Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (6 page)

Some of the young ladies thought they would like to save Augustus Umfreville the trouble of thinking of it. At length they got a bargain struck: So much money down, so much more in the middle, so much at the end of the season, and Facey strutted up Regent Street as if both sides of the way were his, and the middle too. It was Mr Romford, M.F.H., Mr Romford, master of the Heavyside hounds. And he drank his own health in a copious bowl of Blue Posts baked punch, and then bought Lucy a splendid tiara of brilliants in Burlington Arcade. Price two pound ten.
Hoo-ray!
for Mr Romford!

A
S ILL-LUCK WOULD HAVE IT
, the very day that saw Mr Romford elevated into a master of hounds, placed him in an awkward position with Mrs Sponge. Soapey, as we said before, had not been a good husband. So long as the betting lists lasted, and he could pigeon the greenhorns, he was all very well, and attended to the shop, but when they were abolished, and Sir Richard Mayne's cab-fares superseded those of his favourite author Mr Mogg, Soapey grew more and more out-of-doorish, horsey, and Hornsey wood-ish, until at last upon Lucy devolved the entire responsibility of making the pot boil. Still, they might have done pretty well with the cigar shop alone; for the abolition of the betting lists operated favourably in the baccy line by drawing a goodly number of young swells into the shop, who had theretofore been kept at bay by the appearance of Sponge; but unfortunately he spent more than the swells brought in, so the concern was rapidly retrograding. At this juncture came Facey Romford, as before mentioned, whose great athletic frame and keen watchful eye cleared the course like a constable. The lawful owner even, too, durstn't show, for there was that sivin pun ten scored against him, and as the take in the till grew daily less, the less Sponge cared to come to count it. And now, on this auspicious day, when Facey came to crown her with the tiara on the glorious termination of the hound treaty, he was met by Lucy with the serious announcement that Mr S. (for she did not care to mention the name) had bolted,—bolted with the spoons and all the loose cash.

She had just received a letter with the Euston Square post mark upon it, saying, he was off to Liverpool, to catch one of the Black Ball line of clipper packets for Australia, and would write to her again when he got there.

“Bolted!” exclaimed Facey, his lively imagination realising the position as quickly as did that of the old gentleman who had the child pawned off upon him in the City omnibus.
¹
“Bolted!” repeated he, twitching out a liberal sample of his cane-coloured beard as he spoke, and examining it by the fan gas-light of the counter.

Facey did not like it; Lucy neither. Though Soapey had not been a good Sponge to her of late, still she now realised her old aphorism, that a bad husband was a deal better than none. Facey feared to have a woman thrown upon him just at this critical moment of his preferment, when he thought he saw heiresses rising in shoals to contend for his hand. He now wished he had forfeited the sivin pun ten.

“Whatever am I to do?” exclaimed poor Lucy, clasping her hands, with tearful upturned eyes. “Nathan Levy has fixed to be here at twelve o'clock to-morrow for his rent, and there isn't a halfpenny to meet it with.”

“Humph!” growled Facey, taking another pull at his beard.

“He'll seize whatever he finds,” ejaculated Lucy.

“Then the less you leave him to find the better,” replied Facey, “Whose are these things?” asked he, knocking the mahogany counter with his knuckles, and nodding promiscuously at the gas and general fittings around.

“Some are his, and some are ours,” replied Lucy.

“Well, then, I'll tell you what, you just go and convert them,” said Facey, “and bolt too.”

“But where am I to go? What am I to do?”

“Plenty of places to go to!—plenty to do,” rejoined Romford, with the confidence of a man well established himself.

Lucy hesitated assent.

“Set up a register-office, start a school, teach dancing, give lessons in riding, return to the stage,—a hundred ways of making money in this great, rich metropolis.”

Facey determined that, come what might, he would not be encumbered with her himself. He was a very moral man, especially when it was his interest to be so, and was not going to prejudice his chance of getting an heiress by—even the semblance of an illicit connection.

“But why not go to your mother?” asked Facey, who he knew was a theatrical dresser, living at Hart Street, Covent Garden.

