CHAPTER XIV
THE BLANK DAY—(Continued)
THE Duke of Tergiversation’s park-wall encroaches so on the township road outside, that the field was lengthened into something like military line until they cleared its precincts. Indeed it was not until they got upon the liberal width and grass-sidings of the Cockington Fort road, that Tom Scott had an opportunity of diving into the mêlée, and seeing “who was who.” Others had been in the same predicament, for Tom had not advanced far into the crowd of horsemen, ere he was hailed by some of the “best fellows under the sun,” exclaiming, in the wild outburst of surprise, “Damme, here’s Tom Scott!” “What the deuce has brought you here, old boy?” “Well, Tom, did you ever?” “No, I never!” and so on, alluding to the recent Fox and Goose exhibition in the park.
Despite the retirement of the prince, and the carriages, and the cavalry, and the costermongers, there was still an immense field: from a hundred and fifty to two hundred horsemen at least. The country papers of the next week, who devoted three columns and a half each to the details of the pageant, “Grand Sporting Pageant at Fast-and-Loose Castle, in honour of his Serene Highness the Prince of Spankerhausen and the great Dutch merchant Myhheer Von Cled,” declared there were a thousand — a thousand, exclusive of the handful of yeomanry, whom they magnified into “two hundred of the flower of the country.”
And here we may observe, how much better it is for a respectable paper to have a regular cut-along correspondent, who sticks to the truth, and tells what he sees, calling things by their proper names—fools, fools—humbugs, humbugs—and so on, instead of one of your word-sprawling gentry, who are perfectly bewildered when they come to handle a hunt, and who only make absurdity more ridiculous.
Who doesn’t remember the mess they made when her Majesty went out at Belvoir, and again when glorious Tom Smith1 revisited the green haunts of Leicestershire!
But to the adjourned hunt.
“Why didn’t you come in to breakfast at the castle, Mr. Scott?” asked Sir George Stiffenecke, who had got straggled all the way down to the “duke’s,” and was still prosecuting the chase, notwithstanding his grace’s return, in hopes of gaining an appetite for dinner. “Why didn’t you come in to breakfast at the castle?” repeated he, adding, “the duke would have been happy to see you.”
“I dare say would he,” replied our uncourteous Tom; “just as happy as I am when I find a straw. Dukes are only for such great men as yourself, Sir George,” added he, thinking to smooth over the roughness of the former part of the speech.
“Well, but his grace is extremely affable and condescending, I’m sure,” rejoined Sir George.
“Oh! devilish affable—especially about election times,” replied Tom. “Then one may expect a visit from his agent, Mr. Saucyjaw, with his forty-horse power of impudence, reminding one of the breakfast, and his grace’s condescension, and saying that his grace having just discovered ‘black’s white,’ hopes Mr. Scott won’t object to voting in the affirmative; and if one refuses, the duke storms and fumes as if he had been robbed of his birthright. I don’t buy my groceries quite so dear, Sir George,” added Tom: “if great men wish to retain their influence over little ones they must be consistent.”
Sir George was rather posed, for he’s a short-noticed Jem Crow-er himself.
The Stiffenecke conversation was here interrupted by a most dislocating thump on the shoulder from Tom’s very sincere, but very heavy-fisted friend, Foxey Wollop, of Tod House, a ginger-haired gentleman, with a coarse cane-coloured beard, and a strong cross of the fox in his face.
“Why, what the deuce has brought you to this scene of absurdity?” inquired Wollop, after he had followed up the blow by nearly crushing Tom’s fingers in his vice of a hand.
“You may ask that,” replied Tom, wringing his tingling hand against his horse’s side: “I came to hunt, but we don’t always get what we come for.”
“Indeed we don’t,” replied Foxey Wollop. “However, if you’ll come home with me, I’ll tell you what you’ll get, and no mistake—you’ll get a cut off a beautiful round of beef, three weeks in the salt, with the gravy springing out of the centre, like a fountain, and a pie or a pudding, or something of that sort.”
“That’s a very good offer,” said Tom, “but at present I’m for the fox, et preterea nihil.”
