CHAPTER X “HAIL! SMILING MORN!”

When we read in Bell’s Life, the Morning Post, or the Northampton paper, that the Pytchley hounds will meet on Wednesday at Crick, we confess to the same sensation which the old coachman is said to experience at the crack of the whip. We call up a picture tinged with the colours of a memory that Time has no power to fade. It seems again to be a soft-eyed morning in the mild winter or the early spring, and the sky is dappled with serene and motionless clouds; whilst here below, a faint breeze from the south whispers of promised fragrance, only biding its time to exude from Earth’s teeming bosom—she sleeps, the mighty mother; but even in repose she is clad in majestic beauty, and instinct with vitality and hope. On such a morning the blood dances through their veins, and her children would fain leap and shout aloud for joy. What freshness in the smell of the saturated pastures! What beauty in the softened tints and shadows of the landscape—leafless though it be! How those bare hedges seem ready to burst forth in the bloom of spring, and the distant woods on the horizon melt into the sky as softly as in the hot haze of a July noon. The thud of our horses’ hoofs strikes pleasantly on the ear, as we canter over the undulating pastures, swinging back the hand-gates with a dexterity only to be acquired by constant practice, and on which we plume ourselves not a little. He is the sweetest hack in England, and shakes his head and rolls his shoulders gaily, as we restrain the canter from becoming a gallop. Were he not the sweetest, &c., he would begin to plunge from sheer exuberance of spirits; we could almost find it in our heart to indulge him. The scared sheep scour off for a few paces, shaking their woolly coats, and then turn round to gaze at us as we fleet from field to field. A couple of magpies, after a succession of jerks and bows, while they make up their minds, dive rapidly away over the hedge to our right; a direction (for we confess the superstition) ominous of sport. A scarlet coat glances along the lane in front; and, as this is our last bit of grass, and moreover the furrows lie the right way, we catch hold of the sweetest’s head, and treat ourselves to a gallop. Soon we emerge on the high-road, and relapse into a ten-mile-an-hour trot; the sweetest, who thinks nothing of twelve, going well on his haunches, and quite within himself. All the best fellows in England seem to have congregated in this highway. Some in dog-carts, some in phaetons, half-a-dozen on a four-horse drag, and others on horseback, like ourselves. With the latter we speedily join company. Yesterday’s gallop—the Ministerial Crisis—the Rifle Volunteers—all the topics that interest us for the time, are touched on, and we learn the latest news of each. By a quarter before eleven we have had pleasure enough for the whole twenty-four hours, and yet our day is only just beginning. Now the plot thickens rapidly. Grooms with led horses are overtaken by their masters, and we recognise many a well-known flyer and honest servant’s face.

“How fresh the old horse looks, John: none the worse for the Lilbourne day, when he carried your master so well!”

“Never was better, sir,” answers gratified John, with a touch of his hat; partly out of compliment to ourselves, partly out of respect for the good horse. Now we observe a scarlet group collected in a knot, where the hounds meet in the centre of the village, and the church clock points to five minutes before eleven, as we bid the cheery huntsman “Good-morning,” and exchange our hack for our hunter.

Mr. Sawyer probably felt very much the sort of sensations I have endeavoured to describe, as he dashed along on the free-going Dandy, in company with some of his new companions. If so, he kept them to himself. Our friend was a man of few words at the best of times; and when, as in the present instance, “big with high resolve,” taciturnity personified. Also, notwithstanding the want of the new boots, he had “got himself up” to-day with peculiar care. The result, I am bound to admit, was not entirely satisfactory; and, when that is the case, a man’s loquacity is apt to decrease in proportion. However, the roan, or “Hotspur,” as we must now call him, made a pretty good figure, as far as appearance went, even amongst a bevy of celebrated hunters, and his master felt a considerable accession of confidence when he found himself fairly mounted and ready for the fray. Miss Dove, too, had arrived in company with her papa. There was no doubt about it: she did look remarkably well in her riding-habit.

Mr. Sawyer, a little nervous and rather ashamed of it, doffed the velvet hunting-cap, and rode up to accost her. I need scarcely observe that the young lady’s greeting was of the coldest and most reserved. The last time she had been all smiles and sunshine: so, on the principle of rotation, to-day must be one of frigidity and decorum. It’s a way they have, you see; and one that seldom fails to put the inexperienced to utter confusion. A man cannot be said to know what the ague really is till he has suffered from the fits—both hot and cold. Take warning, John Standish Sawyer! you who have once before burnt your fingers, and had cause to dread the fire. Miss Mexico, with her quadroon stain and her thirty thousand pounds, was a queerish one to manage; but she was a fool to Miss Dove.