“Oh, my mother has as much as she can manage to keep herself,” sighed Lucy.

“Well, but you can stop there, at all events, for the present,” observed Facey, “till summut turns up.”

The result of a long conference was, that the little slip-shod girl of the house was sent to Wardour Street for a furniture broker, to whom Lucy sold everything for ready money, with a stipulation that it was all to be cleared away that night, and, having packed up her clothes, together with the remaining stock of cheroots and manillas, she drove off in a four-wheeled cab to her mother in Hart Street, there to ruminate on the past and contemplate the future.

Next Morning, “
THE SPONGE CIGAR WAREHOUSE
,
WHOLESALE
,
RETAIL
,
AND FOR EXPORTATION
,” was closed!

And when Nathan Levy heard the said news, he wrung his hands in anguish, vowing that he was utterly and inextricably ruined. Never! no
never
, should he get over it.

And selfish Facey, having established Mrs Sponge, presently took his departure to look after his hounds, very glad that things had terminated as they had done, for at one time he thought they locked very ominous.

The reader will therefore now have the goodness to accompany Mr M.F.H. Romford into the country.

1.  “Would you have the goodness to hold the baby while I get out?” asked a young woman of a respectable looking gentleman sitting next her, at the same time placing it on his knee. The next thing he saw, was the young woman disappearing in the thick of the crowd by the Mansion House. The omnibus went on, the gentleman sitting with his little charge, saying nothing. When, however, it stopped again, at the end of Cheapside, he repeated the operation on his next neighbour, saying, “Would you have the goodness to hold the child while I get out.” When, having done so, he instantly disappeared up St. Martin's-le-Grand.

R
AILWAYS HAVE DESTROYED THE ROMANCE
of travelling. Bulwer himself could not make anything out of a collision, and trains, trucks, trams, and tinkling bells are equally intractable. No robbing, no fighting, no benighting, no run-away-ing. One journey is very much like another, save that the diagonal shoots across country are distinguished by a greater number of changes. But with the exception of certain level crossings, certain mountings up, certain divings down like a man changing his floor at a lodging, there is really nothing to celebrate. It's, “Away you go!” or, “Here you are!”

The H.H. country had scarcely been screeched and whistled awake by the noise of railways. It had few requirements that way.

There were no factories, no tall chimneys, no coal pits, no potteries, no nothing. The grass grew in the streets of what were called the principal towns, where the rattle of a chaise would draw all heads to the windows. The people seemed happy and contented, more inclined to enjoy what they had than disposed to risk its possession in the pursuit of more. In fact, they might be called a three per cent sort of people in contradistinction to the raving rapacity of modern cupidity.

It was long after dark ere the little dribbling single line branch railway, that Mr Romford had adopted by means of a sort of triumphal arch on quitting the main one at Langford Green, deposited him at the quiet little town of Minshull Vernon, the nearest point to the H.H. kennel. He had been in and out of so many trains, paced the platforms of so many stations, and read the announcements of so many waiting rooms, that he felt as if he had traversed half the kingdom, and was thankful to get his luggage out for the last time in a quiet, unhurrying way. The train was twenty minutes behind time as it was, and the guard did not seem to care if he made it thirty before he got to the end of his short but slow journey. Minshull Vernon was a very small station, too insignificant for any advertiser save a Temperance Hotel keeper and a soda-water maker to patronize. Even their placards looked worn and dejected. There wasn't a bus or a cab or a fly or a vehicle of any sort in attendance, only a little boy, who however was willing to carry any quantity of luggage. Such a contrast to the leaving in London.

Finding there were but two inns in the place, The White Swan, and The West-end Swell, our friend, true to his colours, patronised the latter, and was presently undergoing the usual inquiry “what he would like for supper,” from a comely hostess, Mrs Lockwood, the widow of a London groom, who in all probability had christened the house after his master. Romford wasn't a dainty man, and having narrowed the larder to the usual point of beef steaks and mutton chops, he said he'd have both, which he afterwards supplemented by a large cut of leathery cheese. Two pipes and two glasses of brandy and water, one to his own health, the other to that of the hounds, closed the performance, after which he rolled off to bed in a pair of West-end Swell slippers. He was soon undressed, in bed, and asleep.

