THE PRINGLES of course were furious when they read the announcement of Billy’s marriage. Such a degradation to such a respectable family, and communicated in such a way. We need scarcely say that at first they all made the worst of it, running Mrs. William down much below her real level, and declaring that Billy though hard enough in money matters, was soft enough in love affairs. Then Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, who up to that time had been the belle of the family, essayed to pick her to pieces, intimating that she was much indebted to her dress—that fine feathers made fine birds—hoped that Billy would like paying for the clothes, and wondered what her figure would be like a dozen years thence. Mrs. Joe had preserved hers, never having indeed having been in the way of spoiling it. Joe looked as if he was to perpetuate the family name. By-and-by, when it became known that the Countess Delacey’s yellow carriage, with the high-stepping greys and the cocked-up-nose beet-root-and-cherry-coloured Johnnies, was to be seen astonishing the natives in Doughty Street, they began to think better of it; and though they did not stint themselves for rudeness (disguised as civility of course), they treated her less like a show, more especially when Billy was present. Still, though they could not make up their minds to be really civil to her, they could not keep away from her, just as the moth will be at the candle despite its unpleasant consequences. Indeed, it is one of the marked characteristics of Snobbism, that they won’t be cut. At least, if you do get a Snob cut, ten to one but he will take every opportunity of rubbing up against you, or sitting down beside you in public, or overtaking you on the road, or stopping a mutual acquaintance with you in the street, either to show his indifference or his independence, or in the hope of its passing for intimacy. There are people who can’t understand any coolness short of a kick. The Pringles were tiresome people. They would neither be in with Mrs. William, nor out with her. So there was that continual knag, knag, knagging going on in the happy united family, that makes life so pleasant and enjoyable. Mrs. William well knew, when any of them came to call upon her, that her sayings and doings would furnish recreation for the rest of the cage. It is an agreeable thing to have people in one’s house acting the part of spies. One day Mrs. Joe, who lived in Guildford Street, seeing the Countess’s carriage-horses cold-catching in Doughty Street, while her ladyship discussed some important millinery question with Mrs. William, could not resist the temptation of calling, and not being introduced to the Countess, said to Mis. William, with her best vinegar sneer, the next time they met. She “‘oped she had told her fine friend that the vulgar woman she saw at her ‘ouse was no connection of her’s.” But enough of such nonsense. Let us on to something more pleasant.
Well, then, of course the next step in our story is the appearance of our hero, the boy Billy——Fine Billy, aforesaid. Such a boy as never was seen! All other mammas went away dissatisfied with theirs, after they had got a peep of our Billy. If baby-shows had been in existence in those days, Mrs. Billy might have scoured the country and carried away all the prizes. Everybody was struck in a heap at the sight of him, and his sayings and doings were worthy of a place in Punch. So thought his parents, at least. What perfected their happiness, of course, operated differently with the family, and eased the minds of the ladies, as to the expediency of further outward civility to Mrs. William, who they now snubbed at all points, and prophesied all sorts of uncharitableness of. Mrs., on her side, surpassed them all in dress and good looks, and bucked Billy up into a very produceable-looking article. Though he mightn’t exactly do for White’s bay-window on a summer afternoon, he looked uncommonly well on “‘Change,” and capitally in the country. Of course, he came in for one of the three cardinal sources of abuse the world is always so handy with, viz., that a man either behaves ill to his wife, is a screw, or is out-running the constable, the latter, of course, being Billy’s crime, which admitted of a large amount of blame being laid on the lady, though, we are happy to say, Billy had no trial of speed with the constable, for his wife, by whose permission men thrive, was a capital manager, and Billy slapped his fat thigh over his beloved balance-sheets every Christmas, exclaiming, as he hopped joyously round on one leg, snapping his finger and thumb, “Our Billy shall be a gent! Our Billy shall be a gent!” And he half came in to the oft-expressed wish of his wife, that he might live to see him united to a quality lady: Mr. and Lady Arabella Pringle, Mr. and Lady Sophia Pringle, or Mr. and Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Pringle, as the case might be.
