CHAPTER XLII

MR. JOCK HAGGISH AND THE HOUNDS

R. JOCK HAGGISH, or Haggis, as Miss Rosa pronounced it, was a great muckle six foot, sixteen stone, sixty year old, gray-headed, gray-eyed Scotchman, whom the Duke had taken into his service because he got him cheap, and because Jock would turn his hand to anything, which is not the case with English servants generally. Jock could hunt, and he could shoot, or shut as he called it, throw the caber, put the stone, play the pipes, or dance a reel, and would back himself to catch rats with any one. Moreover (and this perhaps was one of his recommendations), he was a great screw, and husbanded the Duke’s “siller” as though it were his own. He was continually exclaiming against some piece of extravagance or other. “No more green silk whopcord! no more green silk whopcord! the green silk whopcords cost the Duke eighteen pence!” exclaimed he shortly after he entered the Duke’s service, bursting into the saddle-room, among all the grooms and helpers, flourishing the terrible document frantically in his hand—and this to men who had always considered that a Duke should pay double for everything.

True, Jock was bad to mount, but then he was a great “e-co-o-nomist” of his horses as well as of the Duke’s siller, never leaping if he could possibly circumvent a place. He would stick his great seat of honour against a stiff stake and witherings, and send the whole concern flying into the next field as if it were a bundle of straw. He rode low short-legged dray horse-like animals that would creep or screw or scramble up and down and through, the most cramped impossible-looking places, according as Jock by hand and voice indicated his desire to be doing. At leading over he was quite unique, Jock and his horse hopping over walls or gates or hog-backed stiles together, to the great discomfiture of his followers, who would come up expecting the places were nothing. As to riding for éclat or “raputation” as he called it, Jock hadn’t the slightest idea of anything of the sort, his notion of a horse being merely as an accessory to enable him to get up and down the “hulls,” and keep near to his hounds in the open. Indeed, he never rode up the “hulls” always “leading” like Mr. Briggs did at the Devil’s Dyke. Then Jock would come skating straight down with his horse almost on its haunches, leaving long railway-like lines behind him, and nearing the bottom would gradually ease out his horse, and shoot away till he came to some other obstruction.

He had but two horses, a white called Grampian, and a black called Galashiels; but as the Duke let him find his own whips, he never stood upon ceremony in dismounting either of them that happened to be up. Though more of a “Tod” than a fox-hunter, and not caring whether he killed with two couple of hounds or with ten, he yet was uncommonly keen, and rode like fury when there was any occasion.

The want of style, however, did not make much matter with the Duke, for he was a munificent supporter of the chase in everything except the main essentials, viz., hounds, horses, and men. So far as dressing up in an orange-coloured coat, with cherry-coloured linings, collar and cuffs, with a white vest and white kerseymeres, to attend a hunt dinner or ball of an evening, his Grace was quite unexceptionable; but his exit from the smart Queen’s-coloured barouche, with the four grays and postilions at the cover side, savoured more of the foot lights of the theatre than of the appropriate fitness of things so peculiar to fox-hunting. For the morning, the order of things was reversed, the Duke and his field appearing in scarlet coats with yellow collar and cuffs, while Jock and his men sported the orange (plush) with cherry-coloured linings and facings, and the latter’s numerical strength was sometimes increased on state occasions by two or three stablemen in plush, without the cherry-coloured facings, who galloped frantically about, taking a sly cut at a hound whenever Jock wasn’t near. These, with the Duke himself, were long Jock’s great annoyance; but Jock was a free-spoken man, and would “D——” the Duke just as soon as he would anybody else.

Now, however, Jock had got an addition to his troubles in the person of the young Earl of Marchhare whose idea of hunting consisted in riding at all the impossible places he could find. At the most critical moments of the chase, when perhaps the fox had been coursed by a cur, headed by shooter, or the already-failing scent had been rendered less by an impending storm, “Swich, crash, bang!” his lordship would come blundering head-foremost through some impervious-looking place, right into the middle of the hounds, sending them right and left, laming if not killing one or two. Then Jock would rise in his stirrups and imprecate the “dighted body” as he called him, wishing him at “Jericho beyond Jordan,” or some other distant place. What made these performances more unbearable was, that the Duke was extremely parsimonious in the matter of hounds, never letting Jock buy any, though he was welcome to take what he could get in a gift; but as people do not generally give away their best hounds, the assortment was not very select. Still they made a good show at the meet, and with the aid of the extra yellow plush, and the “green silk whopcord,” were kept in tolerable subjection, while the Duke talked and criticised them to his ignorant or obsequious friends in a way that made the long gray locks protruding beneath Jock’s black velvet hunting-cap shake with laughter.

The castle company, however, being chiefly composed of distinguished foreigners and parties who did not know or care much more about the matter than the Duke, the exhibition answered very well, and Jock having made the welkin ring with the roar of the hounds, and satisfied the keenness of the cocktails, by the capture of a “ringer” would trot away to a distant cover, leaving a couple of incorrigibles at this farm-house, and a couple at that, until he got himself suited with a somewhat steady pack for his afternoon fox. He would then exercise his Scotch prowess in catching another, unaided by the Duke’s instructions, and uninterrupted by the notes of his silver horn. But perhaps the reader would like to have a day with his Grace’s hounds, for which purpose we would take a fresh chapter.