Chapter XLIX: The Sham Day

SATURDAY is a very different day in the country to what it is in
London. In London it is the lazy day of the week, whereas it is
the busy one in the country. It is marked in London by the coming
of the clean-linen carts, and the hurrying about of Hansoms with
gentlemen with umbrellas and small carpet-bags, going to the
steamers and stations for pleasure; whereas in the country
everybody is off to the parliament of his local capital on
business. All the markets in Hit-im and Hold-im shire were held
on a Saturday, and several in Featherbedfordshire; and as
everybody who has nothing to do is always extremely busy, great
gatherings were the result. This circumstance made Sir Moses hit
upon Saturday for his fourth, or make-believe day with the
hounds, inasmuch as few people would be likely to come, and if
they did, he knew how to get rid of them. The consequence was,
that the court-yard at Pangburn Park exhibited a very different
appearance, on this occasion, to what it would have done had the
hounds met there on any other day of the week. Two red coats
only, and those very shabby ones, with very shady horses under
them—viz., young Mr. Billikins of Red Hill Lodge, and his cousin
Captain Luff of the navy (the latter out for the first time in
his life), were all that greeted our sportsmen; the rest of the
field being attired in shooting-jackets, tweeds, antigropolos and
other anti-fox-hunting looking things.

“Good morning, gentlemen! good morning!” cried Sir Moses, waving
his hand from the steps at the promiscuous throng; and without
condescending to particularise any one, he hurried across for his
horse, followed by our friend. Sir Moses was going to ride Old
Jack, one of the horses he had spoken of for Billy, a venerable
brown, of whose age no one’s memory about the place supplied any
information—though when he first came all the then wiseacres
prophesied a speedy decline. Still Old Jack had gone on from
season to season, never apparently getting older, and now looking
as likely to go on as ever. The old fellow having come pottering
out of the stable and couched to his load, the great Lord Mayor
came darting forward as if anxious for the fray. “It’s _your_
saddle, sir,” said Wetun, touching his forehead with his finger,
as he held on by the stirrup for Billy to mount. Up then went our
friend into the old seat of suffering. “There!” exclaimed Sir
Moses, as he got his feet settled in the stirrups; “there, you do
look well! If Miss ‘um’ sees you,” continued he, with a knowing
wink, “it’ll be all over with you;” so saying, Sir Moses touched
Old Jack gently with the spur, and proceeded to the slope of the
park, where Findlater and the whips now had the hounds.

Tom Findlater, as we said before, was an excellent huntsman, but
he had his peculiarities, and in addition to that of getting
drunk, he sometimes required to be managed by the rule of
contrary, and made to believe that Sir Moses wanted him to do the
very reverse of what he really did. Having been refused leave to
go to Cleaver the butcher’s christening-supper at the sign of the
Shoulder of Mutton, at Kimberley, Sir Moses anticipated that this
would be one of his perverse days, and so he began taking
measures accordingly.

“Good morning, Tom,” said he, as huntsman and whips now
sky-scraped to his advance—“morning all of you,” added he, waving
a general salute to the hound-encircling group.

“Now, Tom,” said he, pulling up and fumbling at his horn, “I’ve
been telling Mr. Pringle that we’ll get him a gallop so as to
enable him to arrive at Yammerton Grange before dark.”

“Yes, Sir Moses,” replied Tom, with a rap of his cap-peak,
thinking he would take very good care that he didn’t.

“Now whether will Briarey Banks or the Reddish Warren be the
likeliest place for a find?”

“Neither, Sir Moses, neither,” replied Tom confidently,
“Tipthorne’s the place for us.”

This was just what Sir Moses wanted.

“Tipthorne, you think, do you?” replied he, musingly. “Tipthorne,
you think—well, and where next?”

“Shillington, Sir Moses, and Halstead Hill, and so on to
Hatchington Wood.”

“Good!” replied the Baronet, “Good!” adding, “then let’s be
going.”

At a whistle and a waive of his hand the watchful hounds darted
up, and Tom taking the lead, the mixed cavalcade swept after them
over the now yellow-grassed park in a north-easterly direction,
Captain Luff working his screw as if he were bent on treading on
the hounds’ stems.

There being no one out to whom Sir Moses felt there would be any
profitable investment of attention, he devoted himself to our
hero, complimenting him on his appearance, and on the gallant
bearing of his steed, declaring that of all the neat horses he
had ever set eyes on the Lord Mayor was out-and-out the neatest.
So with compliments to Billy, and muttered “cusses” at Luff, they
trotted down Oxclose Lane, through the little village of
Homerton, past Dewfield Lawn, over Waybridge Common, shirking
Upwood toll-bar, and down Cornforth Bank to Burford, when
Tipthorne stood before them. It was a round Billesdon Coplow-like
hill, covered with stunted oaks, and a nice warm lying gorse
sloping away to the south; but Mr. Tadpole’s keeper having the
rabbits, he was seldom out of it, and it was of little use
looking there for a fox.