Vainglorious ambition! After an inordinate kidney supper, poor Billy was found dead in his chair. Great was the consternation among the Pringle family at the lamentable affliction. All except Jerry, who, speculating on his habits, had recently effected a policy on his life, were deeply shocked at the event. They buried him with all becoming pomp, and then, Jerry, who had always professed great interest in the boy Billy—so great, indeed, as to induce his brother (though with no great opinion of Jerry, but hoping that his services would never be wanted, and that it might ingratiate the nephew with the bachelor uncle,) to appoint him an executor and guardian—waited upon the widow, and with worlds of tears and pious lamentations, explained to her in the most unexplanatory manner possible, all how things were left, but begging that she would not give herself any trouble about her son’s affairs, for, if she would attend to his spiritual wants, and instil high principles of honour, morality, and fine feeling into his youthful mind, he would look after the mere worldly dross, which was as nothing compared to the importance of the other. “Teach him to want nothin’ but what’s right,” continued Jerry, as he thought most impressively. “Teach him to want nothin’ but what’s right, and when he grows up to manhood marry him to some nice, pious respectable young woman in his own rank of life, with a somethin’ of her own; gentility is all very well to talk about, but it gets you nothin’ at the market,” added he, forgetting that he was against the mere worldly dross.
But Mrs. Pringle, who knew the value of the article, intimated at an early day, that she would like to be admitted into the money partnership as well, whereupon Jerry waxing wroth, said with an irate glance of his keen grey eyes, “My dear madam, these family matters, in my opinion, require to be treated not only in a business-like way, but with a very considerable degree of delicacy,” an undisputed dogma, acquiring force only by the manner in which it was delivered. So the pretty widow saw she had better hold her tongue, and hope for the best from the little fawning bully.
The melancholy catastrophe with which we closed our last chapter found our hero at a preparatory school, studying for Eton, whither papa proposed sending him on the old principle of getting him into good society; though we believe it is an experiment that seldom succeeds. The widow, indeed, took this view of the matter, for her knowledge of high life caused her to know that though a “proud aristocracy” can condescend, and even worship wealth, yet that they are naturally clannish and exclusive, and tenacious of pedigree. In addition to this, Mrs. Pringle’s experience of men led her to think that the solemn pedantic “Greek and Latin ones,” as she called them, who know all about Julius Cæsar coming, “summa diligentia,” on the top of the diligence, were not half so agreeable as those who could dance and sing, and knew all that was going on in the present-day world; which, in addition to her just appreciation of the delicate position of her son, made her resolve not to risk him among the rising aristocracy at Eton, who, instead of advancing, might only damage his future prospects in life, but to send him to Paris, where, besides the three R’s,—“reading, riting, and rithmetic,”—he would acquire all the elegant accomplishments and dawn fresh upon the world an unexpected meteor.
This matter being arranged, she then left Dirty Street, as she called Doughty Street, with all the disagreeable Pringle family espionage, and reminiscences, and migrated westward, taking up her abode in the more congenial atmosphere of Curtain Crescent, Pimlico, or Belgravia, as, we believe the owners of the houses wish to have it called. Here she established herself in a very handsome, commodious house, with porticoed doorway and balconied drawing-rooms—every requisite for a genteel family in short; and such a mansion being clearly more than a single lady required, she sometimes accommodated the less fortunate, through the medium of a house-agent, though both he and she always begged it to be distinctly understood that she did not let lodgings, but “apartments;” and she always requested that the consideration might be sent to her in a sealed envelope by the occupants, in the same manner as she transmitted them the bill. So she managed to make a considerable appearance at a moderate expense, it being only in the full season that her heart yearned towards the houseless, when of course a high premium was expected. There is nothing uncommon in people letting their whole houses; so why should there be anything strange in Mrs. Pringle occasionally letting a part of one? Clearly nothing. Though Mrs. Joe did say she had turned a lodging-house keeper, she could not refrain from having seven-and-sixpence worth of Brougham occasionally to see how the land lay.
It is but justice to our fair friend to say that she commenced with great prudence. So handsome unprotected a female being open to the criticisms of the censorious, she changed her good-looking footman for a sedate elderly man, whose name, Properjohn, John Properjohn, coupled with the severe austerity of his manners, was enough to scare away intruders, and to keep the young girls in order, whom our friend had consigned to her from the country, in the hopes that her drilling and recommendation would procure them admission into quality families.
Properjohn had been spoiled for high service by an attack of the jaundice, but his figure was stately and good, and she sought to modify his injured complexion by a snuff-coloured, Quaker-cut coat and vest, with claret-coloured shorts, and buckled shoes. Thus attired, with his oval-brimmed hat looped up with gold cord, and a large double-jointed brass-headed cane in his hand, he marched after his mistress, a damper to the most audacious. Properjohn, having lived in good families until he got spoiled by the jaundice, had a very extensive acquaintance among the aristocracy, with whom Mrs. Pringle soon established a peculiar intercourse. She became a sort of ultimate Court of Appeal, a Cour de Cassation, in all matters of taste in apparel,—whether a bonnet should be lilac or lavender colour, a dress deeply flounced or lightly, a lady go to a ball in feathers or diamonds, or both—in all those varying and perplexing points that so excite and bewilder the female mind: Mrs. Pringle would settle all these, whatever Mrs. Pringle said the fair applicants would abide by, and milliners and dress-makers submitted to her judgment. This, of course, let her into the privacies of domestic life. She knew what husbands stormed at the milliners’ and dress-makers’ bills, bounced at the price of the Opera-box, and were eternally complaining of their valuable horses catching cold. She knew who the cousin was who was always to be admitted in Lavender Square, and where the needle-case-shaped note went to after it had visited the toy-shop in Arcadia Street. If her own information was defective, Properjohn could supply the deficiency. The two, between them, knew almost everything.
