stripped, a flea-bitten grey, of extraordinary beauty
and symmetry, may serve as a specimen of the rest. His head, when turned
round in the stall, showed like that of an Arab, so square was it in the
forehead, and so tapering at the delicate velvet-like muzzle. The small
silken ears, too, might have listened for the bells of the caravan in
the glowing Syrian air, so pointed and symmetrical was their form, so
restlessly they quivered at the slightest noise; and the mild black eye,
with its latent fire, might have belonged equally to a gazelle in the
rose groves of El-Gulbaz, or an Arab maid at the door of her father’s
tent in the heart of the Buyuk-Sahar.
I have often thought that in the eye of no other animal is there so
_reflective_ an expression, as in that of a horse. There is a depth of
honesty and _goodness_ in that full shining glance, that vouches for the
intrinsic worth of his character—that seems to denote courage,
generosity, gratitude, all the nobler qualities which man would fain
arrogate to himself, and a sensitive disposition, which is hurt, rather
than angered, by an injury. When irritated, nay even maddened, by
ill-usage, how soon he is soothed and appeased by a little judicious
kindness! How he appreciates approbation! How willing he is to expend
his force, his energies, his very life, for the sake of a kind word, or
a well-timed caress from the hand he is so proud to obey! It seems to me
that his is the brute nature which most resembles that of the best and
bravest of the human race—true, loving, and courageous; writhing under
injury, but giving all, freely and generously still; springing to the
kind word or gesture, and always ready at the call of the voice he
loves; game to the back-bone, and staunch to the last drop of his blood.
This may seem a far-fetched parallel, and my reader may smile at me for
a hot-brained enthusiast; but I love a good horse from my heart, and
that’s the truth!
Nevertheless, although the grey’s head and neck may have seemed to argue
an Eastern origin, the size and power of his lengthy frame were as far
removed as possible from the attenuated proportions, the spare lean
quarters of the indigenous Arab. He looked like getting through deep
ground, and _shooting_ well into the next field, whatever might be the
size or nature of the fence that opposed his progress. I thought, on
_such_ a horse as that, there was no obstacle should stop me in the
Soakington country; and I felt a momentary disgust while I compared his
noble beauty with the more plebeian appearance of Tipple Cider and
Apple-Jack.
“He looks a right good one,” said I, “and as fit to go as a man can get
him. What is his name?”
“We call him the ‘King of Diamonds,’” replied the groom, modestly
accepting, and passing over, my compliment to his own skill, as implied
in approval of the horse’s condition. “Next to him is ‘Prince Charming;’
and the chestnut mare’s name is ‘Beller Donner;’ and the bay in the far
stall, he’s ‘Lady-Killer;’ that’s all our stud, sir,” he added, touching
his hat. “We don’t keep any hack; they’re no use to _us_, hacks ain’t.”
“I suppose the grey’s the best of them,” I observed, reverting to the
beautiful animal who was now being covered up once more.
“Neatest fencer of the lot,” answered the man, “and they can all go
middling straight for that matter; but the Prince, he pounded of ’em all
that heavy day last week in the Vale; and Beller Donner, she was the
only one as got over the Bumperley Brook, down by Heel Tappington, last
Thursday was a fortnight. Ah! we beat ’em all that day, we did. If it
hadn’t been for a man hoeing turnips, we have had to take the fox from
the hounds ourselves. We did go owdacious, to be sure! ‘The Beller,’ as
I calls her, had had pretty nigh enough, I can tell you, sir. But when
we _do_ get a start, of a fine scenting morning, I’ll tell you what it
is, sir—we takes no denial, and we stands for no repairs!”
Amused with the manner in which my new friend seemed to identify himself
with his proprietor, I proceeded to question him further about the
horses, eliciting from him their various qualifications and merits, to
which he was obviously willing to do ample justice.
“You see, sir,” said he, “we rides ’em all alike; that’s where it is. We
doesn’t go picking a horse for this here country, and a horse for that
there; but we brings ’em out each in their turn, as regular as
clockwork. Wery particular, we are; and when they are out, go they must,
or we’ll know the reason why. We haven’t had Prince Charming, now, so
long as the others; and the first day we rode him he seemed
unaccountably shifty at large places; uneasy like, and prevaricating,
and wanting to go anywhere but where we put him. Now some folks would
have said, ‘This horse won’t suit at no price,’ and been _dashed_ a
little, as was natural, and so perhaps sent him back again and lost of
him altogether. But that’s not our way, that isn’t. We just laid him
alongside of the hounds as soon as ever they began to run, sat down upon
him, catched a good hold of his head, and _sailed_ him at his places so
as he might go in or over, which he pleased; but he _must_ do one or the
t’other. The Prince seemed to take it all at once like. When we gets off
him, we just gives a quiet little smile—we _never_ laughs; and, says we,
‘I know’d he could gallop and go on, and now I’ve found out he can jump.
I think we’ll keep him, John,’ says we,—My name’s John, sir,” (with a
touch of his hat,)—“‘so put him in along with the others;’ and up we
goes to a cup-o’ tea, and a book till bed-time.”
“That’s the way to make a hunter!” I exclaimed enthusiastically; for I
confess I felt my blood stir at John’s description; “and to ride in that
form, no doubt you require the very best, such as you seem to have got
here.”
“We doesn’t grudge price, you see, sir,” answered John confidentially.