That being the case, of course it was more necessary to make a
great pretension, so halting noiselessly behind the high
red-berried hedge, dividing the pasture from the gorse, Tom
despatched his whips to their points, and then touching his cap
to Sir Moses, said, “P’raps Mr. Pringle would like to ride in and
see him find.”

“Ah, to be sure,” replied Sir Moses, “let’s both go in,”
whereupon Tom opened the bridle-gate, and away went the hounds
with a dash that as good as said if we don’t get a fox we’ll get
a rabbit at all events.

“A fox for a guinea!” cried Findlater, cheering them, and looking
at his watch as if he had him up already. “A fox for a guinea!”
repeated he, thinking how nicely he was selling his master.

“Keep your eye on this side,” cried Sir Moses to Billy. “he’ll
cross directly!” Terrible announcement. How our friend did quake.

“_Yap, yap, yap_,” now went the shrill note of Tartar, the
tarrier, “_Yough, yough, yough_” followed the deep tone of young
Venturesome, close in pursuit of a bunny.

“_Crack!_” went a heavy whip, echoing through the air and
resounding at the back of the hill.

All again was still, and Tom advanced up the cover, standing
erect in his stirrups, looking as if half-inclined to believe it
was a fox after all.

“_Eloo in! Eloo in!_” cried he, capping Talisman and Wonderful
across. “Yoicks wind ‘im! yoicks push him up!” continued he,
thinking what a wonderful performance it would be if they did
find.

“Squeak, yap, yell, squeak,” now went the well-known sound of a
hound in a trap. It is Labourer, and a whip goes diving into the
sea of gorse to the rescue.

“Oh, dom those traps,” cries Sir Moses, as the clamour ceases,
adding, “no fox here, I told you so,” adding, “should have gone
to the Warren.”

He then took out his box-wood horn and stopped the performance by
a most discordant blast. The hounds came slinking out to the
summons, some of them licking their lips as if they had not been
there altogether for nothing.

“Where to, now, please Sir Moses?” asked Tom, with a touch of his
cap, as soon as he had got them all out.

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“_Tally-ho!_” cries Captain Luff, in a most stentorian
strain—adding immediately, “Oh no! I’m mistaken, _It’s a hare!_”
as half the hounds break away to his cry.

“Oh, dom you and your noise,” cries Sir Moses, in well-feigned
disgust, adding—“Why don’t you put your spectacles on?”

Luff looks foolish, for he doesn’t know what to say, and the
excitement dies out in a laugh at the Captain’s expense.

“Where to, now, please, Sir Moses?” again asks Tom, chuckling at
his master’s displeasure, and thinking how much better it would
have been if he had let him go to the supper.

“Where you please,” growled the Baronet, scowling at Luff’s nasty
rusty Napoleons—“where you please, you said Shillington, didn’t
you—anywhere, only let us find a fox,” added he, as if he really
wanted one.

Tom then got his horse short by the head, and shouldering his
whip, trotted off briskly, as if bent on retrieving the day. So
he went through the little hamlet of Hawkesworth over Dippingham
water meadows, bringing Blobbington mill-race into the line, much
to Billy’s discomfiture, and then along the Hinton and London
turnpike to the sign of the Plough at the blacksmith’s shop at
Shillington.

The gorse was within a stone’s throw of the “Public,” so Luff and
some of the thirsty ones pulled up to wet their whistles and
light the clay pipes of gentility.

The gorse was very open, and the hounds ran through it almost
before the sots had settled what they would have, and there being
a bye-road at the far end, leading by a slight _détour_ to
Halstead Hill, Sir Moses hurried them out, thinking to shake off
some of them by a trot. They therefore slipped away with scarcely
a crack of the whip, let alone the twang of a horn.

“Bad work this,” said Sir Moses, spurring and reining up
alongside of Billy, “bad work this; that huntsman of mine,” added
he, in an under tone, “is the most obstinate fool under the sun,
and let me give you a bit of advice,” continued he, laying hold
of our friend’s arm, as if to enforce it. “If ever you keep
hounds, always give orders and never ask opinions. Now, Mister
Findlater!” hallooed he, to the bobbing cap in advance, “Now,
Mister Findlater! you’re well called Findlater, by Jove, for I
think you’ll never find at all. Halstead Hill, I suppose, next?”