Nor was Mrs. Pringle’s influence confined to the heads of houses, for it soon extended to many of the junior members also. It is a well known fact that, when the gorgeous Lady Rainbow came to consult her about her daughter’s goings on with Captain Conquest, the Captain and Matilda saw Mamma alight from the flaunting hammer-clothed tub, as they stood behind the figured yellow tabaret curtains of Mrs. Pringle’s drawing-room window, whither they had been attracted by the thundering of one of the old noisy order of footmen. Blessings on the man, say we, who substituted bells for knockers—so that lovers may not be disturbed, or visitors unaccustomed to public knocking have to expose their incompetence.
We should, however, state, that whenever Mrs. Pringle was consulted by any of the juveniles upon their love affairs, she invariably suggested that they had better “Ask Mamma,” though perhaps it was only done as a matter of form, and to enable her to remind them at a future day, if things went wrong, that she had done so. Many people make offers that they never mean to have accepted, but still, if they are not accepted, they made them you know. If they are accepted, why then they wriggle out of them the best way they can. But we are dealing in generalities, instead of confining ourselves to Mrs. Pringle’s practice. If the young lady or gentleman—for Mrs. Pringle was equally accessible to the sexes—preferred “asking” her to “Asking Mamma,” Mrs. Pringle was always ready to do what she could for them; and the fine Sèvres and Dresden china, the opal vases, the Bohemian scent-bottles, the beautiful bronzes, the or-molu jewel caskets, and Parisian clocks, that mounted guard in the drawing-room when it was not “in commission” (occupied as apartments), spoke volumes for the gratitude of those she befriended. Mrs. Pringle was soon the repository of many secrets, but we need not say that the lady who so adroitly concealed Pheasant Feathers on her own account was not likely to be entrapped into committing others; and though she was often waited upon by pleasant conversationalists on far-fetched errands, who endeavoured to draw carelessly down wind to their point, as well as by seedy and half-seedy gentlemen, who proceeded in a more business-like style, both the pleasant conversationalists and the seedy and the half-seedy gentlemen went away as wise as they came. She never knew anything; it was the first she had heard of anything of the sort.
Altogether, Mrs. Pringle was a wonderful woman, and not the least remarkable trait in her character was that, although servants, who, like the rest of the world, are so ready to pull people down to their own level, knew her early professional career, yet she managed them so well that they all felt an interest in elevating her, from the Duke’s Duke, down to old quivering-calved Jeames de la Pluche, who sipped her hop champagne, and told all he heard while waiting at table—that festive period when people talk as if their attendants were cattle or inanimate beings.
The reader will now have the goodness to consider our friend, Fine Billy, established with his handsome mother in Curtain Crescent—not Pimlico, but Belgravia—with all the airs and action described in our opening chapter. We have been a long time in working up to him, but the reader will not find the space wasted, inasmuch as it has given him a good introduction to “Madam,” under whose auspices Billy will shortly have to grapple with the “Ask Mamma” world. Moreover, we feel that if there has been a piece of elegance overlooked by novelists generally, it is the delicate, sensitive, highly-refined lady’s-maid. With these observations, we now pass on to the son He had exceeded, if possible, his good mother’s Parisian anticipations, for if he had not brought away any great amount of learning, if he did not know a planet from a fixed star, the difference of oratory between Cicero and Demosthenes, or the history of Cupid and the minor heathen deities, he was nevertheless an uncommonly good hand at a polka, could be matched to waltz with any one, and had a tremendous determination of words to the mouth. His dancing propensities, indeed, were likely to mislead him at starting; for, not getting into the sort of society Mrs. Pringle wished to see him attain, he took up with Cremorne and Casinos, and questionable characters generally.
