CHAPTER XXV

MR. JORROCKS AT EARTH

MASTER took a cooling draught—a couple of seidlitz powders—the next morning, intending to lie at earth, as he said, and was later than usual in getting down-stairs. Stobbs improved his opportunity, and got sixteen kisses of Belinda, according to Ben’s reckoning, who was listening outside, ere Mrs. Jorrocks made her appearance either. A voluminous correspondence—a week’s St. Botolph’s Lane letters, and many private ones, some about hounds, some about horses, awaited our master’s descent. The first he opened was the following from our old friend Dick Brag:—

“London.

“Dear Mr. J.

“Though I fear it may involve a charge of fickleness, I feel it due to myself to make the following communication:—

“The fact of my having offered my services to you having transpired, I have been so persecuted with remonstrances from those whose judgment and good opinion I value, and representations of the impolicy of accepting office, other than in similar administrations to those I have heretofore co-operated with, that I really have no alternative but most respectfully to request that you will allow me to withdraw my previous communication. It is, I assure you, with great reluctance that I make this announcement, knowing, as I do, by sad experience, the difficulty there is in obtaining talent even under the most favourable circumstances, let alone in the middle of a season, when every body worth having is taken up; but it is one of those casualties that cannot be helped, and, in making this communication, allow me to assure you, Sir, that I shall always speak of you with respect, Sir—yes, Sir, I shall always speak of you with respect, Sir, and esteem you, Sir, as an upright gentleman and a downright fox-hunter. Allow me to subscribe myself,

“Ah! Rich. Bragg indeed,” grunted Mr. Jorrocks when he read it, “you must think I’ve a deal more o’ the Michaelmas bird i’ me than I ’ave to believe you wrote this afore you got my letter. There, Batsay,” said he, as the handsome maid now entered with the hissing urn, “take that,” handing it to her, “and make curl-papers on’t, and don’t you be so ’eavy on my witey-brown.”

The next letter he selected was from Mr. Bowker.

“LINCOLN’S INN, LONDON.

“Dear Sir,

“On calling to pay The Life for your advertisement of ‘A hunting-man wanted,’ he expressed a wish for you to contribute information respecting the sport with your hounds; and, knowing I had the honour of your acquaintance, he wished me to sound you on the subject. He says he gets lots of pot-house accounts of stag, and bag fox-hunting, with harriers, and such like rubbish; but what he wants is real sporting accounts of runs with superior establishments like yours. An editor, you know, can’t be everywhere, or he would like to have a horse in every hunt in the kingdom; but he says if you would have the kindness to furnish off-hand accounts, he would spice them up with learning and Latin. He has ‘Moore’s Dictionary of Quotations,’ and can come the classical quite as strong as the great Mr. Pomponius Ego, whom they reckon the top-sawyer in that line. Some gentlemen, The Life says, send their accounts to a third party, to be copied and forwarded as from an indifferent person; but that consumes time without answering a good end, as the utmost secrecy may be relied upon, and The Life is most particular in combing them into English. In short, gentlemen unaccustomed to public writing may forward their accounts to him with perfect confidence.

“You will be sorry to hear the Slender is in trouble. He had long been suspected of certain spiritual runnings, in the shape of an illicit still, at the back of his horse-slaughtering premises in Copenhagen Fields, and an exciseman was despatched last Thursday to watch, and, if necessary, take him. Somehow or other the exciseman has never cast up again, and poor Billy has been taken up on suspicion of having sent him to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. I hope he has not, but time will show.

“Susan Slummers has cut the Cobourg, and got engaged at Sadlers’ Wells, under the name of Clarissa Howard. I said if she was choosing a name, she might as well take a good one: she is to do genteel comedy, and is not to be called upon to paint black or wear tights. Her legs have got rather gummy of late, from too constant strain on the sinews, and the manager wanted to reduce her salary, and Susan kicked in consequence; and this reminds me that I have seen a blister in your stable—James’s or Jones’s, I forget which—that your groom, Benjamin, told me you applied to horses’ legs when they are enlarged. Might I take the liberty of asking if you think it would be beneficially applied in this case?

“As I presume from a letter I had from Mr. Stobbs the other day that he will be with you by this time, perhaps you will have the kindness to inform him that Mrs. B. will send his ‘’baccy’ by the early train tomorrow, along with your seidlitz powders, so as to make one parcel do. Old Twist’s business is sadly fallen off—my fees have diminished a third — though my twist hasn’t. We have only half the number of pupils we had. That, however, makes no difference to me, as I never got anything from them but sauce. I hope Mrs. and Miss Jorrocks are enjoying the pure air of Handley Cross. We are enjoying a dense yellow fog here—so thick and so damp, that the gas-lights, which have been burning all day, are hardly visible; I tripped over a child at the corner of Chancery Lane, and pitched head-foremost into an old chestnut-woman’s roasting oven.

