Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour Part 28

This he sealed with the great seal of Jawleyford Court--a coat of arms containing innumerable quarterings and heraldic devices. Having then refreshed his memory by looking through a bundle of bills, and selected the most threatening of the lawyers' letters to answer the next day, he proceeded to keep up the delusion of sickness, by retiring to sleep in his dressing-room. Our readers will now have the kindness to accompany us to Lord Scamperdale's: time, the morning after the foregoing. 'Love me, love my dog,' being a favourite saying of his lordship's, he fed himself, his friends, and his hounds, on the same meal. Jack and he were busy with two great basins full of porridge, which his lordship diluted with milk, while Jack stirred his up with hot dripping, when the put-off note arrived. His lordship was still in a complete suit of the great backgammon-board-looking red-and-yellow Stunner tartan: but as Jack was going from home, he had got himself into a pair of his lordship's yellow-ochre leathers and new top-boots, while he wore the Stunner jacket and waistcoat to save his lordship's Sunday green cutaway with metal b.u.t.tons, and canary-coloured waistcoat. His lordship did not eat his porridge with his usual appet.i.te, for he had had a disturbed night, Sponge having appeared to him in his dreams in all sorts of forms and predicaments; now jumping a-top of him--now upsetting Jack--now riding over Frostyface--now crashing among his hounds; and he awoke, fully determined to get rid of him by fair means or foul. Buying his horses did not seem so good a speculation as blowing his credit at Jawleyford Court, for, independently of disliking to part with his cash, his lordship remembered that there were other horses to get, and he should only be giving Sponge the means of purchasing them. The more, however, he thought of the Jawleyford project, the more satisfied he was that it would do; and Jack and he were in a sort of rehearsal, wherein his lordship personated Jawleyford, and was showing Jack (who was only a clumsy diplomatist) how to draw up to the subject of Sponge's pecuniary deficiencies, when the dirty old butler came with Jawleyford's note.

'What's here?' exclaimed his lordship, fearing from its smartness, that it was from a lady. 'What's here?' repeated he, as he inspected the direction.

'Oh, it's for _you_!' exclaimed he, chucking it over to Jack, considerably relieved by the discovery.

'_Me!_' replied Jack. 'Who can be writing to me?' said he, squinting his eyes inside out at the seal. He opened it: 'Jawleyford Court,' read he.

'Who the deuce can be writing to me from Jawleyford Court when I'm going there?'

'A put-off, for a guinea!' exclaimed his lordship.

'Hope so,' muttered Jack.

'Hope _not_,' replied his lordship.

'It is!' exclaimed Jack, reading, 'Dear Mr. Spraggon,' and so on.

'The humbug!' muttered Lord Scamperdale, adding, 'I'll be bound he's got no more influenza than I have.'

'Well,' observed Jack, sweeping a red cotton handkerchief, with which he had been protecting his leathers, off into his pocket, 'there's an end of that.'

'Don't go so quick,' replied his lordship, ladling in the porridge.

'Quick!' retorted Jack; 'why, what can you do?'

'_Do!_ why, _go_ to be sure,' replied his lordship.

'How can I go,' asked Jack, 'when the sinner's written to put me off?'

'Nicely,' replied his lordship, 'nicely. I'll just send word back by the servant that you had started before the note arrived, but that you shall have it as soon as you return; and you just cast up there as if nothing had happened.' So saying, his lordship took hold of the whipcord-pull and gave the bell a peal.

'There's no beating you,' observed Jack.

Bags now made his appearance again.

'Is the servant here that brought this note?' asked his lordship, holding it up.

'Yes, _me_ lord,' replied Bags.

'Then tell him to tell his master, with my compliments, that Mr. Spraggon had set off for Jawleyford Court before it came, but that he shall have it as soon as he returns--you understand?'

'Yes, _me_ lord,' replied Bags, looking at Jack supping up the fat porridge, and wondering how the lie would go down with Harry, who was then discussing his master's merits and a horn of small beer with the lad who was going to drive Jack.

Jawleyford Court was twenty miles from Woodmansterne as the crow flies, and any distance anybody liked to call it by the road. The road, indeed, would seem to have been set out with a view of getting as many hills and as little level ground over which a traveller could make play as possible; and where it did not lead over the tops of the highest hills, it wound round their bases, in such little, vexatious, up-and-down, wavy dips as completely to do away with all chance of expedition. The route was not along one continuous trust, but here over a bit of turnpike and there over a bit of turnpike, with ever and anon long interregnums of township roads, repaired in the usual primitive style with mud and soft field-stones, that turned up like flitches of bacon. A man would travel from London to Exeter by rail in as short a time, and with far greater ease, than he would drive from Lord Scamperdale's to Jawleyford Court. His lordship being aware of this fact, and thinking, moreover, it was no use trashing a good horse over such roads, had desired Frostyface to put an old spavined grey mare, that he had bought for the kennel, into the dog-cart, and out of which, his lordship thought, if he could get a day's work or two, she would come all the cheaper to the boiler.

'That's a good-shaped beast,' observed his lordship, as she now came hitching round to the door; 'I really think she would make a cover hack.'

'Sooner you ride her than me,' replied Jack, seeing his lordship was coming the dealer over him--praising the shape when he could say nothing for the action.

'Well, but she'll take you to Jawleyford Court as quick as the best of them,' rejoined his lordship, adding, 'the roads are wretched, and Jaw's stables are a disgrace to humanity--might as well put a horse in a cellar.'