Mrs. Pringle’s own establishment, we are sorry to say, soon furnished her with the severest cause of disquietude; for having always acted upon the principle of having pretty maids—the difference, as she said, between pretty and plain ones being, that the men ran after the pretty ones, while the plain ones ran after the men—having always, we say, acted upon the principle of having pretty ones, she forgot to change her system on the return of her hopeful son; and before she knew where she was, he had established a desperate liaison with a fair maid whose aptitude for breakage had procured for her the sobriquet of Butter Fingers. Now, Butter Fingers, whose real name was Disher—Jane Disher—was a niece of our old friend, Big Ben, now a flourishing London hotel landlord, and Butter Fingers partook of the goodly properties and proportions for which the Ben family are distinguished. She was a little, plump, fair, round-about thing, with every quality of a healthy country beauty.
Fine Billy was first struck with her one Sunday afternoon, tripping along in Knightsbridge, as she was making her way home from Kensington Gardens, when the cheap finery—the parasol, the profusely-flowered white gauze bonnet, the veil, the machinery laced cloak, the fringed kerchief, worked sleeves, &c., which she kept at Chickory the greengrocer’s in Sun Street, and changed there for the quiet apparel in which she left Mrs. Pringle’s house in Curtain Crescent—completely deceived him; as much as did the half-starting smile of recognition she involuntarily gave him on meeting. Great was his surprise to find that such a smart, neat-stepping, well-set-up, bien chaussée beauty and he came from the same quarters. We need not say what followed: how Properjohn couldn’t see what everybody else saw; and how at length poor Mrs. Pringle, having changed her mind about going to hear Mr. Spurgeon, caught the two sitting together, on her richly carved sofa of chaste design, in the then non-commissioned put-away drawing room. There was Butter Fingers in a flounced book-muslin gown with a broad French sash, and her hair clubbed at the back à la crow’s-nest. It was hard to say which of the three got the greatest start, though the blow was undoubtedly the severest on the poor mother, who had looked forward to seeing her son entering the rank of life legitimately in which she had occupied a too questionable position. The worst of it was, she did not know what to do—whether to turn her out of the house at the moment, and so infuriate the uncle and her son also, or give her a good scolding, and get rid of her on the first plausible opportunity. She had no one to consult. She knew what “Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry” would say, and that nothing would please Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe more than to read the marriage of Billy and Butter Fingers.
Mrs. Pringle was afraid too of offending Big Ben by the abrupt dismissal of his niece, and dreaded if Butter Fingers had gained any ascendancy over William, that he too might find a convenient marrying place as somebody else had done.
Altogether our fair friend was terribly perplexed. Thrown on the natural resources of her own strong mind, she thought, perhaps, the usual way of getting young ladies off bad matches, by showing them something better, might be tried with her son. Billy’s début in the metropolis had not been so flattering as she could have wished, but then she could make allowances for town exclusiveness, and the pick and choice of dancing activity which old family connections and associations supplied. The country was very different; there, young men were always in request, and were taken with much lighter credentials.
If, thought she, sweet William could but manage to establish a good country connection, there was no saying but he might retain it in town; at all events, the experiment would separate him from the artful Butter Fingers, and pave the way for her dismissal.
To accomplish this desirable object, Mrs. Pringle therefore devoted her undivided attention.
AMONG Mrs. Pringle’s many visitors was that gallant old philanthropist, the well-known Earl of Ladythorne, of Tantivy Castle, Featherbedfordshire and Belvedere House, London.
His lordship had known her at Lady Delacey’s, and Mrs. Pringle still wore and prized a ruby ring he slipped upon her finger as he met her (accidentally of course) in the passage early one morning as he was going to hunt. His saddle-horses might often be seen of a summer afternoon, tossing their heads up and down Curtain Crescent, to the amusement of the inhabitants of that locality. His lordship indeed was a well-known general patron of all that was fair and fine and handsome in creation, fine women, fine houses, fine horses, fine hounds, fine pictures, fine statues, fine every thing. No pretty woman either in town or country ever wanted a friend if he was aware of it.
He had long hunted Featherbedfordshire in a style of great magnificence, and though latterly his energies had perhaps been as much devoted to the pursuit of the fair as the fox, yet, as he found the two worked well together, he kept up the hunting establishment with all the splendour of his youth. Not that he was old: as he would say, “far from it!” Indeed, to walk behind him down St. James’s Street (he does not go quite so well up), his easy jaunty air, tall graceful figure, and elasticity of step, might make him pass for a man in that most uncertain period of existence the “prime of life,” and if uncivil, unfriendly, inexorable time has whitened his pow, his lordship carries it off with the aid of gay costume and colour. He had a great reputation among the ladies, and though they all laughed and shook their heads when his name was mentioned, from the pretty simpering Mrs. Ringdove, of Lime-Tree Grove, who said he was a “naughty man,” down to the buxom chambermaid of the Rose and Crown, who giggled and called him a “gay old gentleman,” they all felt pleased and flattered by his attentions.