“When we hears of what we think likely to suit, at Tattersall’s or
elsewhere, we comes down with the money at once: two hundred, three
hundred—no matter what, so long as they are _real_ good ones. Now
there’s Lady-Killer, (Here! Tom, take and strip that bay horse,) we
bought him at The Corner, with never a character, for two hundred and
fifty guineas. Know’d nothing at all about him, except that we’d seen
him out, and seen him gallop. Well, Mason would have had him if we
hadn’t. First day as we rode him, and first fence as we put him at,
blessed if it wasn’t the park pales, up in Deersley Chase. My Lord’s
hounds, they found their fox like winking, and away right over the park
and amongst the fallow-deer, as if they was tied to him. What a scent
there was, to be sure! Never checked nor hovered, nor seemed to take no
notice of the riot; but away, with their heads up-wind, as straight and
as even as the crop of my whip. Well, there was an awful scrimmage, to
be sure: such a rush among the fast ones! and we was a-going slap in
front of the whole on ’em, with our hands down, I can tell you. It is a
pleasure to see us, sir. Three-quarters-of-a-mile of grass had just got
the horses into their swing, when the hounds came to the park pales, and
over, like a stream of water across a mill-dam. No time to think about
it. While two or three of the tail hounds were falling back from the
top, the others were rising the opposite hill, running _alarming_. It
was a regular case of ‘jump, or else go home.’ Some of the gentlemen
pulls up, and some goes shying away to look for a gate; and one—a young
gent he was, from college—takes and rides at it; but his horse turns
round and kicks. So there was plenty of room, you see, for anybody who
wanted to go and try. We catches hold of the bay horse, very steady and
determined, and we rides him at it, so that he could not have refused,
if it had been ever so. I don’t think, myself, he knowed anything about
timber, for he just took it with his knees, and turned completely over
on the top of us. ‘Killed! by jingo!’ says my Lord, turning as white as
ashes, for he had waited to see us have a drive at it afore he galloped
away to the gate. ‘Worth a dozen dead ones yet, my Lord!’ says we,
jumping into the saddle again as light as a feather, and away after the
hounds. So from that time we called the bay horse ‘Lady-Killer,’
although I never knowed him touch a rail since, and now he’s as safe a
timber-jumper as we’ve got in the stable!”
“Your master must have extraordinary nerve,” said I, somewhat aghast, I
must confess, at this stirring narrative of escape and daring. “There
are few men who would care to ride for a certain fall over so dangerous
a fence, let hounds run as hard as they will.”
The man stared. “Men!” he repeated, “Master! I ain’t got no master: it’s
my _lady_ as I’m a talkin’ of—Miss Merlin: her that came two hours ago
in a po’ chay. The prettiest rider in England, let who will be the
other. Master, indeed! I should like to know the man who can see the way
she goes. There’s a many of ’em that’s tried it; but bless you, she
takes no more notice, but just cuts ’em down, and hangs ’em up to dry.”
It was now my turn to be surprised. I confess I had never contemplated
such a possibility as this; and now it flashed upon me all at once, as
these things generally do. The owner of such high-bred cattle, the
reckless equestrian, to whom wood and water formed but the mere items of
a pleasurable excitement, was doubtless also the mistress of the
fascinating Justine. I could picture to myself the sort of person likely
to combine those dashing possessions. I imagined a lady of gaudy
exterior, such as I remember to have met formerly out hunting in the
vicinity of London, and masculine, not to say free-and-easy manners,
with a bold eye, a dab of rouge, false plaits skilfully disposed, and a
loud voice, enforcing a corresponding style of language, garnished with
strong expressions. I could conceive that such a dame would never be
content to sit down to dinner alone at the Haycock, after the excitement
of a day’s hunting, particularly as she seemed to render that amusement
as thrilling a one as possible, but that she would naturally make
acquaintance with its sole inmate, bid him join her quiet little repast,
a pint of sherry, and a bottle of champagne between the two, and what
would become of me then? Perhaps, ere twelve hours had elapsed, we might
be drinking the palest brandy-and-water together, while I smoked my
virgin weed, and she indulged in a coquettish little cigarette. Of
course she smoked. It is the fast thing for a woman to do in these days,
and most of us know what a pace they _can_ go when they like. I saw it
all, in my mind’s eye—the little shyness at first, the gradual warming
from acquaintance into friendship, and from friendship to intimacy; my
own misgivings, struggles, subjugation, and eventual discomfiture.
I am not ashamed to confess my weakness. Any woman, who thinks it worth
her while, can put her foot upon my neck. It is for this reason that I
fight shy of the sex, that I am considered a bear and a bore by the
majority of my female acquaintances, and that my pretty cousins call me
The Woman-hater. There are certain allurements I cannot resist, certain
encroachments I cannot withstand. I see the net, and walk into it
open-eyed. Other men can emerge scathless from the ordeal of Christmas
games and Twelfth-night festivities; can play at blind-man’s-buff
without finding their mental vision dazzled and darkened by the game;
can hunt the slipper or the ring, round and round the charmed circle,
nor find the charm too potent for their peace of mind; nay, can even
take a base advantage of the pendent mistletoe, with a forehead of
brass, a check of marble, and a lip of stone. I envy them their
insensibility, their moral courage, and their physical daring; but for
my own part I think it wiser to leave these “little games” alone. Need I
say I am a bachelor? Need I say I came to the Haycock in order to enjoy
my favourite pastime, unmolested by the presence of the dominant sex?
Even Miss Lushington I had considered an unnecessary addition to the
establishment, a snare to be avoided and an enemy to be defied: but I
had been somewhat reassured by the mild and motherly interest that lady
took in my welfare, and the impartiality with which she shed her
attractions on all alike. But now, if I was to be exposed to the
insidious attacks of this mounted Delilah, beset by Miss Merlin, not
only in the free intercourse of the hunting-field, but also when “taking
mine ease in mine inn,” why I had better retire in disorder at once, and
obviate the possibility of battle and defeat alike, by a tumultuous
flight.
Revolving these weighty matters in my mind, I retraced my steps into the
Haycock, and ordered a glass of sherry and a biscuit in the bar.
Miss Lushington filled out my liquor to the brim without a word,
slamming down before me at the same time that biscuit, peculiar to the
British hostelry, of which, to judge by its flavour, the ingredients are
soda and sawdust, with a dash of gravel. I munched in silence for
awhile, observing cautiously the clouds that gathered on the barmaid’s
brow. At last I ventured an observation.
“A fresh arrival, I understand, Miss Lushington. The Haycock will be
getting quite gay now, I presume.”
Miss Lushington’s only reply was a toss of her black head. “Do you
expect any more visitors?” I proceeded, like a timid bather trying his
depth. “This will be somewhat lonely for a lady all by herself, when she
isn’t out hunting, I should say.”
