CHAPTER IX IN THE TRAP

“You’ll go with me, Softly, of course!” observed young Plumtree, otherwise “Jovial Jem,” just as I expected. “There’s a Waterborough ’bus runs right by our lodge-gate: your servant can come over with your traps. Get a greatcoat on, there’s a good fellow, and we’ll start immediately, if not before. A short drain of brandy neat, Miss Lushington, if you please. Look alive, you adorable angel, ministering spirit, I may say. Time’s short, you know, roads woolly, and whipcord scarce.”

“But are you sure you can take me?” I interposed, with expostulatory eagerness. “Yours is a smallish carriage, if that was it I saw just now in the yard” (how devoutedly I wished it was not!). “I fear I shall inconvenience you; and, by the by, where is your servant to sit?” I added, grasping vaguely at the last chance of a reprieve.

“Servant?” said the Jovial, drinking off his brandy at a gulp, “didn’t bring one; don’t want a ‘shoot’ when I’m driving Crafty Kate. There’s only one gate to open if we go the short way, and it opens from us; so I catch it, you know, on the shaft, and there’s no trouble in getting out. Once the apron’s buttoned, never move till the end of the stage, that’s my principle. Wet t’other eye? Thank you, Miss Lushington. Here’s your health! Now, young man, tell the ostler to get the trap round to the front-door; when I drive a gemman, I likes to take him up like a gemman.”

“But if the harness wants altering, or anything?” I urged feebly. “In my crippled state, you know, I can’t get out. Don’t you think, now?—though, of course, I should like the drive very much—don’t you really think it would be better if I were to find my own way over, and you might take a man from here to open the gates and that, who could come back in my return chaise?”

“Not a bit of it!” replied the Jovial. “What’s the use of that? I know the mare, and the mare knows me. You won’t have to get out, never fear. Come, though you’ve got a queer wing, there’s nothing amiss with your pipes. Look here, there’s a yard of tin in that basket. You’ll play all the way, and I’ll drive. Take her in a hole shorter, Ben. Here’s a game! hooray!”

By this time “the Jovial’s” high conveyance—well might he called it a trap—was at the door; Crafty Kate wincing, and lifting and swishing her tail, as if nothing would give her greater pleasure than to knock the whole thing, red wheels, lamps, paint, varnish, and lacquering, all to pieces forthwith. I could not get out of it now, do what I would. Recalling in my own mind every frightful accident I ever remembered to have read, or heard of, that had occurred on wheels, and no whit reassured by an appalling fact I had always considered established, viz. that more long coachmen had been killed out of gigs, than had died any other death, I went upstairs to give my servant directions as to the clothes he should pack up, to wrap myself in a warm greatcoat, and to put another cigar in my mouth, that haply might conceal the involuntary trepidation of my nerves.

How comfortable my sitting-room looked as I left it! It was a cold raw day, and the fire burnt up so cheerily; the easy-chair spread its arms invitingly to receive me in its familiar embrace; there was the newspaper carefully unfolded and spread out on the table, with the last Quarterly uncut, by its side. An amusing novel, of which I had got halfway into the second volume, seemed to entreat me not to leave it unfinished, and two or three letters requiring early answers were lying with their seals opened in mute appeal. All this comfort I was about to exchange for a muddy drive, a drizzling rain, the conversation of a man I did not care about, and worse still, the probable vagaries of Crafty Kate. I confess I have no great confidence in a thorough-bred mare, that swishes her tail a good deal in harness. I thought Miss Lushington, even, looked somewhat pitifully on me, as one about to venture in a dangerous undertaking unawares. Nevertheless I mounted the trap, not without difficulty, was carefully buttoned in by the one-eyed ostler, and felt myself launched forth on stormy seas, with Jovial Jem for a pilot.

