CHAPTER IV MARCHING ORDERS

Isaac was a character in his way—quite an institution at The Grange, where, by dint of indomitable tenacity of opinion, and a singular talent for silence, he had contrived to extend his influence over a good many matters not in the least connected with his department. For instance, not a sheep could be killed without consulting Isaac. His word on the subject of pigs was law; and it needed but a wave of his hand to substitute for the useless, hideous, gigantic Cochin-Chinas of the poultry-yard, a certain breed of plump Dorkings, that laid diurnal eggs in their lifetime, and, after death, made almost as handsome an appearance as Norfolk turkeys on the dining-table.

Perhaps the old groom was less omnipotent in the stable than elsewhere. Mr. Sawyer, like many other proprietors of small studs, chose to have his own way with his horses, and would no more have omitted to visit them after breakfast than he would have neglected to smoke his cigar. It is only the tip-top swells, with whom our friend had not yet scraped acquaintance, who “suppose their fellow will have ‘two or three’ at the place of meeting.” But although it is doubtless a great luxury to own plenty of hunters, this very plurality often prevents a man from finding out which is his best horse. There are not a great many good runs over any country in one season. It is a long time before you have treated each one of your dozen to a clipper; and, till then, you only know you have a good hunter, but cannot tell you have got a good horse.

Mr. Sawyer, however, knew the merits and the failings of his own two or three nags but too well. He was pretty often on their backs, and, when off them, constantly in and out of the stable. Isaac would no more have dared to give one of them a gallop, or a dose of physic, than to have inflicted the same discipline on his master. Nevertheless he grumbled always and continuously. As I have said before, it was the one relaxation he permitted himself. Perhaps he never had a better opportunity than on the morning after the new horse came home, when Mr. Sawyer, according to custom, but with a trifle more eagerness than usual, visited his favourites in their comfortable quarters. According to custom, too, he felt their legs all round; expressed his satisfaction that the grey’s had got “quite fine again,” and passed over a certain thick-set underbred bay horse without a remark. Indeed, it would have been difficult to say anything complimentary of this animal; and his remaining so long in Mr. Sawyer’s stable was less the consequence of his merits than that strangers seemed to have the same opinion of him as was entertained by his own master. It is somewhat galling, when we cannot get rid of a bad one, to reflect that it should be so difficult to find a bigger fool than ourselves. The bay, who rejoiced in the classical appellation of Marathon, was a slow horse, a sulky horse, and by no means a safe fencer—about as unpleasant a hunter as a man would wish to get upon, but rather a favourite with Isaac notwithstanding, as he was sound, and a voracious feeder. These three, the roan, the grey (who had no name), and the bay, with a little three-cornered jumping hack called Jack-a-Dandy, now constituted Mr. Sawyer’s stud; and, as he contemplated them all hard at work with their eleven o’clock feed, he felt that spark of ambition glowing in his bosom which has lured so many great men to their destruction.

“He looks a clipper! don’t he, Isaac?” observed the master, nodding towards the roan’s long shapely quarters and square tail. “The rarest shaped one we’ve had in this stable for many a day,” he added, seeing his servant’s features screwed into the well-known twist that denoted disapprobation.

“Looks!” grunted Isaac, who never called his master “sir.” “Looks! Ah! he’d be a nice thing enough to knock a light trap about, or do you a day now and then when the country gets dry. He’ll never be fit for our ploughs—you see if he will! They’ll pull him to pieces in a fortnight—you see if they won’t!”

“I don’t want him for our ploughs,” answered Mr. Sawyer, waxing somewhat impatient. “I don’t think I shall have another day in the Old Country this year. Look ye here, Isaac. I’m going to move the horses. I’ve three now, let alone ‘Jack’” (this was an abbreviation for the hack who seldom enjoyed his fall name, being generally designated as above, or as “The Dandy”)—“three right good ones. I can easily pick up another, when I’m settled. I’m going down to the grass.”