Miss Lushington’s bright eyes flashed. “Ladies are very different in
their tastes,” said she, laying a withering stress of sarcasm on this
general and incontestable position. “Some women, Mr. Softly” (I have
omitted to mention that my address is Cyrus Softly, Esq., Hat and
Umbrella Club, London)—“some women seem to me more like men than women.
In course every one to her liking. For my part, I say nothing; but this
I _will_ say: for a lady to come down to a out-o’-the-way corner like
this—no friends, no followers; nothing but that highty-tighty maid (and
if ever I catch her put her saucy face inside my bar, I’ll give her a
piece of my mind, see if I don’t,) and hunt, hunt, hunt, day after day,
and when it’s a frost or what not, read, read, read, from morning till
night, and never out of a riding-habit, or else a plain dark gownd with
no more trimming than on the back of my ’and” (Miss Lushington, when
excited, had a habit of catching her breath, and in so doing let go a
certain number of aspirates, and added a few elegant superfluities of
language). “Why, I say it isn’t natural, and if it isn’t natural, there
must be something in it, don’t you think so, Mr. Softly? And to see a
maid dressed out like that flaunting miss, in flounces and fal-lals,
with a velvet net to her ’air, and hear-rings like any lady of the land!
In course it ain’t my place to make remarks, Mr. Softly; but you can’t
prevent my thinking it a pity and a shame, not if you was to hang me
alive for it the very next minute, there!”
Foreseeing no advantageous result from a continuance of the discussion
with Miss Lushington, and surmising also that the strong opinion she had
formed of the new arrivals was partly owing to Justine’s attractions, I
left the barmaid in her own department, placing her hand to her side for
“occasional spasms,” and catching her breath loudly at intervals, as is
the habit of the sex when stimulated by any unusual excitement, and
proceeded up the staircase and along the dark passage that led to my
dormitory, pondering deeply on all that I had heard and seen.
My curiosity—more, my interest, was strongly aroused. Miss Merlin was
evidently no common character. Brave, reserved, studious, and simple in
her attire, she must be a _lusus naturæ_, a flower like the aloe,
blooming but once in a century; and here she was at Soakington;—how to
obtain an introduction was the difficulty. Had I been sound again,
nothing, I thought, could be easier: a large fence out hunting; an
appropriate compliment to her horse, and implied flattering of herself;
a gate opened at the right moment, and then a bow out-of-doors, which
could not but ripen to a familiar greeting within. After that, it would
be all plain-sailing. When I got thus far, I was perfectly astonished at
myself. “Softly,” said I, “is it possible—you, who have been a shy man
and a diffident all your life; who have never been willing to burn your
fingers at the shrine of Cupid, much less scorch yourself up, body and
bones and all; you, who have had warnings innumerable among your
friends, and beacons untold in your own family—can _you_ be such an ass?
Did not your cousin Harry, helping a comparative stranger to put on her
goloshes at a picnic, become involved in a series of dilemmas which came
eventually under the notice of Sir Cresswell Cresswell, in reviewing
whose decision a weekly paper was good enough to remark that the
co-respondent, meaning Cousin Harry, had behaved with the blackest
villainy throughout? Was not your brother John, accidentally offering an
unknown damsel his umbrella in the street, compelled by an Amazonian
mother to marry her within six weeks? Has not the Amazonion taken up her
abode with him for life, and has not Mrs. John Softly borne twins to her
lord on two successive occasions? Are these hideous examples
insufficient, and must you in your own person furnish another deplorable
instance of the inevitable result when—
“‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’?”
“Let it alone,” cried Caution. “But may I not at least take a look at my
danger?” whispered Curiosity. “Better bandage your eyes,” answered
Caution. “Perhaps she is not good-looking after all,” urged Curiosity.
“Don’t go near her for your life!” threatened Cau. “I’ll be d—d if I
don’t!” thundered Q.
This was the end of the argument, and I arrived at it precisely as I
reached a turn of the staircase that led to my bedroom. Justine was at
this instant coming down with a basket in her arms far too wide for the
narrow landing: the corner was exceedingly dark and inconvenient. In
common humanity I could not but stop to assist her. Not very
self-possessed at the best of times, I am afraid my efforts were of the
clumsiest. Between us, we got the basket in the angle of the two walls.
I was inside of it, and could not possibly get out: Justine could not
very well leave me imprisoned. She laughed a good deal, and blushed and
pulled as hard as she could. I, too, pushed vigorously, but it struck me
Justine was remarkably pretty, and that of all places in the world this
was the most whimsical for a conversation with a strange young woman of
lively manners and prepossessing exterior.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
MISS MERLIN
AT length, by our joint efforts, the basket was extricated and placed
upon its—what shall I say?—on its right end, in the landing. The pretty
maid smoothed her hair and adjusted her collar, somewhat creased by her
exertions. I made an effort to recover the usual dignity of my
demeanour, conscious that I was, to a certain extent, in a false
position, yet resolved to make the best of it.
“Thank you,” said I, somewhat bashfully, as well as breathlessly.
“Thank _you_, sir,” said Justine; laughing, I thought, rather roguishly.
“Dear! how you’ve rumpled your collar,” I observed, with perfect
innocence. Justine glanced reproachfully in my face, as she smoothed the
collar down with a remarkably pretty hand, and, tilting the offending
basket on the bannisters, paused for a space, as if to “get her wind”
before proceeding any further. In a few minutes the process would be
accomplished, and Justine would take wing and fly away. I should never
have such an opportunity again—at least not for a considerable period.
The basket, in all probability, contained articles of wearing apparel,
either going to or coming from the wash. Without being a family man, I
was aware such an occurrence did not usually take place more than once a
week. I should have another seven days to wait before so favourable an
opportunity would arise again. Stimulated by this reflection I accosted
Justine with considerable energy. I am not sure that I did not take her
by the hand.
“Can I speak a word with you, mademoiselle?” said I, in trembling tones.
I do not know why I called her Mademoiselle, except that I was flurried
and eager, and inclined to be supremely polite.
