N ext day his lordship, who was of the nice old Andlesey school
of dressers, was to be seen in regular St. James’s Street attire,
viz. a bright blue coat with gilt buttons, a light blue scarf, a
buff vest with fawn-coloured leathers, and brass heel spurs,
capering on a long-tailed silver dun, attended by a diminutive
rosy-cheeked boy—known in the stables as Cupid-without-Wings—on a
bay.
He was going to see a pup he had at walk at Freestone Banks, of
which the reader will remember Dicky had spoken approvingly on a
previous day; and the morning being fine and sunny, his lordship
took the bridle-road over Ashley Downs, and along the range of
undulating Heathmoor Hills, as well for the purpose of enjoying
the breeze as of seeing what was passing in the vale below. So he
tit-up’d and tit-up’d away, over the sound green sward, on his
flowing-tailed steed, his keen far-seeing eye raking all the
roads as he went. There seemed to be nothing stirring but heavy
crushing waggons, with doctor’s gigs and country carts, and here
and there a slow-moving steed of the grand order of agriculture.
When, however, he got to the broken stony ground where all the
independent hill tracks join in common union to effect the
descent into the vale, his hack pricked his ears, and looking
a-head to the turn of the lane into which the tracks ultimately
resolved themselves, his lordship first saw a fluttering,
light-tipped feather, and then the whole figure of a horsewoman,
emerge from the concealing hedge as it were on to the open space
beyond. Miss, too, had been on the hills, as the Earl might have
seen by her horse’s imprints, if he had not been too busy looking
abroad; and she had just had time to effect the descent as he
approached. She was now sauntering along as unconcernedly as if
there was nought but herself and her horse in the world. His
lordship started when he saw her, and a crimson flush suffused
his healthy cheeks as he drew his reins, and felt his hack gently
with his spur to induce him to use a little more expedition down
the hill. Cupid-without-Wings put on also, to open the rickety
gate at the bottom, and his lordship telling him, as he passed
through, to “shut it gently,” pressed on at a well-in-hand trot,
which he could ease down to a walk as he came near the object of
his pursuit. Miss’s horse heard footsteps coming and looked
round, but she pursued the even tenour of her way apparently
indifferent to everything—even to a garotting. His lordship,
however, was not to be daunted by any such coolness; so stealing
quietly alongside of her, he raised his hat respectfully, and
asked, in his mildest, blandest tone, if she had “seen a man with
a hound in a string?”
“_Hound! me! see!_” exclaimed Miss de Glancey, with a well
feigned start of astonishment. “_No, sir, I have not,_” continued
she haughtily, as if recovering herself, and offended by the
inquiry.
“I’m afraid my hounds startled your horse the other day,”
observed his lordship, half inclined to think she didn’t know
him.
“Oh, no, they didn’t,” replied she with an upward curl of her
pretty lip; “my horse is not so easily startled as that; are you,
Cock Robin?” asked she, leaning forward to pat him.
Cock Robin replied by laying back his ears, and taking a snatch
at his lordship’s hack’s silver mane, which afforded him an
opportunity of observing that Cock Robin was not very sociable.
“_Not with strangers_,” pouted Miss de Glancey, with a flash of
her bright hazel eyes. So saying, she touched her horse lightly
with her gold-mounted whip, and in an instant she was careering
away, leaving his lordship to the care of the now grinning
Cupid-without-Wings.
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And thus the mynx held the sprightly youth in tow, till she
nearly drove him mad, not missing any opportunity of meeting him,
but never giving him too much of her company, and always pouting
at the suggestion of _her_ marrying a “_mere fox-hunter._” The
whole thing, of course, furnished conversation for the gossips,
and Mr. Boggledike, as in duty bound, reported what he heard. She
puzzled his lordship more than any lady he had ever had to do
with, and though he often resolved to strike and be free, he had
only to meet her again to go home more subjugated than ever. And
so what between Miss de Glancey out of doors and Mrs. Moffatt in,
he began to have a very unpleasant time of it. His hat had so
long covered his family, that he hardly knew how to set about
obtaining his own consent to marry; and yet he felt that he ought
to marry if it was only to spite his odious heir—_old_ General
Binks; for his lordship called him old though the General was ten
years younger than himself; but still he would like to look about
him a little longer. What he would now wish to do would be to
keep Miss de Glancey in the country, for he felt interested in
her, and thought she would be ornamental to the pack. Moreover,
he liked all that was handsome, _piquant_, and gay, and to be
joked about the Featherbedfordshire witches when he went to town.
So he resolved himself into a committee of ways and means, to
consider how the object was to be effected, without surrendering
himself. That must be the last resource at all events, thought
he.