On leaving the door it became painfully apparent that Crafty Kate was in a condition of excitement, not to say insubordination, which boded untoward results. Passing between the lines of dilapidated houses that constitute the little village of Soakington, she piaffed and curvetted, and tucked her head in, and hoisted her great angular quarters, in a manner calculated to excite the admiration of all beholders—limited in the present instance to a lame duck, and two boys playing truant from school; but when we emerged on the smooth expanse of the Waterborough road, stimulated by the love of approbation, or urged by a morbid anxiety to get home, the mare took the bit in her teeth, and very nearly made a bolt of it. I confess I clung to the rail that ran round the seat, thankful even for that frail support, and notwithstanding the slight hold it afforded me, narrowly escaped being dashed out, as we turned with fearful rapidity, and entirely on one wheel, like a skater doing the outside edge, up a lane diverging at right angles from the thoroughfare along which we had been bowling at such a pace.

It was evident, however, by Crafty Kate’s demeanour, that this was not the way home. She stopped dead short, stuck her forelegs out, and began nodding her head in that ominous manner, which denotes a determination to fight to the last. “Sit tight, Softly!” exclaimed the Jovial, with a fiendish laugh, as though this had been part of a programme devised for my special entertainment. “Sit tight! whilst I give my lady a taste of the silk!” and without further parley he pulled the whip from its bucket, and commenced a course of punishment on the mare’s sides, which produced no further result than that of causing her to back faster and faster towards the ditch; the tall red wheels hovered on its very brink, when a bright idea flashed across the charioteer’s mind. “Give us a blast of the tin, Softly,” said he, continuing, nevertheless, a vigorous application of the whipcord, “and let us see if your blasting is not more musical than mine!”

I am no performer, I candidly admit, on a trumpet of any description; but a desperate crisis demands a desperate remedy, and seizing the long coach-horn I performed such a solo upon it as has probably never been heard before, or since. “The Jovial” left off flagellating, and laughed till he cried. The mare laid her ears down into her poll, tucked her tail close to her quarters, and went off at score. Completely blown by my exertions, we had gone nearly a mile ere I returned the horn to its case, and found breath to speak.

“But is this the shortest way to The Ashes?” said I, striving by the aid of a “Vesuvian” to relight my cigar, which had gone out in the panic. “I thought we kept straight along the high-road to the turnpike, and then took the first turning to the——”

“O, bother The Ashes;” returned my mercurial companion. “We shall get there quite soon enough. Besides, the governor never shows till feeding-time; busy about the farm you know, mud-larking as I call it. No! no! if you want to see some fun, I’ll show you a game. We’ll just trot down to Joe Lambswool’s, at the World’s End, about two miles further on, and if you do care for sport, I can promise you a real treat. He’s going to pull down the old barn to-day; hasn’t been touched, I dare say, for two hundred years. Talk of rats! why, it’s swarming with them, as big as pole-cats pretty nigh, and twice as savage. He’s got a dawg as I want to see tried, quite a little ’un, what you would call a toy-dawg, you know; but they tell me he’ll tackle to anything alive, and knows how to kill a cat. If I like him I’ll buy him; and we’ll give old Brimstone a treat into the bargain,” added my amiable entertainer, looking back at the bull-terrier, who was toiling behind us, bespattered with mud, his tail lowered, his tongue out, and a villanous expression of sullenness and ferocity stamped on his round massive head.

“I should like it excessively,” I replied, with an inward shudder, belying, most uncomfortably, my unqualified expressions of delight, and the Jovial, turning on me a look of astonished approval, made a queer noise through his teeth, that started Crafty Kate incontinently into a canter.

“Well! I’m in for it now!” was my mental soliloquy, as we went whirling past the dripping trees and hedges with increasing rapidity. “How could I ever be induced to blunder into such a trap as this? A wet day; a dangerous drive; a pot-house gathering, and an afternoon spent in a tumble-down barn, full of draughts I make no doubt, and by no means water-tight; watching for rats, animals of which I have the greatest horror, and circumventing the same by means of ferrets—creatures if possible more disgusting to me than their prey—all because I hadn’t nerve to say ‘No.’ And not a chance now of seeing Miss Merlin when she comes home from hunting! Softly! this is a day’s penance. You must get through it as you best can!”