“Not now, sir,” replied Justine, sinking her voice, to my great alarm,
incontinently to a whisper. “Some other time, Mr. Softly” (she had got
my name already): “not now, sir, _pray_. I hear somebody coming!”
“It’s only a question or two I want to ask,” I urged, as soothingly and
reassuringly as I could; for, in truth, had there been fifty “somebodies
coming,” there was nothing to be alarmed at. “Something you can tell me
about—about your mistress.” I bounced it out, thinking it better we
should understand each other at once.
“Oh!” replied Justine, this time in a perfectly audible voice. “And what
may you please to want to know, Mr. Softly, about _my_ lady?”
“I want to know _everything_ about her,” said I; slipping, at the same
time, a little profile of her Majesty, raised in gold, into Justine’s
hand, which delicate compliment was acknowledged by the least
perceptible squeeze. “When did she arrive? When is she going away again?
Where did she come from? Where does she live when she is at home? Is she
young or middle-aged? Of course she’s very beautiful, or she couldn’t
afford to take about with her such a pretty maid as _you_!”
The latter clause of my sentence I considered, not without reason, a
master-stroke of diplomacy, and I strove to enhance its effect by again
possessing myself of Justine’s hand; a manœuvre she neutralised by
placing both her own in her apron-pockets, leaving the basket to take
care of itself.
“Why, ain’t you a hunting gentleman?” asked she, in her turn, somewhat
inconsequently, as I thought. “I made sure you was a hunting gentleman,
by your broken bones; and I thought every hunting gentleman knew my
lady. She’s just come from the Castle—my lady. She’ll stay here exactly
as long as suits her fancy, and not a moment longer. Bless you, Mr.
Softly, we might never stir a foot from here this side of Easter; and we
_might_ be off, bag and baggage, first thing to-morrow morning. She’s a
quiet lady, mine: a quieter lady than Miss Merlin I never wish to dress
and do for; but when she says a thing, she _means_ it, Mr. Softly, and
horses couldn’t draw her the way she hasn’t a mind to go.”
“And is she so very beautiful?” I inquired, determined to know the worst
of this Amazon at once. Justine looked up from under her long eyelashes
(she was a very pretty girl—this Justine), and shook her head, and
smiled.
“That depends upon taste, Mr. Softly,” replied she, shooting such a
glance at me the while, as I have no doubt had often done irreparable
injury amongst her adorers.
“Some gentlemen doesn’t admire such a pale grave lady with dark eyes and
hair. She’s a slight figure, too, has Miss Merlin; and, for as tall as
she is, her waist is as small as mine. For goodness’ sake, Mr. Softly,
here’s the waiter coming along the passage!” and without giving me any
more information as to the size of Miss Merlin’s waist, or further
opportunity of measuring her own, Justine darted up the staircase, and
was soon lost in the sacred retreat of her mistress’s apartment.
I am no busy-body, I humbly trust and believe. It is not my way ever to
inquire into the affairs of other people; and when any obliging friend
wishes to make me the depository of some secret which is growing too
heavy for his own shoulders, I invariably beg that he will keep it to
himself. There is no such false position, as to be told an awful mystery
under oath of inviolable silence, which you feel sure has been
administered with the same injunctions to some half-dozen others besides
yourself. One of these lets it out; perhaps all six of them make it
their everyday conversation; and you, the only trustworthy person of the
lot, sustain all the blame of having divulged a circumstance which you
have kept silent as the grave, or even forgotten altogether. I need not,
therefore, say that it is not my custom to waylay waiting-maids, nor to
set every engine in my power in motion to discover the antecedents of
such ladies as may happen to occupy the same hostelry with myself. But
there was something about this new arrival that interested and excited
me in spite of my better judgment. It was like being in the same house
with a ghost. A man may not like ghosts, or he may disbelieve in them,
or, worse still, he may have an invincible terror of these apparitions;
and although he laughs and jeers at such matters by a crowded fireside
on a Christmas eve, he may quail and shudder in his cold sheets at the
dead of night, when he lies awake, thinking of all the horrors he has
ever heard and read; fancying, as people _will_ fancy in the dark, that
he hears sighs at the door, footsteps in the passage, and something
moving softly and stealthily about the room. But whether he be a
courageous infidel, or a superstitious believer in the possibility of
apparitions, only tell him there is a phantom belonging to the
establishment, and the man becomes restless and uncomfortable forthwith.
You will find him poking about the attics and offices by day and night.
When you are snoring healthily in your first sleep, he will be shivering
in his dressing-gown, to discover the spirit or the impostor; and it is
probable that in his character of detective he will alarm more of the
inhabitants of the mansion in a week than the old established and
considerate ghost itself has done in a century.
Well, Miss Merlin was rapidly becoming _my_ ghost. I felt a morbid
desire to find out all about her. I could not rest in ignorance of the
appearance, the character, and the antecedents of a lady who in her own
person involved such interesting contradictions as this mysterious
dame—tall, pale, and slight; with a waist as small as Justine’s, and
that was certainly an extremely taper one; with a will of iron (not that
there was anything unusual in THAT), and four such horses as I never saw
together in one stable before. Then she was a devoted student; for had
not Miss Lushington taxed her with read, read, reading all day long?
Probably she was _blue_; possibly she might be an authoress, and I adore
intellectual women! I can never see why ignorance is supposed by some
men to be such an attraction in the other sex. The Tree of Knowledge is
not necessarily the Tree of Evil; and, for my part, I think the more
they know the better. What can be more graceful than a woman’s way of
imparting her information?—the deprecating air with which she produces
it, as it were, under protest, and the charming humility with which she
accepts her victory when she has beaten you in argument, and swamped you
with rhetoric? Oh! if Miss Merlin should turn out _literary_, it would
be all over with me! In the meantime, how was I to find out something
definite about her, before I committed myself in a personal interview?
