_Friday._--This has been an eventful day. I thought somehow it would
be so; at all events, the first day's hunting is always an era to
me--so when I came down to breakfast in my riding-habit, and braved
the cold glances of my aunt and the sarcasms of my cousin, I was
prepared for a certain amount of excitement, although, I confess, I
did not bargain for quite so much as I got.
"You'll enjoy yourself to-day, I trust, Miss Coventry," said Aunt
Horsingham, looking as black as thunder.
"Mind you don't get a fall," observed Cousin Amelia with a sneer; but
I cared little for their remarks and remonstrances. White Stockings
was at the door, Cousin John ready to lift me into my saddle, and I
envied no mortal woman on earth, no not our gracious Queen upon the
throne, when I found myself fairly mounted, and jogging gently down
the park in all the delightful anticipation of a good day's sport. I
think I would rather have ridden Brilliant of the two, but John
suggested that the country was cramped and sticky, with small fields
and blind fences. Now, White Stockings is an animal of great
circumspection, and allows no earthly consideration to hurry him. He
is, moreover, as strong as a dray-horse, and as handy, so John
declares, "as a fiddle." To him, therefore, was entrusted the honour
of carrying me on my first appearance with the Heavy-top hounds. The
meet was at no great distance from Dangerfield Hall, and being the
beginning of the season, and a favourite place, there was a
considerable muster of the _élite_ of the county, and a goodly show of
very respectable horses to grace the covert side. As we rode up to the
mounted assemblage, I perceived, by the glance of curiosity, not to
say admiration, directed at myself and White Stockings, that ladies
were unusual visitors in that field, and that the Heavy-top gentlemen
were not prepared to be cut _down_, at all events by _a woman_. Cousin
John seems to know them all and to be a universal favourite.
"Who's the lady, John, my boy?" whispered a fat squire in a purple
garment, with a face to match; "good seat on a horse, eh? rides like a
bird, I'll warrant her." I did not catch John's answer; but the
corpulent sportsman nodded, and smiled, and winked, and wheezed out,
"Lucky dog--pretty cousin--double harness."
I don't know what he meant; but that it was something intensely
ludicrous I gather from his nearly choking with laughter at his own
concluding observation, though John blushed and looked rather like a
fool.
"Who's that girl on the chestnut?" I again heard asked by a
slang-looking man with red whiskers meeting under his chin; "looks
like a larker--I must get introduced to her," added the conceited
brute. How I hated him! If he had ventured to speak to me, I really
think I could have struck him over the face with my riding-whip.
"I told you it would not be long before we met, Miss Coventry," said a
well-known voice beside me; and turning round, I shook hands with
Captain Lovell; and I am ashamed to confess, shook all over into the
bargain. I am always a little nervous the first day of the season. How
well he looked in his red coat and neat appointments, with his
graceful seat upon a horse, and so high-bred, amongst all the country
squires and jolly yeomen that surrounded us! He had more colour too
than when in London, and altogether I thought I had never seen him
looking so handsome. The chestnut with the wicked eye, showing off his
fine shape, now divested of clothing, curvetted and bent to his
rider's hand as if he thoroughly enjoyed that light restraining touch:
the pair looked what the gentlemen call "all over like going," and I
am sure one of them thought so too.
"I saw your horses on their way to Muddlebury yesterday," I at length
found courage to say. "Are you going to hunt all the season with the
Heavy-top?"
"How long do you stay at Dangerfield?" was the counter question from
Frank; "you see I know the name of the place already; I believe I
could find my way now about the Park; very picturesque it is too by
night, Miss Coventry. Do you like music by moonlight?"
"Not if it's played out of tune," I answered with a laugh and a blush;
but just then Squire Haycock, whom I scarcely knew in his hunting
costume, rode up to us, and begged as a personal favour to himself
that we would accompany him to a particular point, from which he could
ensure us a good start if the fox went away--his face becoming scarlet
as he expressed a hope "Miss Coventry would not allow her fondness for
the chase to lead her into unnecessary danger;" whilst Frank looked at
him with a half-amused, half-puzzled expression that seemed to say,
"What a queer creature you are; and what the deuce can that matter to
you?"
