CHAPTER III “YOUR HANDWRITING, SIR”

“Mornin’, sir,” says Mr. Sloper, scenting a customer as he accosts his guest. “Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Sawyer? Won’t ye step in and sit down after your walk? Take a glass of mild ale and a crust of bread-and-cheese, or a drop of sherry or anythink?”

“No hunting to-day, Job,” answers the visitor, declining the refreshment; “so I just toddled over to see how you’re getting on, and have a look round the stables; no harm in looking, you know.”

Mr. Sloper’s face assumes an expression of profound mystery. “I’m glad you come over to-day, sir,” he says, in a tone of confidential frankness, “of all days in the year. I’ve a ’orse here, as I should like to ast your opinion about—a gent like you as knows what a ’unter really is. And so you should, Mr. Sawyer, for there’s no man alive takes greater liberties with ’em when they can go and do it. And I’ve got one in that box, as I think, just is more than curious.”

“Would he carry me?” asks Mr. Sawyer, with well-affected indifference, as if he had not come over expressly to find one that would. “Not that I want a horse, you know; but if I saw one I liked very much, and you didn’t price him too high, why I might be induced to buy against next season, perhaps.”

Job took his hands out of his coat-pockets, and spread them abroad, as it were to dry. The action denoted extreme purity and candour.

“No; I don’t think as he ought to carry you, sir,” was the unexpected reply. “Now, I ain’t a-going to tell you a lie, Mr. Sawyer. This horse didn’t ought to be ridden, not the way you take and ride them, Mr. Sawyer; leastways not over such a blind heart-breaking country as this here. He’s too good, he is, for that kind of work; he ought to be in Leicestershire, he ought; the Harborough country, that’s the country for him. He’s too fast for us, and that’s the truth. Only, to be sure, we have a vast of plough hereabout, and I never see such a sticker through dirt. It makes no odds to him, pasture or plough, and the sweetest hack ever I clapped eyes on besides. However, you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Sawyer. I won’t ask you to believe me. You’ve a quicker eye to a horse than I have, by a long chalk, and I’d sooner have your opinion than my own. I would now, and that’s the truth!”

Our purchaser began to think he might possibly have hit upon the animal at last. Often as he had been at the game, and often as he had been disappointed, he was still sanguine enough to believe he might draw the prize-ticket in the lottery at any time. As I imagine every man who pulls on his boots to go out hunting has a sort of vague hope that to-day may be his day of triumph with the hounds, so the oldest and wariest of us cannot go into a dealer’s yard without a sort of half-conscious idea that there must be a trump card somewhere in the pack, and it may be our luck to hold it as well as another’s.

But Sloper, like the rest of his trade, was not going to show his game first. It seems to be a maxim with all salesmen to prove their customers with inferior articles before they come to the real thing. Mr. Sawyer had to walk through a four-stall stable, and inspect, preparatory to declining, a mealy bay cob, a lame grey, a broken-winded chestnut, and an enormous brown animal, very tall, very narrow, very ugly, with extremely upright forelegs and shoulders to match. The latter his owner affirmed to be “an extraordinary shaped un” as no doubt he was. A little playful badinage on the merits of this last enlivened the visit.

“What will you take for the brown, Sloper, if I buy him at so much the foot?” said the customer, as they emerged into the fresh air.

“Say ten pound a foot, sir!” answered Job, with the utmost gravity, “and ten over, because he always has a foot to spare. Come now, Mr. Sawyer, I can afford to let a good customer like you have that horse for fefty. Fefty guineas, or even pounds, sir, to you. I got him in a bad debt, you see, sir;—it’s Bible truth I’m telling ye;—and he only stood me in forty-seven pounds ten, and a sov. I gave the man as brought him over. He’s not everybody’s horse, Mr. Sawyer, that isn’t; but I think he’ll carry you remarkably well.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever give him a chance,” was the rejoinder. “Come, Job, we’re burning daylight; let’s go and have a look at the crack.”

