CHAPTER XIII

THE BLANK DAY

IT’s four years since last February, though our friend Tom says he remembers it as if it were but yesterday, so rare are the calamities of blank days in the catalogue of his misfortunes.

The Duke of Tergiversation, having the Prince of Spankerhausen, Mynheer Von Cled, and several other great Dutch swells, whom he wanted “galvanising,” had written to Lord Harry Harkaway to bring his unrivalled hounds to Fast-and-Loose Castle, on that most forlorn of all forlorn speculations, the “chance” of finding a fox.

Dukes are people that generally have their own way, let them be ever so unreasonable; and even if Lord Harry had been inclined to object to trashing his hounds and horses such a distance, the offer of hospitality to himself and establishment would have caused him to think that he might as well avail himself of the opportunity for paying the duke and duchess a visit.

Accordingly the hounds were advertised to meet at Fast-and-Loose Castle on “their” day of the week, with a non-hunting one on each side of it, though what that day was, we don’t pretend to say, dates and distances being things we seldom trouble our head about.

It was the first season of Lord Harry’s hunting the country, the hounds having just come out of Yarnshire with the usual high-flown renown of new packs.

Fast-and-Loose Castle, indeed the whole Tergiversation territory, had long been looked upon as extra-parochial in the hunting line, neither Sir Charles Wildblood nor his predecessor, Lord Heavysop, ever having thought it worth while to play at drawing his grace’s covers a second time. Not but that his grace is a patron of fox-hunting, a patron in his own peculiar way,—just as he is a patron of racing, to uphold which, he keeps two or three wooden-limbed brutes that go the rounds of the district. Fox-hunting he looks upon in much the same light as racing; a sort of amusement of the hour, that requires no care or consideration during the rest of the year. He therefore gives hounds leave to draw his covers, on certain set days of the season—the 15th of December, the 15th of February, and again on the 15th of April, provided none of those days fall on a Sunday, in which case, the hunt stands adjourned to the Monday.

But the system will develop itself with the narrative.

The talk people make about anything new, especially anything new in the hands of a nobleman, made Tom Scott take a fancy for seeing Lord Hark-away’s hounds, and though the distance from Hawbuck Grange is great, five-and-thirty miles to the kennel, yet the town of Barkeston being within easy distance of the castle, by lying out a couple of nights, he could easily accomplish his object, especially as like Lord Harry, he could kill two birds with one stone—get a hunt, and pay a visit to his old friend the Rev. Peter Blackcoat, the worthy rector of Barkeston.

Accordingly Tom arranged it so.

It was not until he got to Barkeston that he heard the exact state of the fox question. His grace having lately made one of his periodical changes of politics, Tom thought he had very likely turned over a new leaf in the hunting book too, and that things were going to be different.

“I am afraid you’ve come on a forlorn hope,” observed Peter Blackcoat, wringing Tom’s hand, as he met him at his neat parsonage gate.

“How so?” asked Tom, fearing the whole thing was put off. “The duke hasn’t changed his mind, has he?”

“Oh no,” replied his friend; “the thing is to take place; that’s to say, there’s to be a grand spread of a breakfast—cherry brandy, cheese and so on—but as to finding a fox, there isn’t such a thing in the parish.”

“The deuce there isn’t!” exclaimed Tom; “then what are the hounds there for?”

“Oh, just for the duke to show them to his friends. He’s got a lot of great barge-built Dutchmen there, who can’t speak a word of English, and he’ll persuade them that the hounds are his, and that Lord Harry is a sort of retainer of the castle, and so they’ll go back to the place from whence they come, and tell all the great boundless burgomasters and fellows what a tremendous great man the Duke of Tergiversation is.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Tom, wishing himself home again.

“Nay, don’t look glum,” replied the parson, patting the mare’s neck. “I dare say the game-keeper will manage something in the shape of a fox. All the world will be there, and it won’t do to disappoint a whole countryside.”

“Manage something in the shape of a fox, my dear Peter!” exclaimed our friend, in disgust. “You don’t think a fox is like a coat, that you can have to order and turn out when you want it? Believe me, my dear fellow, a fox is very like what the young ladies, bless them! say of love; there is but one real love, though there may be a hundred different copies of it; so there is but one right sort of fox, though there may be a hundred imitation ones.”