'Well,' observed Jack, retiring from the parlour window to his little den along the pa.s.sage, to put the finishing touch to his toilet--the green cutaway and buff waistcoat, which he further set off with a black satin stock--'Well,' said he, 'needs must when a certain gentleman drives.'

He presently reappeared full fig, rubbing a fine new eight-and-sixpenny flat-brimmed hat round and round with a substantial puce-coloured bandana.

'Now for the specs!' exclaimed he, with the gaiety of a man in his Sunday's best, bound on a holiday trip. 'Now for the silver specs!'

repeated he.

'Ah, true,' replied his lordship; 'I'd forgot the specs.' (He hadn't, only he thought his silver-mounted ones would be safer in his keeping than in Jack's.) 'I'd forgot the specs. However, never mind, you shall have these,'

said he, taking his tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed ones off his nose and handing them to Jack.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. SPRAGGON'S EMBa.s.sY TO JAWLEYFORD COURT]

'You promised me the silver ones,' observed our friend Jack, who wanted to be smart.

'Did I?' replied his lordship; 'I declare I'd forgot. Ah yes, I believe I did,' added he, with an air of sudden enlightenment--'the pair upstairs; but how the deuce to get at them I don't know, for the key of the Indian cabinet is locked in the old oak press in the still-room, and the key of the still-room is locked away in the linen-press in the green lumber-room at the top of the house, and the key of the green lumber-room is in a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe in the Star-Chamber, and the--'

'Ah, well; never mind,' grunted Jack, interrupting the labyrinth of lies.

'I dare say these will do--I dare say these will do,' putting them on; adding, 'Now, if you'll lend me a shawl for my neck, and a mackintosh, my name shall be _Walker_.'

'Better make it _Trotter_,' replied his lordship, 'considering the distance you have to go.'

'Good,' said Jack, mounting and driving away.

'It will be a blessing if we get there,' observed Jack to the liveried stable-lad, as the old bag of bones of a mare went hitching and limping away.

'Oh, she can go when she's warm,' replied the lad, taking her across the ears with the point of the whip. The wheels followed merrily over the sound, hard road through the park, and the gentle though almost imperceptible fall of the ground giving an impetus to the vehicle, they bowled away as if they had four of the soundest, freshest legs in the world before them, instead of nothing but a belly-band between them and eternity.

When, however, they cleared the n.o.ble lodge and got upon the unsc.r.a.ped mud of the Deepdebt turnpike, the pace soon slackened, and, instead of the gig running away with the old mare, she was fairly brought to her collar. Being a game one, however, she struggled on with a trot, till at length, turning up the deeply spurlinged, clayey bottomed cross-road between Rookgate and Clamley, it was all she could do to drag the gig through the holding mire.

b.u.mp, b.u.mp, jolt, jolt, creak, creak, went the vehicle. Jack now diving his elbow into the lad's ribs, the lad now diving his into Jack's; both now threatening to go over on the same side, and again both nearly chucked on to the old mare's quarters. A sharp, cutting sleet, driving pins and needles directly in their faces, further disconcerted our travellers. Jack felt acutely for his new eight-and-sixpenny hat, it being the only article of dress he had on of his own.

Long and tedious as was the road, weak and jaded as was the mare, and long as Jack stopped at Starfield, he yet reached Jawleyford Court before the messenger Harry.

As our friend Jawleyford was stamping about his study anathematizing a letter he had received from the solicitor to the directors of the Doembrown and Sinkall Railway, informing him that they were going to indulge in the winding-up act, he chanced to look out of his window just as the contracted limits of a winter's day were drawing the first folds of night's muslin curtain over the landscape, when he espied a gig drawn by a white horse, with a dot-and-go-one sort of action, hopping its way up the slumpey avenue.

'That's Buggins the bailiff,' exclaimed he to himself, as the recollection of an unanswered lawyer's letter flashed across his mind; and he was just darting off to the bell to warn Spigot not to admit any one, when the lad's c.o.c.kade, standing in relief against the sky-line, caused him to pause and gaze again at the unwonted apparition.

'Who the deuce can it be?' asked he of himself, looking at his watch, and seeing it was a quarter-past four. 'It surely can't be my lord, or that Jack Spraggon coming after all?' added he, drawing out a telescope and opening a lancet-window.

'Spraggon, as I live!' exclaimed he, as he caught Jack's harsh, spectacled features, and saw him t.i.tivating his hair and arranging his collar and stock as he approached.

'Well, that beats everything!' exclaimed Jawleyford, burning with rage as he fastened the window again.

He stood for a few seconds transfixed to the spot, not knowing what on earth to do. At last resolution came to his aid, and, rushing upstairs to his dressing-room, he quickly divested himself of his coat and waistcoat, and slipped on a dressing-gown and night-cap. He then stood, door in hand, listening for the arrival. He could just hear the gig grinding under the portico, and distinguish Jack's gruff voice saying to the servant from the top of the steps, 'We'll start _directly_ after breakfast, mind.' A tremendous peal of the bell immediately followed, convulsing the whole house, for n.o.body had seen the vehicle approaching, and the establishment had fallen into the usual state of undress torpor that intervenes between calling hours and dinner-time.

The bell not being answered as quickly as Jack expected, he just opened the door himself; and when Spigot arrived, with such a force as he could raise at the moment, Jack was in the act of 'peeling' himself, as he called it.

'What time do we dine?' asked he, with the air of a man with the entree.

'Seven o'clock, my lord--that's to say, sir--that's to say, my lord,' for Spigot really didn't know whether it was Jack or his master.

'Seven o'clock!' muttered Jack. 'What the deuce is the use of dinin' at such an hour as that in winter?'