CHAPTER IX FOUR O’CLOCK, STABLES

I should be sorry for my reader to suppose that John Standish Sawyer was what is termed “a susceptible man.” On the contrary, since his well-remembered rejection by Miss Mexico, an event of which it is unnecessary to specify the date, he had steeled himself resolutely against the fair, and devoted his energies, if possible, more exclusively than ever to the worship of Diana. Cold as she is at times, and rigorous as are her icy frowns, corrugating that beaming face into unpropitious wrinkles, at least she is a mistress who never deceives. The thermometer at your dressing-room window tells you exactly the humour in which you will find her, and we do not hear the old, whose season of enjoyment has passed away, regretting the hours and days they have spent in her service. “If I had my time to come over again,” I heard a hale octogenarian declare not long ago, “I should make one alteration. I should flirt a little less and hunt a great deal more.” He had been a four-days-a-week man all his life, and in his youth a fierce admirer of the ladies. The foregoing, nevertheless, was the result of his experience.

Mr. Sawyer, like any other male biped, was not above being flattered and pleased by the notice of such a girl as Miss Dove. It smoothed his feathers, so to speak, and encouraged him to think better of himself. The Honourable Crasher, too, who had quite taken a fancy to his new friend, asked him to a tête-à-tête dinner at his lodgings on the night after the Tilton Wood meet; and as the wine was remarkably good, and the host, in his sleepy, quiet way, rather pleasant company, he spent an agreeable evening enough.

For the next two or three days there was a catching kind of frost, of the most provoking description, just hard enough to stop hunting, yet with a deceitful appearance of “going” which prevented sportsmen from leaving their quarters for London. During this interregnum Mr. Sawyer had leisure to unpack his things, arrange his books—consisting of “Colonel White’s Observations on Fox-hunting,” “Ask Mamma” (illustrated with coloured prints), and a few back numbers of the Sporting Magazine,—inspect his stables, watch the roan putting on flesh, and the departure of the grey’s cough, besides making acquaintance with the persons and studs of Mr. Savage, Captain Struggles, and Major Brush—gentlemen possessing, one and all, an inexhaustible fund of spirits, an untiring delight in horseflesh, numerous suits of wearing apparel, such as nearly approached the character of fancy dresses, and, to all appearance, a lack of nothing in the world except ready money. They fraternised willingly enough with our friend, smoked cigars with him at his hotel in the morning, took him over their stables at dusk, did not try to sell him any of their horses, which would indeed have been a hopeless enterprise, and generally made the world as pleasant for him as was in their power. Mr. Sawyer began to think he had landed in Utopia at last—that he had reached the Happy Land, where, metaphorically speaking, it was to be “beer and skittles” all day long. The only drawback to his felicity was the sustained discontent of old Isaac, and an increasing tendency to inebriety on the part of The Boy.

Perhaps my reader will best understand his situation from a description of a visit paid, according to custom, by the whole gang to the stables of the Honourable Crasher. Time 4.30, on a dark afternoon, with every appearance of a thaw.

Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue Light, is being stripped for Mr. Sawyer’s inspection. As a compliment to the stranger, he is further invited to “walk up to the mare, and feel how fit she is!” at the risk of having his brains dashed out; Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue Light, resenting such liberties with the ferocity of her British namesake, and kicking with considerable energy when her ribs are tickled. Mr. Tiptop, by far too great a man to touch a rug or hood, gives his directions from the offing, with his hat very much over his eyes, removing it only when addressed by his master, his legs very wide apart, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his tight trousers.

Captain Struggles, a heavy gentleman, who rides light-weight horses, and wears a shooting suit of the broadest check fabricated, takes a straw out of his mouth, and observes, “That’s about the sort, I think, when you want to do the trick over this country. Ain’t it, Tiptop?”