As I revolved this question in my mind, I bethought me of a club
acquaintance of mine—indeed I think I may almost call him a friend—whose
speciality it is to know all about everybody who floats on the surface
of society, not only in London, where he resides, but also in the
different counties of England, and most of the fashionable
watering-places abroad. Where and how he acquires his information is to
me a matter of the darkest mystery, inasmuch as I never entered “The Hat
and Umbrella” in my life, without finding him making use of that
commodious club; and I have been informed by other members, that with
the exception of Christmas-Day—a festival which, in his dislike of
congratulations, I am giving to understand he always spends in bed—he
may be seen seven times a week in his accustomed arm-chair during the
afternoon, and at his accustomed table when the dining-hour arrives.
However, he is a man of universal information, a walking edition of
“Who’s Who?” in any year of the century. And to Quizby accordingly I
resolved to write, begging him at his earliest convenience to give me
all the particulars he could about Miss Merlin, stating also that we
were occupying the same hotel, but wording by communication with the
delicacy imperatively demanded by such topics. I hope none of my friends
may ever have cause to say, but that “Softly is a confoundedly _guarded_
fellow about women, you know!”
Pending my friend’s reply, it may easily be believed that I waited with
no small anxiety and impatience, none the less that the fact of my being
under the same roof with Miss Merlin gave me no more access to her
society, no more information regarding her movements, than if we had
been on different continents. The very first morning after her arrival
she was off to hunt before I was out of bed, and returned so quietly as
to frustrate my insidious intentions of waylaying her in the passage.
Justine too, either taken to task by her mistress, or on some definite
calculations of her own, avoided my presence altogether, and never gave
me an opportunity of exchanging a syllable with her. Miss Lushington,
whom I boldly confronted in her own dominions, was obviously on her high
horse, and ill at ease. There could be no question but that,
notwithstanding her simple and retiring habits, in accordance with the
strict seclusion in which she lived, Miss Merlin’s arrival had
completely altered the tone and destroyed the cordiality of the whole
establishment.
True to his post, my letter must have found Quizby at the “Hat and
Umbrella,” for within eight-and-forty hours of its dispatch, I received
his answer; written of course on Club paper, and sealed with our
handsome Club seal—a beautiful device formed of the domestic _insignia_
from which we take our name. I opened it eagerly, and after a few
commonplace lines of inquiry and gossip, I arrived, so to speak, at the
marrow of its contents.
“You could not have applied, my dear Softly,” said my correspondent, “to
any man in London better qualified to give you the information you
require. Not only have I known Miss Merlin almost from childhood, but it
was my lot in early life, when the heart is fresh and the feelings
susceptible, to be by no means insensible to her charms. You ask me
whether she is good-looking; and this, did I not know your extreme
diffidence and scrupulous delicacy of feeling, would seem a strange
question from one who is under the same roof with its object. Beauty is
a matter of opinion. I need scarcely say that many years ago I thought
her ‘beautiful exceedingly.’ She was then a tall pale girl, with the
most thorough-bred head and neck you ever saw, with the grace and
elasticity of a nymph, combined with the dignity of an empress. So
haughty a young woman it has never been my fate to come across. She had
full dark eyes, and very silky dark hair; regular features of the severe
classical type, and the sad mournful expression, that had a great effect
on me at that period. I need not be ashamed to confess it, whilst I
remained an eleven-stone man I was romantic; but, like many others,
increasing weight has brought with it, I trust, increasing wisdom, and I
have not the slightest doubt myself that adipose matter conduces vastly
to a proper equilibrium of the mind. I thought otherwise once, and Miss
Merlin’s dark eyes would have led me to follow her to the end of the
world—nay, even over those ghastly fences, which then, as now, it seemed
to be her greatest delight to ‘negotiate,’ as I think you hunting men
call it in your extraordinary vernacular. She had a wonderfully graceful
figure too, as a young thing, and the narrowest, most flexible hands and
feet you ever beheld. I have waltzed with her many a time—_moi qui vous
parle_; and to think of the delicious swing with which she went down a
room to the strains of Jullien and Kœnig, the musical wonders of _our_
day, almost makes me feel as if I could waltz again. When she bridled
her taper neck, and put one little foot forward from beneath her
draperies, she looked like a filly just going to start for the Oaks.
“I have been thus particular in describing her, because they tell me she
is very much aged and altered now; so that, whenever you do see her, you
can judge for yourself of the difference between the Miss Merlin of
to-day, and the damsel of a good many years ago, who made such an
example of your old friend.
“But I never had a chance with her—never! She was a singular girl, not
the least like most of her own age and sex. Her mother was dead; and she
lived and kept house for her father, an old clergyman of eccentric
habits and extraordinary learning. Being an only child, she was
accustomed to have her own way from the first; and as her father never
interfered in the household arrangements, and indeed seldom came out of
his study upon any provocation, she had the whole management of the
establishment, and conducted it with the decision and prudence of a
woman of forty. To this I partly attribute her extraordinary
self-reliance and self-control. She was attached to her father, and
studied with him several hours a day. At the period when we used to
dance together, I think Miss Merlin was as thorough a Greek scholar as
any University don I know. She was a proficient in several modern
languages, and my own impression is that mathematics and algebra were as
completely at her fingers’-ends, as worsted-work and crochet-knitting
are to the generality of her sex. Studying hard at the Parsonage, her
only relaxation was to hunt. I have already said she did exactly what
she pleased; and her father, though a clergyman, was a rich man, and
though a rich man a liberal one. Consequently Miss Fanny, as she was
called then, was allowed to keep a couple of horses for her own use, and
very good ones she took care they should be. At eighteen there was not a
sportsman with the X.Y.Z. that cared to follow Fanny Merlin in a quick
thing over the Vale, where the fences were largest, and the Swimley
twisted and twined about, like the silver lace on a green volunteer
uniform, never less than eighteen feet from bank to bank. I always hated
hunting, I honestly acknowledge it; but oh! the duckings I have had in
that accursed Swimley, following the flutter of her riding-habit, that I
_would_ have followed, if necessary, across the Styx. The girl never
looked back either, which was sufficiently provoking. No; she rode on,
always in the same calm business-like manner, perfectly quiet, and
perfectly straight. She cured me of following her, though, after a time;
for I found it safer and easier to skirt a little, with the generality
of the other sportsmen, so as to come in somewhere at the finish, and
take my chance of riding with her part of the way home.