Now upon his lordship’s vast estates was a most unmitigated
block-head called Imperial John, from his growing one of those
chin appendages. His real name was Hybrid—John Hybrid, of Barley
Hill Farm; but his handsome sister, “Imperial Jane,” as the wags
called her, having attracted his lordship’s attention, to the
danger as it was thought of old Binks, on leaving her furnishing
seminary at Turnham Green, John had been taken by the hand, which
caused him to lose his head, and make him set up for what he
called “a gent.” He built a lodge and a portico to Barley Hill
Farm, rough cast, and put a pine roof on to the house, and then
advertised in the “Featherbedfordshire Gazette,” that letters and
papers were for the future to be addressed to John Hybrid,
Esquire, Barley Hill Hall, and not Farm as they had hitherto
been. And having done so much for the place, John next revised
his own person, which, though not unsightly, was coarse, and a
long way off looking anything like that of a gentleman. He first
started the imperial aforesaid, and not being laughed at as much
as he expected for that, he was emboldened to order a red coat
for the then approaching season. Mounting the pink is a critical
thing, for if a man does not land in the front rank they will not
admit him again into the rear, and he remains a sort of red bat
for the rest of his life,—neither a gentleman nor a farmer.
John, however, feeling that he had his lordship’s countenance,
went boldly at it, and the first day of the season before that
with which we are dealing, found him with his stomach buttoned
consequentially up in a spic and span scarlet with fancy buttons,
looking as bumptious as a man with a large balance at his
banker’s. He sat bolt upright, holding his whip like a
field-marshal’s bâton, on his ill-groomed horse, with a
tight-bearing rein chucking the Imperial chin well in the air,
and a sort of half-defiant “you’d better not laugh at me” look.
And John was always proud to break a fence, or turn a hound, or
hold a horse, or do anything his lordship bid him, and became a
sort of hunting aide-de-camp to the great man. He was a boasting,
bragging fool, always talking about m-o-y hall, and m-o-y lodge,
and m-o-y plate in m-o-y drawing-room, for he had not discovered
that plate was the appendage of a dining-room, and altogether he
was very magnificent.
Imperial Jane kept old Binks on the fret for some time, until
another of his lordship’s tenants, young Fred Poppyfield,
becoming enamoured of her charms, and perhaps wishing to ride in
scarlet too, sought her fair hand, whereupon his lordship, acting
with his usual munificence, set them up on a farm at so low a
rent that it acquired the name of Gift Hall Farm. This
arrangement set Barley Hall free so far as the petticoats were
concerned, and his lordship little knowing how well she was “up”
in the country, thought this great gouk of a farmer, with his
plate in his drawing-room, might come over the accomplished Miss
de Glancey,—the lady who sneered at himself as “a mere
fox-hunter.” And the wicked monkey favoured the delusion, which
she saw through the moment his lordship brought the pompous
egotist up at Newington Gorse, and begged to be allowed to
introduce his friend, Mr Hybrid, and she inwardly resolved to
give Mr. Hybrid a benefit. Forsaking his lordship therefore
entirely, she put forth her most seductive allurements at
Imperial John, talked most amazingly to him, rode over whatever
he recommended, and seemed quite smitten with him.
And John, who used to boast that somehow the “gals couldn’t
withstand him,” was so satisfied with his success, that he
presently blundered out an offer, when Miss de Glancey, having
led him out to the extreme length of his tether, gave such a
start and shudder of astonishment as Fanny Kemble, or Mrs.
Siddons herself, might have envied.
“O, Mr. Hybrid! O, Mr. Hybrid!” gasped she, opening wide her
intelligent eyes, as if she had but just discovered his meaning.
“O, Mr. Hybrid!” exclaimed she for the third time,
“_you—you—you_,” and turning aside as if to conceal her emotion,
she buried her face in her laced-fringed, richly-cyphered
kerchief.
John, who was rather put out by some women who were watching him
from the adjoining turnip-field, construing all this into the
usual misfortune of the ladies not being able to withstand him,
returned to the charge as soon as he got out of their hearing,
when he was suddenly brought up by such a withering “_Si-r-r-r!
do you mean to insult me?_” coupled with a look that nearly
started the basket-buttons of his green cut-away, and convinced
him that Miss de Glancey, at all events, could withstand him. So
his Majesty slunk off, consoling himself with the reflection,
that riding-habits covered a multitude of sins, and that if he
was not much mistaken, she would want a deal of oil-cake, or cod
liver oil, or summut o’ that sort, afore she was fit to show.
And the next time Miss met my lord (which, of course, she did by
accident), she pouted and frowned at the “mere fox-hunter,” and
intimated her intention of leaving the country—going home to her
mamma, in fact.
It was just at this juncture that Mrs. Pringle’s letter arrived,
and his lordship’s mind being distracted between love on his own
account, dread of matrimony, and dislike of old Binks, he caught
at what he would in general have stormed at, and wrote to say
that he should begin hunting the first Monday in November, and if
Mrs. Pringle’s son would come down a day or two before, he would
“put him up” (which meant mount him), and “do for him” (which
meant board and lodge him), all, in fact, that Mrs. Pringle could
desire. And his lordship inwardly hoped that Mr. Pringle might be
more to Miss de Glancey’s liking than his Imperial Highness had
proved. At all events, he felt it was but a simple act of justice
to himself to try. Let us now return to Curtain Crescent.