Mr. Tiptop is always mysterious and oracular concerning the Honourable’s stud. Somebody, he thinks, ought to preserve the secrets of the stable, and Crasher himself is the most indiscreet of mortals on such subjects. So the groom raises his hat with both hands, puts it on again, and replies, “We like to get all of ours as nearly as possible about that mould. There’s a young horse as is quite one of your sort, Captain, in the next box.” Whereupon Mr. Sawyer, who had no patience with Tiptop, winks at Major Brush, and the latter bursts out laughing.

The conversation now becomes general, and not altogether devoid of personality.

“Your sort are rather of the weedy order, Struggles,” observes the Major. “Too light for this country, as you’ll find out before you’re many days older, now that we’ve got the ground to ride as it should do, up to our girths. Besides, those thorough-bred rips never have courage to face large fences. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Sawyer?”

The Major has not yet forgiven Struggles for stopping him on the last day they were out, at the only practicable place in a bullfinch, on which the heavy weight and a very little chestnut stallion were see-sawing backwards and forwards, like some exquisitely-balanced piece of machinery. Mr. Sawyer, thus appealed to, gives his opinion, thinking of the roan the while: “They must have power, I fancy, for these flying countries, but they must have blood too. I should like to show you a horse I’ve just bought, that I mean to hunt to-morrow if the frost goes. My stables are ‘close at hand.’”

It is resolved that Mr. Sawyer’s shall be the next stud inspected; but such an unheard-of breach of etiquette as leaving their present haunt until every individual horse has been stripped, cannot be entertained for a moment; so Mr. Savage, in his turn, enlivens the process by attacking poor Struggles: “You never got to the end that Keythorpe day, after all,” says he. “What’s the use of these long pedigrees of yours, if they can’t stay? I have always understood their only merit as hunters is, that you can’t tire the thoro’-bred ones. But confess now, Struggles, you stopped before the hounds ran through the Coplow!”

“No distance at all!” chimes in Brush.

“And the ground must have been quite light before the rain,” adds Mr. Sawyer, who thinks he must say something, and who has not been permitted to remain in ignorance of this Keythorpe day, now more than a fortnight old.

Struggles turned from one to the other of his tormentors, with a grin on his jolly face. “Little Benjamin couldn’t have been so beat, when I caught your horse for you,” said he to Brush; “or when I went by you, Savage, in the lane, and that was after five-and-twenty minutes, with fifteen stone on his back, amongst those hills. No, no, my boys! Fair play’s a jewel, and neither of you were there to see whether I’d had my gruel or not. Stop indeed! I’d lay odds none of old Catamaran’s stock would cut up soft, if you rode them till the day after to-morrow. Stop! I’ll be hanged if I didn’t trot when I got on the high-road coming home.”

“Never mind! we know,” interposed Mr. Savage—a tall pale man, with a hawk’s eye that nothing escaped. “Why, you were seen, my good fellow!—seen with your own back against your horse’s, shoving him through a fence. They said if you hadn’t been the heaviest of the two, you’d have been there now.”

Like almost all stout men, Struggles was the essence of good-humour. He burst into a hearty laugh, but persevered in his denial. “Who saw me?” said he; “who saw me? He must have been in a right good place, though I say it.”

“Parson Dove saw you,” rejoined his accuser. Whereat Mr. Sawyer felt his heart give a thump. “Parson Dove made a capital story about it. He said he never saw a horse so badly in with so heavy a backer. I shouldn’t wonder if he put it in his sermon on Sunday. However, he’ll be out to-morrow—he and Miss Cissy, and the lot of ’em. I’ll appeal to him if what I say isn’t true.”

Mr. Sawyer listened attentively. Then he should see Miss Dove again on the following day, and in the enjoyment of what she had confided to him was a favourite pastime. Involuntarily he found himself thinking of the black eyes, with their long eyelashes, and wondering whether she would look well in a riding-habit.

Meantime the Honourable Crasher, in the last stage of exhaustion, was endeavouring to discover which of his horses Tiptop would let him ride on the morrow. The fixture was at a capital place, with the Pytchley, and promised a large field. Notwithstanding his insouciance, the Honourable C. could not but feel that he should like something both safe and fast, if, as was more than possible, he would have to ride for his life during the first few minutes.

