CHAPTER XXVI THE MATCH

Lounging past Tattersall’s one baking day in June, I had the good fortune to encounter Mr. Savage, apparently as busily employed as myself in the agreeable occupation of doing nothing. If you have ever been addicted to the fascinating pursuit of fox-hunting, you will understand how, even in London, the presence of a fellow-enthusiast is as a draught of water to a pilgrim in the desert sand. Linking arms, we turned unconsciously down the yard, and were soon mingling with the motley crowd who fill that locality on a sale-day.

“Any horses you know to be sold here?” I asked, as we stepped into the office for a list.

“None but Sawyer’s,” answered Mr. Savage; “pretty good nags, too. I shall bid for one of them myself.”

Then we fell to talking of the grass countries and their delights, of the different rumours afloat as to this master and that, how one county was to change hands, and another to be hunted six days a week, how the young Squire was getting keen, and the old Lord was growing slack, and how, under all conditions, the foxes were not so stout nor the sport so brilliant as it used to be. Lastly, we got upon the doings of our Market Harborough friends. Struggles was as jolly as ever, nothing changed, putting on weight, and looking for weight-carriers every day. Brush? Oh, Brush had lost a “cracker” on the Derby, would back “Skittle-Sharper,” though Savage warned him not, and had been obliged to go on fall pay. What of the Honourable Crasher? He had appeared in London as usual, and was gone for a little change of air to New York! I pictured to myself how enchanted the “Broadway Swells” would be with Crasher’s superfine languor and general debility; how they would worship him as the “real article” in dandyism; how they would quote his sayings and imitate his nonchalance, and how favourable a contrast such an imitation would offer to their moral state of hurry and confusion, particularly about dinner-time. But I wondered what could have taken Crasher there, of all places in the world. Then I mentioned that I had seen nothing of my old friend Sawyer for a considerable period, and indeed had received no intelligence of his doings since the steeple-chase, in which he got so bad a fall.

“Haven’t you heard?” exclaimed Savage. “Why Sawyer’s married, poor fellow! Married pretty Cissy Dove, that flirting girl, who used to look so well on a chestnut horse. You must remember Cissy Dove. Why, there’s the very horse going up to the hammer with Sawyer’s lot. I suppose she’s given up riding now—got something else to do.”

Sure enough there was the late Miss Dove’s exceedingly clever palfrey, looking fat and in good case, as horses always do when they are “to be sold without reserve.” There was Wood-Pigeon, twice his hunting size. There was the brown and the grey, and one I didn’t know, and Jack-a-Dandy himself, submitting, not very patiently, to the attentions of a villainous-looking man in dirty-white cords, who was coughing him and punching him, and feeling his legs, and narrowly escaped having his brains knocked out for his pains.

I turned to moralise with Savage, but he was gone. You never can speak to anybody in London for more than five minutes together, and I walked out of the yard musing upon man’s weakness and woman’s power, on the uncertain tenure by which a bachelor holds his freedom, on the common lot, and how nobody is safe. “I never would have believed it of Sawyer,” methought, as I turned meditatively into Piccadilly; but then I did not know he had been out gathering violets in seductive company, with his arm in a sling.

Turning into Sam’s Library, with intent to secure a stall at the French play for my niece, I politely awaited the leisure of a very smartly-dressed lady examining the plan of the Opera House, and bending studiously over the same at the counter. Her cavalier, a thick-set man, attired with considerable splendour, was engrossed in a volume which he had taken up, as it would appear, to wile away a long and tedious interval of consultation between his companion and the shopman. The lady looked up first, and under her little white bonnet with its innocent bride-like lilies-of-the-valley, I discovered a pretty dark-eyed face, such as ere this has tempted many a son of Adam, forgetful of his progenitor’s mishaps, into the commission of matrimony.

“An’t you ready yet?” she inquired, addressing her cavalier with just the slightest possible turn of asperity, to give piquancy, as it were, to the dregs of honey still remaining from the moon. “An’t you ready?” she repeated in a sharper key, perceiving the student so engrossed as to be unconscious of her observation. This time there was more of the vinegar and less of the honey, and he started to “attention” forthwith.

“Quite ready, dearest,” was the reply in the most submissive of tones, as he laid his book down upon the counter and disclosed to my astonished view the features of my old friend John Standish Sawyer.

Our greeting was of the most cordial. I was presented in due form to the bride, who vouchsafed me so sweet a smile as made me wonder less than ever at Mr. Sawyer’s subjugation. After putting her into the hired brougham that was in waiting for them, he lingered for a moment to tell me of his late-won happiness. “The horses go up to-day,” said he, “and I cannot affirm that I am sorry for it. With such an attraction at home, a man don’t want to go out hunting. I don’t think somehow I shall ever care to ride to hounds again!”

As I turned back into the shop, the book my friend had been studying so assiduously lay upon the counter. I took it up with a pardonable curiosity. It was the “Life of Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.”

I shall expect to hear of Sawyer’s buying two or three hunters yet, before November.