Facey couldn't tell where he was in the morning. The excitement of the journey, the rapidity of events, all tended to confuse him.

He wasn't at Mother Maggison's, for he had no curtains to his bed there; besides, that game was all up. It wasn't Beak Street, for those were brown and these were green; then it came across him where he was, and with a victorious swing of his great muscular arm, he bounded out of bed with a thump that nearly sent him through the old dry rotting floor. Mrs Lockwood thought it was the chimney-stack coming down.

Never having heard of Minshull Vernon before, of course Facey had not formed any expectations as to appearance; but when he came to look out of his window he found quite a different sort of place to what it looked over night. In lieu of a dull formal street he found himself on the reach of a beautiful river with its clear translucent streams sparkling in the morning sun. “Dash it but here's fishing,” said Facey as he eyed the still trout holes—adding, “I'll be in to you, by fair means or foul.” Having made a general survey of the scene, he then halloaed down-stairs for hot water just as he used to do at old Mother Maggison's, and forthwith proceeded to shave and array himself.

Having ordered his breakfast—coffee and sausages, for which latter Minshull Vernon is famous—Facey put on his buttoned boots and turned out for a stroll in the street. It was a seedy-looking place, all the shops doing double duty, with no apparent pre-eminence among them. Jugs and basins commingled with ladies' hoops, flour and fruit stood side by side, marbles and mustard were in the some bowl. Besom makers and beer shops seemed to predominate. At length Facey found a saddler's, or rather half a saddler's, for he dealt in cheese as well, far different to the saddler's in whose window he drew in inspiration in Oxford Street. This was Toby Trotter, a first-rate gossip and liberal tipper of servants who brought work to his shop. To hear the tippees talk, one would think there wasn't such another shop in the kingdom. Such leather, such sewing, such workmanship generally. Toby was what they call a jobbing saddler, a man who worked out by the day, either so much money and his meals, or so much money without his meals; but as people found that Toby managed to get his meals either way, they mostly adopted the system of paying and feeding him. This gave him a fine opportunity for picking up news, and many a story and many an arrangement that people thought quite snug all among themselves was promulgated at Toby's shop. All the queer rumours and scandals in the county could be traced up to him. He had heard when taking his usual night-cap that there was an arrival at The West-end Swell, and was on the look out for a view. He now saw Facey coming, and began busying himself with the arrangement of a bunch of brass nailed cart whips hanging at the shop door. Toby was a little bald turnip-headed roundabout white-aproned man, who looked as if you could trundle him down street like a beer barrel. At first he thought Facey was a bagman—we beg pardon, representative of a commercial establishment—a conjecture that was speedily dissipated by his stopping short and asking for a set of spur straps. Toby had none by him, but would make him a set in a minute, which was just what Facey wanted, the imparlance, not the leathers, being the object of his visit. A saddler's is always the place to pick up sporting news, just as a confectioner's is the one to pick up matrimonial intelligence. So our friend entered and took a seat on a stool while Toby busied himself for what he wanted. Nay more, Facey made a mental inventory of the shop, and estimated its contents, cheese and all, at some eighteen pound odd. This, too, while he was talking on indifferent subjects with Toby. Our friend's honours were too novel and recent to admit of his keeping them to himself; and Toby, who was a bungler, had scarcely begun to cut ere Facey let out that he was the new master of the Heavyside hunt. Great was Toby's awe and astonishment, and his hand shook and his cutter jibbed in a way that made very slovenly workmanship. Nevertheless his tongue went glibly enough, and he presently inducted Facey into his country, told him who kept a good house, who kept a middling one, who kept a shabby one, whose keeper shot the foxes, whose sold the pheasants, whose trapped the hares, whose wanted palming. Altogether, gave him a very satisfactory insight into what he might expect. And Toby declined taking payment for the spur leathers, handing Facey a card, and hoping he would allow him the honour of opening an account with him, a request that Facey was obliging enough to grant.