“Tiptop,” said his master, raising himself from his seat on the corn-bin, and taking the cigar from his lips, “Tiptop, as they’re all pretty fit, you may send on Catamount and Confidence to-morrow.”

“Catamount’s hardly got over his physic yet, and I’m keeping Confidence for you on Thursday,” replied the master of the horse.

“Well, then, the mare and old Plantagenet?” urged the Honourable. “I can ride Plantagenet first, and send him home by two o’clock.”

“The mare’s had a gallop this morning, and we wants Plantagenet second ’oss for Friday,” objected Mr. Tiptop.

“Well, then, Life Boat,” pleaded the proprietor. “I haven’t had a ride on Life Boat this season. And, let me see, the Banker would do very well for second.”

“I thought of Topsy-Turvy and Chance,” enunciated Mr. Tiptop, somewhat imperiously; and the Honourable’s face lengthened considerably at the announcement. To do him justice, he was one of those sportsmen so well described in the old Cheshire hunting-song—
“To whom nought comes amiss—
One horse or another, that country or this;
Who through falls and bad starts undauntedly still
Ride up to the motto—Be with them I will!”

But Bellerophon himself was mortal, and Topsy-Turvy was a very awkward mare to ride in a crowd. With great pace and jumping powers she had all the irritability of her high-born race, and more than all the jealousy of her sex. Horses in her rear annoyed her—alongside, or in front, they drove her mad: so she was never thoroughly comfortable, unless sailing away by herself with the hounds—a place, it is only fair to add, that she was quite capable of keeping. Chance, by Gamester out of Happy-go-lucky, was no safer a mount. Just out of training, she went nevertheless at her fences with considerable audacity; but was prone to over-jump herself when she didn’t run through them. As Struggles observed of her, “It was a safe bet to lay five to two on the Caster.”

However, the Honourable never dreamed for an instant of disputing Mr. Tiptop’s fiat; so he consoled himself by thinking what a start he would get! and how he hoped the hounds would keep out of his way. By the time Topsy-Turvy’s clothes had been replaced, and a handsome pony examined and approved of, the party, much to old Isaac’s disgust, adjourned to Mr. Sawyer’s stables, where they were good enough to express their approval of the roan and his companions in that conventional tone which is so much less flattering than one of sincere abuse. These gentlemen hardly knew Mr. Sawyer well enough yet to give their honest opinion; and perhaps it was fortunate for the sake of Isaac’s peace of mind that they did not.

“Useful horses, Sawyer!” observed Mr. Savage, considerately sparing the groom the labour of stripping them.

“Useful horses,” repeated Captain Struggles and Major Brush in a breath; the latter adding, “and seem pretty fit to go.” While the Honourable Crasher, who had not ventured further than the door, remarked that he “thought Jack-a-Dandy the best shaped one of the lot;” but conceded, in a faint whisper, that the rest of them looked “very like hunters: remarkably useful horses indeed!”

Our friend was not deficient in penetration, and by no means a person to have been nearly a week in The Shires without finding out what this epithet means. “When a man tells me he has got a useful horse,” Mr. Sawyer was once heard to observe, “I interpret it that he is the owner of a useless brute, which he wishes to sell me!” And Mr. Sawyer was not deceived by the politeness of his companions. He held his tongue, however; but more than once he caught himself brooding over the offensive adjective during the evening.

“If the roan is only half as good as I take him to be, and I can but get a start to-morrow,” thought our friend, “I’ll show them what my useful horse can do! Miss Dove will be out, too, and that cursed fellow of Putty’s hasn’t sent down my new boots! Never mind—I’ve got the right spurs at any rate, and it won’t be my fault to-morrow if I don’t ‘go for the gloves,’ as we used to say in the Old Country.”

He dined at home, and reduced the allowance of sherry considerably; also consumed but one of the Laranagas before going to roost at the sober hour of 10.30. Mr. Sawyer seldom took his nervous system into consideration; but on this occasion, with all his self-confidence (and he had as much as his neighbours), he was indeed resolved not to throw a chance away.