Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour Part 65

Jog's charms, nor the voluble enunciation of 'Obin and Ichard,' followed by 'Bah, bah, black sheep,' &c, from that wonderful boy, Gustavus James, mend matters; for the young rogue having been in Mr. Sponge's room while Murry Ann was doing it out, had torn the back off Sponge's _Mogg_, and made such a mess of his tooth-brush, by cleaning his shoes with it, as never was seen.

Mr. Sponge soon began to think it was not worth while staying at Puddingpote Bower for the mere sake of his keep, seeing there was no hunting to be had from it, and it did not do to keep hack hunters idle, especially in open weather. Leather and he, for once, were of the same opinion, and that worthy shook his head, and said Mr. Crowdey was 'awful mean,' at the same time pulling out a sample of bad ship oats, that he had got from a neighbouring ostler, to show the 'stuff' their 'osses' were a eatin' of. The fact was, Jog's beer was nothing like so strong as Mr.

Puffington's; added to which, Mr. Crowdey carried the principles of the poor-law union into his own establishment, and dieted his servants upon certain rules. Sunday, roast beef, potatoes, and pudding under the meat; Monday, fried beef, and stick-jaw (as they profanely called a certain pudding); Wednesday, leg of mutton, and so on. The allowance of beer was a pint and a half per diem to Bartholomew, and a pint to each woman; and Mr.

Crowdey used to observe from the head of the servants' dinner-table on the arrival of each cargo, 'Now this (puff) beer is to (wheeze) a month, and, if you choose to drink it in a (gasp) day, you'll go without any for the rest of the (wheeze) time'; an intimation that had a very favourable effect upon the tap. Mr. Leather, however, did not like it. 'Puffington's servants,' he said, 'had beer whenever they chose,' and he thought it 'awful mean' restricting the quant.i.ty. Mr. Jog, however, was not to be moved. Thus time crawled heavily on.

Mr. and Mrs. Jog had a long confab one night on the expediency of getting rid of Mr. Sponge. Mrs. Jog wanted to keep him on till after the christening; while Jog combated her reasons by representing the improbability of its doing Gustavus James any good having him for a G.o.dpapa, seeing Sponge's age, and the probability of his marrying himself.

Mrs. Jog, however, was very determined; rather too much so, indeed, for she awakened Jog's jealousy, who lay tossing and tumbling about all through the night.

He was up very early, and as Mrs. Jog was falling into a comfortable nap, she was aroused by his well-known voice hallooing as loud as he could in the middle of the entrance-pa.s.sage.

'BARTHOLO-_me-e-w!_' the last syllable being p.r.o.nounced or prolonged like a mew of a cat. 'BARTHOLO-_me-e-w!_' repeated he, not getting an answer to the first shout.

'MURRY ANN!' shouted he, after another pause.

'MURRY ANN!' exclaimed he, still louder.

Just then, the iron latch of a door at the top of the house opened, and a female voice exclaimed hurriedly over the banisters:

'Yes, sir! here, sir! comin' sir! comin'!'

'Oh, Murry Ann (puff), that's (wheeze) you, is it?' asked Jog, still speaking at the top of his voice.

'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann.

'Oh! then, Murry Ann, I wanted to (puff)--that you'd better get the (puff) breakfast ready early. I think Mr. (gasp)--Sponge will be (wheezing) away to-day.'

'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann.

All this was said in such a tone as could not fail to be heard all over the house; certainly into Mr. Sponge's room, which was midway between the speakers.

What prevented Mr. Sponge wheezing away, will appear in the next chapter.

CHAPTER L

SIR HARRY SCATTERCASH'S HOUNDS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The reason Mr. Sponge did not take his departure, after the pretty intelligible hint given by his host, was that, as he was pa.s.sing his shilling army razor over his soapy chin, he saw a stockingless lad, in a purply coat and faded hunting-cap, making his way up to the house, at a pace that betokened more than ordinary vagrancy. It was the kennel, stable, and servants' hall courier of Nonsuch House, come to say that Sir Harry hunted that day.

Presently Mr. Leather knocked at Mr. Sponge's bedroom door, and, being invited in, announced the fact.

'Sir 'Arry's 'ounds 'unt,' said he, twisting the door handle as he spoke.

'What time?' asked Mr. Sponge, with his half-shaven face turned towards him.

