CHAPTER LIV

THE WANING SEASON

The season was wearing out apace.

An unusually dry spring brought the country forward, and set the farmers to their fences and their fields. Ploughs and harrows were going, grain was scattering, and Reynard was telegraphed wherever he went.

“You bain’t a coming this way again, I s’pose,” observed each hedger, as he drove his stakes into the ground to stop up the gaps.

The hazel-drops began to hang from the bushes, the larch assumed a greenish tint, and the groves echoed to the sound of minstrelsy. The wood pigeons had long been exhorting Davy to take two cows when he was about it—

as some ingenious gentleman has interpreted their mild melody. The rooks, indeed all the birds, were busy—primroses opened their yellow leaves, and the wood anemone shot into life and wild luxuriance. The broom was parched and the gorse sun-burnt.

After many days of declining sport, including two or three after the old customer, the following ominous paragraph at length appeared in the “Paul Pry,” under the head of

“HUNTING INTELLIGENCE.”

Mr. Jorrocks’s hounds will meet at Furzy Lawn Turnpike, on Wednesday, at nine o’clock precisely.” Significant notice! Another “last day” about to be added to the long list of “last days” that had gone before. The old stagers sighed as they read it. It recalled many such notices read in company with those they would never see again. The young ones said it was a “pity,” but consoled themselves with the thoughts of a summer in London, a yachting or a fishing season. The would-be sportsman who had been putting off hunting all the winter began to think seriously of taking to it next, and to make arrangements for November.

The morning of the last day was anything but propitious. The sun shone clear and bright, while a cutting east wind starved the sheltered side of the face—horses’ coats stared, the hounds looked listless and ill, and men’s boots carried dust instead of mud-sparks. Fitful gusts of wind hurried the dust along the roads, or raised it in eddying volleys on hills and exposed places. It felt like anything but hunting; the fallows were dry and parched, the buds on the trees looked as if they thought they had better retire, and all nature yearned for rain—rain would be a real blessing.

Still there was a goodish muster of pinks, and the meet being on the road, sundry flys and other sporting equipages contributed their quota of dust. Great was the moaning and lamentation that the season was over. Men didn’t know what they should do with themselves all the summer. What wild resolutions they might have pledged themselves to is uncertain, for just as the drawing up of vehicles, the cuttings in and out of horsemen, the raising of hats, the kissing of hands, and the volleys of dust, were at their height, Walter Fleeceall’s ominous visage appearing on one side of the gate, and Duncan Nevin’s on the other, caused such a sensation that (to avoid the dust) many of the gentlemen got into the fields, and never came near the gate again. Added to this, a great black cart stallion, with his tail full of red tape, whinnied and kicked up such a row that people could hardly hear themselves speak.

At nine o’clock, half blinded, half backed, and quite bothered, Mr. Jorrocks gave the signal for leaving the meet. It was a wildish sort of try, and every farmer having recently seen a fox at some distance from his own farm, James Pigg just run the hounds through turnip-fields, along dike-backs, as he called the hedge-rows, and through any little spinneys that came in his way, till he got them to Bleberry Gorse. What a change had come over the hounds since last they were there! Instead of the eager dash in, they trotted up to it, and not above half the hounds could be persuaded to enter.

“Eleu in, mar cannie hinnies!” holloaed James Pigg, standing erect in his stirrups and waving his cap; but the “cannie hinnies” didn’t seem to care about it, and stood looking him in the face, as much as to say so. “Hoic in there, Priestess! Hoic in!” continued he, trotting round the cover, and holding them at the weak places, in hopes of striking a scent. “Ne fox here,” said Pigg to himself, watching the waving of the gorse as the hounds worked leisurely through it. “Ne great odds, either,” continued he; “could make nout on him if there was.”

“Where will you go to next, James?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks, coming up, horn in hand, preparing to call his hounds out of cover.

“A! ar dinna ken, ar’s sure,” replied Pigg; “mak’s little odds, ar think—might as well hunt o’er a pit-heap, as i’ seek a country as this,” looking at the baked fallows round about.

“Well, never mind,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “this is our last day, and high time it was; but we mustn’t let it be blank, if we can ’elp it—so let’s try Sywell Plantation—the grass at all ewents will carry a scent, and I should like to hear the Jenny Linds again afore we shut up, if it was only for five minutes.”

