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HE worst of these _dejeuners à la fourchette_, and also of
luncheons, is, that they waste the day, and then send men out
half-wild to ride over the hounds or whatever else comes in their
way. The greatest funkers, too, are oftentimes the boldest under
the influence of false courage; so that the chances of mischief
are considerably increased. The mounted Champagne bottle smoking
a cigar, at page 71, is a good illustration of what we mean. We
doubt not Mr. Longneck was very forward in that run.
All our Ivy Tower party were more or less primed, and even old
Wotherspoon felt as if he could ride. Billy, too, mounted the
gallant grey without his usual nervous misgivings, and trotted
along between the Major and Rintoul with an easy Hyde Park-ish
sort of air. Rintonl had intimated that he thought they would
find a hare on Mr. Merryweather’s farm at Swayland, and now led
them there by the fields, involving two or three little
obstacles—a wattled hurdle among the rest—which they all charged
like men of resolution. The hurdle wasn’t knocked over till the
dogs’-meatmen came to it.
Arrived at Swayland, the field quickly dispersed, each on his own
separate hare-seeking speculation, one man fancying a fallow,
another a pasture: Rintonl reserving the high hedge near the Mill
bridle-road, out of which he had seen more than one whipped in
his time. So they scattered themselves over the country, flipping
and flopping all the tufts ard likely places, aided by the
foot-people with their sticks, and their pitchings and tossings
of stones into bushes and hollows, and other tempting-looking
retreats.
The hounds, too, ranged far and wide, examining critically each
likely haunt, pondering on spots where they thought she had been,
but which would not exactly justify a challenge.
While they were all thus busily employed, Rintoul’s shallow hat
in the air intimated that the longed-for object was discerned,
causing each man to get his horse by the head, and the
foot-people to scramble towards him, looking anxiously forward
and hurriedly back, lest any of the riders should be over them.
Rintoul had put her away, and she was now travelling and
stopping, and travelling and stopping, listening and wondering
what was the matter. She had been coursed before but never
hunted, and this seemed a different sort of proceeding.
The terror-striking notes of the hounds, as they pounced upon her
empty form, with the twang of the horn and the cheers of the
sportsmen urging them on, now caused her to start; and, laying
back her long ears, she scuttled away over Bradfield Green and up
Ridge Hill as hard as ever she could lay legs to the ground.
“Come along, Mr. Pringle! come along, Mr. Pringle!” cried the
excited Major, spurring up, adjusting his whip as if he was going
to charge into a solid square of infantry. He then popped through
an open gate on the left.
The bustling beauties of hounds had now fallen into their
established order of precedence, Lovely and Lilter contending for
the lead, with Bustler and Bracelet, and Ruffler and Chaunter,
and Ruin and Restless, and Dauntless and Driver, and Dancer and
Flaunter and others striving after, some giving tongue because
they felt the scent, others, because the foremost gave it.—So
they went truthfully up the green and over the hill, a gap, a
gate, and a lane serving the bustling horsemen.
The vale below was not quite so inviting to our “green linnets”
as the country they had come from, the fields being small, with
the fences as irregular as the counties appear on a map of
England. There was none of that orderly squaring up and
uniformity of size, that enables a roadster to trace the line of
communication by gates through the country.—All was zigzag and
rough, indicating plenty of blackthorns and briers to tear out
their eyes. However, the Champagne was sufficiently alive in our
sportsmen to prevent any unbecoming expression of fear, though
there was a general looking about to see who was best acquainted
with the country. Rintoul was now out of his district, and it
required a man well up in the line to work them satisfactorily,
that is to say, to keep them in their saddles, neither shooting
them over their horses’ heads nor swishing them over their tails.
Our friend Billy worked away on the grey, thinking, if anything,
he liked him better than the bay. He even ventured to spur him.
The merry pack now swing musically down the steep hill, the
chorus increasing as they reach the greener regions below. The
fatties, and funkers, and ticklish forelegged ones, begin
who-a-ing and g-e-e-ntly-ing to their screws, holding on by the
pommels and cantrells, and keeping their nags’ heads as straight
as they can. Old Wotherspoon alone gets off and leads down. He’s
afraid of his horse slipping upon its haunches. The sight of him
doing so emboldens our Billy, who goes resolutely on, and
incautiously dropping his hand too soon, the grey shot away with
an impetus that caused him to cannon off Broadfurrow and the
Major and pocket himself in the ditch at the bottom of the hill.