“Grass!” grunted the listener. “Where be that?”

“Well, I’m going to see what sport they have in the Shires,” answered his master, warming up with the subject—“going to have a look at Mr. Tailby and the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, and try if I can’t make a fight good enough to see those Pytchley bitches run into their fox. I’m going to Market Harborough, Isaac. Such horses as mine are wasted in this out-of-the-way country. Why, the grey’s the best I’ve ever had; and the roan ought to be faster than he; and even the bay would carry me better, I think, in that country than he does here.”

A gleam as of pity softened old Isaac’s hard blue eyes, as it rested on Marathon tucking in his feed, and he pictured that devoted animal rolling and lurching, disconsolate, over the ridge-and-furrow of a fifty-acre grass-field. But he only observed sardonically,

“Markit Harboro’, is it? To stand at the sign of the ‘Hand-in-Pocket,’ I suppose?”

“Never mind what you suppose!” answered Mr. Sawyer, now positively angry. “You do what I bid you. Move the horses down to-morrow by the rail. Take The Boy with you; and mind you keep him out of mischief. I’ve written to a friend of mine to engage stables. Next week we’ll begin work in right earnest. Come into the house, with your book, after your dinner; and hold your tongue!”

Old Isaac knew better than to pursue the subject any further; and, truth to tell, the old fellow had a spark of his youth’s adventurous spirit lingering about him still, which made him not averse to a change, although he thought the scheme wasteful, imprudent, and extravagant. He looked after his master, strolling leisurely towards the house, and observed very slowly to himself and the stable-cat:

“Market ’Arborow! Market ’Arborow! Five days a week, bullock-fences, and a wet country! Thorns, stubs, cracked heels, and hawful wear-an’-tear of horses! No—I couldn’t have believed it of him!”

Eight-and-forty hours more saw old Isaac stamping drearily about on the wet pavement of that excellent sporting locality. Market Harborough, though perhaps the best head-quarters in the world for fox-hunting, can scarcely be termed a gay or very beautiful town. On a wet, drizzling afternoon in early winter, when twilight begins somewhere about 2.45, with no movable object visible save a deserted carrier’s cart, and a small rain falling, which dulls the red-brick houses while it polishes the paved and slippery streets, it is, doubtless, a city suggestive of repose, not to say stagnation. Isaac’s was a temperament sufficiently susceptible of all unpleasant influences; and he began to wish heartily he hadn’t come. A variety of disadvantages had occurred to him since his arrival. The price of forage and stabling he considered enormous. The conveniences for hot water were not what he was accustomed to at home. Hotspur did by no means feed well in a strange box: the horse had begun to look poorer day by day since he left the dealer’s. And last night The Boy, who had never been from home before, certainly smelt of gin when he came to bed.

This youth—who, if he once had a name, must have long forgotten it, since he was never called anything but “The Boy”—was a continual thorn in the head groom’s side. He had originally been taken solely on Isaac’s recommendation, and had caused that worthy more trouble than all the rest of the establishment put together, horses, pigs, and the Cochin-Chinas to boot. He was a light, lathy lad, with a pretty face; a good horseman, considering his strength, or rather weakness; and had a knack of keeping his hands down: but he owned the usual faults of boyhood—carelessness, forgetfulness, “imperence” (as Isaac called it), a great love of procrastination, and general insensibility to the beauty of truth.

“If he takes to drinking, the young warmint!” thought Isaac, “I’ll larrup the skin off him!” And thus consoling himself, the old man turned his cheek once more to the chill, misty heavens, and shook his head. His horses were done up; the door locked, and the key in his pocket; The Boy also secured by the same means in the loft. Master could not arrive till eight or nine o’clock. It was the hour when, at The Grange, he was accustomed to see the pigs feed and the chickens to roost. He wished he was back in the Old Country: the time hung heavily on the old groom’s hands.

