Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (63 page)

Not that Lucy got the money; but Mr Hazey's cheque was drawn in her favour; and she had to indorse it ere Mr Romford and Goodheart could manipulate the money, according to the peculiar arrangement that existed between them.

T
HE
E
ARL AND
C
OUNTESS OF
Caperington were staying at their seat, Caperington Castle, enjoying the old-womanly sport of
battueing,
when the wondrous Leotard arrived. Here they were, entertaining a semi-distinguished party—not quite good enough to advertise, perhaps, but still very sounding in titles. Two or three dowagers, who lived half the year at their own expense and half at other people's; some distinguished foreigners, some equally distinguished Englishmen. The guests being chiefly of the adhesive order, were about tired of each other; consequently anything that created conversation was extremely acceptable. Leotard now furnished some.

He was greatly praised and admired by all—all excepting Mr Bustler, who called himself his Lordship's stud-groom, though the stud only consisted of a few ponies. Bustler had not been properly propitiated in the £—s—d transaction, and thought Leotard had been punctured for a spavin, though nothing of the sort had ever been done. Indeed, if Leotard's mental qualifications had been as good as his bodily ones, he would have been a very nice horse, and well worth a hundred pounds. But, like many bipeds, he could better bear adversity than prosperity, and as soon as ever he got his condition up a little, back came all his bad qualities. He then would not do anything he didn't like, and if coerced, resented it. He then either kicked the party over his head, or, in the language of the low dealer, “saluted the general”—that is to say, reared up on end.

Now Leotard, with a perversity that had always distinguished him, went perfectly well on the first days of trial: the Countess's way being apparently his, and the Countess's pace also. When, however, he became better acquainted with the roads and the country, he began to exercise a judgment of his own; and one day, when the Countess wanted to canter across the grass sidings of the Rosendale road, to meet the overladen market coaches, Leotard insisted upon taking her to Tewkesbury. Not that he had any acquaintance at Tewkesbury—indeed, we dare say if she had pulled him up for Tooksbury, as she called it, he would have insisted upon going to Rosendale. It was just a spirit of contradiction—a sort of equine awkwardness that nobody could account for. The Countess, however, had a spirit too; and, moreover, had no idea of a horse, for which her noble husband had given such a liberal price, presuming to exercise a will of his own. So she just administered the whip—one, two, three; but before she got four the horse was up straight on end, and the Countess was down over his tail. It was just Mrs Rowley Rounding over again. Then off went the horse, full tilt at first, but not finding himself pursued, he relaxed into a snorting, tail-distended, head-diverging trot, as though he were surveying the landscape—much after the manner of the Benicia Boy. General chasers made a “click” at him, as they called it; but Leotard evaded them all, and entered Caperington Park just as the noble Earl and his party opened fire on the rabbits on Fourburrow Hill. Then there was such a commotion, and sending off, and running heel, to track the offender back to the site of the dissolution of partnership. The Countess, however, had tucked up her habit, and one of the before-mentioned overladen market coaches coming up, she hailed it, and made three on the box, sitting between the coachman and a puffy butcher from Bassetlaw. Thus she met the affrighted party, easing their minds but not her own, for she was very angry with the horse, and wanted to give him a good whipping. When, however, she saw him stand and deliver Mr Bustler like a shot, she thought she had better do it by deputy; still more so when she saw a helper share her own fate. The horse was then unanimously pronounced to be vicious.

