“We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds, and echo in conjunction.”
Will Sykes was designed by nature for a huntsman. With a short stature
and wiry frame, he possessed activity, indomitable courage, patience,
and judgment. His voice, too, seemed to come from his heart, as he
cheered with lusty lungs; and his strong grey eyes encompassed a whole
parish, when he threw them forward for a view. Good humour sat upon his
lip, and there was a great secret in his possession, of being capable
of pleasing everybody without any apparent effort. Proud--perhaps a
little vain--was our Will of his exterior; but then there might be
sufficient cause; for although his short-cropped hair was grizzled
and frosted by time, and a few wrinkles--albeit the joint effects of
laughter and age--were stamped on his ruddy cheeks, few could boast of
a larger circle of admirers. Will could never pass through a village,
in pink and boots, but old women and young--but more especially the
young--and mothers and maids flocked to their cottage doors and windows
to exchange nods and friendly greetings with him. Ladies, too, of the
first degree acknowledged his polite lift of the cap with friendly
smiles, and, at convenient seasons, inquired after the health of Mrs.
Sykes, and took quite an interest in sundry other of his domesticities
and household economy. And was the huntsman’s better half--the plump,
the prim, the comely Mrs. Sykes--jealous of these attentions? By
no means. That excellent and discriminating person considered that
the favour in which Will was held by the gentle and simple might
be ascribed to her tactics and general measures of expediency; and
popularity, she had cogent reasons for supposing, had greatly to do
with the liberal capping so invariably bestowed upon the huntsman,
whenever his right and title to the gratuity accrued. Worthy indeed
is the care to be recorded with which the worthy dame bleached and
starched the cravat, folded and tied without a crease, around Will’s
neck. The white cords, too, stained as they have been in many a run,
with the mud flying in showers over them, are spotless, and without a
speck to note the wear and tear of bygone seasons. His tops also bore
evidence of a division of Mrs. Sykes’s accomplishments. Scratched and
rubbed, it is true, they were; but no erasible mark was permitted to
remain. His spurs, too, glittered again; and in short, “no baron or
squire, or knight of the shire,” had greater attention paid to his
toilet than had our huntsman.
“Personal appearance,” observed Mrs. Sykes to Will, one evening,
sitting in a cozy corner of his parlour, in a dreamy, winking, blinking
state, lulled by the influence of a blazing yule log--“personal
appearance,” repeated she, somewhat louder, “is necessary for personal
respect; and unless we look as if we respected ourselves, it’s
unreasonable to suppose that other people will go for to respect us.
We must best know,” continued she, “our own in’ards; and if we show,
by our out’ards, that they’re all gammon and bacon, rest assured they
won’t pass as the _best_ of chitlins.”
And was it for this, then--this worldly object--that Mrs. Sykes might
be seen on every succeeding Sunday, volume in hand, walking with
stately and measured tread along the path leading to the gray-mossed
and ivy-twined church? Was it for this that the ribbed silk dress
and most treasured bonnet were donned on the seventh day, when the
likelihood was great of many eyes beholding them? Was it for this that,
from the bright buckle in her shoe to the topmost ribbon stuck jauntily
to flutter in the breeze, Mrs. Sykes evinced such elaborate taste and
dainty care? Mrs. Sykes, like countless hosts of her betters, would
have been justly indignant had such prying interrogatories been put to
her for solution, however blandly they might have been effected; and
as there is no confession on her part, and no justifiable ground for
speculation in the replies, they must remain unanswered to the end of
time.
Tom Holt, the first whipper-in, and consequently second in command, was
a very different _genus homo_ to our huntsman. As may already have
been learned from his expressed opinions and sentiments, he possessed
strange quirks and notions, and, to use his own graphic description of
his imaginary pedigree, might have been “a cross between a bull-dog
and a flat iron.” Much nice sophism might be used to support the
poetical origin of Tom Holt; but if volumes were written to define his
allegory more clearly, the end could not be more satisfactorily arrived
at than by briefly saying, “it can far more easily be conceived than
described.” Tom was a reflective man; he could not see an infant in its
mother’s arms without the endeavour to picture to his vivid imagination
how it would look when blear-eyed with age. A piece of thistle-down,
whirling here and there, now catching in a bramble, and then skimming
along in its varied, uncertain course, would make him think of “cause
and effect” for an hour. A dew-drop, a feather in the air, a film of
gossamer, often set Tom Holt “a-thinking” for the livelong day. He was
a dreamer, and had more strange fantasies, with eyes wide and staring
open, than a thousand such will-o’-the wisps fanned by the fairies’
midwife, Queen Mab. And yet Tom Holt, although his face was pale and
thin, and his dark hazel eyes always bore a serious look, enjoyed right
heartily his duties, and all thereunto pertaining. He studied the
attributes and affections of the animals with which he had to deal,
and took little less delight in the cunning and subtle tricks of the
crafty fox than he did in the sagacity of his darling hounds hunting
him. Like many enthusiasts, however, Tom went very strange lengths upon
occasions; and it was generally reported in a wide ring in the country,
that he asserted, when “much wrought,” at the Duck and Gridiron, upon
a memorable occasion, “that a spider might teach a weaver more in one
hour, than he could learn in a seven years’ apprenticeship.” Be this
as it may, there is no doubt whatever that, upon Tom’s recovering
consciousness from a stunning fall, causing the blood to flow from his
nose profusely, he remarked, brushing a few of the sanguinary drops
from the tip of it, that, “he did not see why they shouldn’t be blue
instead of red.” This is an ascertained and acknowledged fact, and,
without further detail of his oddities and eccentricities, Tom Holt
must be left, like the cork against the tide, to work his own way.