Hunting a country undoubtedly gives gay old gentlemen great opportunities, for, under pretence of finding a fox, they may rummage any where from the garret[1] to the cellar.
[1]
Ex. gra., As we say in the classics.
“A Fox Run into a Lady’s Dressing-Room.—The Heythrop hounds met at
Ranger’s Lodge, within about a mile of Charlbury, found in Hazell Wood,
and went away through Great Cranwell, crossing the park of Cornbury, on by the
old kennel to Live Oak, taking the side hill, leaving Leafield (so celebrated
for clay-pipes) to his left, crossed the bottom by Five Ashes; then turned to
the right, through King’s Wood. Smallstones, Knighton Copse, over the
plain to Ranger’s Lodge, with the hounds close at his brush, where they
left him in a mysterious manner. After the lapse of a little time he was
discovered by a maid- servant in the ladies’ dressing-room, from which he
immediately bolted on the appearance of the petticoats, without doing the
slightest damage to person or property."—Bell’s Life. What a gentlemanly
fox!
In this interesting pursuit, his lordship was ably assisted by his huntsman, Dicky Boggledike. Better huntsman there might be than Dicky, but none so eminently qualified for the double pursuit of the fox and the fine. He had a great deal of tact and manner, and looked and was essentially a nobleman’s servant. He didn’t come blurting open-mouthed with “I’ve seen a davilish,” for such was his dialect, “I’ve seen a davilish fine oss, my lord,” or “They say Mrs. Candle’s cow has gained another prize,” but he would take an opportunity of introducing the subject neatly and delicately, through the medium of some allusion to the country in which they were to be found, some cover wanting cutting, some poacher wanting trouncing, or some puppy out at walk, so that if his lordship didn’t seem to come into the humour of the thing, Dicky could whip off to the other scent as if he had nothing else in his mind. It was seldom, however, that his lordship was not inclined to profit by Dicky’s experience, for he had great sources of information, and was very careful in his statements. His lordship and Dicky had now hunted Featherbedfordshire together for nearly forty years, and though they might not be so punctual in the mornings, or so late in leaving off in the evenings, as they were; and though his lordship might come to the meet in his carriage and four with the reigning favourite by his side, instead of on his neat cover hack, and though Dicky did dance longer at his fences than he used, still there was no diminution in the scale of the establishment, or in Dicky’s influence throughout the country. Indeed, it would rather seem as if the now well-matured hunt ran to show instead of sport, for each succeeding year brought out either another second horseman (though neither his lordship nor Dicky ever tired one), or another man in a scarlet and cap, or established another Rose and Crown, whereat his lordship kept dry things to change in case he got wet. He was uncommonly kind to himself, and hated his heir with an intensity of hatred which was at once the best chance for longevity and for sustaining the oft-disappointed ambitious hopes of the fair.
Now Mrs. Pringle had always had a very laudable admiration of fox-hunters. She thought the best introduction for a young man of fortune was at the cover side, and though Jerry Pringle (who looked upon them as synonymous) had always denounced “gamblin’ and huntin’” as the two greatest vices of the day, she could never come in to that opinion, as far as hunting was concerned.
She now thought if she could get Billy launched under the auspices of that distinguished sportsman, the Earl of Ladythorne, it might be the means of reclaiming him from Butter Fingers, and getting him on in society, for she well knew how being seen at one good place led to another, just as the umbrella-keepers at the Royal Academy try to lead people into giving them something in contravention of the rule above their heads, by jingling a few half-pence before their faces. Moreover, Billy had shown an inclination for equitation—by nearly galloping several of Mr. Spavin, the neighbouring livery-stable-keeper’s horses’ tails off; and Mrs. Pringle’s knowledge of hunting not being equal to her appreciation of the sport, she thought that a master of hounds found all the gentlemen who joined his hunt in horses, just as a shooter finds them in dogs or guns, so that the thing would be managed immediately.
Indeed, like many ladies, she had rather a confused idea of the whole thing, not knowing but that one horse would hunt every day in the week; or that there was any distinction of horses, further than the purposes to which they were applied. Hunters and racehorses she had no doubt were the same animals, working their ways honestly from year’s end to year’s end, or at most with only the sort of difference between them that there is between a milliner and a dressmaker. Be that as it may, however, all things considered, Mrs. Pringle determined to test the sincerity of her friend the Earl of Ladythorne: and to that end wrote him a gossiping sort of letter, asking, in the postscript, when his dogs would be going out, as her son was at home and would “so like” to see them.