A rescue, however, when I least expected it, was proposed for me by a kind fortune, to snatch me from the ratting part of my discomforts. The lane down which we were bowling, though of considerable length, was not that proverbial one in which there is no turning. On reaching an angle by a sign-post, the Jovial pulled up, with great animation displayed on his broad white face.

“I can hear ’em running in Tangler’s Copse, as plain as can be,” said he, putting up his hand in the air, and cocking his head on one side to listen. Tangler’s Copse, be it observed, was a straggling woodland in the Castle-Cropper country, from which it was always difficult, and generally impossible, to force a fox into the open. “Listen, Softly!” he continued, with increasing excitement; “I’m blessed if that isn’t the horn! See, Kate hears it too.”

I am not gifted with extraordinary fineness of ear, particularly when well wrapped up on a rainy day; so I turned down the collar of my greatcoat, and took off my shawl-handkerchief to listen. There was no doubt we were in the vicinity of hounds; I could hear them distinctly, running as it seemed with a good scent, and cheered by occasional blasts on the horn.

The drizzling rain struck cold on my bare cheek. Kate’s head was up, her ears erect, her nostrils dilated, and she trembled in every limb.

“Bother the rats for to-day!” exclaimed my mercurial charioteer. “What say you, Softly? Let’s go hunting instead. The mare can jump like fun, and the trap can go anywhere. Open the gate, there’s a good chap! In the next field but one there’s a bridle-road takes us right away to Tangler’s Copse.”

I descended from the tall conveyance to do his bidding, dirtying my gloves, wetting my feet, and daubing my coat with mud in the process; but there is a condition of the human mind, at which it ceases to be a free agent, and I had arrived at that negative state, when we quitted the turnpike-road. Once more climbing with difficulty to my seat, I found myself bumping over the ridge-and-furrow of a large grass-field, and, straining my eyes to find an egress, became aware that it was the Jovial’s intention to drive through a sort of gap in the fence, where the ditch had been partially filled up. It was now time to protest, which I did loudly and energetically; but my objections were too late. “Sit tight, Softly! Gently, Kate!” exclaimed Plumtree in a breath; and with a bump, a jerk, and a most astounding bang against the splash-board, we were safe over, and careering along the next field.

I was glad to see a gate led out of this enclosure. I would have climbed up and down those red wheels, fifty times, rather than repeat the process we had just now accomplished.

Crafty Kate, shamelessly belying the first half of her name, seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, swinging along at a very respectable pace, with her ears cocked, her head and tail both up, and an obvious determination to join the chase with as little delay as possible. The vehicle sprang and jerked, and swung from side to side; the wheels bespattered us from head to foot with mud: the splash-board alone prevented us from shooting out, over the mare’s back. No one who has ever tried it will wish to repeat the uncomfortable diversion of galloping in a gig.

Fortunately the rain began to cease, the clouds cleared away, and a burst of winter sunshine enabled us to see as far as the flatness of the country would allow.

The Jovial pulled up short, not without considerable difficulty. “They’re away, by all that’s lucky,” exclaimed he, shifting his reins into his whip-hand, that he might give me a congratulatory slap on the back, which knocked all the breath out of my body. “Never knew a fox to leave Tangler’s Copse before, and bearing right down upon us too, or I’m a Scotchman! There’s the fox, by jingo! Hold your tongue, Softly!”

The injunction was quite unnecessary, for I am not one of the halloaing tribe. Moreover, my handkerchief was pulled up to my nose, and I did not myself see the cause of my companion’s excitement. He was right, however; presently two or three couple of hounds straggled into the field adjoining that in which we were stationed, ran to and fro along the hedge-side, put their noses down, threw their tongues, and followed by the whole pack, streamed across the pasture on the line of their prey.

It was great fun, and a new sensation, to watch the progress of the field, as one sat an unoccupied spectator, perched in a thing like a tea-tray on a pair of tall red wheels. I can quite understand the pleasure an old gentleman has, who rides quietly out on his cob, to see them “find and go away.”