“It was hard that such devotion as mine should not have met with better
success. You, my dear Softly, who are fond of that uncomfortable
diversion which men call hunting, can scarcely appreciate what I had to
undergo; but when I tell you that in addition to unintermitting
agitation of mind, I suffered from constant abrasion of body, you will
pity, though you cannot sympathise with, my distress. Apprehension,
amounting to actual _funk_, is a disagreeable sensation enough; but to
be partially flayed alive, and that on portions of the person called
into daily use by a man of sedentary habits, amounts to a cruel and
unbearable infliction. I wonder whether she ever pitied me! I am
inclined to think she scarcely thought about me at all.
“At one time, however, our acquaintance seemed likely to ripen into
intimacy; and it happened that at the same period a detachment from a
regiment of Hussars was quartered in our neighbourhood. The Captain
hunted of course, so did the Lieutenant; and two harder riders never
dirtied their coats with the X.Y.Z., nor washed them, when dirty, in the
Swimley brook. Also they danced, dined, drank, and flirted, as is the
custom of their kind. But the Cornet was an exception to the rule.
Strange anomaly! a Cornet of Hussars, who seldom, when off duty, got
upon a horse; who did not waltz or give conundrums, or squeeze young
ladies’ hands; who retired from mess early, not to smoke nor play whist,
nor get into scrapes, but to practise on the pianoforte; whose general
appearance was sedate and steady, though, to do him justice, he was a
good-looking fellow enough, in a manly Anglo-Saxon style, and, in short,
whose whole character and habits appeared more those of a travelling
tutor than a dissipated young officer of Dragoons.
“And yet Miss Merlin fell in love with Cornet Brown. Where they met, has
always been to me a mystery; and when they did meet, I cannot conceive
what they found to talk about, for they had not two ideas in common. He
did not even read; for, with all his quiet habits, the Cornet was as
ignorant upon most topics of general information, as if he had been the
fastest and idlest of his kind. His sole passion was music, and Miss
Merlin did not know a note. Nevertheless, she fell in love with him—over
head—such a fall as she never had in her life before, even in the Vale.
She gave up hunting; she parted with her horses; she altered her whole
habits and disposition and appearance, as a woman will, to identify
herself the more with the man she loves. A good many of us in that part
of the country had entered for the race; but we saw it was all up
now—Brown in a canter, and the rest nowhere.
“The Cornet, too, seemed fond of her, in his own undemonstrative way.
When not practising the pianoforte in his barrack-room, he was generally
to be found at the Rectory; and as he never interfered with old Merlin,
who indeed hardly knew him by sight, he would have suited him as well
for a son-in-law as anybody else. The thing seemed to go on swimmingly,
his brother-officers laughed at him, and we all thought the Cornet and
Fanny Merlin were engaged.
“But this deserving young officer had an elder brother, whose views in
some peculiar points it did by no means suit that his junior should
commit matrimony, and the elder Brown appeared ere long upon the scene
of action. He came down to stay at the barracks, where he made himself
so agreeable to the Hussars, that they seriously proposed to him that he
should make interest at the Horse Guards for the transfer of his
brother’s commission to himself. He didn’t know a note of music—the
elder Brown; but he talked, and he drank, and he smoked, and he rode,
and, in short, was as jolly a fellow as ever kept a mess-table in a
roar. Also, he made a slight acquaintance with Miss Merlin—not, I am
bound to state, with any ulterior views; for he had a wife and promising
little family of his own. He was a man of energy, you see—this
gentleman—and when he meant a thing, why he went and did it without
delay.
“There are secrets, I am told, in all families—a fact that makes me
additionally grateful that I have got none: I mean, neither family nor
secrets. What arguments were used by the elder Brown in his conferences
with the younger, whether he urged him by threats or plied him with
entreaties, we shall never know. It is sufficient to state that he
gained his point, as such men usually do, and prevailed upon the less
energetic Cornet to give up Miss Merlin. Men vary much in the force of
character, and I hope I know what is the wisest and the most discreet
course to take in most affairs of life; but when I was his age, before I
would have given up such a girl as Fanny Merlin, in consideration of any
amount of threatening, reasoning, or expediency, I would have seen fifty
elder brothers consigned to that place where they would have had an
opportunity of comparing notes with Dives on their terrestrial
prosperity.
“The Cornet, however, gave way, and wrote a most affecting letter to his
ladye-love, in which he assured her of his eternal attachment and
regard, vowing that ‘imperious necessity would alone have induced him to
forego her affection, and that although, at his brother’s injunctions,
he must leave that part of the country, and they would probably not meet
again, yet he could never forget her, and should always look back on
their acquaintance as the happiest period of his life. In conclusion, he
implored her to send him some keepsake, however trifling, that he might
take with him into his banishment—anything that was _her_ gift would be
prized and valued till death,’ etc. etc.
“Miss Merlin was not a young lady to make parade of a sorrow, however
engrossing. She said nothing, and the most curious observer could not
have discovered from her impassive face that she had sustained so cruel
a wound, for she loved the Cornet very dearly, as the sequel proved; but
she complied with her weak-minded swain’s request, and sent him by
return of post the most appropriate present she could think of—namely,
‘a pair of leading-strings and a child’s go-cart’! Brown the elder
positively roared with delight when he heard of this quiet and bitter
sarcasm. But the Cornet took it very much to heart; I do not think he
had seen his own conduct in its true light before.
“Soon after this, old Merlin died, and there was a lawsuit instituted by
his next of kin to deprive his daughter of her inheritance. The general
report in the country went that Fanny Merlin was ruined, and would have
to go for a governess. The Cornet was not a bad fellow after all. In
defiance of his brother, he came back forthwith from the North of
England, and endeavoured to renew his proposals. Of course, with such a
girl as Miss Merlin, this was a forlorn hope, and equally of course the
young officer became more attached to her than ever, and would have
broken the leading-strings and dashed the go-cart all to pieces this
time; but he never once set eyes on her whilst he remained in the
neighbourhood, and retired at last in a perfect fever of fury and
disappointment. Whether this _contre-temps_, or the accumulating
pressure of many unpaid bills, chiefly for grand pianofortes, and other
musical instruments, was the cause, I know not; but the following year
Cornet Brown exchanged into a regiment serving in India, and the same
paper which furnished the gazette of his appointment, also announced the
judicial decision that restored Miss Merlin to affluence and prosperity.