I wonder why people always want to oblige you when you don't want to
be obliged; "too civil by half" is much more in the way than "not half
civil enough." So we rode on with Squire Haycock, and took up a
position at the end of the wood that commanded a view of the whole
proceedings, and, as Frank whispered to me, was "the likeliest place
in the world if we wanted to head the fox."
The Heavy-top hounds are an establishment such as, I am given to
understand, is not usually kept in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire,
and other so-called "flying counties." I like to gain all the
information I can--Cousin John calls this thirst for knowledge,
"female curiosity"--and gather from him that the Heavy-top consists of
twenty-two couples of hunting hounds, and that the whole twenty-two
come out three times a week during the season. I don't see why they
shouldn't, I'm sure; they look very fat, and remind me of the otter
hounds poor Uncle Horace used to keep when I was a child. He (that's
my oracle, Cousin John) further adds that they are remarkably
"steady"--which is more than can be said of their huntsman, who is
constantly drunk--and that they consume a vast quantity of "flesh,"
which, far from being a meritorious, appears to me a disgusting
tendency. They are capital "line-hunters," so says John; a
"line-hunter," I imagine, is a hound that keeps snuffing about under
the horses' feet, and must be a most useful auxiliary, when, as is
often the case, the sportsmen are standing on the identical spot where
the fox has crossed. He considers them a very "killing" pack, not in
manners or appearance certainly, but in perseverance and undying
determination. Their huntsman is what is called "one of the old sort."
If this is a correct description, I can only say that "the old sort"
must have worn the brownest and shabbiest of boots, the oldest of
coats, and the greasiest of caps; must have smelt of brandy on all
occasions, and lived in a besotted state of general confusion,
vibrating between "delirium audacious" and "delirium tremens." They
have, however, a certain whip called "Will," who appears to me to do
all the work, and to keep everything right. When old Tippler drinks
himself to death (a casualty which must shortly happen), Will is
pretty sure to succeed him--an event which I fancy will greatly add to
the efficiency of the Heavy-top hounds. To crown all, Frank Lovell
dubs the whole thing "slow;" but I have remarked gentlemen make use of
this epithet to convey their disapproval of that which they cannot
find any positive fault with--just as we ladies call a woman "bad
style" when we have nothing else to say in her disparagement.
"Gone away!" exclaims Squire Haycock, lifting his cap high above his
red head; "yonder he goes! Don't you see him, Miss Coventry, now
whisking under the gate?"
"Forward, forward!" holloas Frank, giving vent to his excitement in
one of those prolonged screams that proclaim how the astonished
sportsman has actually seen the fox with his own eyes. The next
instant he is through the hand-gate at the end of the ride, and rising
in his stirrups, with the wicked chestnut held hard by the head, is
speeding away over the adjoining pasture, alongside of the two or
three couples of leading hounds that have just emerged from the
covert. Ah! we are all forgotten now; women, children, everything is
lost in that first delirious five minutes when the hounds are really
away. Frank was gazing at me a minute ago as if his very life was at
my disposal, and now he is speeding away a field ahead of me, and
don't care whether I break my neck following him or not. But this is
no time for such thoughts as these; the drunken huntsman is sounding
his horn in our rear. Will, the whip, cap in hand, is bringing up the
body of the pack. Squire Haycock holds the gate open for me to pass,
Cousin John goes by me like a flash of lightning; White Stockings with
a loose rein, submits to be kicked along at any pace I like to ask
him. The fence at the end of the field is nothing; I shall go exactly
where Frank did. My blood thrills with ecstasy in my veins: moment of
moments! I have got a capital start, and we are in for a run.