It appears indispensable--stale as the necessity may prove--to
introduce the persons spoken of previously to relating the scenes
and incidents in which they may assist. The second whip, Ned Adams,
therefore, must not be permitted to escape notice altogether, like
one of immaterial consequence and account; and although slight will
be the sketch of his virtues, vices, and tendencies, still, to render
that which is justly due is but to yield the very bare bones of common
honesty. As with the greater number of second whippers-in, Ned was a
connexion of the huntsman, and had the right--needlessly, be it said,
on the maternal side--to call him “uncle,” Ned’s uncle embraced divers
opportune occasions to impress upon his nephew’s mind the onerous duty
and essential service which may be performed by a whipper-in if he
will only _keep in his place_. “But,” observed the huntsman, “most of
you hot-blooded young ’uns are so eager to get for’ard, that ye forget
the first principles of what you ought to do, and instead of keeping
behind, to bring on the tail hounds, hang me if you don’t jam to the
sterns of the leading ones.”
“It’s more than mortal patience can endure,” replied Ned, by way of
justification, “to stick in the rear on some occasions.”
“But your duty, Ned,” seriously rejoined Will Sykes, “won’t bear
excuse. It’s as much your place to be behind hounds as it is mine to be
with them. In my judgment,” continued he, “there are but these couple
of proper causes for a whip to be seen for’ard:--when hounds are to be
stopped, and when ordered to clap to an open earth or hold a fox in
covert, if not on such terms that we can run him.”
“But you seldom give me the chance of doing the last,” returned his
nephew.
“And the less the better,” added Will Sykes. “It’s too much like
mobbing a fox to please me; but still there are occasions, as in
lifting hounds, to justify us in so doing. If the scent be cold and the
fox a long way ahead, so that hounds can’t hunt, we must, in order to
have any chance, get them nearer to him, and then it is that a whip may
get for’ard to the point and head him in.”
“But this only applies to a fresh fox, I suppose?” said Ned Adams.
“To be sure,” responded his uncle, “unless, indeed, he’s a dying
one: for then, as he can show no more sport, the sooner he is killed
the better. I’m one of the last men living,” continued the huntsman,
emphatically, “to kill a fox by either lifting hounds or any other
means, except by a fair find--a fair rattle from scent to view, and
pulling him down when he can’t run any farther. But it isn’t every day
that we can have such cream of sport; and for any one to say that it’s
unjustifiable to lift or assist hounds to run when they can’t hunt, or
that we should never hold a fox in covert, is to acknowledge himself to
be too tame a hand for a killer of foxes.”
“Nobody will accuse you of being that,” rejoined his nephew, laughing,
“if they count the noses on the kennel-door at the end of each season.”
“I hope not,” returned the huntsman, seriously. “I hope,” continued
he, “that when Will Sykes’s tally comes to be reckoned up and squared,
those noses will go in the scales with his morals, and make ’em kick
the beam.”
It has been said that Will Sykes possessed a wide circle of admirers;
and therefore to be quite silent upon the matter respecting his
nephew, would be an act approaching injustice; for, although the
number was more choice, and--to be strictly correct--comprised no old
women whatever, yet there is no question but every pretty, young, and
unmarried one within the wide range of Ned’s jaunts and wanderings
might be fairly registered among them. And no wonder; for Ned was
spruce and handsome, and had soft looks, and yet softer words, for
those with whom he wished to be in favour. His jest and laugh, too,
were free and hearty; and where-ever he went, “Welcome” awaited him.
The short sketches of those in immediate authority would still be
incomplete if Old Mark the Feeder was allowed to escape observation.
Whether he possessed a surname is a subject known only to himself; for
nobody ever heard him spoken of, or to, but as “Old Mark.” From infancy
he had been employed in the kennel, and owed his want of promotion
to a nervous inability to become a horseman. No exertions on his own
part, or those of others, could render him anything like competent
to ride to hounds; and the result was that, after a long and patient
trial to obtain this necessary accomplishment for a whipper-in, Mark
was compelled to abandon the design, and to fall back on his former
position. After this, no second attempt was made; and so years and
years rolled on, and at length discovered the failure of a whipper-in
in Old Mark the feeder. As may be supposed from his long experience, no
one knew more about us than he did; and the moment his practised eye
fell on a hound, he could instantly tell a defective point, let it be
never so trifling. Proud and enthusiastic in his calling, the courts
and lodging-houses were always clean, dry, and wholesome; and, late or
early, the old man never allowed the most insignificant part of his
duties to pass unfinished. The feet of each were carefully examined
after returning home, and if foot-sore, washed with bran, warm water,
and vinegar. A warm bath, too was also in readiness, and plenty of
clean straw to roll in for the purpose of drying.
Little can be said of Mark’s outward man; for his back was
crooked--perchance from continually bending over the troughs and
copper--and his legs were lean and long, like a daddy-long-legs; but
one of the best attributes of human nature sat reflected in his mild,
open, honest face; and that was gentle kindness of heart. Oh! if the
world was more thickly populated with “Old Marks,” how many hearts and
hides would cease to throb with anguish!