Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (28 page)

“Hoop!” cheered Facey, delighted with his prowess. He didn't care a copper for his Bedford cords, nor yet for his new coat-laps.

Meanwhile the hounds shot away with renewed melody, renovating the roadsters, and making the country ring with their energy. The face of the landscape now changed, inclining upwards towards the dark frowning hills, which divided the vale from the moorlands above. The enclosures, too, got larger and larger—twenty, thirty, and forty acres each—while the surface was more openly exposed, flat, and expansive, with very weak hedges, and fest hollows for concealment or out-of-sight running. The hounds now showed to great advantage, striving and racing for the mastery. A sheet would cover them.

“Dash it! but they are a rare lot!” muttered Facey, eyeing their performances. “And didn't cost much, either,” chuckled he, thinking how he got them. “
Forrard! forrard!
” cheered he, fanning the flame of their ardour. So they went screeching and pressing to the front—now Prosperous leading, now Terrible, now Tuneable. Dash it! He didn't know whether the Beaufort or the Belvoir were the best. Didn't think even Bondsman himself could beat some of the former. Monstrous lucky he was to get them.

Facey next views the fox stealing steadily over what was once Coltsfoot Common, with an attendant canopy of crows hovering over him, indicating his course. “
Yow! yow! yap!
” went the bustling hounds. “Caw! caw! caw!” went the birds. So the poor fox had a double set of pursuers.

On he went, however, steadily and perseveringly. He had beat the old Larkspur hounds twice, and did not see why he should not beat Mr Romford's. But nearer and nearer came the notes of the pack, commingling with the vociferous cawing of the black gentry above. It was hard to say which seemed the most inveterate against the unfortunate fox. Still, the many-caverned rocks were close at hand, and if he could but gain them, they might work for a week before they got him out. There they girded the horizon in frowning altitude, the dark interstices looking most inviting for a refuge. Facey saw the difficulty. If the fox and hounds held on at the same pace, the fox would inevitably gain the rocks and heat the hounds. This was not to be desired, especially on a first day after a good run. So clapping spurs to Pull-Devil-Pull-Baker, now, indeed, made into Placid Joe, he capped them on from scent to view; and, after a smart race, the Belvoir Dreadnought pulled the fox down by the brush, just as he was ascending the first reef of rocks.

“W
HO
-
HOOP
!” shrieked Romford in a voice that made the hills ring and reverberate. “
Who-hoop!
” repeated he, throwing himself from his horse, and diving into the midst of the pack, to extricate the fox from their fangs. Up he held him triumphantly, with the baying pack jumping and frolicking around. “Take my horse, away now,” cried Facey to Swig, and the coast being then clear, Facey advanced a few steps to where a soft mossy bank seemed to invite the performance of the last obsequies of the chase. There on the bright green cushion he cast the nut-brown fox.

Meanwhile, the field having availed themselves of the facilities of Beltingford Bridge, were now making the air and the hard road ring with their voices and the noise of their horses' hoofs, all in a deuce of a stew lest they should lose the hounds, or not be up at the kill. They had not yet arrived at the elegant point of indifference that makes men turn their horses' heads homewards as soon as they hear “who-hoop!” and most satisfactory (though of course none of them admitted it) Romford's death-note sounded on their ears.

They had all about had enough. The gallant Captain Spurrier had lost a shoe, Mr Blanton had lost two, while Mr James Allnut and his son had lost five between them.

Mr Romford took no advantage of their circumlocution, but keeping the fox on the green bank, maintained the ardour of the pack by repeated hoops and halloos. So there was a very lively circle when the last of the field came up. Facey and the fox in the centre, the baying hounds all around, Chowey and Swig outside, contributing their occasional quota of noise to the scene.

“Well (puff) done!” exclaimed Mr Bullpig, mopping himself.

“Capital (gasp) run!” shouted Allnut, who had only seen half of it.

“Never saw better (puff) hounds in my life!” asserted Mr Large, who had never seen any but the Surrey.