“Yes, Sir Moses,” replied Tom, with a half-touch of his cap,
putting on a little faster, to get away, as he thought, from the
spray of his master’s wrath. And so with this comfortable game at
cross purposes, master and servant passed over what is still
called Lingfield common (though it now grows turnips instead of
gorse), and leaving Cherry-trees Windmill to the left, sunk the
hill at Drovers’ Heath, and crossing the bridge at the
Wellingburn, the undulating form of Halstead Hill stood full
before them. Tom then pulled up into a walk, and contemplated the
rugged intricacies of its craggy bush-dotted face.

“If there’s a fox in the country one would think he’d be here,”
observed he, in a general sort of way, well knowing that Mr.
Testyfield’s keeper took better care of them than that. “Gently
hurrying!” hallooed he, now cracking his whip as the hounds
pricked their ears, and seemed inclined to break away to an
outburst of children from the village school below.

Tom then took the hounds to the east end of the hill, where the
lying began, and drew them along the face of it with the usual
result, “_Nil_.” Not even a rabbit.

“Well, that’s queer,” said he, with well feigned chagrin, as
Pillager, Petulant, and Ravager appeared on the bare ground to
the west, leading out the rest of the pack on their lines. They
were all presently clustering in view again. A slight twang of
the horn brought them pouring down to the hill to our obstinate
huntsman just as Captain Luff and Co. hove in sight on the
Wellingburn Bridge, riding as boldly as refreshed gentlemen
generally do.

There was nothing for it then but Hatchington Wood, with its deep
holding rides and interminable extent.

There is a Hatchington Wood in every hunt, wild inhospitable
looking thickets, that seem as if they never knew an owner’s
care, where men light their cigars and gather in groups, well
knowing that whatever sport the hounds may have, theirs is over
for the day. Places in which a man may gallop his horse’s tail
off, and not hear or see half as much as those do who sit still.

Into it Tom now cheered his hounds, again thinking how much
better it would have been if Sir Moses had let him go to the
supper. “_Cover hoick! Cover hoick!_” cheered he to his hounds,
as they came to the rickety old gate. “I wouldn’t ha’ got drunk,”
added he to himself. “_Yoi, wind him! Yoi, rouse him, my boys!_
what ‘arm could it do him, my going, I wonders?” continued he to
himself. “Yoi, try for him, Desp’rate, good lass! Desp’rate bad
job my not gettin’, I know,” added he, rubbing his nose on the
back of his hand; and so with cheers to his hounds and
commentaries on Sir Moses’s mean conduct, the huntsman proceeded
from ride to road and from road to ride, varied with occasional
dives into the fern and the rough, to exhort and encourage his
hounds to rout out a fox; not that he cared much now whether he
found one or not, for the cover had long existed on the
reputation of a run that took place twelve years before, and it
was not likely that a place so circumstanced would depart from
its usual course on that day.

There is nothing certain, however, about a fox-hunt, but
uncertainty; the worst-favoured days sometimes proving the best,
and the best-favoured ones sometimes proving the worst. We dare
say, if our sporting readers would ransack their memories, they
will find that most of their best days have been on unpromising
ones. So it was on the present occasion, only no one saw the run
but Tom and the first whip. Coming suddenly upon a fine
travelling fox, at the far corner of the cover, they slipped away
with him down wind, and had a bona fide five and thirty minutes,
with a kill, in Lord Ladythorne’s country, within two fields of
his famous gorse cover, at Cockmere.

“Ord! rot ye, but ye should ha’ seen that, if you’d let me go to
the supper,” cried Tom, as he threw himself off his lathered
tail-quivering horse to pick up his fox, adding, “I knows when to
blow the horn and when not.”

Meanwhile Sir Moses, having got into a wrangle with Jacky
Phillips about the price of a pig, sate on his accustomed place
on the rising ground by the old tumble-down farm-buildings,
wrangling, and haggling, and declaring it was a “do.” In the
midst of his vehemence, Robin Snowball’s camp of roystering,
tinkering besom-makers came hattering past; and Robin, having a
contract with Sir Moses for dog horses, gave his ass a forwarding
bang, and ran up to inform his patron that “the hunds had gone
away through Piercefield plantins iver see lang since:”—a fact
that Robin was well aware of, having been stealing besom-shanks
in them at the time.

“Oh, the devil!” shrieked Sir Moses, as if he was shot. “Oh, the
devil!” continued he, wringing his hands, thinking how Tom would
be bucketing Crusader now that he was out of sight; and catching
up his horse, he stuck spurs in his sides, and went clattering up
the stony cross-road to the west, as hard as ever the old Jack
could lay legs to the ground, thinking what a wigging he would
give Tom if he caught him.