Great was the uproar! The Richest Commoner in England was in
danger! Ten thousand a-year in jeopardy! “Throw yourself off!”
“Get clear of him!”
“Keep hold of him!”
“Mind he doesn’t strike ye!” resounded from all parts, as first
the horse’s head went up, and then his tail, and then his head
again, in his efforts to extricate himself.
At length Billy, seizing a favourable opportunity, threw himself
off on the green sward, and, ere he could rise, the horse, making
a desperate plunge, got out, and went staring away with his head
in the air, looking first to the right and then to the left, as
the dangling reins kept checking and catching him.
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“Look sharp or you’ll loss him!” now cried old Duffield, as after
an ineffectual snatch of the reins by a passing countryman, the
horse ducked his head and went kicking and wriggling and
frolicking away to the left, regardless of the tempting cry of
the hounds.
The pace, of course, was too good for assistance—and our friend
and the field were presently far asunder.
Whatever sport the hounds had—and of course they would have a
clipper—we can answer for it Mr. Pringle had a capital run; for
his horse led him a pretty Will-o’-the-wisp sort of dance,
tempting him on and on by stopping to eat whenever his rider—or
late rider, rather—seemed inclined to give up the chase, thus
deluding him from field to lane and from lane to field until our
hero was fairly exhausted.—Many were the rushes and dashes and
ventures made at him by hedgers and ditchers and drainers, but he
evaded them all by laying back his ears and turning the battery
of his heels for the contemplation, as if to give them the choice
of a bite or a kick.
At length he turned up the depths of the well-known Love Lane,
with its paved _trottoir_, for the damsels of the adjoining
hamlets of East and West Woodhay to come dry-shod to the
gossip-shop of the well; and here, dressed in the
almost-forgotten blue boddice and red petticoat of former days,
stood pretty Nancy Bell, talking matrimonially to Giles Bacon,
who had brought his team to a stand-still on the higher ground of
the adjoining hedge, on the field above.
Hearing the clatter of hoofs, as the grey tried first the hard
and then the soft of the lane, Bacon looked that way; and seeing
a loose horse he jumped bodily into the lane, extending his arms
and his legs and his eyes and his mouth in a way that was very
well calculated to stop even a bolder animal than a horse. He
became a perfect barrier. The grey drew up with an indignant
snort and a stamp of his foot, and turning short round he trotted
back, encountering in due time his agitated and indignant master,
who had long been vowing what a trimming he would give him when
he caught him. Seeing Billy in a hurry,—for animals are very good
judges of mischief, as witness an old cock how he ducks when one
picks up a stone,—seeing Billy in a hurry we say, the horse again
wheeled about, and returned with more leisurely steps towards his
first opponent. Bacon and Nancy were now standing together in the
lane; and being more pleasantly occupied than thinking about
loose horses, they just stood quietly and let him come towards
them, when Giles’s soothing w-ho-o-ays and matter-of-course style
beguiled the horse into being caught.
Billy presently came shuffling up, perspiring profusely, with his
feet encumbered with mud, and stamping the thick of it off while
he answered Bacon’s question as to “hoo it happened,” and so on,
in the grumpy sort of way a man does who has lost his horse, he
presented him with a shilling, and remounting, rode off, after a
very fine run of at least twenty minutes.
The first thing our friend did when he got out of sight of Giles
Bacon and Nancy, was to give his horse a good rap over the head
with his whip for its impudent stupidity in running away, causing
him to duck his head and shake it, as if he had got a pea or a
flea in his ear.—He then began wheeling round and round, like a
dog wanting to lie down, much to Billy’s alarm, for he didn’t
wish for any more nonsense. That performance over, he again began
ducking and shaking his head, and then went moodily on, as if
indifferent to consequences. Billy wished he mightn’t have hit
him so hard.
When he got home, he mentioned the horse’s extraordinary
proceedings to the Major, who, being a bit of a vet. and a strong
suspector of Sir Moses’ generosity to boot, immediately set it
down to the right cause—megrims—and advised Billy to return him
forthwith, intimating that Sir Moses was not altogether the thing
in the matter of horses; but our friend, who kept the blow with
the whip to himself, thought he had better wait a day or two and
see if the attack would go off.—In this view he was upheld by
Jack Rogers, who thought his old recipe, “leetle drop gin,” would
set him all right, and proceeded to administer it to himself
accordingly. And the horse improved so much that he soon seemed
himself again, whereupon Billy, recollecting Sir Moses’s
strenuous injunctions to give him the refusal of him if ever he
wanted to part with him, now addressed him the following letter:—
“Yammerton Grange.