A couple of simultaneous crashes in the fence announced the arrival in the same field with the hounds of the Earl himself, and a hard-riding gentleman with moustaches, a visitor at the castle. Fifty yards or so to their right again, and somewhat nearer the pack, a beautiful grey horse, having been quietly trotted up the hard pathway that led to it, landed in artistic form over a hog-backed stile with a foot-board, ridden by an elegant figure in a lady’s habit, of whom it was impossible at that distance to recognise the face. Happening, however, to glance at my companion’s countenance (who caught his breath by the way, during this performance), and observing it to become a deep crimson, my surmises that the daring Amazon was none other than Miss Merlin were to a certain extent corroborated.

Then came a bay, and a brown, and a chestnut, the latter falling at his fence, but inflicting no damage on his rider, who never let go the bridle, but was up and at it again without delay. These were followed by another bay, who refused to jump, and a dark-coated gentleman on a roan, whose heart failed him at the last stride, and who faded ignominiously away from that moment. The huntsman and first whip must have come a different line altogether, for we saw their velvet caps bobbing up and down in the distance, but could not otherwise have identified them.

The Jovial, however, was now waxing visibly impatient. “Dash it!” said he, “we may as well see the finish. I’m game, Softly, if you are. Come along, Kate!” And without waiting for the consent, which as a partner in the firm I think I was entitled to withhold, he laid the rein on the mare’s back, and we were once more jolting and bumping across the fields in search of some dubious and unfrequented bridle-road.

My friend was a good pilot. I must do him the justice to admit that quality. He seemed to know every gate and lane in the country, also to possess an intuitive knowledge of the run of a fox, with a staunch predilection for keeping down wind. I did not despair of coming up with the chase once more, and truth to tell I was not without hopes that to-day my curiosity might be satisfied with a view of Miss Merlin.

“The Jovial,” on the other hand, had become preoccupied and restless. No longer dispensing his quaint sallies and florid parables in my ear, he gave his whole attention to Crafty Kate, an arrangement to which I should have been the last person on earth to object; and although he drove that game and resolute animal with merciless rapidity, it was in a style considerably less random than before. Perhaps the influence of the brandy had died out; perhaps he felt the depression that always succeeds the excitement of seeing hounds, when it has evaporated. Perhaps he was thinking of his dinner, perhaps of the rat-catching he had missed, perhaps of Miss Merlin. We drove on for at least two miles without speaking.

In justice to my friend’s humanity, I am bound to observe that we had long ago taken pity on Brimstone, and hoisted him into the cart, where he lay coiled up under my legs, sniffing them ominously from time to time, as if only deterred by considerations of the merest politeness from taking a bite out of them at the most sensitive place. I dreaded lest a jolt severer than common should be construed by this amiable animal into a personal insult to himself.

To any one who has ever tried the delusive pastime of following hounds at a distance, with any expectation of coming up with them, I may leave the task of imagining our repeated disappointments and the labour, like that of Sisyphus, undergone by Crafty Kate. The persevering sportsman will have no difficulty in understanding how we drove from field-road to cross-road, and from cross-road to highway; how the little indistinct figures and black hats, dotting and bobbing behind the hedges, were now on our right, now on our left, anon almost within hail, and then hopelessly and provokingly ahead; how we saw the hounds themselves entering Cropley Pastures, and, thinking to nick in upon them at Whitethorns, found they had taken an unexpected turn to Swillingford mill; in short, how surely, as must always be the case in a good run, the further we went, the farther we were left behind, till our hopes, being suddenly raised by a butcher in a tax-cart, who had met them not half-a-mile from where we then were, and thought they must have “got him in a drain,” to be as suddenly dashed into ruins again by a farmer’s lad at the spot indicated, who vowed they had been gone twenty minutes, and “were running like fire,” we gave it up in despair, and turned Crafty Kate’s head, soberly and sadly, on her homeward way. A mouthful of gruel at a road-side public-house for the mare, and a small measure of hot ale, with a glass of gin, a spoonful of brown sugar, and a dash of spice in it, called by the different titles of “lambs’ wool,” “dog’s nose,” and “purl,” but of superlative merit after a three hours’ drive in the wet, restored us all, except Brimstone, to something of our earlier energy. I was glad, I confess, to have got through the drive without an accident, and looked forward to a warm house and a comfortable dressing-room, where my servant, I hoped, had already arrived with my things, more cheerfully than I should have conceived possible in the morning, when I anticipated my enforced visit to The Ashes with considerable distaste. The Jovial, too, having apparently drowned his unpleasant reflections, whatever they might be, in the hot mixture, came out once more in his normal character, accepting one of my cigars with facetious condescension, and sticking it in the extreme corner of his mouth, from which he never once removed it till he had smoked it down to the very stump.

