CHAPTER IX

MR. JENKINS JONES

“WHO-HOOP!”

“Who-hoop! that’s a queer way of beginning a chapter, Mr. Author!”

“So it is, Mr. Reader, but you’ll have a good many more of them before you are done.”

Our last left the Stout-as-steel hounds in the act of running into their fox on the far hill-side, the field viewing the feat across the water. Not a soul appeared near them, but ere the “worry” was complete, old Enoch dropped as it were from the clouds, and dived into the middle of the pack. To be sure the latter part of his descent was visible enough in the shape of a red thing sitting as it were on the back of a rabbit, sliding on its hindquarters down the mountain.

Having reached the pack, up went the fox, and baying leaped the hounds, the group forming a lively speck on the wide expanse of mountain scenery.

Few people are willing to admit that a fox has been killed, unless they see him—at all events seeing him seems to add considerably to their satisfaction; and away Captain Cashbox cut, followed by the field for ocular demonstration. Through the water splashed the mules, over great boulder stones, enough to throw down an elephant, across the rushy, rugged bottom, and now up the steep hill-side — clatter, clatter, clatter, they went among the loose rumbling stones—blob, blob, blob, they floundered on the unsound ground beyond.

“Who-hoop!” each man exclaimed, on pulling up within “ware-horse” distance of the huge fox, now hanging his head before the pack in all the terrors of grim death. “Who-hoop!” yelled little Cashbox, putting his finger in his ear, as though he were afraid of deafening himself. “Who-hoop!” screamed he, still louder, throwing himself off his mule and rushing up to Tiphill for the fox. If the Captain had gone on all-fours, and hunted and killed the fox himself, he could not have taken greater credit to himself for the feat. The hounds might kill him, but who brought the hounds? Captain Cashbox—and therefore to Captain Cashbox belonged the honour and glory of the day.

Having got the fox from Enoch, he held him up for some seconds above his head, in the manner of a “Poses Plastique” master, until his little arms tiring, he threw him flop on the ground.

“He’s a terrible length from the snout to the stern,” observed the nondescript little man, stooping and measuring the fox with his whip.

Without announcing the longitude, he proceeded to divest him of his appendages.

Off went the head.

“There’s the head of a traitor!” exclaimed the Captain, holding it up.

Then came the pads, and, lastly, that noblest trophy of them all—the brush!

“Allow me, sir,” said he, strutting out in the most grotesque, puss-in-boots style, towards where Tom Scott stood, “to present you, sir, with the brush of one of our mountain breed—sir, a real ‘stunner,’ sir, as my friend, Joe Banks, would say, sir. Sir, I’m extremely glad, sir, to see you out with my hounds, sir; hope, sir, I shall often have the pleasure, sir— shall be most happy, sir, to present you with our button, sir.”

Flattered by so much attention, especially from a man that he did not expect any from, Tom incontinently replied, on receiving the brush, that he would be most proud to receive the button, and wear it wherever he went.

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, than the Captain, having dived into the trunk of his fisherman’s boots, produced a packet, from which, having blown the silver paper, he exhibited a complete set of large buttons, to which having added a pinch of small ones from his seal-skin waistcoat pocket, he handed the whole over to Scott, observing, that “he might send him a Post Office order for the four guineas when he got home, and that he would be most happy to have his name down as a subscriber also.”

“He’s done you,” whispered a gentleman, with a smile and a wink, as the little varmint waddled back to his mule, and proceeded to what he would call “hoist himself on deck,” by the aid of a rusty, most disreputable-looking stirrup.

“I don’t know that,” replied Tom Scott, with a grunt, thinking the Captain might perhaps get the buttons back instead of the Post Office order.

“Well, we’ve had a very good run—at least, the hounds have,” observed the stranger, who had now brought his horse alongside. “Are you staying in this part of the country?”

“Why, yes—no—yes—not exactly,” replied Scott; “the fact is, I was on this side of the country, and, wishing to have a look at these hounds, lay at Sludgington over night.”

“I pity you,” exclaimed the gentleman; adding, “I wish you’d come to me. Where are you going to now?” inquired he.

“Don’t know till I get back—perhaps stay there again.”

“Come to me,” rejoined he; “we shall be most happy to see you—you’ve plenty of time,” added he, showing our friend his watch, which wanted a quarter to one.

“You are very kind,” replied Scott, feeling little disposed to undergo the persecution of Cake and the noise of the Goldtrap Arms again, though the cuckoo clock nuisance was abated—adding, “I shall be very glad to avail myself of your offer.”

“That’s right!” said the stranger, closing the bargain by a shake of the hand; “we dine at six, and there will be a stable ready for you.” So saying he turned up a road the reverse of the one that he pointed out as Scott’s, and tickling his horse with the spur was speedily out of sight.

One person in a hurry is very apt to put another person in a hurry, and Scott began to trot too, without knowing why.