“She gave up her hunting, though, for a time, and practised music
incessantly. I have heard that in a wonderfully short period she
attained a proficiency in that science, which is not usually acquired
under a lifetime.
“Meanwhile the Cornet, alternating his military duties in India with a
great many _tiffins_ and a vast quantity of brandy _pawnee_, was
invalided home in a very dangerous state of illness. The sea-voyage
failed in his case to produce its usual good effect, and he arrived at
Marseilles a dying man. How she heard of it, I have not the slightest
idea; but Miss Merlin never was like other girls; she possessed an
energy and force of will extremely rare in her sex, fortunately for
ours. She started off, at a moment’s notice, without taking even a maid,
and crossed France in the utmost haste, to reach her old lover, and
bring him home. She had forgiven him his weakness and vacillation, had
forgotten all about the leading-strings and the go-cart, now that she
heard he was dying.
“I am not a sentimental man, as you know, and have little sympathy to
spare for those afflictions of the heart, which, in my opinion, sink
into insignificance when compared with a derangement of the stomach; but
it has always struck me that Miss Merlin’s was a melancholy story. When
she arrived at Marseilles the Cornet had been buried eight-and-forty
hours. She stood by his grave on the hill above the town, with the blue
southern sky overhead, and the blue Mediterranean at her feet. I think,
strong and self-reliant as she was, she had as much sorrow then for her
portion as she could bear.
“She remained abroad a twelvemonth, I know, for I made it my business at
the time to ascertain; but what she did with herself, during that
period, I have never been able to find out. Some said she had gone on
into Syria, others that she was in Egypt. Archer thought he saw a person
very like her eating sandwiches at Jerusalem. Aimwell is almost sure he
recognised her in male attire at the First Cataract; there was a very
general report prevalent that she had gone into a convent for a year on
trial; but didn’t like it, which I can easily imagine, and so came away
again. Be this as it may, she turned up again after a time in the X. Y.
Z. country, hunting more furiously than before, riding harder, speaking
less, and looking graver than she had ever done; but as the Rectory was
now inhabited by a fresh incumbent, and she had no settled place of
residence, she did not remain very long in the neighbourhood of her
youthful home.
“Since then, and it is a long time ago, she has travelled about the
country, far more independently than most bachelors. In the summer she
retires to some obscure town, either in the Highlands of Scotland, or on
the sea-side, where she takes a quiet lodging, and devotes the time to
study. In the winter she moves her horses about, to hunt with different
packs of hounds, giving the Soakington country the preference, partly on
account of the strong friendship which has sprung up between herself and
the Earl. In fact, a room is always kept ready for her at
Castle-Cropper, and she has arranged the library for the proprietor, and
re-hung all the pictures in more favourable lights. So independent is
she, however, in her habits, that she often prefers to remain at the
Haycock, where, _if you are not afraid_, you may, perhaps, have an
opportunity of becoming acquainted with her. I have now told you all I
can about your mysterious visitor, and consign you, not without a
shudder, to your fate. If she only retains half the attractions she had
at eighteen, you’re a gone ’coon, Softly; and mind this—it’s a game like
the pitch-and-toss we used to play at school, ‘Heads she _wins_, tails
_you_ lose!’ I have warned you. Adieu! _Liberavi animam meam._
“P.S.—A pianoforte is no use. She has never played a note since the
Cornet died.”
I appeal to any impartial man, whether such a communication as the above
was not adding fuel to fire. I read and re-read it with an interest that
increased on each fresh perusal. I resolved that, come what might, it
should not be my fault if another sun went down without my obtaining at
least _a sight_ of the fair subject of Quizby’s memoir. I called up, in
my mind’s eye, my correspondent himself. His jolly fat face, with the
little eye, that twinkled pleasantly over a ready joke as over a slice
from the haunch or a bubbling bumper of Bordeaux. I reflected on his
imperturbable character, his consistent philosophy, cynical, perhaps, in
language, but jovial, and thoroughly epicurean in practice; and the more
I thought, the more I wondered, the more I longed to witness with my own
eyes the peerless attractions that could have knocked my steady friend,
so to speak, off his equilibrium. To-morrow morning then, I resolved, I
would see Miss Merlin, or die in the attempt.
Eagerly I scanned the hunting-card for the week. To-morrow the hounds
were to meet at the kennels. Castle Cropper was but ten miles from
Soakington. She could not possibly start before nine. I desired my
servant to call me at eight, and retired to rest, in that frame of mind
which prompts a man to shave over-night, that he may be in time, and
makes him wake every half-hour lest he should over-sleep himself after
all at the last.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
YOUNG PLUMTREE
I SUPPOSE no man sleeps the sounder for a broken collar-bone, even when
it is getting well. Determined to be up in time, even if I lay awake for
the purpose, I spent what invalids call a _bad_ night. I heard more than
one of the small hours strike from a certain loud-ticking clock in the
kitchen, that, strangely enough, was never audible in the day. At last,
however, I fell into a deep sleep, from which I woke with a start, to
hear my servant arranging my dressing-things and pouring cold water into
my tub. The morning was as dark as only a hunting morning can be, and a
drizzling rain, glazing the chimney-pots and tiles, of which I had a
commanding view from my bedroom window, by no means enhanced the
temptation of leaving a warm bed. I jumped out, nevertheless, with an
effort, shaved, washed, and dressed with considerable energy and
rapidity, writhing into my coat in my crippled state, by a series of
gymnastics similar to those with which a “navvie” struggles into his
fustian jacket. The clock struck nine as I completed my preparations. I
had already heard the wheels of a carriage grinding round from the
stableyard to the front-door of the inn, whilst a certain bustle in the
passages, with much opening and banging of doors, denoted an arrival or
a departure. There was no time to lose, if I would waylay Miss Merlin as
she went downstairs. I brushed up my whiskers for the last time, and
emerged from my bedroom. As I put my foot in the passage, a rush of cold
air from below, apprised me that the hall-door must be standing
wide-open, and I ran down in a tumult of hurry and agitation, lest I
should be too late after all.