“Oh, fox! we shall find no fox,” replied Wollop, with a smile, “unless it is such another as we had in the park.”
“That’s a pity,” said our friend, “for I’ve come a long way to see these hounds, and should like to have a round with them of some sort.”
“Ah! then you must come another day; or, I’ll tell you what to do—stay over to-morrow with me, and hunt Saturday at Crashington brake; a sure find, and a capital country.”
“Can’t,” replied Tom with a shake of the head; “got to be at home; but tell me,” added he, “what are they going to draw now?” as a whip opened a gate on the left of the road, for the hounds to pass into a field.
“Oh! it will be Thorneyhalf Dean, one of the duke’s,” replied Wollop; “one of the duke’s—might as well draw the turnpike—Lord Harry, I suppose, thinks he may as well make a day of it, and go through the form.”
Nevertheless, “a lively-faithed” field ranged themselves orthodoxly for reynard to break: the whips scuttled to their respective points, and the swell huntsman yoicked his hounds into cover, and stood erect in his stirrups eyeing the Dean, as though he really expected to find.
“Have at him there, good dogs!” holloaed he; “yoicks, wind him! yoicks, push him up!” and then he gave his own patent note, something between a screech and a demi view-holloa; a cheer, however, that we are sorry to say is not reducible to paper.
Most huntsmen have a pet noise of their own, and that was Mr. Tiptop’s.
While this make-believe work was going on, Gurney Sadlad came up grinning from ear to ear, with a “I say, Scott, old boy, they’ve been hoaxing the ‘cretur’ that you are the Duke of Devonshire, and we want you to carry on the joke.”
“They’ve been what!” exclaimed Tom in astonishment.
“Hoaxing the ‘cretur’: you know the ‘cretur,’ don’t you?” inquired Sadlad. “Everybody knows the ‘cretur,’ Toe Tugtail. Well, they’ve been hoaxing the ‘cretur’ that you are the Duke of Devonshire, and we want you to let us introduce him to you in form.”
“Nonsense,” replied Tom; adding, “I can’t do Duke at short notice—I can’t personate the Duke of Devonshire, a man I never saw in my life.”
“Oh! that’s nothing,” rejoined Sadlad; “the ‘cretur’ never saw him either; therefore you’ll be matched in that respect.”
The gentleman thus indicated, although then a perfect stranger to Tom, was so well known by the field as to make them suppose he must at all events have heard of him; and so, lest we should fall into a similar error with the reader, we will here give a slight sketch of him from the knowledge Tom afterwards obtained.
Toe Tugtail, whose real name is Anthony, Anthony Tugtail, Esq., derives his appellation, either from the natural abbreviation of his name, or from a propensity the unkind ones say he has of making people’s acquaintance through the medium of their toes. He is a watering-place bird, and has mustered an extensive acquaintance by a dexterous application of his foot. If he sees a ring formed round a quadrille, or a staring circle environing a set of petticoat-whirling waltzers, Toe elbows his way in till he gets beside the party he wants to know, when dropping his hat, or his glove, or his handkerchief, he contrives to touch the person, which is immediately followed up by ten thousand apologies, and a sort of imperceptible glide into conversation respecting the performances, the lights, the music, the anything that happens to be handy. The foundation of the acquaintance is thus laid. If it is a “don,” off goes the hat the first time Toe meets him alone; but if Toe is in company, he tries the familiar half nod of a bow, and says, “That’s my friend, Sir John, or Sir Tom, or Lord Harry.”
Before Tom Scott had time to arrange his thoughts or ideas, he saw a move among the horsemen about twenty yards lower down the hedge, and presently a little wizened, ugly old man, in a rusty, old scarlet coat and moleskin breeches, backed a mealy-legged, mealy-muzzled, fiddle-case-headed, bay horse out of the rank, in answer to Sadlad’s summons, who had gone half-way back to give it.