“Confound the girl! what does she mean by it?” said the humiliated swain to himself, as the hounds moved off towards the gorse. He felt a little disgusted, and not a little irritated: just in the humour that makes a man ready for a bit of excitement rather keener than ordinary. He thought he had never felt so like riding in his life before! With the natural instinct of one who knew himself capable of going in the first flight, the observant Sawyer proceeded to scan narrowly such of the surrounding sportsmen as looked to him like “meaning mischief.” Out of a hundred riders it was not so difficult as might be supposed to pick a proportion of flyers, and the proportion, as my hunting readers will not dispute, was little over ten per cent. Shall I name them? Shall I add ninety enterprising and energetic gentlemen to the list of my mortal enemies? Heaven forbid that I should do anything so invidious and ill-advised! Mr. Sawyer did not know them, and why should I? Each of the hundred, doubtless, believed himself one of the chosen ten. I fancy that every man who goes out hunting thinks he only wants an opportunity to show his back to the rest of the field. I fancy that when the opportunity does come, he lets it slip in hopes of a better, and that no one attributes to want of nerve, horsemanship, or common sense, that failure, on which it would be no bad investment to offer each equestrian nine to one! Well, everybody has an equal chance on a fine scenting day, when the fox has slipped quietly away, by good fortune only seen by a countryman, with a quinsy, who couldn’t halloo to save his life. When the two or three couple of leading hounds have flashed a hundred yards or so over his line, thus enabling the body of the pack to join them, and stoop all together to the scent, when after a cheery twang, the huntsman returns his horn to its case, and the master, relieved, for an instant, from the weight of care, which none but an M.F.H. knows, takes his place alongside of his favourites, and observes mentally, though he wouldn’t say it aloud for a thousand, “Now, my fine fellows, ride on their backs if you can!” In short, at that delicious moment when the wise bethink them of a fox’s point, and a convenient lane, and the enthusiasts glance exultingly at each other, and say, “All right, old fellow! I think we’re landed!” then hath each a fair field and no favour; and if a man’s hardihood, or his vanity, or his ambition, prompt him to assume a place in the front rank, he has nothing to do but go and try.

As Mr. Sawyer rode down to the gorse, he was pleased to feel Hotspur step so lightly and vigorously under him. The horse shook his bit, and cocked his ears, and reached at his bridle to get near the hounds. He felt like a good one, and we all know what confidence that sensation imparts to the rider. Mr. Sawyer forgot all about Miss Dove, and the unprovoked manner in which she had snubbed him. It was cheerful to hear one or two complimentary remarks exchanged between the passing sportsmen.

“That’s a clever horse,” said a tall heavy man, himself admirably mounted, indicating the roan with a nod, and addressing a supercilious-looking person in a black coat, whose attention was much taken up with the appearance of his own legs and feet, which he was looking at alternately en profile.

“Rather,” answered the supercilious person, glancing up for an instant from his occupation—“Who’s the man? Never saw such a man; never saw such boots; never saw a fellow so badly got-up altogether.”

At this juncture the Honourable Crasher, cantering by on Topsy-Turvy, accosted our friend with good-humoured familiarity, and the supercilious man, changing his mind all in a moment, about Mr. Sawyer and his boots, resolved to take the first opportunity of making the stranger’s acquaintance. In effect he followed the last comer to prosecute this intention. The Honourable C. disappearing through a bullfinch, on Topsy-Turvy, whom he thus hoped to put in good-humour, was ere this in a field alongside of the hounds, which he was likely to have all to himself.

Soon a hand-gate stems the increasing cavalcade, and the stoppage becoming more obstinate, owing to Mr. Sawyer’s abortive attempts to open the same, a good deal of conversation, rhetorical rather than complimentary, is the result.

“Put your whip under the latch,” says one.

“Got the wrong hand to it,” sneers another.

“What a tarnation muff!” vociferates a third.

“Ware heels!” exclaims a fourth, as a wicked little bay mare, in the thick of them, lets out with unerring precision; and one man says, “What a shame it is to bring such a devil as that into a crowd!” and another opines that “The kick will be out of her before two o’clock!” and the owner, profuse in apologies, is only thinking of slipping through the gate, and going on to get a start.