“Mare’s about told out, Softly,” said he, as we drove somewhat soberly through the very gate he had spoken of in the morning, opening it by the dangerous process of running the shaft against its bars, and fending it off from the wheel with his left hand. “Hard day for the Crafty: those field-roads are so blessed deep. Never mind; another half-mile will see us. I don’t think you know my sisters: remarkable young women, and accomplished, ’specially Jane. I am prepared now to back Jane against any other girl in England, weight for age of course, to do five things—work cross stitch, whistle jigs, do the outside edge backwards, speak German, and make a sparrow pudding. My money is ready at The Ashes, Waterborough, this identical house of call we’re coming to, that it’s too dark for you to see. Catch hold, while I jump out and ring the bell.”

The flood of warm light that shone out upon us from the hall was indeed a pleasant contrast to the dark cold afternoon, which had already changed again for the worse. As I divested myself of my wraps, with the assistance of a staid elderly servant, young Plumtree welcomed me quite courteously to his father’s house, diverging, however, immediately afterwards, into the kind of jesting slang which was most familiar to him.

“You’re wet,” he observed, laying his hand on my coat, through which the rain had indeed penetrated. “Perhaps you’d like to go and dress at once. Indeed, we dine in less than an hour. Shall I show you your room? Will you have anything before dinner?—glass of sherry?—biscuit?—crust of bread and a pickle? No? then step this way, if you please. Here’s your room; things laid out—hot water laid on. There’s the bell; you ring for what you want, and the servants will bring you what they have!”

Behold me, then, like a man in a dream, dressing comfortably for dinner, in a strange house, of which I did not know the proprietor, nor, indeed, one of the inmates, except the harum-scarum young gentleman who had introduced me. In justice to myself, I made an elaborate toilet—white tie, black suit, thin boots—everything rigorously correct. There is no costume, in my opinion, which so marks the distinction of classes, as the plain dinner-dress of an English gentleman; and, indeed, I once heard that very invidious title defined as “a man who had got evening clothes.” Passing down to the drawing-room—an apartment I had no difficulty in finding, for the door was open, and a lamp shone brilliantly from it into the hall—I had leisure to observe the articles of furniture in the passages, and to remark on the idiosyncrasy which prompts all country gentlemen alike to ornament the insides of their houses with stuffed animals in glass cases. The Ashes was rich in specimens of this description. All kinds of birds flourished their beaks at the visitors on the stairs. A gigantic pike, like a miniature shark, grinned at him over the chimney-piece, and a hideous otter snarled at him from under the umbrella-stand in the hall. A portrait, which I concluded to be that of Mr. Plumtree senior, also adorned this crowded vestibule. I studied it by the light of my chamber-candlestick, not entirely, I fear, without spilling some wax on the floor during the process, in pardonable curiosity as to the exterior of the gentleman with whom I was about to dine. The picture was in all probability more valuable from its resemblance to the original, than from any intrinsic merit of its own as a work of art. It represented a florid personage, in the prime of life, attired in a bright-blue coat, and yellow waistcoat, on both which articles of apparel the artist had bestowed a liberal amount of colour, sitting by a pillar of porphyry, under a crimson curtain, “with a distant view of the changing sea.” His face, devoid of any outward expression, denoted that rapt state of thought peculiar, I am informed, to the highest order of intellects, and he seemed equally unmoved by the magnificence of the scenery, the gorgeousness of the curtain which overhung him, or the splendour of a heavy watch-chain and seals that rested massively against his nankeen stomach. On a table at his elbow stood a large book and a snuff-box, whilst his hand rested carelessly on the head of a black retriever dog. “If old Plumtree is like that,” was my mental observation, “he must present as great a contrast to the Jovial as was ever afforded in the inconvenient relationship of father and son.” I did not speak aloud, fortunately; for this conclusion brought me into the drawing-room, which, having dressed early, I expected I should have had to myself: it was not so, however. On entering that apartment—a pretty, well-furnished, long, low room, with some excellent prints and a grand pianoforte—I was somewhat discomfited to find it already occupied by two young ladies, dressed, as far as my confusion permitted me to observe, precisely alike, sitting in precisely the same attitude, and engaged over similar pieces of crochet-work. I bowed very awkwardly, and walked up to the fire, with the startling intelligence that it was “a cold evening,” a proposition neither of the ladies seemed in a position to confute. This masterly man?uvre, however, gave me an opportunity of studying both their faces, and I am bound to admit that the one predominating idea present to my mind, during a perusal of their features, was, “How shall I ever know one from the other, when their brother comes down, and formally introduces us?” Each of them was a rather tall, rather large young lady, with hands and feet to correspond. Each of them had a certain regularity of features, totally devoid of any expression whatsoever, that might have laid claim to good looks, had it not been nullified by the absence of colouring and want of tone in their rather large, rather flat faces. If either of them had unfortunately taken to drinking, she would have been a bad likeness of her brother the Jovial. That I longed ardently for the conclusion of that gentleman’s toilet is no matter of surprise, the conversation between the Misses Plumtree and myself being driven, so to speak, at a funereal rate, and in the longest possible stages. I gathered, however, from a certain decision of tone in their few and disjointed remarks, that there was no mother Plumtree, and that the vestals now before me were the presiding goddesses of the place.