“By the way, I read an advertisement in a north country paper the other day, of ‘the eatage of the fog in a park to let.’ I wish some one would take the eatage of it here, he’d get a good bellyful, I’m sure. Adieu. Excuse haste and a bad pen, as the pig said when he ran away from the butcher; and believe me to remain,

Then before Mr. Jorrocks got half through his City letters and made his pencil observations thereupon—who to do business with, whose respectability to inquire into, who to dun, who to decline dealing with, the gossiping Handley Cross ‘Paul Pry,’ with its list of arrivals, fashionable millinery, dental surgery advertisements, &c., having passed the ordeal of the kitchen, made its appearance with the following important announcement:—

“The Handley Cross (Mr. Jorrocks’s) Fox-hounds

Will meet on Wednesday at the ‘Round of Beef and Carrots,’ Appledove Road, and on Saturday at the ‘Mountain Daisy,’ near Hookey’s Hutch, each day at ten o’clock.

“N.B.—These hounds will hunt Mondays and Fridays, with an occasional bye on the Wednesdays in future.”

“Why, you’re advertising, I see!” exclaimed Charley, on reading the above.

“I am,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, with a grin, “comin’ it strong, arn’t I?”

“Very,” replied Stobbs, “three days a week—will want a good many horses for that.”

“O, I sha’n’t be much troubled on the Wednesdays,” rejoined Mr. Jorrocks; “shall jest make that long or short, ’cordin’ as it suits.”

“But you’ll go out, I s’pose,” observed Stobbs.

“In course,” replied Jorrocks. “In course—only I shall go out at my own hour—may be height, may be sivin, may be as soon as we can see. Not many o’ these waterin’-place birds that’ll get hup for an ’unt, only ye see, as I wants their money, I must give them walue received—or summut like it; but there’s nothing like the mornin’ for makin’ the foxes cry ‘Capevi!’ ” added he, with a grin of delight.

“Nothing,” assented Stobbs.

“We’ll have some rare chiveys!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, his eyes glistening as he spoke.

“Hope so,” replied Stobbs, adding, “let’s give them a trot out to-day.”

“To-day,” mused our master—“to-day,” repeated he, thrusting his hands deep in his pockets, and then taking a dry shave of his chin—“couldn’t well go out to-day. To-morrow if you like—got a lot o’ letters to write and things to do—not quite right nouther—feel as if I’d eat a hat or a pair o’ worsted stockins.”

“To-morrow will be too near your regular day,” observed Stobbs.

“Ah, true, so it would,” assented Mr. Jorrocks, thinking he must attend to appearances at first, at all events.

“Better give them a round to-day,” continued Stobbs, returning to his point.

“Not prepared,” mused Jorrocks—“not prepared. Pigg hasn’t got himself ‘fettled oop’ yet, as he calls it.”

“Oh, yes, he has,” replied Stobbs—“saw him trying on his tops as I came down-stairs, and his red coat and waistcoat were lying on the kitchen table.”

“Indeed,” replied Mr. Jorrocks—“wonder ’ow he looks in ’em. Only a hugly beggar out on ’em.”

“He’s a varmint looking chap,” observed Stobbs.

“Yes, he is,” assented Mr. Jorrocks; “’ope he’s keen.’

“How’s Ben off that way?” asked Stobbs.

“Oh, Bin’s a fine bouy,” observed Jorrocks, “and I makes no doubt ’ill train on. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Constantinople nouther.”

“Certainly not,” assented Stobbs, thinking if Ben made a sportsman he was very much mistaken.

After a vigorous attack upon the muffins, kidneys, fried ham, marmalade, and other good things adorning Mr. Jorrocks’s breakfast table, our Yorkshire friend again tried to draw the great M.F.H. for a day.

“Couldn’t we give the hounds a trot out by way of exercise, think ye?” asked he.

“Don’t know,” grunted Jorrocks from the bottom of his coffee-cup. “Wot good would that do?”

“Make ’em handy,” replied Stobbs.

“’Andy enough,” replied our master, bolting a large piece of muffin. “’Andy as ladies’ maids. Can do everything ’cept pay their own pikes.”

Despite this confident assertion, Stobbs still stuck to him. First he proposed that Pigg and he should take the hounds out together. This Jorrocks wouldn’t stand. “Be sure to get into mischief.” Then Stobbs thought it would do Jorrocks a vast deal of good to have a bump on one of his great rough horses. Our master couldn’t quite gainsay this, though he did look out of the window, observing that the sun had risen very red, that he thought it would rain, and he shouldn’t like to get wet.

“Oh, it ’ll not rain,” replied Stobbs—“not till night at least,” added he, confidently.

“Don’t know that,” grunted Mr. Jorrocks; “Gabey seems to be of a different ’pinion,” added he, as the noble old peacock now emerged from under a sun-bright Portugal laurel, and stretching his neck, and flapping his wings, uttered a wild piercing scream.

“Dash my vig, but that looks like it!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks; adding, as he caught up his right foot with a shake of his head, “Gabriel Junks is seldom wrong, and my corns are on his side.”

Still Stobbs persevered, and, by dint of agitation, at length succeeded in getting Jorrocks not only to go out, but to have a draw in Newtimber Forest; Stobbs observing, and Jorrocks assenting, that there would be very little more trouble in running the hounds through the cover than in trotting them along the road. And, with some misgivings, Jorrocks let Stobbs go to make the arrangements, while he applied himself vigorously to his letters.