Then all having come up, Chowey, at a signal from Facey, proceeded to divest the fox of his brush and his pads, prior to presenting the remainder to the hounds. Up then went the carcase, which was caught by a myriad of mouths as it fell. Tear him and eat him, was then the cry. And tear him and eat him they did. The master of the circle, Facey Romford, then quitted the ring, now somewhat difficult to maintain in consequence of the struggling efforts of the fox-devouring hounds, and having decorated Master Allnut's pony with the brush, and given the pads to those who would have them, proceeded to the outer ring, to hear how things were going on there.

There was a great discussion about the time and distance.

Mr Pyefinch said it was nine miles as the crow flies.

Doctor Snuff, who had joined promiscuously on a cob, thought it was hardly that, but it was good eight.

Mr Kickton thought it was more than eight. It was seven to Stewley Hill, and the rocks were two good miles beyond it.

Then they appealed to Mr Romford.

“How far should you say it was, Mr Romford?” demanded Mr Joseph Large, who thought he had come twenty at least.

“Faith, I've no notion!” replied Facey, adding, “He was a right good fox, any how.”

“Capital!” ejaculated Mr Large, adding, “It was almost a pity to kill him.”

“Not a bit,” retorted Facey, “always kill 'em when you can. The more you kill, the more you'll have to kill.”

The teapot-handle-maker didn't understand that doctrine, but took it for granted. He inwardly hoped there were not many such foxes in the country.

Then Facey, pretending that the run was nothing out of the way, remounted his horse, demanding where they should go next; whereupon they all cried “Content!” recommending him to go home and change, for he must be very wet, and began asking their own individual ways, for some people will live in a country all their lives, and yet never know where they are after hunting.

Then Mr Bullpig, having identified Hazelton Hill, and Mr Blanton the far-off Castlefield Clump, the respective cohorts filed off together to be further distributed as they proceeded. And Mr Romford having looked over his hounds, and found them all right to a fraction, moved away in the direction of Middlethorpe Steeple, well pleased at having given the field such a stinger at starting. And he smoked his pipe, and played the flute with great glee, at Beldon Hall, that evening; telling Lucy and her mamma that he had given his new friends a “
deuce of a dustin'
.”

A
HUNTSMAN
'
S FAME RISES AND
falls with the sport he shows, and after such a run as that described in our last chapter, no wonder Mr Romford's was in the ascendant. People said there was no mistake about him. He was the right man in the right place. And the tide of public opinion turned entirely in his favour. His unadorned eloquence, queer questions, and napkin-pocketing
gaucheries
were forgotten or merged in the brilliant nature of his exploits. He was a trump, and no mistake.

The run was talked of far and wide—magnified, and exaggerated beyond all bounds. It was twelve miles, it was fifteen miles, and it was twenty miles. Facey swam the Lune (a navigable river), and rode up a precipice a hundred and ten feet high. It was talked of at my Lord's, at Sir Charles's, at the Hall, the House, and Grange, at the Barley Mow, the Coach and Horses, the Fox and Hounds, the Red Lion, the White Horse, the Black Horse, the Bay Horse, at all the houses of public entertainment within the limits of the Larkspur Hunt.

As it gradually reached the confines of the Larkspur country, a sort of reaction took place, and people began to be more sceptical; doubted whether Facey swam the Lune; doubted whether he rode up the precipice; doubted whether the run was as long as they said. If it was there must have been two foxes.

When the news got into Independent Jimmy's friend, Mr Hazey's country, it became more and more doubted still, and some of the members of the Hard and Sharp Hunt seemed to take it amiss, if any one mentioned it. Distance? Nonsense! it was nothing of the sort. Mr Jiggerton Jones, who was born at Brickley Hill, and knew every yard of the country, said it was barely eight miles—not eight as the crow flies. The Lune never came in the way. It was the Fleet Mr Romford swam—anybody could leap it on foot when the waters were down. So they crabbed the great run.

Mr Hazey heard the news with misgivings, for he had had some difficulty in holding his own even against the old Larkspur Hunt, and it was only by letting the large subscribers hoop and halloo, and do as they liked with his hounds, that he managed to keep them together. But for this they would have been straggling all over the world, some to the Larkspurs, some to Captain Copperthwaite's harriers, some to Mr Stotfold's staghounds. Railways make sportsmen very ubiquitous. One day they are with the Queen's, another with the Quorn, a third with the Craven, or perhaps the Cheshire.