“Hark!” continued he, pulling short up across the road, and
nearly shooting Billy into his pocket with the jerk of his
suddenly stopped horse, “Hark!” repeated he, holding up his hand,
“Isn’t that the horn?”

“Oh, dom it! it’s Parker, the postman,” added he,—“what business
has the beggar to make such a row!” for, like all noisy people,
Sir Moses had no idea of anybody making a noise but himself. He
then set his horse agoing again, and was presently standing in
his stirrups, tearing up the wretched, starvation, weed-grown
ground outside the cover.

Having gained a sufficient elevation, he again pulled up, and
turning short round, began surveying the country. All was quiet
and tranquil. The cattle had their heads to the ground, the sheep
were scattered freely over the fields, and the teams were going
lazily over the clover-lays, leaving shiny furrows behind them.

“Well, that’s a sell, at all events!” said he, dropping his
reins. “Be b’und to say they are right into the heart of
Featherbedfordshire by this time,—most likely at Upton Moss in
Woodberry Yale,—as fine a country as ever man crossed,—and to
think that that wretched deluded man has it all to himself!—I’d
draw and quarter him if I had him, dom’d if I wouldn’t,” added
Sir Moses, cutting frantically at the air with his thong-gathered
whip.

Our friend Billy, on the other hand, was all ease and composure.
He had escaped the greatest punishment that could befall him, and
was so clean and comfortable, that he resolved to surprise his
fair friends at Yammerton Grange in his pink, instead of changing
as he intended.

Sir Moses, having strained his eye-balls about the country in
vain, at length dropped down in his saddle, and addressing the
few darkly-clad horsemen around him with, “Well, gentlemen, I’m
afraid it’s all over for the day,” adding, “Come, Pringle, let us
be going,” he poked his way past them, and was presently
retracing his steps through the wood, picking up a lost hound or
two as he went. And still he was so loth to give it up, that he
took Forester Hill in his way, to try if he could see anything of
them; but it was all calm and blank as before; and at length he
reached Pangburn Park in a very discontented mood.

In the court-yard stood the green fly that had to convey our
friend back to fairy-land, away from the red coats, silk jackets
and other the persecutions of pleasure, to the peaceful repose of
the Major and his “haryers.” Sir Moses looked at it with
satisfaction, for he had had as much of our friend’s society as
he required, and did not know that he could “do” him much more if
he had him a month; so if he could now only get clear of Monsieur
without paying him, that was all he required.

Jack, however, was on the alert, and appeared on the back-steps
as Sir Moses dismounted; nor did his rapid dive into the stable
avail him, for Jack headed him as he emerged at the other end,
with a hoist of his hat, and a “Bon jour, Sare Moses, Baronet!”

“Ah, Monsieur, comment vous portez-vous?” replied the Baronet,
shying off, with a keep-your-distance sort of waive of the hand.

Jack, however, was not to be put off that way, and following
briskly up, he refreshed Sir Moses’s memory with, “Pund, I beat
Cuddy, old cock, to de clomp; ten franc—ten shillin’—I get over
de brook; thirty shillin’ in all, Sare Moses, Baronet,” holding
out his hand for the money.

“Oh, ah, true,” replied Sir Moses, pretending to recollect the
bets, adding, “If you can give me change of a fifty-pun note, I
can pay ye,” producing a nice clean one from his pocket-book that
he always kept ready for cases of emergency like the present.

“Fifty-pun note, Sare Moses!” replied Jack, eyeing it. “Fifty-pun
note! I ‘ave not got such an astonishin’ som about me at
present,” feeling his pockets as he spoke; “bot I vill seek
change, if you please.”

“Why, no,” replied Sir Moses, thinking he had better not part
with the decoy-duck. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though,”
continued he, restoring it to its case; “I’ll send you a
post-office order for the amount, or pay it to your friend, Mr.
Gallon, whichever you prefer.”

“Vell, Sir Moses, Baronet,” replied Jack, considering, “I think
de leetle post-office order vill be de most digestible vay of
squarin’ matters.”

“Va-a-ry good,” cried Sir Moses, “Va-a-ry good. I’ll send you
one, then,” and darting at a door in the wall, he slipped through
it, and shot the bolt between Jack and himself.

And our hero, having recruited nature with lunch, and arranged
with Jack for riding his horse, presently took leave of his most
hospitable host, and entered the fly that was to convey him back
to Yammerton Grange. And having cast himself into its ill-stuffed
hold he rumbled and jolted across country in the careless,
independent sort of way that a man does who has only a temporary
interest in the vehicle, easy whether he was upset or not. Let us
now anticipate his arrival by transferring our imaginations to
Yammerton Grange.