This very philosophical observation brought Tom to his friend’s stable door, a comfortable three-stall’d edifice, with a gig and harness-room adjoining.

We never get into a parsonage house without thinking if it wasn’t for writing the weary sermons, we’d like to be a parson ourself. They are always so snug, and have such capital port wine!

But we will pass over the feeding and friendship, and proceed at once to the festival.

Tom’s friend said the thing that was true. As he rode away in the morning through the usually quiet little town of Barkeston, all heads were at the windows, those who were to be left behind looking wistfully after those who were going, and one-horse chaises and two-horse chaises were loading and driving away with mirthful parties, to say nothing of an omnibus full inside and out. There were Mrs. and the two Miss Sugarlips in their yellow phaeton, driven by young Mr. Whateley, the rising apothecary; and there were Mr. Luxford, the bookseller, and “his lady,” as the genteel ones call their wives; Mr. Kidd, the hosier, rode with Mr. Holmes, the saddler, while their respective ladies, with some seven or eight children between them, followed in the public “private” landau of the Duke’s Arms. The duchess—that is to say, the landlady—had just been confined, and couldn’t show. Nevertheless, every horse they had, both from the hotel and the farm, were in requisition, and great was the demand for saddles, bridles, and tackle generally.

The plot thickened as Tom proceeded, until the road swarmed again. More gigs, more horsemen, more horsemen, more gigs, and pedestrians without end.

The most astonishing thing, however, was the appearance of a troop of yeomanry that came jingling and clattering down the Heckfield-lane on to the turnpike, in all the pomp and terror of cart-horse cavalry.

“Who’s dead, and what’s to pay?” exclaimed Tom Scott, as a most insignificant little officer, almost extinguished by his horse-tailed helmet, was borne against him by a great pulling powerful black mare, who seemed fully intent upon running away with him.

“Co-o-o-m-e and s-s-e-e, old b-o-y,” ejaculated the victim, pretending to be quite at his ease.

“Why, Billy Bobbinson! is that you? you little unfortunate devil; what have you been about now, that they have dressed you up in that way?” exclaimed Tom. “Who looks after the shop when you are out soldiering?” but Billy was deaf to the inquiry, and the troop rattled on as if they were going to quell a rebellion or extinguish a fire at the least. Little thought Tom that they were the Duke of Tergiversation’s cavalry going to form a hunting guard of honour on Mynheer Von Cled and Co.!

Our friend Tom had never seen Tergiversation Castle except from the Cockington Fort road, where it is visible in the usual style of castle visibility, towers above trees, and a flag above towers. Its ground dimensions he had no idea of, neither did he care much, seeing he was not likely to be wanted inside.

The castle certainly had a very imposing appearance, when he got the whole concern mustered in one grand view—body, wings, giblets, and all. There was great liveliness and animation apparent, both inside and out, quite relieving the austere frownings of the cloisters, and the heavy Gothic architecture of the building.

Powdered footmen, in gorgeous plum-coloured liveries, bedizened with silver lace, with massive covered dishes, pushed their way among “gentlemen’s gentlemen” and heavy-looking moustached Dutchmen, who seemed as if they had nothing whatever to do but smoke; while occasional glimpses of the “real quality” might be caught through the plate-glass windows of the receiving rooms, and good steady studies made of ladies’ maids staring out of the windows or disporting themselves on the leads and turrets above.

The spacious court-yard behind presented a curious medley of war and pastime, soldiers and fox-hunters. The yeomanry had dismounted, and were busy rectifying the little derangements of dress and appointments incident to the march. Those whose saddles had threatened to come over their horses’ ears for want of the crupper were now slamming them back in their places; others were scraping the frothy sweat off the stinking, hairy-heeled brutes, while some were combing out the manes and tails of theirs, by way of trying to make them look a little decent. There was a strange contrast between the cumbrous, misfitting uniforms of the ploughman soldiers, and the trim neatness of the hunting and stable servants. Nevertheless, the former seemed very well pleased with themselves, and clamped and strutted about the yard in their heavy jack-boots, dragging their noisy swords after them, looking about for admiration from the maids.