Scott had a good view of him as he came primming himself up, and certainly he did not seem undeserving of the name of the “cretur.” It was visible at a glance that he dyed his hair; indeed it does not require a conjurer to see that, for a practised eye may almost tell what o’clock it is by the various shades a dyed head assumes during the day. The pheasant-coloured tint of the “cretur’s” showed that it was long past noon.
Scott had observed Mr. Tugtail in the park; indeed he saw him come out of the castle close on the Prince of Spankerhausen’s heels, but from seeing him running a muck, first at one great man, and then at another, Scott had concluded he was either a great man himself, or an attaché to one at all events. That “birds of a feather flock together” holds as good with peers as with pigeons.
Sadlad, we should observe, is one of those harum-scarum creatures whom it is no use being angry with. He will have his joke, let what will be the consequence; and even if our friend Tom had had presence of mind to ride away, we dare say Sadlad would have followed with Tugtail at his back. It was, therefore, perhaps best to surrender at discretion. Sadlad’s was the fault, Tom’s the misfortune.
“My lord duke, will you allow me to present my particular friend, Mr. Tugtail,” said Sadlad in a sonorous voice, and the most respectful manner, extending his right arm a little behind to where his particular friend came creeping along.
The “cretur’s” hat made an aerial sweep, finishing at the spur.
“Great pleasure in making Mr. Tugtail’s acquaintance,” replied Tom, raising his hat string high.
“Your grace is very fortunate in the day,” observed the “cretur,” after a grin.
“Very,” replied Tom, not knowing whether he meant in the sport or the weather.
“It was a splendid run, indeed,” said Tugtail.
“Oh, splendid,” rejoined Tom, looking at the creases in Tugtail’s coat and the moth holes at his breeches’ knee, and wondering how long it was since they had been aired.
Twang—twang—twang! went Lord Harry’s horn; screech—screech—screech! went Mr. Tiptop’s too, who was not to be done out of his blow.
“To him, hounds—to him!—get away!” hallooed the men, cracking their heavy-thonged whips.
“No go, here, I’m afraid, my lord duke,” observed the “cretur,” with pretended concern.
“I’m afraid not,” replied Tom, gathering his reins, thinking to escape from the listening, laughing, gaping, giggling crowd.
Vain hope! Whenever Tom turned, the “cretur” was at his heels; worse still, the crowd followed to hear the fun. How he did be-duke and be-grace and be-lord him!
From Thorneyhalf Dean they went to Cressingham Copse, another cover of Tom’s noble brother Tergiversation’s. As they proceeded, the wicked author of his misfortune rode up alongside, and whispered into his ear, “Pitch into him.”
“Daren’t,” replied Tom; “he’d have me up for an assault.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Sadlad, “but cram him well.”
“Your grace hasn’t much hunting in Derbyshire, I think,” interposed the “cretur,” crushing up on the other side of Tom’s horse.
“Not much,” replied Tom, thinking the “cretur” might know more of Derbyshire than he did.
“Noble place, Chatsworth!” observed Tugtail, confirming Tom’s worst suspicions that he had been there.
“Why, yes it is; and yet I don’t know,” replied Tom, doubtfully, as if there were things he didn’t like about it, or his modesty prevented his praising what was his own.
“Oh, splendid place!” rejoined Tugtail encouragingly; “splendid place, indeed!”
“You’ve been there, have you?” asked Tom.
“Oh yes,” replied Tugtail; “as a sight-seer I mean —merely to see the place, you know, your grace.”
“I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there as a guest next time,” observed Tom, with true ducal condescension.
The “cretur” nearly kissed his ugly horse’s ears.
Having “done the polite,” Tom made him a sort of half bow, as if going to talk to some one else, and got his mare jogged into a trot, which, by dint of spurring, he worked far into the yet remaining crowd, ere he again ventured to look over his shoulder.
“By gar, there was Monsieur Tonson again!” Tonson, followed by a longer tail than before, all laughing, he-he-he-ing, haw-haw-haw-ing, “you don’t say so”-ing, as if they would split their sides.