Although we introduced Lord Ladythorne as a philanthropist, his philanthropy, we should add, was rather lop-sided, being chiefly confined to the fair. Indeed, he could better stand a dozen women than one man. He had no taste or sympathy, for the hirsute tribe, hence his fields were very select, being chiefly composed of his dependents and people whom he could d—— and do what he liked with. Though the Crumpletin Railway cut right through his country, making it “varry contagious,” as Harry Swan, his first whip, said, for sundry large towns, the sporting inhabitants thereof preferred the money-griping propensities of a certain Baronet—Sir Moses Mainchance—whose acquaintance the reader will presently make, to the scot-free sport with the frigid civilities of the noble Earl. Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, Mrs. Pringle had made rather an unfortunate selection for her son’s début, but it so happened that her letter found the Earl in anything but his usual frame of mind.
He was suffering most acutely for the hundred and twentieth time or so from one of Cupid’s shafts, and that too levelled by a hand against whose attacks he had always hitherto been thought impervious. This wound had been inflicted by the well-known—perhaps to some of our readers too well-known—equestrian coquette, Miss de Glancey of Half-the-watering-places-in-England-and-some-on-the-Continent, whose many conquests had caused her to be regarded as almost irresistible, and induced, it was said—with what degree of truth we know not—a party of England’s enterprising sons to fit her out for an expedition against the gallant Earl of Ladythorne under the Limited Liability Act.
Now, none but a most accomplished, self-sufficient coquette, such as Miss de Glancey undoubtedly was, would have undertaken such an enterprise, for it was in direct contravention of two of the noble Earl’s leading principles, namely, that of liking large ladies (fine, coarse women, as the slim ones call them,) and of disliking foxhunting ones, the sofa and not the saddle being, as he always said, the proper place for the ladies; but Miss de Glancey prided herself upon her power of subjugating the tyrant man, and gladly undertook to couch the lance of blandishment against the hitherto impracticable nobleman. In order, however, to understand the exact position of parties, perhaps the reader will allow us to show how his lordship came to be seized with his present attack, and also how he treated it.
Well, the ash was yellow, the beech was brown, and the oak ginger coloured, and the indomitable youth was again in cub-hunting costume—a white beaver hat, a green cut-away, a buff vest, with white cords and caps, attended by Boggledike and his whips in hats, and their last season’s pinks or purples, disturbing the numerous litters of cubs with which the country abounded, when, after a musical twenty minutes with a kill in Allonby Wood, his lordship joined horses with Dicky, to discuss the merits of the performance, as they rode home together.
“Yas, my lord, yas,” replied Dicky, sawing away at his hat, in reply to his lordship’s observation that they ran uncommonly well; “yas, my lord, they did. I don’t know that I can ever remamber bein’ better pleased with an entry than I am with this year’s. I really think in a few more seasons we shall get ’em as near parfection as possible. Did your lordship notish that Barbara betch, how she took to runnin’ to-day? The first time she has left my oss’s eels. Her mother, old Blossom, was jest the same. Never left my oss’s eels the first season, and everybody said she was fit for nothin’ but the halter; but my!” continued he, shaking his head, “what a rare betch she did become.”
“She did that,” replied his lordship, smiling at Dicky’s pronunciation.
“And that reminds me,” continued Dicky, emboldened by what he thought the encouragement, “I was down at Freestone Banks yasterday, where Barbara was walked, a seein’ a pup I have there now, and I think I seed the very neatest lady’s pad I ever set eyes on!”—Dicky’s light-blue eyes settling on his lordship’s eagle ones as he spoke. “Aye! who’s was that?” asked the gay old gentleman, catching at the word “lady.”
“Why, they say she belongs to a young lady from the south—a Miss Dedancey, I think they call her,” with the aptitude people have for mistaking proper names.
“Dedancey,” repeated his lordship, “Dedancey; never heard of the name before—what’s set her here?”
“She’s styin’ at Mrs. Roseworth’s, at Lanecroft House, but her osses stand at the Spread Heagle, at Bush Dill—Old Sam ‘Utchison’s, you know.”
Indomitable Youth. Horses! what, has she more than one?
Dicky. Two, a bay and a gray,—it’s the bay that takes my fancy most:—the neatest stepper, with the lightest month, and fairest, freeest, truest action I ever seed.
Indomitable Youth. What’s she going to do with them?
Dicky. Ride them, ride them! They say she’s the finest oss-woman that ever was seen.