At this juncture there appeared upon the scene our rosy-gilled, silvery-haired friend, now no longer Sir Roger Ferguson, but the old original Goodhearted Green, of Brown Street, Bagnigge Wells Road. Goodheart was so overcome with grief at the Countess's misfortunes, that he could scarcely find utterance for his sorrow. “Oh dear, he was distressed! he was 'urt! he didn't know the time when he had been so put about! Hadn't slept a wink for two nights for thinkin' on't. The Countess ought never to get on to such a quadruped again. He knew the 'oss—wicked, mistetched animal, that had been turned out of half the stables in London. People that sold such 'osses ought to be indicted for conspiracies.” And after a good deal of similar palaverment, he concluded by saying he thought he knew a man who would give fourteen or fifteen pound for him; which Goodheart affirmed was more than he was worth. And though it certainly was a miserably dejected figure to take for a two-hundred-guinea horse, yet, when he won't do anything for his keep, what is the use of him? So they just let him go, hoping to set something back from Coper and Hazey. Coper, of course, could not be found; and though Hazey liked Countesses, he loved money more, and could not bear to part with his beloved gains. It was hard to lose the profit of his labour, especially when he believed the objection to the horse was founded partly on caprice, and partly on incompetence. The boy Bill assured him that nothing could go better than the horse did the morning he tried him at Tarring Neville; and certainly Mrs Somerville rode him with the greatest ease and composure. If the Countess had given more for him than she liked, that was no reason for dissolving the bargain. Many people expected more than they got, and those who knew the least about horses always expected the most. Hazey had had many such, but none of them had ever got a halfpenny out of him. He didn't sell hands, only horses.

The horse, we need scarcely say, was soon back into Beldon Hall, undergoing the treatment and discipline necessary for keeping him in something like subjection; and when Mr Hazey heard that Mrs Somerville was riding him as usual, he gained confidence in his cause, and asserted boldly that the horse was as quiet as a lamb, and had doubtless been ridden injudiciously, or spoiled by mismanagement.

The Countess felt piqued at this announcement, conceiving that it conveyed an imputation on her horsemanship; for though she was not in reality a good rider. yet she thought she was, and perhaps was more sensitive on the point than if she had really been one. The Earl, too, backed her opinion, seeing that she sat well on her horse and looked the equestrian; and the party generally favoured the view that the horse was vicious. Hazey, however, held out the other way; and for once believing his own story, stated that the fact was capable of proof, for the horse might be seen with the Larkspur Hounds almost every day in the week; Mr Hazey, perhaps, not thinking that anyone would be at the trouble of making the long journey for the purpose of seeing. Here, however, he was mistaken, for railways have annihilated distance; and having got a locality to work upon, the Countess talked and fretted, and fretted and talked till she worked herself up into a resolution to go and see. If anybody would go with her, she would really go and see. She would like uncommonly to go and see. She thought it would be very good fun to go and see. And a lady in that mood not being likely to remain unescorted, especially when she paid the expenses first, Major Elite, and then Mrs Mountravers—both staying guests—volunteered their services to accompany her into Doubleimupshire. And as none of them had ever been there before, or had the slightest idea how to get to it, the expedition furnished abundant food for conversation; first to find out what part of Doubleimupshire Mr Romford hunted; secondly, how it was to be got at, and, thirdly, where the meets of the hounds were.

To this end maps, and books, and “Bell's Lifes,” and “Bradshaws” were consulted, and calculations made for train meeting, and crossing, and catching. Then came the sorting and packing and arranging for the journey, the Countess taking as much luggage as in former times would have served a traveller to India, all, of course, directed—so that they who run might read—“To the Right Honourable the Countess of Caperington.” Then there was such a to-do about her Ladyship's man, and her Ladyship's maid, and her Ladyship's this, and her Ladyship's that.

At length they got started as well from the castle as from the neighbouring station of Lilleyfield, and, after numerous halts, and stops, and changes, with the usual variations of speed peculiar to different trains and systems of railway, they found themselves, towards sunset, contemplating the tall spire of Dirlingford Church from a dumpy little station about a mile from the town. Railways which make some places ruin others, and Dirlingford had suffered the latter fate. The railway seemed to have sucked all the life out of it—taken it all up to Pickering Nook. So few passengers stopped there that the solitary omnibus did not meet every train, and now that the driver had got a haul in the graceful person of the Countess and her attendants, he seemed appalled at the quantity of luggage. Didn't know how he should ever get it up. Independent Jimmy would have had it on during the time this one was looking at it. At last, with the aid of the porter, he got it accomplished, and the party being now seated—“Where to?” was the question. “Head Inn!” was the answer.