“Your grace was building your pointer kennels the last time I was at Chatsworth,” said the “cretur,” bringing his horse alongside again to the displacement of Gurney Sadlad, Foxey Wollop, and some other wicked wags who had crowded round Tom Scott to prompt him. “Let me see, when would it be! I was staying at Matlock. Ah, well, it’s immaterial; but I ventured to suggest that the floors should be made of asphalte, which was then just coming into vogue.”
“And they are made of asphalte,” replied Tom, “and very much obliged I was to the gentleman who made the suggestion, and most happy I am to have an opportunity of thanking him personally,” continued Tom, tendering him his hand, to try if he couldn’t shake him off that way.
No go; the “cretur” stuck to him like a leech, and shoved poor Sir George Stiffenecke aside, as if he were the veriest plebeian under the sun. Ungrateful man! There are times when even the knight is ardently worshipped.
“Your grace has splendid shooting at Chatsworth,” observed the “cretur.”
“Pretty well,” replied our newly-jumped-up duke; “pretty well; nothing compared to what I shall have;” adding confidentially, “I have an idea in my head that, if carried out, will make the sporting at Chatsworth one of the finest things under the sun.”
“Indeed, your grace,” observed Tugtail with well assumed interest.
“I’m going to substitute peacocks, ostriches, cassowaries, and other eastern birds, for our common-place pheasants and partridges. What think you of a peacock battue or an ostrich hunt?” asked Tom.
“Splendid! magnificent!” exclaimed Toe, as though he could hardly contain himself.
“I will tell you what my idea is,” continued Tom, lowering his voice, “but this, of course, is between ourselves, and in strict confidence; but my idea with regard to Chatsworth is this—it’s a fine place, no doubt, and the present mansion has its advantages, but I think I could orientalise the whole thing, and combine every English comfort with Eastern magnificence.”
“Indeed, your grace,” said Tugtail, all attention.
“My idea is this—but of course it goes no further —to buy the Pavilion at Brighton, and place it on the site of the present house, or to take the Pavilion for a model, and try to improve upon it.”
“It would have a very fine effect, indeed, your grace,” interrupted the “cretur.”
“You know the Pavilion, then?” asked Tom.
“Oh yes, your grace,” replied he; “I frequently go to Brighton; was there last summer—stay at the York, on the Esplanade, close by the Pavilion, you know.”
The “cretur” had the advantage of poor Tom again, for he has never been there, and his only acquaintance with the Pavilion is through a picture on his old housekeeper’s workbox, where it certainly looks like a most gingerbread affair.
“Well,” said Tom, determined to brazen it out, “I’m in treaty for the thing, and I think I shall get it too. The Queen evidently doesn’t like it; but it doesn’t do for a purchaser to appear too keen. We all like good bargains, and royalty is not exempt from the feeling.”
“I should think her Majesty would be too happy to give it to your grace,” observed the “cretur,” “especially to ornament so fine a site as Chatsworth.”
“I don’t know that,” replied Tom. “You see if she was to give me the Pavilion some one else might take a fancy to Buckingham Palace, or St James’s; not that I think any one is likely to trouble either of those; but still the principle is the same, and she might be left houseless, which would be unbecoming the Queen of a great nation of fox-hunters like this.”
“It would so,” assented the “cretur.”
“However,” said Tom, “if the worst comes to the worst, and she tries to ‘Jew me,’ I can always build a similar thing, and perhaps improve upon it too.”
The hounds had now got to Cressingham Copse. It is an oval dean, with a strongish stream, fringed with sedgy banks, the water running into the large reservoir of the Dusty Binn Mills, a little below. After the usual “make believe” drawing, Lord Harry crossed the mill race at the sluice, and scrambling up a rough brush-woody bank, horn in hand, surveyed the scene below.
It requires a steady horse to insure your safe transit over a mill dam, and some of the field did not seem to fancy giving theirs a chance of tumbling them in; among the number the “cretur,” who, sliding down the bank below the dam, began exploring a south-east passage.
“Duke!” exclaimed he at the top of his voice, as he saw a footpath winding up the bank from the road he was now taking, “Duke!” repeated he, though Tom answered at the first shot, “Here’s a better way! here’s a better way!”