“Nothing to do, and lots of time to do it in! that seems to be about the size of it—eh, governor?” said a voice at his elbow; and, turning round, Isaac confronted a short and dapper personage, whom, by a sort of freemasonry, he had no difficulty in recognising as one of his own profession.

At any other time he would have treated this worthy’s advances to acquaintance with sovereign contempt; but his spirits were depressed and his heart solitary, so he vented a grunt of acquiescence, which, for him, was wonderfully polite.

“I think I see you arrive yesterday, with two or three nags,” continued this affable functionary, “when I was out a hairin’ some o’ mine; and you’re puttin’ up close by my place. Come in, governor, and take something hot, to keep the cold off till we become better acquainted.”

With this hospitable offer, Isaac found himself following his new friend into a cosy little tap-room, with red curtains and a sanded floor, which apartment they had all to themselves; and whilst “something hot”—a delicious compound of yolk of egg, brown sugar, warm beer, and cordial gin—was being got ready, he had time to study the exterior of his new acquaintance.

Probably the utmost ingenuity of the tailor’s art must have been exhausted in constructing trousers so tight as the pair which clung to that person’s legs. Not a crease had they, nor a fold anywhere; and, unless the man slept in them, it was difficult to conceive how they could conveniently be used as articles of daily apparel. The person’s boots, too, were neat, round-toed Wellingtons; his waistcoat descended far below his hips; and the waist-buttons of his grey-mixture coat were unusually low and wide apart. A cream-coloured silk neckcloth, secured by a horse-shoe pin, set off a pale, sharp-looking countenance, speaking of hot stables and dissipation, while the closest possible crop of hair and whiskers did justice to a shaved hat with an exceedingly flat brim. A few splashes of mud on the boots and trousers showed he had been lately on horseback; and he held up one of his thin little legs as he took his seat, and contemplated the stains with a grin of morbid satisfaction.

“Blessed if ever I see this country so deep!” he remarked, after a pull at the flip. “How my horses will stand it, I know no more than the dead, the way the governor rides. We’ve only nine this year; and he’s an awful hard man upon a horse.”

“Nine!” exclaimed old Isaac, smacking his lips after the draught, which warmed the very cockles of his heart; and being a man of few words, only added, “Well, now, to be sure!”

“He is awful hard upon ’em—that’s the truth,” continued the narrator. “It was only last week he says to me, ‘Tiptop,’ says he—my name’s Tiptop—‘what made Boadicea’ (that’s our bay mare by Bellerophon out of Blue Light)—‘what made Boadicea stop with me under Carlton Clump to-day? Either she wasn’t fit,’ says he, ‘or she isn’t worth five shillings.’ ‘Well, sir,’ says I, ‘the mare’s a gross feeder,’ says I, ‘and you ride with rayther a slack rein.’ ‘slack rein be hanged!’ says he. ‘If ever such a thing happens again, you’ll get the sack,’ says he. So I up and told him I was ready to go whenever he could replace me; and the upshot of it was as he apologised quite like a gentleman; for, indeed, he wouldn’t know whatever to do without me. He’s a good man—my governor—enough; but he’s hasty—very hasty. Why, to see him coming over a gate into the turnpike-road, as I did t’other day, on Catamount—that’s our chestnut, as ran fourth for the Liverpool—you’d say he’d no discretion whatever; but they’ve all got their faults—all on ’em. What’s yours? Can he ride?”

Discreet Isaac answered with a counter-question. “What’s your governor’s name?” said he, peeping once more into the waning pewter measure.

“The Honourable Crasher,” replied Mr. Tiptop, not without an air of exultation. “A brother he is to the Hearl of Heligoland. Now I’ve told you all about it, old bloke. There—you ease your mind in return, and give us your name.”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve seen the register,” answered Isaac. “But it’s a long way to the parish as owes me a settlement; and I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, Mr. Tiptop, till I can communicate with you by post.” Saying which Isaac finished the flip at a gulp, and walked off to seven-o’clock stables without uttering another word.