As I sit here in my armchair and dressing-gown, I see the whole
panorama of to-day passing once more before my eyes. I see that dark,
wet, ploughed field, with the white hounds slipping noiselessly over
its furrowed surface. I can almost perceive the fresh, wholesome smell
of the newly-turned earth. I see the ragged, overgrown, straggling
fence at the far end, glistening with morning dew, and green with
formidable briers. I see Frank Lovell's chestnut rising at the weakest
place, the rider sitting well back, his spurs and stirrup-irons
shining in the sun; I see Squire Haycock's square scarlet back, as he
diverges to a well-known corner for some friendly egress; I hear
Cousin John's voice shouting, "Give him his head, Kate!" As White
Stockings and I rapidly approach the leap, my horse relapses of his
own accord into a trot, points his small ears, crashes into the very
middle of the fence, and just as I give myself up for lost, makes a
second bound that settles me once more in the saddle, and lands
gallantly in the adjoining field, Frank looking back over his shoulder
in evident anxiety and admiration, whilst John's cheery voice, with
its "Bravo, Kate!" rings in my delighted ears. We three are now
nearest the hounds, a long strip of rushy meadow-land before us, the
pack streaming along the side of a high, thick hedge that bounds it on
our left; the south wind fans my face and lifts my hair as I slacken
my horse's rein and urge him to his speed. I am alongside of Frank. I
could ride anywhere now, or do anything. I pass him with a smile and a
jest. I am the foremost with the chase. What is ten years of common
life, one's feet upon the fender, compared to five such golden minutes
as these? The hounds stop suddenly, and after scattering and spreading
themselves into the form of an open fan, look up in my face with an
air of mute bewilderment. The huntsman and the field come up, the
gentlemen in a high state of delight and confusion; but Mr. Tippler in
the worst of humours, and muttering as he trots off to a corner of the
meadow with the pack about his horse's heels,--
"Rode 'em slap off the scent--drove 'em to a check--wish she was at
home and abed and asleep, and be d----d to her!"
A grim old lady who has but one eye, and answers to the name of
"Jezebel," has threaded the fence, and proclaims in anything but a
sweet voice to her comrades, that she has discovered the line of our
fox. They join her in an instant, down go their heads in concert, and
away we all speed again, through an open gate, across a wide common,
into a strip of plantation, over a stile and foot-board that leads out
of it, and I find myself once more following Captain Lovell with
Cousin John alongside of me, and all the rest far, far behind. This is
indeed glorious. I should like it to go on till dinnertime. How I hope
we shan't kill the fox!
"Take hold of his head, Kate," says my cousin, whose horse has just
blundered on to his nose through a gap. "Even White Stockings won't
last for ever, and this is going to be something out of the common."
"Forward!" is my reply as I point with my whip towards the lessening
pack, now a whole field ahead of us. "Forward!" If we hadn't been
going such a pace I could have sung for joy.
There is a line of pollarded willow trees down in that hollow, and the
hounds have already left these behind them; they are rising the
opposite ground. Again Frank Lovell looks anxiously back at me, but
makes no sign.
"We _must_ have it, Kate!" says John; "there's your best place, under
the tree; send him at it as hard as he can lay legs to the ground."
I ply my whip and loosen my reins in vain. White Stockings stops dead
short, and lowers his nose to the water, as if he wanted to drink; all
of a sudden the stream is behind me, and with a flounder and a
struggle we are safe over the brook. Not so Cousin John; I see him on
his legs on the bank, with his horse's head lying helplessly between
his feet, the rest of that valuable animal being completely submerged.
"Go along, Kate!" he shouts encouragingly, and again I speed after
Frank Lovell, who is by this time nearly a quarter of a mile ahead of
me, and at least that distance behind the hounds. White Stockings is
going very pleasantly, but the ground is now entirely on the rise, and
he indulges occasionally in a trot without any hint on my part; the
fences fortunately get weaker and weaker; the fields are covered with
stones, and are light, good galloping enough, but the rise gets
steeper every yard; round hills are closing in about us; we are now on
the Downs, and the pack is still fleeting ahead, like a body of hounds
in a dream, every moment increasing their distance from us, and making
them more and more indistinct. Frank Lovell disappears over the brow
of that hill, and I urge White Stockings to overtake my only
companion. He don't seem to go much faster for all that. I strike him
once or twice with my light riding-whip; I shake my reins, and he
comes back into a trot; I rise in my stirrup and rouse his energies in
every way I can think of. I am afraid he must be ill, the trot
degenerates to a jog, a walk; he carries his head further out from him
than is his wont, and treats curb and snaffle with a like disregard
and callousness of mouth. Now he stops altogether, and catching a side
view of his head his eye appears to me more prominent than usual, and
the whole animal seems changed, till I can hardly fancy it is my own
horse. I get a little frightened now, and look round for assistance. I
am quite alone. Hounds, horsemen, all have disappeared; the wide,
dreary, solitary Downs stretch around me, and I begin to have
misgivings as to how I am to get back to Dangerfield Hall. Cousin John
has explained it all to me since.