“That'll be the ‘Lord 'ill,' then,” said he, and, hurrying round to his horses he mounted his box and drove down to the town.

The “Lord Hill” hotel and posting house, at Dirlingford, was a good sample of the old-fashioned way-side inn, now fast disappearing before the march of modern civilisation. It was a great gaunt four-storeyed small-windowed red brick house, standing right in the middle of the High Street, its front-door reached by an iron-railed flight of steep stone steps. On the right of the door was a caged bell that had announced the coming of many a carriage; on the left the name of the landlord, John Scorer, with the words “neat wines, neat post-chaises” below. Above the door was the sign of the house, the “Lord Hill,” a faded warrior in fall uniform, powdered and pig-tailed according to the prevail in fashion of the day.

At one time it kept twelve pair of post-horses, besides a few that worked on the farm, and seven long coaches changed horses at it twice a day. Great were the gains from the unfortunate victims whom necessity compelled to take the road in those days. They were treated much like cattle at a market, pushed and squeezed and fed anyhow. It was for the great magnates of the road that the landlord's attention and civility were reserved. Then, when the bow-legged “next boy out” descried the coming carriage, he gave the caged door-bell such a ringing as caused a similar commotion in the house to that which attended the coming of the Countess of Caperington to Mrs Slyboots' the milliner's, at Worryworth. The “Lord Hill” was convulsed.

And the mention of her Ladyship reminds us that we have got her and her party in the Dirlingford omnibus, from which we had better extract them as soon as we can. One disadvantage of the now universal use of public conveyances undoubtedly is, that consequence does not get properly attended to. When that the maid dresses so much finer than the mistress, it is difficult at first sight to distinguish between them—to say which is which. The Countess, however, was not one of that sort, and always dressed as became her exalted station, and the 'bus had scarcely stopped at the “Lord Hill” hotel and posting-house door ere it was bruited throughout that a great lady had come. Then down went Scorer's pipe on the inner bar table. Mrs Scorer adjusted her antiquated frilled cap in the looking-glass, the old bed-gowned chambermaid, Rebecca, slid downstairs, holding on by the banisters, and Timothy, the bald-headed, short-breeched antediluvian waiter, with something between a napkin and a duster in his hand, waddled out of the commercial room to join the commotion in the passage. Great was the bobbing and bowing and curtseying and your Ladyshipping, great the gesticulation to induce them to get forward out of the way of the now-coming boxes, and ascend the narrow staircase to the gloomy regions above. Of course there wasn't a fire in any of the rooms, “but they would light one directly,” Scorer said. And to this end Rebecca began to strike a light with a flint and steel in the “Trafalgar,” declaring she could get one sooner that way than with a lucifer-match.

The “Lord Hill,” was a close, frowsy old house, from which every breath of air seemed to be excluded by heavily-dressed curtains before the never-opened windows. The sitting-rooms were large and low, their lowness being further aggravated by most oppressively heavy mouldings on the ceilings. It was enough to give one the nightmare to think of such ceilings. As to those grand old temples of suffocation, the large four-post beds in the small rooms, the large boot-jack, the diminutive towel, and insoluble soap, they are yet to be found in most countries, and need not be described. We also pass by as well the order for, as the incidents of, the mutton-chop dinner—the offer of everything, with the reduction to nothing; the battered copper-betraying side-dishes, the green hook, and dull needle-case-shaped champagne-glasses, with the strong loathsome cheese that followed the dry unpalatable tart. Let us suppose the evening spent; the long wax lights replaced by short ones, and our tired travellers off to bed, to sleep, to dream, or perchance be bit by bugs.

Those who have watched the progress of public conveyances, seen how the fastidiousness of former times has gradually disappeared before the lights of common-sense and utility, can have little doubt that another great change is coming over the nation in the matter of domestic economy. The universality of travel; the extreme difficulty of getting servants at home—the hopelessness of managing them when got; all tend to show that clubs, which answered so well for gentlemen, are about to be extended to families, in the shape of the magnificent hotels now rising up all around, where, if people do pay for accommodation, they at all events get an equivalent for their money.