At length, to my great relief, I heard a door open on the staircase, and a manly step approaching, which I feared, even while I listened, was too ponderous for that of my friend. The young ladies made a rustling kind of movement, as if to bespeak my attention. A deep voice in the hall was heard to say, “Dinner directly!” and the portly form of mine host walked into the drawing-room, with outstretched hand, and that welcome on his lips with which an Englishman always receives a guest into his castle, whether that metaphorical building be really a ducal residence, a squire’s hall, or a day-labourer’s cottage.

Old Mr. Plumtree was a great improvement on his son, as well as his picture. Although of the plainest and most unsophisticated of squires, he was obviously a high-bred gentleman; and his old-fashioned attire—for he had not discarded the blue coat, yellow waistcoat, and white stockings of his younger days—was perfectly in keeping with his fresh old face, round and rosy as a winter-apple: his fine bald head and stately figure, deep of chest, stout of limb, and somewhat protuberant of stomach.

“I am glad James found ye at home, Mr. Softly,” said he, “and doubly glad he persuaded ye to come over and eat your mutton with us here. My daughters, Mr. Softly—Rebecca and Jane.” Both ladies again got up, and we bowed and curtsied once more to one another; whilst I still remained as much in ignorance as ever as to which was Rebecca and which was Jane. “You got here before six,” continued my host, evidently bent on making me feel myself at home. “Our roads are not the best travelling in the dark, but I conclude you don’t make much account of roads. Broke your collar-bone at a fence? and a large one too, I’ll be bound. I was a sportsman myself, Mr. Softly. I recollect in the year——”

“Dinner is on the table, sir!” announced the respectable-looking servant, interrupting his master’s reminiscences at this juncture; and with a nod to me to take Miss Plumtree, which I acknowledged by diving at the nearest lady, whom I afterwards found out to be the younger sister, we filed off in great state for the dining-room, the Jovial joining the procession in the hall, and whispering in my ear, as he passed my chair, “Don’t be afraid of the Madeira, it’s been twice round the Cape; and if he talks about breeding hounds, mind you say ‘Yes’ to the governor!”

With the carte du pays thus spread before me, I unfolded my napkin, and went at an excellent clear soup with the utmost confidence.