The hounds were advertised for eleven, but that hour had long passed without any indications of a move. To be sure, a little after eleven, sundry footmen emerged from the castle, bearing trays, covered with cakes and biscuits, with bottles of sherry and glass jugs full of water for the schedule B people outside, while bread and cheese and ale, with something in a most profane-looking black bottle, circulated freely among the troopers and trampers at the back. The servants of the hunt, being billeted in the castle, surveyed the scene in easy indolent attitudes from the stone steps leading from the offices into the court-yard, and criticised each comer just as the first-class company criticised the outsiders from the windows in front.

Little Billy Bobbinson, with his face all flushed with liquor and tight girthing, conveyed the first symptoms of active animation by floundering along the stone passage in his iron-heeled jacks, with his spurs draggling and his sword banging and nearly tripping him up as he went, to give the word of command for the men to “prepare to mount.” Billy is the most unfortunate-looking little object that ever was manufactured into a heavy dragoon, being split up far too high—all legs, and no body. Still Billy was in great force. He would not have exchanged figures with Hercules, nor his rusty, misfitting, dragging, lace-tarnished scarlet with green facings, or his parchment-looking leathers and lack-lustre jacks, for the outfit of the youngest and smartest officer in the Life Guards.

“Prepare to mount!” hallooed little Billy from the top of the steps, standing on one leg and putting his right hand to his mouth, so as to convey the sound right among the soldiers. “Prepare to mount!” repeated he in a still louder tone.

“Hurrah for the cornet!” exclaimed Tom Curlin, the half-drunken farrier, tossing off a third potation from the black bottle, and “Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” was shouted and repeated from all parts of the yard.

Billy the hatter and Billy the soldier are very different people, and he does in his red coat what he would never think of doing in his black. Seeing Scott standing in the desolate way a man does outside a great house waiting for hounds, he came with a patronising air of one with the entrée, and asked if our friend wouldn’t “walk in”; adding his conviction, “that the duke would be extremely happy to see him.”

Tom didn’t think the duke would; and not knowing what practical jokes some of Billy’s half-drunken heavies might play on the old mare if he went to try the experiment, he contented himself by saying that “he had breakfasted,” and was anxious to know whether it was to be “a fox-hunt or a review?”

“Oh, it’s a fox-hunt,” replied Billy, quite gravely, adding, confidentially, “the fact is, we are here as a guard of honour on the prince.”

“To prevent the fox eating him, I suppose,” said Scott, as puss-in-boots waddled away to get his men mounted.

All this gathering, and quartering, and liquoring, and soldiering, so unlike the “real thing,” was anything but encouraging; nor did the prospect appear brighter when sundry postilions in bullion-laced, plum-coloured jackets, spic-and-span leathers, with tasselled caps, and glass-blown wigs, emerged from the servants’ hall, whips in hand, and wended their ways to the coach-house department in the adjoining court to where the soldiers were.

Presently the tramp of horse announced something coming, and a light-blue landau, drawn by six blood bays with their manes full of ribbons, followed by a barouche and four, drew up in the inner court, for the “army,” as the Irish call a handful of recruits, to arrange themselves around, so as to proceed in proper form to the front.

This was no easy matter; for few of the honest Dobbins’s being accustomed to such lord mayor’s shows, they flew in all directions as the postilion wormed his leaders among them; and more than one heavy dragoon measured his length on the ground. A wicked wag, too, whom Billy Bobbinson had rather “done” in the matter of a hat, had figged the old black, who began lifting her hindquarters as he mounted in a sort of cross between a kick and the action of a dancing horse at Astley’s. Drink! all glorious drink, however, had strung Billy’s nerves, and he rebuked her, and jagged her in a way that plainly said, “he wasn’t the Billy he was when he came.”

At last they all got mounted and under weigh, and a brandy-nosed trumpeter having made the castle courts echo with his battered instrument, Billy Bobbinson gave the order “to draw swords,” and having got his own great cheese toaster hoisted over his shoulder, the cavalcade proceeded to join the greatly increased crowd in front.