One individual had been listening to the above conversation with thrilling interest. This was no less a personage than Barney, Mr. Sloper’s head groom, general factotum, and rough-rider in ordinary—an official whose business it was to ride anything at anything, for anybody who asked him. He was a little old man, with one eye, a red handkerchief, and the general appearance of a post-boy on half-pay; a sober fellow, too, and as brave as King Richard; yet had he expressed himself strongly about this said brown horse, the previous evening, to the maid-of-all-work. “He’s the wussest we’ve had yet,” was his fiat. “It’s nateral for ’em to fall; but when he falls, he’s all over a chap till he’s crumpled him.” So his heroic heart beat more freely when they adjourned to the neighbouring box.

The Roan.

Mr. Sloper threw the door open with an air. It must be confessed he seldom had one that would bear, without preparation, a minute inspection from the eye of a sportsman; but he knew this was a sound one, and made the most of it. Clothed and hooded, littered to the hocks, and sheeted to the tail, there was yet something about his general appearance that fascinated Mr. Sawyer at once. Job saw the spell was working, and abstained from disturbing it. As far as could be seen, the animal was a long, low, well-bred-looking roan, with short flat legs, large clean hocks, and swelling muscular thighs. His supple skin threw off a bloom, as if he was in first-rate condition; and when, laying his ears back and biting the manger, he lifted a foreleg, as it were, to expostulate with his visitors, the hoof was round, open, and well-developed, as blue, and to all appearance as hard as a flint.

“Has he fashion enough, think ye, sir?” asked Job, at length, breaking the silence. “Strip him, Barney,” he added, taking the straw from his mouth.

The roan winced, and stamped, and whisked his tail, and set his back up during the process; but when it was concluded, Mr. Sawyer could not but confess to himself, that if he was only as good as he looked, he would do.

“Feel his legs, Mr. Sawyer!” observed the dealer, turning away to conceal the triumph that would ooze out. “There’s some legs—there’s some hocks and thighs! Talk of loins, and look where his tail’s set on. Carries his own head, too; and if you could see his manners! I never saw such manners in the hunting-field. Six-year-old—not a speck or blemish; bold as a bull, and gentle as a lady; he can go as fast as you can clap your hands, and stay till the middle of the week after next—jump a town, too, and never turn his head from the place you put him at. As handy as a fiddle, as neat as a pink, and worth all the money to carry in your eye when you go out to buy hunters. But what’s the use of talking about it to a judge like you? Lay your leg over him—only just lay your leg over him, Mr. Sawyer. I don’t want you to buy him! but get on him and feel his action, just as a favour to me.”

Our friend had made up his mind he would do so from the first. There was no mistaking the appearance of the animal; so good was it, that he had but two misgivings—some rank unsoundness, to account for its being there, or so high a price as to be beyond his means; for Mr. Sawyer was too fond of the sport to give a sum that he could not replace for so perishable an article as a hunter.

He was no mean equestrian, our friend, and quite at home on a strange horse. As he drew the curb-rein gently through his fingers, the roan dropped his long lean head, and champed the bit playfully, tossing a speck of froth back on his rider’s boots.

“You’ve got a mouth, at any rate,” quoth Mr. Sawyer, and trotted him gently down the hard road, the animal stepping freely and gaily under him, full of life and spirits. The customer liked his mount, and couldn’t help showing it. “May I lark him?” said he, pulling up after a short canter to and fro on the turf by the wayside; during which Job Sloper had been exercising his mental arithmetic in what we may term a sum of problematical addition.

“Take him into the close, sir,” was the generous reply; “put him at anything you like. If you can get him into one of these fences, I’ll give him to you!”

So Mr. Sawyer sat down to jump a low hedge and ditch, then stood up, and caught hold of the roan’s head, and sent him a cracker through the adjoining plough, and across a larger fence into a pasture, and back again over a fair flight of rails and lost his flat shooting-hat, and rucked his plaid trousers up to his knees; and Sloper marked his kindling eye and glowing cheek, and knew that he had landed him.

“Walk him about for ten minutes before you do him over,” said that worthy to Barney, as Mr. Sawyer dismounted, and the latter brought him his hat. “And now, sir,” added the hospitable dealer, “you can’t go away without tasting my cheese—the same you liked last time, you know. Walk in, sir; this way, and mind the step, if you please.” So speaking, Mr. Sloper ushered his guest into a neat little parlour with a strong odour of preserved tobacco-smoke, where a clean cloth set off a nice luncheon of bread and cheese, flanked by a foaming jug of strong ale and a decanter of oily-brown sherry.