Still, Mr Hazey hoped if Romford was the great man people represented him to be, he might yet manage to retrieve himself by a little curative horse-dealing with him.

Mr Hazey was one of the new-fangled order of horse-dealing masters of hounds—and hunted the country for the sake of what he could make by it. We don't mean to say that he lived out of the hounds like friend Facey, because he went to a certain expense in their maintenance and education himself, but he never missed a chance of making that expense as little as possible by selling either horses or hounds to advantage. He was one of those provoking, persecuting creatures who are always pestering people about their belongings, praising their horses until one would suppose no money would induce them to part with them, and then all at once they chop over and announce that the paragon of perfection is for sale, all the previous palaverment merely tending to excite competition and enhance the price. A man doesn't deserve a good horse who is always wanting to sell him. The respectable dealers would have nothing to do with Mr Hazey. They would meet him at the thresholds of their yards with a bow, and a “Sorry, sir, we have nothing at home that will suit you,” well knowing that he would turn every horse in the yard out, and then haggle with them for a half-penny at the end. The great Mr Thoroughpin of Oxford Street used to say he would rather do business with two Jews than one Hazey. Then, to hear Hazey running down a horse that he wanted to buy, and afterwards running him up when he wanted to sell, was what Independent Jimmy called quite “a theatre performance.” No one would suppose he was talking about one and the same animal. In buying of the farmers, he was far worse than the regular dealers in his persecution for luck-pence and returns, and would take anything that they would give him,—a sack of potatoes, a goose, or even his gig-hire, if he could get nothing else. Then what trials he required before he could be satisfied of their soundness, and how little he gave when he came to buy! His plan was to canter a horse for three quarters of an hour or so, then take him back to the stable, and, after he had got him cool, to shake down a veterinary surgeon as if by chance, to scan and scrutinise his then appearance and condition. In selling, he sternly repudiated the services of the brotherhood, observing, they were a class of men he never allowed to come into his stables—knew their tricks too well for that gentlemen should place implicit confidence in each other,” Hazey said.

In this honourable career he was ably assisted by his groom; James Silkey, a man who could lie like truth, and who would swear to anything that Hazey said. Having been long in Hazey's service, and, of course, in at a good many robberies, Silkey had acquired a perfect mastery over Hazey, much to the latter's inconvenience, who could neither do with Silkey nor without him—Silkey could expose him whenever he liked.

Not that Hazey cared a great deal for exposure; but Silkey, by enabling parties to put that and that together, might bring him within reach of the law, which would be very disagreeable in a pecuniary point of view. Indeed, he had had once or twice to refund as it was, not caring to trust Silkey to the cross-examina-of that teasing counsel, Serjeant Werrit. Silkey had long discarded livery, set up a broad back, and strutted consequentially in brown cut-aways and gaiters, talking of moy hounds, moy horses, moy this, and moy that—but never about moy master.

After this introduction, perhaps the reader would like to know what sort of a looking gentleman Mr Hazey was—tall or short, thick or thin, dark or fair, old or young, or middling, or how. Well, he was of the middle stature and middling substance, stood five feet nine, and rode eleven stone two—a convenient weight for mounting, and dressed in a-sort of semigroomish, semi-country gentlemanish style—cut-away coat, light vest, fancy tie, with generally tightish drab trousers and Balmoral boots. Being no rider, his hunting costume, of course, was a cap, huntsman-ish cut coat, and everything very stout and substantial.

As to his age, we can hardly fix it, for he was one of those light-complexioned gentlemen who wear so well, had no whiskers, and no striking feature save cold grey eyes that wandered restlessly about a room. It wasn't the quick, piercing eye of Mr Romford, but the sly, circumventing one that makes a man feel far more anxious for his pocket than the other. He had a son now old enough to want top-boots, viz., Mr William Hazey, or, “my boy Bill,” as his father fondly called him. Bill had left two schools with the reputation of being the worst boy at both. Being, however, his father's facsimile in mind as well as looks, he was his especial favourite, and everything seemed to be made subservient to my boy Bill. My boy Bill must have a gun-room; my boy Bill must have a billiard-room; my boy Bill must have a smoking-room; my boy Bill must have everything he wanted.