As I reached the lobby, there was a fly standing at the inn-door. An
incoherent waiter, with a dirty napkin under his arm, and flourishing a
Japan tea-tray wildly in his hands, was gazing vacantly at space; Miss
Lushington’s head peered darkly out from amidst her lemon-nets; an
ostler, with one eye, held the carriage-door; and into that carriage,
with her back to me, was entering the graceful figure of a lady in a
riding-habit; a taper little foot, in the neatest of boots and—what
shall I call them?—leg-sleeves? receding from the top-step, being the
only feature, if I may be allowed the expression, distinguishable
amongst that dark mass of folds and draperies.
There was a fatality about it! The thing was obviously in the hands of
Destiny. The door shut-to with a bang. A pretty little gloved hand drew
up the window, and the fly drove off with Miss Merlin inside, on the
road to Castle Cropper.
Some men are the favourites of Fortune! others, the butts and targets of
Fate. I endeavour at all times to bear my reverses with a sulky
equanimity. I retired accordingly, to derive what consolation I could
from an elaborate and protracted breakfast by a good fire, and then
proceeded into the bar to smoke.
In these ingenious days one cannot but be struck with the many devices
that exist for the discovery of character. One man finds you out by your
handwriting; another by the tone of your voice; a third judges
exclusively from the shape of your hat; and I have met an extremely
far-seeing foreigner who professed to learn, not your fortune, as the
gipsies do, but your tastes and disposition, from the lines on the palm
of your hand. I think I should myself be inclined to judge of a man’s
style by the sort of carriage he drives. This tendency—superstition—call
it what you will, prompts me to take rather a careful survey of such
vehicles as I come across, and therefore it was that, observing a
strange dog-cart in the inn-yard as I traversed its stones, with an
unlighted cigar in my mouth, I paused to examine more minutely the
unfamiliar equipage.
So slang a turn-out it has not been my fortune to meet with, before or
since. Imagine a very high box, narrowing considerably towards the top,
on which, judging by the cushions and hand-rail, it is fair to conclude
the driver is supposed to sit, perched on a pair of extremely tall
wheels, painted red, and picked out with a staring yellow. Imagine the
shafts of this contrivance, perfectly straight, and of great strength
and substance, nearly on a level with the withers of the unfortunate
animal that has to draw it. Imagine the old machine, wickered, and
lacquered, and glazed, and polished to the most dazzling pitch of
brilliancy, attached to the person of a well-bred, crop-eared,
vicious-looking bay mare, herself wearing as little harness as is
compatible with the fact of her being fastened to anything at all, and
that little of the colour and appearance of untanned leather. Add to
these, a tall whip with a yellow crop, long enough to drive
four-in-hand, a pair of enormous lamps, and a white bull-terrier coiled
on the foot-rug, licking his lips, with a bloodthirsty expression of
countenance, and winking hideously with his ominous and ill-looking
eyes.
The proprietor of such “a trap,” as he would probably call it, could not
fail to be a study in himself. Loud accents from within smote on my ear
as I approached the bar. The shrill tones of Miss Lushington’s voice
predominated, and I gathered from this that she had recovered her
good-humour, which for the last few days had been most indubitably on
the wane. Entering the _sanctum_, I stood for a few seconds behind the
wooden screen—which I have already mentioned, and which admits of a
new-comer, himself unseen, reconnoitring the occupants of the place—to
survey the visitor whose arrival seemed so acceptable to the presiding
goddess. I had ample time to take a good look at him; for, whilst he
discussed a glass of sherry and a bitter (a glass of sherry and a
bitter—and it was not yet eleven o’clock!), both talker and listener
were so engrossed with the former’s jokes and conversation that I had
entered completely unobserved. He was a stout young man of some
five-and-twenty summers, with a whiskerless face, and a ruddy
complexion, not yet destroyed, though obviously impaired, by his habits
of life. His cheek, still healthy in colour, was mottled here and there,
as if the vessels near the surface were kept habitually too full, and he
already began to show that slight puffiness under the eyes, as if he had
put his neckcloth on too tight, which is the certain symptom of a
digestion impaired by the too liberal use of stimulants. Not that _his_
neckcloth was too tight—far from it. Save a scarlet knot halfway down
his throat, secured by a horse-shoe pin, there was nothing to be seen of
the customary wisp of ribbon which has now replaced that obsolete
article of apparel, so concealed was it by the fall of a turned-down
shirt collar, extremely well starched and of a singularly varied and
gaudy pattern, not unlike the papering of a room. His hat, which he had
not thought it necessary to lay aside, was of the “pork-pie” order,
immortalised by Leech—a head-dress extremely trying to a countenance
already divested by Nature of any particular expression, and which, like
many other graceful eccentricities, looks as ill upon a man as it is
becoming to a woman. Coat and waistcoat, I need hardly observe, were of
a checked pattern, to which, for richness of hue and diversity of
colours, the rainbow of heaven is a mere pale and feeble transparency.
Beneath the latter, knickerbockers of course! formed apparently from
some woollen fabric, designed by the inventor for a horse-cloth, and
combining great strength of wear-and-tear, with an unassuming and
neutral tint. Scarlet hose, imparting fulness to the calf, and general
_contour_ to the leg (in this instance much required, the limbs
themselves being of too massive an order for elegance), sprang from the
voluminous superfluities above, and a pair of exceedingly stout
half-boots, much strapped and pieced, and, as it were, tattooed like the
_mocassins_ of a Red Indian, completed this choice and becoming costume.
When I add that a double curb-chain of gold, sustaining a dozen
trinkets, ornamented the wearer’s stomach, and a short pipe, blackened
by unintermitting smoking, graced his mouth, I have done all I can to
convey a representation of the gentleman whom I now found making himself
agreeable to Miss Lushington in the bar, and whom I had no hesitation in
setting down in my own mind as the proprietor of the dog-cart in the
yard.