“Oh, your grace, I’m not going to draw any more!” halloaed Lord Harry Harkaway, fit to drop out of his saddle with laughing. So saying he took off his hat with great deference, and having acknowledged his courtesy, Tom cut away as hard as ever he could lay legs to the ground.
Well, it’s four years ago, as we said before, and Tom had forgotten all about the “cretur,” and the “duke,” and the “Pavilion,” and all the nonsense he had talked, until they were most unpleasantly forced on his recollection last season.
Mr. Neville’s hounds met at Scruffington Clump, one of the wildest and most out-of-the-way places they have; but proscribed meets being rather in vogue since the “Chase” day, there was a fairish sprinkling of sportsmen, including our unfortunate friend, the “duke for a day.” Why he went we don’t know, save that oats were very dear, and he had had very little hunting for his money; for Scruffington Clump, independently of being a most uninviting place, is only an uncertain draw, especially in the spring. It lies handier for the Dazzlegoose hounds; but Mr. Neville, who is one of the old, hard-bitten, uncompromising order of masters, and would as soon part with an inch off his nose as an acre off his country, keeps it as a sort of Botany Bay to send his hounds to in bad weather, or on days that he doesn’t mean to go out himself. When asked to give it up, “as it is of no use to him,” he always says, “I don’t know how soon I may want it,” and muttering something about railways he closes the discourse. It’s a nasty place—a landmark clump of Scotch firs, that haven’t grown an inch these twenty years, placed on the summit of the swelling Whitcliffe Hills. The land around is of the poorest, most impoverished order; the wretched water weeds, the yellow moss, the unhealthy rushes, and the scattered broom and brushwood scarcely covering the thin water-gruelly-looking soil. It seems to grow everything but what it should. Some enterprising individuals enclosed a considerable portion of it some years ago, and the weak hedges are in that delightful state of mossy rottenness as to make gates superfluous articles. The cattle just walk through the hedges where they like. The country indeed is fast returning to its pristine, goose an acre, state. Its fox-hunting feature is not amiss, and if it were a sure find it would not be a bad place; but there is no regular holding cover in the draw, and Mr. Neville’s hounds are generally indebted to the Dazzlegoose people for a run when they get one. Such was the place which our friend Tom Scott cast up at, and not having been there for five years, he got such a fright, that we don’t think he will venture there again.
Unpromising as the place was, they had a field— Trumper was there, also the Hobbletrots, and one or two other Goose and Dumpling men.
Of red coats they had Muffinmouth, Colonel Buckskin, Mr. Palmer of Walford, Mr. Moulden of Bradfield, Mr. Harford and his son, Mr. Murray of Hadham, a few Dazzlegoose men in apricot colour, and some of the great unshaved from the barracks.
Judge of our poor friend’s horror on leaving the clump to draw some loose-bottomed belts of plantations below, at seeing Tarquinius Muff’s great white stomach coming along with a diminutive-looking companion, who, at a glance, Scott saw was the “cretur.”
He had hardly time to shove his great Graham-like2 gills into his cravat, push his coat collar up, and stick his hat on sideways (à la Jerry, the race list seller), make himself as unlike himself as possible, ere they were within descrying distance of each other.
Scott pretended not to see Tugtail, but with a sidelong sort of glance watched the first view strike his frame, and saw that if revolving years had deepened the wrinkles in his old cheeks, the day had not yet taken the lustre out of the hair dye, his precise locks being as black and as trim as a raven’s wing.
Moreover, Scott saw Tugtail point him out to Muff, and could almost tell by their manner what each said.
“There’s the Duke of Devonshire!” exclaimed Tugtail.
“Not a bit of it,” replied Muff.
“Who is it, then?” inquired Tugtail.
“Which do you mean?” asked Muff.
“The man on the chestnut.”
“Oh! that’s—haw—gentleman—Mr. Scott—haw —a sort of a—haw—farmer—haw—lives at a place called Haw—Buck Grange—haw.”