“Gently, old girl,” at length said he, easing the old mare down into a walk, to enjoy the scenery, the winding mountain-road having brought him before a fresh range of hills. Just then it flashed across his mind that he didn’t know who his friend was.

“Well, that’s the stupidest thing I ever did in my life,” exclaimed he, dropping the rein, and giving his thigh a hearty slap. “I thought I knew him because he knew me, and I have no more idea who he is than the man in the moon.”

Scott then went back to the turn of the road to see if any of the field were behind, but they had all dispersed on their different routes—the horsemen by the roads, the foot people by the mountain tracks.

“Well, never mind,” said he, turning short round again, “I can describe him—round-faced, ginger hair, rather stout, hunts, says he lives near Sludgington. Oh, Cake, or the saddler, or the postmaster, or the blacksmith, or any of the wise men of the place will be able to tell me who he is.” So saying, he relapsed into enjoyment of the scenery, until the road at length opened upon the vale.

Sludgington formed a not unpleasing feature in the landscape now that Scott regarded it with an unprejudiced eye. Its church tower, its clump of trees, its white dovecote to the right, the now sun-glittering mill-pond on the left, even the very smoke and outline of the houses, made an agreeable break on the tame monotony of the flat vale beyond. The cold, black, whinstone mud made him shudder, though, as he got into the street again; nor were his feelings soothed by having to ride on the rough M‘Adam to make way for a long line of slate carts passing through with the produce of the neighbouring quarries.

“Who is it that lives near here, and hunts with the Stout-as-steel hounds?” asked he of the hostler, as he gave him the mare to be fed while he packed up his traps; “who is it that hunts and rides a clipped horse, and wears black boots, not fishermen’s boots like Captain Cashbox’s, but Bishop’s boots coming up to the knee-pan?” touching the whereabouts on his own leg.

“Who is it that h-o-u-n-t-s and rides Bishop’s boots,” drawled out the muzzy idler.

“No! no! rides in Bishop’s boots, black jacks,” retorted Scott; “rides a clipped horse, and lives somewhere about here.”

“Why, I should say that would be Mr. Jenkins Jones,” replied the man; “he has a clipped horse.”

“But can’t you be sure? a gentleman with gingery hair. Has Mr. Jenkins Jones gingery hair?”

“Why y-e-a-s; I should say he has,” replied he, “and rides a clipped horse.”

“Where does he live?” asked Scott.

“At Down House, about six miles from here,” replied the man.

“Ay, that’s him,” said our friend, leaving the stable and running into the house. “Jenkins Jones, of Down House, is the man;” indeed, I fancied I heard somebody call him Jones out hunting.

What with the bother of packing, waiting for the bill, and then for the horse, the limited allowance of a winter’s day began to give indications of declining ere Scott got sufficiently near the residence of which he was in quest, to gain any decided information from the few country people and mountaineers he met as to its precise distance and locality. One man told him it was three miles, another that it was two; and an old woman that he overtook, driving a flock of geese, and who said she had lived in the country all her life, didn’t know where it was at all—had never heard of Down House before, or of Mr. Jenkins Jones either—had heard of a Mr. Thomas Jones, but he lived at Frengford, at the back of the hills, but he had been dead many years, and “of course,” she said, “it couldn’t be him.”

A woodman, however, that Scott next met, was better informed, and after running the words “Jenkins Jones, Jones Jenkins, Jenkins Jones,” backwards and forwards on his tongue, as a lady runs up and down the notes of a piano, he directed him through a pass at the low end of the mountain range.

Having trotted through it just as night began to close in, he came upon a wild, undulating down country—open, spacious, and far-stretching. Here and there dark patches, occasionally indicated by the fitful gleam of a passing light, denoted human habitations, but the extreme distance was completely lost in the clouds.

To heighten the confusion of the scene, the road, as he had been warned by the woodman, resolved itself into a mere race-course sort of track, whose line was marked by little chalk heap mounds thrown up on the turf.

The springy down, so tempting under ordinary circumstances for a canter, was now traversed slowly for fear of losing the thread of the heaps, and having to pass the night on the wide dreary waste.

“It must be a primitive place, indeed,” thought Scott, riding close inside the line of chalk heaps, “where a track like this serves alike for carriage, cart, and bridle road. No fear of having one’s rest disturbed by the rumbling of carts, the yells of drivers, or the music of cats, as it was last night.”

A bigger wave of land that the mountain throe had rolled further inwards, obtruded just as the fast-falling shades of night began to make him wish to be at his journey’s end; on reaching the top of which the lights from a house ensconced among trees appeared within a couple of hundred yards, and the quick eye of the mare presently caused her to halt at a light iron gate, dividing the lawn from the downs.