“Dear Sir Moses,
_“As I find I must return to town immediately after the hunt
ball, to which you were so good as invite me, and as the horse
you were so good as give me would be of no use to me there, I
write, in compliance with my promise to offer him back to you if
ever I wanted to part with him, to say that he will be quite at
your service after our next day’s hunting, or before if you like,
as I dare say the Major will mount me if I require it. He is a
very nice horse, and I feel extremely obliged for your very
handsome intentions with regard to him, which, under other
circumstances, I should have been glad to accept. Circumstanced
as I am, however, he would be wasted upon me, and will be much
better back in your stud. _
“I will, therefore, send him over on hearing from you; and you
can either put my I.O.U. in the fire, or enclose it to me by the
Post.
“Again thanking you for your very generous offer, and hoping you
are having good sport, I beg to subscribe myself,
“Dear Sir Moses,
“Yours very truly,
“Wm. PRINGLE
“To Sir Moses Mainchance, Bart.,
“Pangburn Park.”
And having sealed it with the great seal of state, he handed it
to Rougier to give to the postman, without telling his host what
he had done.
The next post brought the following answer:—
“_Many, very many thanks to you, my dear Pringle, for your kind
recollection of me with regard to the grey, which I assure you
stamps you in my opinion as a most accurate and excellent young
man.—You are quite right in your estimate of my opinion of the
horse; indeed, if I had not considered him something very far out
of the common way, I should not have put him into your hands; but
knowing him to be as good as he’s handsome, I had very great
satisfaction in placing him with you, as well on your own account
as from your being the nephew of my old and excellent friend and
brother baronet, Sir Jonathan Pringle—to whom I beg you to make
my best regards when you write._
_“Even were it not so, however, I should be precluded from
accepting your kind and considerate offer for only yesterday I
sent Wetun into Doubleimupshire, to bring home a horse I’ve
bought of Tom Toweler, on Paul Straddler’s recommendation, being,
as I tell Paul, the last I’ll ever buy on his judgment, unless he
turns out a trump, as he has let me in for some very bad ones._
_“But, my dear Pringle, ain’t you doing yourself a positive
injustice in saying that you would have no use for the grey in
town? Town, my dear fellow, is the very place for a horse of that
colour, figure, and pretension; and a very few turns in the Park,
with you on his back, before that best of all pennyworths, the
chair-sitting swells, might land you in the highest ranks of the
aristocracy—unless, indeed, you are booked elsewhere, of which,
perhaps, I have no business to inquire._
_“I may, however, as a general hint, observe to the nephew of my
old friend, that the Hit-im and Hold-imshire Mammas don’t stand
any nonsense, so you will do well to be on your guard. No; take
my advice, my dear fellow, and ride that horse in town.—It will
only be sending him to Tat.‘s if you tire of him there, and if it
will in any way conduce to your peace of mind, and get rid of any
high-minded feeling of obligation, you can hand me over whatever
you get for him beyond the £50 —And that reminds me, as life is
uncertain, and it is well to do everything regularly, I’ll send
my agent, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, over with your I.O.U., and you can
give me a bill at your own date—say two or three months—instead,
and that will make us all right and square, and, I hope, help to
maintain the truth of the old adage, that short reckonings make
long friends,—which I assure you is a very excellent one._
_“And now, having exhausted both my paper and subject, I shall
conclude with repeating my due appreciation of your kind
recollection of my wishes; and with best remembrances to your
host and hostess, not forgetting their beautiful daughters, whom
I hope to see in full feather at the ball, I remain,_
_“My dear Pringle._
_“Very truly and sincerely, yours,_
_“Moses Mainchance._
_“To Wm. Pringle”_
We need scarcely add that Mr. Mordecai Nathan followed quickly on
the heels of the letter, and that the I. 0. U. became a
short-winded bill of exchange, thus saddling our friend
permanently with the gallant grey. And when Major Yammerton heard
the result, all the consolation Billy got from him was, “_I told
you so_,” meaning that he ought to have taken his advice, and
returned the horse as unsound.
With this episode about the horse, let us return to Pangburn
Park.