Meanwhile Hotspur makes himself profoundly ridiculous, pushing the gate when the latch is down, and wincing from it when he ought to shove; also finding himself totally unassisted by the crook of his master’s whip, which keeps slipping on the wet green wood, waxes irritable, rears up, and threatens to vary the entertainment, by performing a somersault into the next field.

“Let me do it for you, sir,” says a good-natured young farmer; and Mr. Sawyer wisely abandons his office of doorkeeper, and after about forty people have hustled by him, manages at last to edge his way through.

By this time the hounds have been put into the gorse. Nineteen couple are they of ladies, with the cleanest of heads and necks, straight and fair on their legs and feet as so many ballet-dancers, and owning that keen wistful look, which is so peculiar to the countenance of the fox-hound. They dash into the covert as if sure of finding, and Parson Dove, standing erect in his stirrups, watches them with a glow of pleasure lighting up his clean-shaved face. “There’s a fox, Charles, I’ll lay a bishopric!” says he, and a whimper from Truelove confirms the parson’s opinion on the spot.

“Not a doubt on it! sir, not a doubt on it! one if not a brace!” replies that functionary, with immense rapidity. He loses very little time indeed, at his phrases, or his fences, or anything else. In another moment he is up to his girths in the gorse, cheering on the beauties, who are working up the scent with a vast deal of musical energy. The master casts an uneasy glance at the crowd; countless anxieties and apprehensions cross his mind. One way the fox will be headed, another the hounds will be cut off, a third leads up to the village, and we all know how fatal are houses and pigsties at the commencement of a run. But the fourth side is clear; happily the hounds are even now bustling eagerly towards it.

Diverse occupations engross the attention of the field; few of them seem to be much taken up with the business in hand. Here a gentleman is giving a farmer’s horse a gallop, preparatory, as it would appear, to a purchase. There another is detailing the last news from Warwickshire, to an applauding audience. Struggles, on his feet, is adjusting a snaffle-bridle more comfortably on the head of a game little thorough-bred. Savage is discussing the merits of a new novel with a literary friend. Major Brush is taking up a link in Miss Dove’s curb-chain; that damsel, very killing indeed, in a little hat and feathers, is surrounded by admirers, and yet, lassata, nondum satiata, is inwardly regretting that she had snubbed poor Mr. Sawyer so gratuitously at the meet. You see, however low one may rate the value of his vassalage, still a victim always counts for one; and it is a pity needlessly to throw away the veriest weed that helps to make up one’s chaplet. Truth to tell, Mr. Sawyer was not thinking about her. He had crept on, as he thought, unobserved, to a place from which he could command the proceedings, and try to get a good start. Nevertheless, a watchful eye was on his movements. The master was even then deliberating whether he should holloa to him to “Come back, sir,” and was hoping in his own mind, “that chap in a cap wouldn’t go on, and head the fox!”

The Honourable Crasher and Topsy-Turvy had already fallen out, as to a cigar, which the former wanted to light. No! the mare would not stand still, and an impatient jerk at the curb-rein had not tended to adjust this difference. So she was backing and sidling and shaking her head, and making herself intensely disagreeable, whilst the Honourable, who soon recovered his equanimity, scanned a certain stile just in front of her with a critical eye and employed himself by vaguely calculating how many yards before she came to it she was likely, in her present humour, to “take off;” also whereabouts he should land if they did make a mess of it, and whether more than two or three fellows would be on his back at once.

He has by no means solved the problem, when a violent rush is made towards the lane. Somebody has seen somebody else gallop, who has seen a sheep-dog run; this is a sufficient reason for some eighty or ninety horsemen to charge furiously in the same direction; their leaders finding no hounds, then pull up, and the crowd proceed leisurely back again. But this false alarm has been in favour of the fox, who perceiving a clear space before him, and having obtained, by a dexterous turn round the covert, a little law of his pursuers, takes advantage of the lull, to slip away unobserved by any one but the first whip, and that officer is far too discreet to make a noise. He telegraphs mutely to the huntsman, who has the ladies out of covert, and dashing to the front, with three blasts of his horn. Ere the Honourable Crasher has had time to indulge Topsy-Turvy with a fling at the stile, which she jumps as if there was a ten-foot drain on each side, the pack are settled to the scent, and racing away a clear field ahead of every one but the huntsman and whip. The Honourable Crasher, however, is coming up hand-over-hand, Topsy-Turvy laying herself out in rattling form. The master, with a backward glance at the crowd, is alongside of him, and Mr. Sawyer, sailing over the first fence, in such good company, with a tight hold of his horse’s head, and an undeniable start, thinks he is “really in for it at last!”