Muff was the great man of the day, and the poor “cretur” who doats upon titles, was absolutely high and dry for want of one. In this sad dilemma he actually sought the acquaintance of our friend Tom at the hands of Tarquinius Muff, all because Tom looked like the Duke of Devonshire, or a man he had been told was the duke, for he is no more like him than we are.
Tom had dodged them for nearly an hour, till they pinned him in the corner of a field from whence there was no escape but over a high stone wall.
“Scott, let me introduce my friend Mr. Tugtail,” said Muff, bringing Tuggey up.
“Happy to make the acquaintance of Mr. Scott,” said the “cretur” with a most patronising bow, just such a bow as Tom made to him on the former occasion.
Tom sky-scraped in return.
After a common-place or two, the “cretur” thus began:—
“Do you know, Mr. Scott, I was very nearly making a most ridiculous mistake just now?” observed he.
“What was that, sir?” asked Tom, with a pretty good idea of what was coming.
“Why, do you know when I first saw you, I absolutely took you for my friend the Duke of Devonshire.”
“That would have been a mistake, indeed,” observed Tom.
“Well, I assure you it was so,” replied he. “Our friend Muff will tell you the same. ‘That’s the Duke of Devonshire!’ said I, as you rode up. ‘Nonsense!’ said Muff; ‘it’s Mr. Scott.’ By the way, may I ask if you are any way related to the great Sir Walter?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Tom.
“Most likely, I should think,” observed the “cretur,” anxious to make the best of our friend. “Most likely, I should think,” repeated he. “Pray do you spell your name with two t’s?”
“Yes,” replied Scott.
“You don’t know my friend the Duke of Devonshire, then?” observed Tugtail, after a minute scrutiny of Tom’s features.
“No,” replied Tom; “I never saw him.”
“Ah! well, you’d know him if you were to see him, for there’s certainly a resemblance between you,” observed he; “and your voice is something similar. It must be so, indeed, or I couldn’t have mistaken you for a man I know so well.”
“Does his grace hunt?” asked Tom, thinking to “trot Tuggey out” a little.
“Oh, yes,” replied he; “rides well, too, I should say, but his mind inclines more to shooting.”
“He’ll have good shooting, I suppose,” observed Scott.
“Capital,” replied his—not friend, but persecutor. “He’s great with his gun,” added he. “Indeed it is in the shooting way that I see most of him. I’ve a room at Chatsworth whenever I like to go,” added Tugtail.
“Which you will occupy pretty often, I imagine,” observed Tom; adding, “at least I would, I know.”
“I’ve many other friends,” replied Tugtail, “desirous of my company.”
“Ay, but I’d always go to the biggest,” observed Tom.
“Well, there’s something in that,” replied Tugtail, with a sagacious nod of his now puce-coloured head.
Here Tom managed to shove in between old Trumper and Tom Hobbletrot, and escaped the “cretur” for half an hour or so.
After the usual promiscuous rambling about of a “wild draw,” going first to one nameless place and then to another, just as they turned up, and seemed likely for a fox, the field arrived at Willowby Brake, the first really plausible-looking place they had been at.
Here the “cretur” pinned poor Tom again.
“You don’t know Chatsworth, I think you say, Mr. Scott?” observed Tugtail.
“No, I don’t,” grunted Tom.
“Beautiful place,” observed Tugtail; “at least will be, when the duke makes his grand alterations.”
Tugtail then entered into a long and confidential communication with Tom respecting the Pavilion, which, singular enough, was then lately stated in the papers to have been sold, or for sale, detailing how, “by his advice,” the duke, having held off for some years, had now got it at his own price, and how his grace was going to establish an ostrich hunt, and have battues of peacocks; a réchauffé, in short, of the information Tom had given him four years ago, with a few variations tending to Tuggey’s own glorification and exemplification of his intimacy with the Duke.
So the “cretur” persecuted poor Tom from cover to cover, throughout a long blank day, who declares that if everybody suffers as much for telling a lie as he did, he’s sure they won’t tell any more.
Now, if that isn’t a blank day, we don’t know what a blank day is.