“In-deed,” mused his lordship, thinking over the pros and cons of female equestrianism,—the disagreeableness of being beat by them,—the disagreeableness of having to leave them in the lurch,—the disagreeableness of seeing them floored,—the disagreeableness of seeing them all running down with perspiration;—the result being that his lordship adhered to his established opinion that women have no business out hunting.
Dicky knew his lordship’s sentiments, and did not press the matter, but drew his horse a little to the rear, thinking it fortunate that all men are not of the same way of thinking. Thus they rode on for some distance in silence, broken only by the occasional flopping and chiding of Harry Swan or his brother whip of some loitering or refractory hound. His lordship had a great opinion of Dicky’s judgment, and though they might not always agree in their views, he never damped Dicky’s ardour by openly differing with him. He thought by Dicky’s way of mentioning the lady that he had a good opinion of her, and, barring the riding, his lordship saw no reason why he should not have a good opinion of her too. Taking advantage of the Linton side-bar now bringing them upon the Somerton-Longville road, he reined in his horse a little so as to let Dicky come alongside of him again.
“What is this young lady like?” asked the indomitable youth, as soon as they got their horses to step pleasantly together again.
“Well now,” replied Dicky, screwing up his mouth, with an apologetic touch of his hat, knowing that that was his weak point, “well now, I don’t mean to say that she’s zactly—no, not zactly, your lordship’s model,—not a large full-bodied woman like Mrs. Blissland or Miss Poach, but an elegant, very elegant, well-set-up young lady, with a high-bred hair about her that one seldom sees in the country, for though we breeds our women very beautiful—uncommon ‘andsome, I may say—we don’t polish them hup to that fine degree of parfection that they do in the towns, and even if we did they would most likely spoil the ‘ole thing by some untoward unsightly dress, jest as a country servant spoils a London livery by a coloured tie, or goin’ about with a great shock head of ‘air, or some such disfigurement; but this young lady, to my mind, is a perfect pictor, self, oss, and seat,—all as neat and perfect as can be, and nothing that one could either halter or amend. She is what, savin’ your lordship’s presence, I might call the ‘pink of fashion and the mould of form!’—Dicky sawing away at his hat as he spoke.
“Tall, slim, and genteel, I suppose,” observed his lordship drily.
“Jest so,” assented Dicky, with a chuck of the chin, making a clean breast of it, “jest so,” adding, “at least as far as one can judge of her in her ‘abit, you know.”
“Thought so,” muttered his lordship.
And having now gained one of the doors in the wall, they cut across the deer-studded park, and were presently back at the Castle. And his lordship ate his dinner, and quaffed his sweet and dry and twenty-five Lafitte without ever thinking about either the horse, or the lady, or the habit, or anything connected with the foregoing conversation, while the reigning favourite, Mrs. Moffatt, appeared just as handsome as could be in his eyes.
THOUGH his lordship, as we said before, would stoutly deny being old, he had nevertheless got sufficiently through the morning of life not to let cub-hunting get him out of bed a moment sooner than usual, and it was twelve o’clock on the next day but one to that on which the foregoing conversation took place, that Mr. Boggledike was again to be seen standing erect in his stirrups, yoiking and coaxing his hounds into Crashington Gorse. There was Dicky, cap-in-hand, in the Micentre ride, exhorting the young hounds to dive into the strong sea of gorse. “Y-o-o-icks! wind him! y-o-o-icks! pash him up!” cheered the veteran, now turning his horse across to enforce the request. There was his lordship at the high corner as usual, ensconced among the clump of weather-beaten blackthorns—thorns that had neither advanced nor receded a single inch since he first knew them,—his eagle eye fixed on the narrow fern and coarse grass-covered dell down which Reynard generally stole. There was Harry Swan at one corner to head the fox back from the beans, and Tom Speed at the other to welcome him away over the corn-garnered open. And now the whimper of old sure-finding Harbinger, backed by the sharp “yap” of the terrier, proclaims that our friend is at home, and presently a perfect hurricane of melody bursts from the agitated gorse,—every hound is in the paroxysm of excitement, and there are five-and-twenty couple of them, fifty musicians in the whole!
“Tally-ho! there he goes across the ride!”
“Cub!” cries his lordship.
“Cub!” responded Dicky.
“Crack!” sounds the whip.