And herein the dealer showed his knowledge of human nature, and his discrimination in the different characteristics of the species. Had his guest been some generous scion of the aristocracy, with more money than nerves, he would have primed him first, and put him up to ride afterwards. But he knew his man. He was well aware that Mr. Sawyer required no stimulant to make him jump, but a strong one to induce him to part with his money; so he proposed the luncheon after he was satisfied that his customer was pleased with his mount.

Neither of them touched on business during the meal, the conversation consisting chiefly of the runs that had lately taken place in the Old Country, with many an inferred compliment to the good riding of the possible purchaser.

Then Mr. Sawyer produced the Laranagas and offered one to Job, who bit it, and wet it, and smoked it, as men do who are more used to clay pipes, and then they went back to the stable to see the roan done up.

The gallop and the ale were working in Mr. Sawyer’s brain, but he didn’t see his way into the roan at a hundred; so he obstinately held his tongue. The dealer was obliged to break the ice.

“I’d take it very friendly of you, sir, if you’d give me your honest opinion of that horse,” said he, waving the Laranaga towards the animal. “I fancy he’s too good for our country; and I’ve a brother-in-law down in Rutland as wants to have him very bad. He’s just the cut, so he says, for these Melton gents; and he’s a good judge, is my brother-in-law, and a pretty rider to boot. He’d give me my price, too; but then, you know, sir, askin’ your pardon, it isn’t always ready money between relations; and that cuts the other way again, as a man may say. What do you think, Mr. Sawyer?”

“I’ll find out what he wants for him, at any rate,” thought the customer. “What’s his figure?” was the abrupt rejoinder.

Mr. Sloper hesitated. “A hundred and—” eighty, he was going to say; but seeing his customer’s eye resting on the roan’s back-ribs—a point in which the horse was somewhat deficient—he dropped at once to seventy, and regretted it the next moment when he caught the expression of the listener’s face.

“It isn’t even money,” answered Mr. Sawyer, without, however, making the same sort of face he had done several times before, when he had refused to give double the sum at which he had eventually purchased. “I should say you might get a hundred and twenty for him down there, if you’d luck. But it’s a great risk—a great risk—and a long distance; and perhaps have him sent back to you in the spring. If I wanted a horse, I’d give you a hundred for him, though he isn’t exactly my sort. A hundred!—I’ll tell you what, Sloper, I’ll be hanged if I won’t chance it—I’ll give you a hundred—guineas—come! Money down, and no questions asked.”

“I can warrant him sound,” answered Mr. Sloper; “and I’d rather you had him than anybody. But it’s childish talking of a hundred guineas and that horse on the same afternoon. However, I thank you kindly all the same, Mr. Sawyer. Barney! shut the box up. Come in, sir, and have one glass of sherry before you start. The evenings get chill at this time of year, and that’s old sherry, and won’t hurt you no more than milk. He is a nice horse, Mr. Sawyer, I think—a very nice horse, and I’m glad you’re pleased with him.”

So they returned into the little parlour, and stirred up the fire, and finished the bottle of old sherry: nor is it necessary to remark that, with the concluding glass of that generous fluid the roan became the property of John Standish Sawyer, under the following somewhat complicated agreement:—That he was to give an immediate cheque for a hundred and forty pounds, and ten pounds more at the end of the season; which latter donation was to be increased to twenty if he should sell him for anything over two hundred—a contingency which the dealer was pleased to observe amounted to what he called “a moral.”

The new owner went to look at him once more in the stable, and thought him the nicest horse he ever saw in his life. The walk home, too, was delightful, till the sherry had evaporated, when it became rather tedious; and at dinner-time Mr. Sawyer was naturally less hungry than thirsty. All the evening, however, he congratulated himself on having done a good day’s work. All night, too, he dreamed of the roan; and on waking resolved to call him “Hotspur.”

When the horse came home next day, he certainly looked rather smaller than his new owner had fancied. Old Isaac too, growled out his untoward opinion that he “looked a sort as would work very light.” But then Isaac always grumbled—it was the old groom’s way of enjoying himself.