'Meet at eleven,' replied Leather.

'Where?' inquired Mr. Sponge.

'Nonsuch House, 'bout nine miles off.'

It was thirteen, but Mr. Leather heard the malt liquor was good and wanted to taste it.

'Take on the brown, then,' said Mr. Sponge, quite pompously;' and tell Bartholomew to have the hack at the door at ten--or say a quarter to. Tell him, I'll lick him for every minute he's late; and, mind, don't let old Rory O'More here know,' meaning our friend Jog, 'or he may take a fancy to go, and we shall never get there,' alluding to their former excursion.

'No, no,' replied Mr. Leather, leaving the room.

Mr. Sponge then arrayed himself in his hunting costume--scarlet coat, green tie, blue vest, gosling-coloured cords, and brown tops; and was greeted with a round of applause from the little Jogs as he entered the breakfast-room. Gustavus James would handle him; and, considering that his paws were all over raspberry jam, our friend would as soon have dispensed with his attentions. Mrs. Jog was all smiles, and Jog all scowls.

A little after ten our friend, cigar in mouth, was in the saddle. Mrs. Jog, with Gustavus James in her arms, and all the children cl.u.s.tering about, stood in the pa.s.sage to see him start, and watch the capers and caprioles of the piebald, as he ambled down the avenue.

'Nine miles--nine miles,' muttered Mr. Sponge to himself, as he pa.s.sed through the Lodge and turned up the Quarryburn road; 'do it in an hour well enough,' said he, sticking spurs into the hack, and cantering away.

Having kept this pace up for about five miles, till he thought from the view he had taken of the map it was about time to be turning, he hailed a blacksmith in his shop, who, next to saddlers, are generally the most intelligent people about hounds, and asked how far it was to Sir Harry's?

'Eight miles,' replied the man, in a minute. 'Impossible!' exclaimed Mr.

Sponge. 'It was only nine at starting, and I've come I don't know how many.'

The next person Mr. Sponge met told him it was ten miles; the third, after asking him where he had come from, said he was a stranger in the country, and had never heard of the place; and, what with Mr. Leather's original mis-statement, misdirections from other people, and mistakes of his own, it was more good luck than good management that got Mr. Sponge to Nonsuch House in time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. SPONGE STARTING FROM THE BOWER]

The fact was, the whole hunt was knocked up in a hurry. Sir Harry, and the choice spirits by whom he was surrounded, had not finished celebrating the triumphs of the Sn.o.bston Green day, and as it was not likely that the hounds would be out again soon, the people of the hunting establishment were taking their ease. Watchorn had gone to be entertained at a public supper, given by the poachers and fox-stealers of the village of Bark-shot, as a 'mark of respect for his abilities as a sportsman and his integrity as a man,' meaning his indifference to his master's interests; while the first-whip had gone to visit his aunt, and the groom was away negotiating the exchange of a cow. With things in this state, Wily Tom of Tinklerhatch, a noted fox-stealer in Lord Scamperdale's country, had arrived with a great thundering dog fox, stolen from his lordship's cover near the cross roads at Dallington Burn, which being communicated to our friends about midnight in the smoking-room at Nonsuch House, it was resolved to hunt him forthwith, especially as one of the guests, Mr. Orlando Bugles, of the Surrey Theatre, was obliged to return to town immediately, and, as he sometimes enacted the part of Squire Tallyho, it was thought a little of the reality might correct the Tom and Jerry style in which he did it.

Accordingly, orders were issued for a hunt, notwithstanding the hounds were fed and the horses watered. Sir Harry didn't 'care a rap; let them go as fast as they could.'

All these circ.u.mstances conspired to make them late; added to which, when Watchorn, the huntsman, cast up, which he did on a higgler's horse, he found the only sound one in his stud had gone to the neighbouring town to get some fiddlers--her ladyship having determined to compliment Mr. Bugles'

visit by a quadrille party. Bugles and she were old friends. When Mr.

Sponge cast up at half-past eleven, things were still behind-hand.