Now the whole infuriated phalanx dashed across the ride and dived into the close prickly gorse on the other side as if it were the softest, pleasantest quarters in the world. There is no occasion to coax, and exhort, and ride cap-in-hand to them now. It’s all fury and commotion. Each hound seems to consider himself personally aggrieved,—though we will be bound to say the fox and he never met in their lives,—and to be bent upon having immediate satisfaction. And immediate, any tyro would think it must necessarily be, seeing such preponderating influence brought to bear upon so small an animal. Not so, however: pug holds his own; and, by dint of creeping, and crawling, and stopping, and listening, and lying down, and running his foil, he brings the lately rushing, clamorous pack to a more plodding, pains-taking, unravelling sort of performance.
Meanwhile three foxes in succession slip away, one at Speed’s corner, two at Swan’s; and though Speed screeched, and screamed, and yelled, as if he were getting killed, not a hound came to see what had happened. They all stuck to the original scent.
“Here he comes again!” now cries his lordship from his thorn-formed bower, as the cool-mannered fox again steals across the ride, and Dicky again uncovers, and goes through the capping ceremony. Over come the pack, bristling and lashing for blood—each hound looking as if he would eat the fox single-handed. Now he’s up to the high corner as though he were going to charge his lordship himself, and passing over fresh ground the hounds get the benefit of a scent, and work with redoubled energy, making the opener gorse bushes crack and bend with their pressure. Pug has now gained the rabbit-burrowed bank of the north fence, and has about made up his mind to follow the example of his comrades, and try his luck in the open, when a cannonading crack of Swan’s whip strikes terror into his heart, and causes him to turn tail, and run the moss-grown mound of the hedge. Here he unexpectedly meets young Prodigal face to face, who, thinking that rabbit may be as good eating as fox, has got up a little hunt of his own, and who is considerably put out of countenance by the rencontre; but pug, not anticipating any such delicacy on the part of a pursuer, turns tail, and is very soon in the rear of the hounds, hunting them instead of their hunting him. The thing then becomes more difficult, businesslike, and sedate—the sages of the pack taking upon them to guide the energy of the young. So what with the slow music of the hounds, the yap, yap, yapping of the terriers, and the shaking of the gorse, an invisible underground sort of hunt is maintained—his lordship sitting among his blackthorn bushes like a gentleman in his opera-stall, thinking now of the hunt, now of his dinner, now of what a good thing it was to be a lord, with a good digestion and plenty of cash, and nobody to comb his head.
At length pug finds it too hot to hold him. The rays of an autumnal sun have long been striking into the gorse, while a warm westerly wind does little to ventilate it from the steam of the rummaging inquisitive pack. Though but a cub, he is the son of an old stager, who took Dicky and his lordship a deal of killing, and with the talent of his sire, he thus ruminates on his uncomfortable condition.
“If,” says he, “I stay here, I shall either be smothered or fall a prey to these noisy unrelenting monsters, who seem to have the knack of finding me wherever I go. I’d better cut my stick as I did the time before, and have fresh air and exercise at all events, in the open:” so saying he made a dash at the hedge near where Swan was stationed, and regardless of his screams and the cracks of his whip, cut through the beans and went away, with a sort of defiant whisk of his brush.
What a commotion followed his departure! How the screeches of the men mingled with the screams of the hounds and the twangs of the horn! In an instant his lordship vacates his opera-stall and is flying over the ragged boundary fence that separates him from the beans; while Mr. Boggledike capers and prances at a much smaller place, looking as if he would fain turn away were it not for the observation of the men. Now Dicky is over! Swan and Speed take it in their stride, just as the last hound leaves the gorse and strains to regain his distant companions. A large grass field, followed by a rough bare fallow, takes the remaining strength out of poor pug; and, turning short to the left, he seeks the friendless shelter of a patch of wretched oats. The hounds overrun the scent, but, spreading like a rocket, they quickly recover it; and in an instant, fox, hounds, horses, men, are among the standing corn,—one ring in final destruction of the beggarly crop, and poor pug is in the hands of his pursuers. Then came the grand finale, the who hoop! the baying, the blowing, the beheading, &c. Now Harry Swan, whose province it is to magnify sport and make imaginary runs to ground, exercises his calling, by declaring it was five-and-thirty minutes (twenty perhaps), and the finest young fox he ever had hold of. Now his lordship and Dicky take out their tootlers and blow a shrill reverberating blast; while Swan stands straddling and yelling, with the mangled remains high above his head, ready to throw it into the sea of mouths that are baying around to receive it. After a sufficiency of noise, up goes the carcase; the wave of hounds breaks against it as it falls, while a half-ravenous, half-indignant, growling worry succeeds the late clamourous outcry.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” cries Dicky.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” shouts his lordship.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” shrieks Speed.
“Hie worry! worry! worry!” shouts Swan, trying to tantalize the young hounds with a haunch, which, however, they do not seem much to care about.