The clatter the gate made in swinging to and fro, caused an outburst of barking and yelling from the kennel, while the raising and hurried dropping of the curtain of a low-windowed room on the ground floor showed that the inmates were aroused, and ere he had dismounted at the sash-windowed door, a shirt-sleeved groom had rushed round from the back of the house to take his horse.

A glass door, while it is pleasant and cheerful in summer, has the advantage in winter of letting a guest see who is coming, and the bright burning oil lamp discovered our friend’s host, now attired in a comfortable suit of plaid instead of the cloth and leather of the fox-hunter.

How we pity people who lived before “tweeds,” railways, and writing directions on newspapers, were invented!

The gentleman shaded his eyes with his hand and shut them, as some people do who want to have a good look at one; but a momentary glance produced an “Oh, Mr. Scott, is it you? I’m glad to see you,” confirmed by a cordial shake of the hand.

Scott then proceeded to “hang up his hat.”

“You’ve brought your nightcap, I hope,” observed the gentleman as he helped Scott off with his paletot.

While this was going on in the passage Scott overheard the following nursery dialogue in the parlour:—

“Where did little Jack sit, my pet?”

“Pie,” lisped the child.

“No, my darling, not in the pie,” responded the questioner.

“Let me introduce my friend Mr. Scott, my dear,” interrupted the host, throwing open the door of a cheerful-looking room, and disclosing a beautiful dark-eyed lady, with a lovely little child half on her lap, half on the table, studying the interesting career of the gentleman aforesaid.

An attempted rise, with a sweet smile mingling with a half-suppressed laugh, at Jack Horner’s novel position, made Scott feel quite at home, and he readily accepted his host’s offer of an arm-chair by the brightly burning fire.

As Scott looked at him he thought it was lucky he had been able to give some other account of him beyond a mere description of his person, for hunting things make such a difference in men’s appearance that it is not always easy to recognise them in others. The gentleman, however, speedily touched on the grand ice-breaker of conversation “the run of the morning,” and his wife, having gathered up the child’s toys, consisting of a jumping mouse, a Macassar oil bottle, a tin kettle, a tattered doll, and an illuminated copy of “Jack Horner,” departed with her treasure in her arms.

Scott soon found he was in capital quarters. Indeed he recollected to have heard from some of “their hunt” who had strayed so far out of the world as Mr. Neville’s men consider the hill country, that there were some “capital fellows” in it, which, in current sporting phraseology, means, men who are glad to see their friends without any fuss; or, as in Scott’s case, men who are glad to see fox-hunters at any time.

There certainly is a wonderful freemasonry among fox-hunters. There is no letter of introduction equal to the few words, “This man’s a sportsman.” It is far superior to any formal application to be allowed to recommend one’s particular friend Mr. Augustus Fitznoodle, eldest son of Sir Augustus and Lady Fitznoodle, who was a daughter of Hugh, fifth Earl of Bigacres, to their attention in the way of a “ticket for soup,” as these unfortunate documents are sometimes termed. But we are getting off the line, and must be running into our subject. They had a capital dinner, some famous mutton broth, with meat in it, thick and strong; a well-crimped piece of cod with oyster sauce, a leg of dark-gravied four-year-old Welsh mutton, followed by a woodcock and a dish of nice hot mince pies, assisted by sherry and iced champagne at dinner, and a bottle of fine old port and a devilled biscuit after.

The next morning, as they sat at an equally good breakfast, Scott saw a fustian-clad groom arrive on a horse at exercise, and presently a note was brought in, which his host, after perusing, presented to him with a smile, saying, “This refers to you.” Thus it ran—

“Dear Jones,—Have you seen anything of Mr. Scott of Hawbuck Grange? He promised to come to me yesterday, and has never cast up.—Yours truly,

Jones Jenkins”

“Good God, ain’t I at Mr. Jones Jenkins’s now?” exclaimed our friend.

“Why, no,” replied his host, laughing; “my name is Jenkins Jones, his is Jones Jenkins. I saw you had made the common mistake last night when you came, but was not going to deprive myself of the pleasure of your society by telling you.”

“You are extremely kind, I’m sure,” replied Scott. “I did think, when I saw you, that your hair had got darker, but I attributed it to the shade of the lamp, or to not having seen you with your hat off.”

“Oh, I assure you, it’s nothing uncommon,” replied his host, “nothing uncommon at all; we get each other’s letters and parcels, and papers, and all sorts of things. A Frenchman brought a bill for a musical clock here the other day, and insisted upon my paying it. It was directed ‘à Monsieur Jones Jenkins.’ In vain I protested that my name was Jenkins Jones. ‘Vel, sare,’ said he, ‘it shall be all de same—dey have jost put de Jones before de Jenkins; you are de man.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said I, sporting the old joke, ‘there’s just as much difference between Mr. Jenkins Jones and Mr. Jones Jenkins, as there is between a chestnut horse and a horse chestnut.’ ”