Sir Harry and party had had a wet night of it, and were all more or less drunk. They had kept up the excitement with a champagne breakfast and various liqueurs, to say nothing of cigars. They were a sad debauched-looking set, some of them scarcely out of their teens, with pallid cheeks, trembling hands, sunken eyes, and all the symptoms of premature decay. Others--the sock-and-buskin ones--were a made-up, wigged, and padded set. Bugles was resplendent. He had on a dress scarlet coat, lined and faced with yellow satin (one of the properties, we believe, of the Victoria), a beautifully worked pink shirt-front, a pitch-plaster coloured waistcoat, white ducks, and jack-boots, with bra.s.s heel spurs. He carried his whip in the arm's-length-way of a circus master following a horse. Some dozen of these curiosities were staggering, and swaggering, and smoking in front of Nonsuch House, to the edification of a lot of gaping grooms and chawbacons, when Mr. Sponge cantered becomingly up on the piebald. Lady Scattercash, with several elegantly dressed females, all with cigars in their mouths, were conversing with them from the open drawing-room windows above, while sundry good-looking damsels ogled them from the attics above. Such was the tableau that presented itself to Mr.

Sponge as he cantered round the turn that brought him in front of the Elizabethan mansion of Nonsuch House.

Sir Harry, who was still rather drunk, thinking that every person there must be either one of his party, or a friend of one of his party, or a neighbour, or some one that he had seen before, reeled up to our friend as he stopped, and, shaking him heartily by the hand, asked him to come in and have something to eat. This was a G.o.dsend to Mr. Sponge, who accepted the proffered hand most readily, shaking it in a way that quite satisfied Sir Harry he was right in some one or other of his conjectures. Bugles, and all the reeling, swaggering bucks, looked respectfully at the well-appointed man, and Bugles determined to have a pair of nut-brown tops as soon as ever he got back to town.

Sir Harry was a tall, wan, pale young man, with a strong tendency to delirium tremens; that, and consumption, appeared to be running a match for his person. He was a harum-scarum fellow, all strings, and tapes, and ends, and flue. He looked as if he slept in his clothes. His hat was fastened on with a ribbon, or rather a ribbon pa.s.sed round near the band, in order to fasten it on, for it was seldom or ever applied to the purpose, and the ends generally went flying out behind like a Chinaman's tail. Then his flashy, many-coloured cravats, stared and straggled in all directions, while his untied waistcoat-strings protruded between the laps of his old short-waisted swallow-tailed scarlet, mixing in glorious confusion with those of his breeches behind. The knee-strings were generally also loose; the web straps of his boots were seldom in; and, what with one set of strings and another, he had acquired the name of Sixteen-string'd Jack. Mr.

Sponge having dismounted, and given his hack to the now half-drunken Leather, followed Sir Harry through a foil and four-in-hand whip-hung hall to the deserted breakfast-room, where chairs stood in all directions, and crumpled napkins strewed the floor. The litter of eggs, and remnants of m.u.f.fins, and diminished piles of toast, and broken bread and empty toast racks, and cups and saucers, and half-emptied gla.s.ses, and wholly emptied champagne bottles, were scattered up and down a disorderly table, further littered with newspapers, letter backs, county court summonses, mustard pots, anchovies, pickles--all the odds and ends of a most miscellaneous meal. The side-table exhibited cold joints, game, poultry, lukewarm hashed venison, and sundry lamp-lit dishes of savoury grills.

'Here you are!' exclaimed Sir Harry, taking his hunting-whip and sweeping the contents of one end of the table on to the floor with a crash that brought in the butler and some theatrical-looking servants.

'Take those filthy things away! (hiccup),' exclaimed Sir Harry, crushing the broken china smaller under his heels; 'and (hiccup) bring some red-herrings and soda-water. What the deuce does the (hiccup) cook mean by not (hiccuping) things as he ought? Now,' said he, addressing Mr. Sponge, and raking the plates and dishes up to him with the handle of his whip, just as a gaming-table keeper rakes up the stakes, 'now,' said he, 'make your (hiccup) game. There'll be some hot (hiccup) in directly.' He meant to say 'tea,' but the word failed him.

Mr. Sponge fell to with avidity. He was always ready to eat, and attacked first one thing and then another, as though he had not had any breakfast at Puddingpote Bower.

Sir Harry remained mute for some minutes, sitting cross-legged and backwards in his chair, with his throbbing temples resting upon the back, wondering where it was that he had met Mr. Sponge. He looked different without his hat; and, though he saw it was no one he knew particularly, he could not help thinking he had seen him before.