"Nothing could be simpler, Kate," said he this evening when I handed
him his tea; "you _stopped your horse_. If ladies _will_ go in front
with a loose rein for five-and-forty minutes, 'riding jealous' of such
a first-rate performer as Frank Lovell, it is not an unlikely thing to
happen. If you could have lasted ten minutes longer, you would have
seen them kill their fox. Frank was the only one there, but he assures
me he could not have gone another hundred yards. Never mind, Kate,
better luck next time!"
Well, to return to my day. After a while White Stockings began to
recover himself. I'm sure I didn't know what to do with him. I got
off, and loosened his girths as well as I could, and turned his head
to the wind, and wiped his poor nose with my pocket-handkerchief. I
hadn't any eau-de-Cologne, and if I had it might not have done him
much good. At last he got better, and I got on again (all my life I've
been used to mounting and dismounting without assistance). Thinking
downhill must be the way home, downhill I turned him, and proceeded
slowly on, now running over in my own mind the glorious hour I had
just spent, now wondering whether I should be lost and have to sleep
amongst the Downs; and anon coming back to the old subject, and
resolving that hunting was the only thing to live for, and that for
the future I would devote my whole time and energies to that pursuit.
At last I got into a steep chalky lane, and at a turn a little farther
on espied to my great relief a red-coated back jogging leisurely home.
White Stockings pricked his ears and mended his pace, so I soon
overtook the returning sportsman, who proved to be no other than
Squire Haycock, thrown out like the rest of the Heavy-top gentlemen,
and only too happy to take care of me, and show me the shortest way
(eleven miles as the crow flies) back to Dangerfield Hall.
We jogged on amicably enough, the Squire complimenting me much on my
prowess, and not half so shy as usual--very often the case with a
diffident man when on horseback. We were forced to go very slow, both
our horses being pretty well tired; and to make matters better, we
were caught in a tremendous hailstorm about two miles from home, just
as it was getting dark, and close to the spot where our respective
roads diverged. I could not possibly miss mine, as it was perfectly
straight. Ah! that hailstorm has a deal to answer for. We were forced
to turn through a hand-gate, and take shelter in a friendly wood. What
a ridiculous position, pitch dark, pelting with rain, an elderly
gentleman and a young lady on horseback under a fir tree. The Squire
had been getting more incoherent for some time; I couldn't think what
he was driving at.
"You like our country, Miss Coventry; fine climate, excellent soil,
nice and dry for ladies?"
I willingly subscribed to all these advantages.
"Good neighbourhood," added the Squire; "capital hunting, charming
rides, wonderful scenery for sketching. Do you think you could live in
this part of the world?"
I thought I could if I was to try.
"You expressed your approbation of my house, Miss Coventry," the
Squire proceeded, with his hand on my horse's neck; "do you think--I
mean--should you consider--or rather I should say, is there any
alteration you would suggest--anything in my power--if you would
condescend to ride over any afternoon; may I consider you will so far
favour me?"
I said "I should be delighted, but that it had left off raining, and
it was time for us to get home."
"One word, Miss Coventry," pleaded the Squire with a shaking voice.
"Have I your permission to call upon Lady Horsingham to-morrow?"
I said I thought my aunt would be at home, and expressed my conviction
that she would be delighted to see him, and I wished him good-bye.
"Good-bye, Miss Coventry, good-bye," said the Squire, shaking hands
with a squeeze that crushed my favourite ring into my prettiest
finger; "you have made me _the happiest of men_--good-bye!"
I saw it all in an instant, just as I see it now. The Squire means to
propose for me to-morrow, and he thinks I have accepted him. What
_shall_ I do? _Mrs. Haycock_--Kate Haycock--Catherine Haycock. No, I
can't make it look well, write it how I will; and then, to vow never
to think of any one else; I suppose I mightn't even _speak_ to Frank.
Never, no, never; but what a scrape I have got into, and how I wish
to-morrow was over!