It was now twelve o’clock—“our great-grandfather’s dinner hour,” as Nimrod said in “The Quarterly”—and they had not yet started to find the fox. The day, we should observe, though bright, was clear and cold, with certain indications of frost in the air, just sufficient to make people thump their hands against their thighs, and urge their horses into little backwards and forwards trots before the castle, by way of giving the inmates a hint that they ought to be coming.

After numerous false alarms, at last one of those unmistakable moves was perceptible in the castle, and ere the lumbering heavies had got themselves into “attention,” a rush of servants threw back the great doors, and the Prince of Spankerhausen appeared, with the Duchess of Tergiversation, in feathers and sky-blue satin, on his arm. The prince was a full-sized, stout, heavy-shouldered, enormously big-chested man, with a great meaningless yellow face, little ferrety blue eyes, straight sandy-coloured hair, and bushy mustachios. He was dressed in a half-uniform, half-hunting sort of costume, a cocked hat and feather, a double-breasted red hunting coat, buttoned up to the neck, with leather breeches and jack-boots, and wore a small couteau de chasse at his side. The Duke of Tergiversation was dressed in the costume he used to pretend to hunt in when a young man, a loose bed-gowny frockcoat, yellowochre leathers, coming low down the calf, and very short mahogany-coloured top-boots.

Having stood on the stone step inside the portico for a few seconds to show themselves becomingly to the crowd, the prince handed the duchess into the landau, in which she was followed by Mynheer Von Cled, who, as our readers are aware, is encumbered with a cork leg. Two other swells having filled the back seats, the landau moved on, to allow the barouche to take up the ladies, Chop and Change, and a party of juveniles. The prince having seen them all in, mounted his Flemish prancer, sheep-skinned, netted, tasselled, and caparisoned according to the custom of his country, and the duke taking his place on the right, and Lord Harry Harkaway on the left, the army placed itself so as to keep a space open for the great guns to ride at their ease. The brandy-nosed trumpeter announced their departure on his instrument; the emblazoned flag on the tower was lowered, so that all the country round might know that the Duke of Tergiversation and Co. had gone forth to give battle to the foxes. Minute guns began to boom from the battlements. Amid all this sporting magnificence, the party proceeded in state up to Tower Hill, which commands an extensive view of the park and neighbouring country.

Lord Harry Harkaway quitted the curious cavalcade as it reached the foot of the hill, to join his poor neglected hounds, now wending their way with the servants in the bottom, his lordship wearing the dejected air of a man under orders to make a fool of himself.

“Well, this is the rummest go I ever saw,” observed his lordship to Tom Tiptop, his huntsman, as he reached the latter.

“Oh, it’s all my eye, my lord,” replied Tom, taking off his cap; “there hasn’t been a fox here these five years;” adding, “they are going to turn down a brace of things on the other side of the hill that have been in a sack these three days, poor things.”

“The best thing would be to make a drag of one of them,” observed his lordship.

“I believe it would,” replied the huntsman, “and so be done with it at once, and then we might draw homewards, for it’ll be night before we get away, if we don’t.”

The humbug then commenced by drawing several belts of plantations, and clumps of trees and tufts of brushwood, scattered and dotted about the park, from whence issued hares, pheasants, rabbits, deer, wood pigeons, partridges, tom-tits, everything except a fox. Meanwhile, his grace availed himself of the opportunity for pointing out to the prince and Mynheer Von Cled the vast extent of his park and territory, and the most remarkable of the distant views.

Here, there, and everywhere, Lord Harkaway tried with a patience and perseverance deserving of a better fate. At length he neared Gullington Wood, where fox No. 1 had to be turned down. Turned down he had been; but the supine keepers having omitted to spring the rabbit traps, they found poor Reynard in one of them, when a hound very quietly finished him.

Clumps and belts intervening between Gullington Wood and Poppington Dean, and his lordship anticipating no better luck with the second fox, desired his pad-groom to drag the carcass of the one they had killed at the back of the hill, while the company were staring and gaping in front. “Just drag him alongside your horse,” said his lordship, “keeping on the far side of all the plantations and places, so that they mayn’t see you, and after making a good round of the park, finish in old Absolom Brown, the keeper’s garden, by the South Lodge, where we can bury him, if the hounds won’t eat him, and come out with the brush and pads, and all things proper.”