Out went the horns—Mr. Jorrocks determined to have a blow, if he could have nothing else, and the hounds came straggling out of cover, some lying down at his horse’s heels, others staring listlessly about.

“Never saw such a slack pack in my life,” exclaimed Captain Shortflat, eyeing them as he spoke: “I wonder what Scrutator would say if he saw them! Never saw such a listless lot of animals—glad I’ve not wasted my season by hunting with them.”

Captain Shortflat’s opinion was caught by Master Weekly (at home for the measles), who immediately sported it as his own to his school-fellow, Master Walker (at home for the hooping-cough); and it at length coming to Mr. Bateman’s ears, he immediately attributes their slackness to the fact of their being fed on meal before hunting, which of course he considered was done to save flesh, and thereupon Mr. Jorrocks is voted an uncommon great screw. Meanwhile our Master, unconscious of the verdict, goes on at a very easy pace, feeling that a hot sun and a red coat are incompatible.

Sywell Plantations are blank, Layton Spinney ditto; then they take a three-miles’ saunter to Simonswood, where they find a hare, and at two o’clock Mr. Jorrocks announces that he will draw Warrington Banks, which is the last cover in his draw, and then give in. Some sportsmen go home, others go on, among the number Captain Shortflat, who meditates an article in Bell’s Life on “Slackness in general, and Handley Cross slackness in particular.”

The sun is very powerful, and Mr. Jorrocks gives his hounds a lap at a stream before putting them into cover. Warrington Banks are irregularly fringed with copsewood, intermixed with broom and blackthorn: lying warm to the sun, the grass grows early, and old Priestess and Rummager feather across a glade almost immediately on entering. Presently there is a challenge—another—then a third, and a chorus swells. Mr. Jorrocks listens with delight, for though a kill is hopeless, still a find is fine—Captain Shortflat turns pale.

The hounds work on, bristling into the thick of the cover. Now they push through an almost impenetrable thicker, and cross a ride beyond. The chorus increases, but the hounds move not. “Who-hoop! it’s a kill.”

Now Pigg jumps off his horse, and leaving him to chance, bounds over head among the underwood. His cap-top is just visible as he scrambles about in search of the place. “To the right!” exclaims Mr. Jorrocks, seeing him blindly pushing the wrong way—“make for the big hash a top of the crag and you’ll have ’em.”

On Pigg goes, swimming as it were, through the lofty gorse and brushwood, and his well-known who-hoop! sounds from the bottom of the crag.

“Bravo!” exclaims Mr. Jorrocks, chucking his hat in the air. (He could not afford to kick out the crown.)

“Delightful!” lisps Captain Shortflat, wringing Mr. Jorrocks’s hand.

“A glorious finish!” rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, pocketing his wig.

“Charming, indeed!” exclaims Captain Shortflat, resolving to call it twenty minutes.

“Catch Pigg’s horse!” cries Mr. Jorrocks to a boy, the animal having taken advantage of the commotion to make his way to the well.

After a longish pause, during which there appeared to be a considerable scuffle going on, Pigg’s voice is at length heard calling his hounds out of cover; and as his head pops above the bushes, Mr. Jorrocks exclaims, “Is’t a dog, Pigg?”

“Yeas,” replies James,—“a banger tee.”

“Capital, indeed!” lisps Captain Shortflat; “I’ll take a pad, if you please.”

“There arn’t none!” exclaims James Pigg, appearing with his purple-tailed coat torn in three places, and several of the hounds bleeding about the mouth. “Hounds were sae desp’rate savish, thought they’d eat me;” adding, with a wink, in an undertone to his master, “It’s nobbut a hedgehog, and ar’s gettin’ him i’ my pocket!”

Captain Shortflat, however, is so delighted with the kill and with his own keenness in having stayed, that he forthwith lugs out five shillings for James Pigg, declaring it was perfectly marvellous that hounds should be able to run on such a day—let alone kill; that he never saw a pack behave better in his life—“Uncommon keen, to be sure!” repeated he; “declare the tips of their tails are red with blood.”

The last day closes—Mr. Jorrocks lingers on the ride, eyeing his hounds coming to the horn, till at last all are there, and he has no other excuse for staying; with a pensive air he then turns his horse’s head for Handley Cross.