This was a very good instruction; for though “No. 2” did raise a cry in cover, the melody was very soon terminated by a kill, which his lordship seeing, he out with his horn and blew for hard life, while Tiptop and the three whippers-in set up such screeches and yells, and made such cracks with their whips, that the whole cavalcade seemed to be suddenly electrified, and soldiers, and fox-hunters, and gigs, and carriages, and omnibus, and grooms, and prince, and duke and duchess, and Mynheer Von Cled, were all mixed up in a minute in one glorious state of indescribable confusion.

“Yonder he goes,” roared Jemmy Fitznoodle.

“Hold hard!” screamed Tom Crawley.

“Halt!” roared Billy Bobbinson.

“Go it, ye shavers!” exclaimed Jack Hobler, pushing through the crowd, as all eyes were strained after his lordship, in hopes of viewing the fox.

The hounds poured out of cover, down went their sterns, and out came the music, as they crossed the line of the drag, and settled like a swarm of bees on the scent.

Away! away! away! went the field, the bold dragoons mixing up with the rest, leaving the prince to look after himself, while gigs, and cars, and phaetons, and landau, and all strained over the green sward as best they could. It was a splendid burst!

The prince’s Flemish punch even seemed to catch a little of the infection, and gave two or three squeals and hoists up behind, indicative of what he might do if his highness did not loose his head a little. This the nag accomplished just as the Duke of Tergiversation, who had been nearly capsized by a dog-cart, came alongside, and suggested that they ought to be getting forward if they meant to see the sport.

On then they bumped together in about equal enjoyment of the run, which was dexterously prolonged by sundry doubles, that would have led the knowing ones to think it was a hare if Jemmy Fitznoodle had not had ocular demonstration of the brush.

At last the conical roof of old Absolom’s thatched cottage was seen peering from among the laurels and evergreens in which it is stuck; and when the great guns arrived, it was announced to the duke, who put it into French for the prince, that the fox was at bay in the garden.

Great were the rejoicings thereat, great the exultations of each party on coming up “piping hot” to the finish. “Glorious run! splendid sport! finest sight that ever was seen.”

“Who shall say there are no foxes at Fast-and-Loose Castle!” exclaimed his grace, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

“Who, indeed!” echoed Jemmy Fitznoodle, adding, “this is the biggest one I ever set eyes on!”

“Who-hoop!” screeched Lord Harry Harkaway at last, poking his way under the ivy-twined arch of the little garden-gate, with the brush and pads high in hand.

“Who-hoop!” echoed half a hundred outside.

“Give the brush to the prince, my lord!” exclaimed the duke, as the outburst of joy subsided —“give the brush to the prince, my lord: he rode like a hero and deserves it!”

His grace then interpreted the compliment, while the great phlegmatic Dutchman sat on his horse looking as unconcerned as a cow. Mynheer Von Cled got a pad (rather an equivocal compliment, considering his deficiency in that line), and the compliments and congratulations being at length exhausted, the duke capped the performance by exclaiming, “My Lord Harry! you’d better come to the castle and have a little refreshment after your fatigue.”

Lord Harry thought otherwise, and having paid the last tribute of respect to poor Reynard’s remains in the garden, he groped his way through the now squeezing and jostling crowd to his horse, which having mounted, the brass music of the horn and bugle drew off their respective cohorts, the hunters passing outside the park, while the soldiers again formed into something like line to conduct the heroes back to the castle.

In ten minutes the lately distracted park had resumed its usual placid grandeur. The grey-headed, green-coated gate-keeper rolled the heavy iron gates back as the last donkey cart took its departure, closing the fox-hunting scene, let us hope, “for ever and for aye!”

“Well, but where’s your blank?” we fancy we hear the reader say. “You’ve killed a brace of foxes! how’s that? that’s no blank!”

Gentle reader, we admit it; it wouldn’t be a blank to some, but it was to Lord Harkaway and many of the gentlemen who “hark, away” with him. Will you, however, take it seriously amiss if we tell you that all this is merely preliminary to the “blank day”? We hope not, for unless you close the book, you have all your medicine to take yet.

Perhaps, however, unlike Lord Harry Harkaway, the reader may require a little refreshment after such a run, so we will reserve the real blank for another chapter.