A Hunt Cup; or, Loyalty before all. A novelette

Front matter

A HUNT CUP. SARVE YOU JOLLY WELL RIGHT, FOR JUMPIN' OVER TIGS AND CHRISTIANS \"—J> 79- A HUNT CUP; OR, LOYALTY BEFORE ALL. % sloMzttt. BY WAT BRADWOOD, AUTHOR OF "O. V. H.," "ENSEMBLE," ETC. " HONOUR IS A MERE 'SCUTCHEON ; AND SO ENDS MY CATECHISM." — Henry IV., Part II., Act 5, Scene 1. LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1873. CONTENTS. Chaptetc Pag.< I. — Vinell's Gorse .... I II.— Tete-A-Tete iS III. — Hark Back 31 IV. — Two and Two .... 36 V. — Fond Hopes . . . .49 VI. — A Glimpse of the Future . . 58 VII. — Lost and Won . . . -72 VIII. — Sequences 94 IX. — Hard Hit 106 X. — News from the City . . .133 XL — "You don't say so" . . .144 XII. — "You're Another" . . . 153 XIIL— The Reason Why . . .160 XIV. — The Cat jumps . . . .176 XV. — Abnegation ..... 192 XVI. — Scratched for all Engagements 205 XVII. — Not for James .... 207 XVIII. — Resurrectionized . . . . 215 XIX.— "My Turn now". . . .235 Contents.

VIII Page Chapter XX.— Extraordinary Charge against a Gentleman . . . .242 XXI.— " Encore " 2(55 XXII.— The Lottery of Life . . .278 XXIII.—" You or I " =94 XXIV.— Memories 3*4 XXV.— Kismet 32° Epilogue 329 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. "Our Turn now" 15 " Fetch my Music — like a good Boy " . 44 "Sarve you jolly well right, for jumpin' over Pigs and Christians" ... 79 "If I forget my Loyalty to You" . . 128 " You think You can come the Old Soldier over Me?" T55 "This sort of Thing never does run smooth" _ 20, " Ninety Guineas " 2I6 "I want my Revenge" .... 238 "Confusion and Clamour" . . . 268 "Between Sea and Sky" .... LOYALTY BEFORE ALL.

Chapter I Vinell's Gorse, He

Buckshire hounds found at Vinell's Gorse, and got away mute as mice, racing like swallows, stealing a start on the far side, a clear field away from everybody else. Of course three-fourths of the field made a rush from the gate at the end of the enclosure, and old Major Bumpstead, on his gray cob, whether wilfully or carelessly, let it hasp behind him, while he stole a march exultingly upon the rest of the field, and tit-tupped down a lane, his ain gait, to do a bit of judicious road-hunting to the point which his knowledge of the country told him the fox, if unmolested, would make for. But the hasped gate was an awful bug bear and stumbling-block to those imme diately in his wake. It would not be fair to say positively that none of the crowd would if they could — or still more if some pioneer had volunteered a lead — have put their horses' heads boldly at the timber.

But, as it was, young Sweetinburgh, son of the ex-sugar-boiler, was first up, and putting his crop under the hasp, got it stuck in the spring, stuck tenaciously to his implement, regardless of casual, hasty, and some personal peremptory, " Allow me, sir!" "Let me have a try, will you?" "Deuce take the tailor!" and similar other crescendos, which poured in from the im patient crowd behind. The fence on either side was, for three hundred yards, impracticable — a " double " post and rail, with ditches flanking, and a young quickset growing in a trench in the middle, sufficient to trip any attempt at on and off. The gate was the only chance in that corner, and in another minute the melee was inextricable, enlivened, but by no means unravelled, by the free use which Farmer Stubbs's old roan mare made of her heels among the crowd in the vicinity of her stumpy rat-tail.

This was, perhaps, the reason why Dick Thorpe and a few others of the real sort, who had instantly and unflinchingly set their heads at the upper end of the " double," a quarter of a i — mile back, where the take-off was down hill, and the distance to be covered some four feet less than elsewhere, had the cream of that run of the season pretty much to themselves that day. It was pretty going for the next three miles; mostly grass, forty acre pastures, stiff plaited blackthorn fences, here and there a stray fallow, looking thoroughly ashamed of itself in such verdant com pany, and not a vestige of macadamization to facilitate propinquity, unduly earned, to the fast receding pack. There was Geof frey Ashton, the Master — going well for fourteen stone seven— James Fane, his huntsman, and only one whip visible.

Lord Dunstanley making, as usual, noise enough to wake the dead, and hence nick named the "Whisperer" — lucus a non lucendo — and Joe Wriggles, the rough rider, schooling a young one for Sumter the dealer; and Dick Thorpe, par excellence, on a whole black, wiry-looking five year-old mare; and some four or five others, irrelevant to the purpose. "Bentley's brook will be flush with these rains," said Dick to the Master, as he ranged up to him over a fifty-acre pasture, and noted ominous willow heads in the horizon. "All that, Dick; and the banks are main rotten." And they held their tongues for the next three minutes. "Over he goes!" sang out Jem Fane, as the pack, which, an enclosure in front of them, had been running like a bunch of grapes, disappeared suddenly, as if engulphed in mother earth, then re-ap peared, scrambling helter skelter up rush -grown banks, and shaking their wiry hides as they set off at score, scent breast high, clouds fleecy, sun bright, wind S.W., and the pace "too good" for any cattle not liberally en dowed with blood.

Picking his place under a willow tree, where the bank was higher and drier, and the take off sounder, Dick sent the black mare at the water at her best pace, and dropped safe, not even short, on the far side, just in time to note Joe Wriggles and his young one land in some rat holes a dozen yards to his right, and roll over a buster ; while on either side of him, keen as mustard and jealous as schoolgirls, each in his own line, were coming some eight other horsemen straight at the obstacle. A couple of splashes, one horse swimming, and another with his head and chest in temporary collapse on the bank; but, as " Nimrod," the immortal, has told in a household word, the "pace is too good," or men are too jealous, or too selfish, and no one stops to look round and to scrutinize damages. But Dick noted the Master, his old and especial school and college friend, the only one of the group for whom he would have drawn rein, safe on his bridle hand; and another man, a stranger, well mounted, well got up, whom he had not noticed till now, stealing ahead on his right, and already nearer the hounds than any one else of the field.

"Who is that, Geoffrey?" he asked of his friend, after they had arranged matters with the next line of the blackthorn. "'Pon my soul, old boy, I didn't look, but I think the parson or the 'torney was one of them; it was a black coat, and I guess it's lucky that it will match the mud in Bentley's." " I did not mean the muckers ; the chap with a lead I mean, on the right?" " Hey! can't see for the sun. Ah I think I can tell you. It's Stephens, new man, just come down; taken Estwell Grange, you know?" said Geoffrey, spas modically, as a ridge and furrow, steep and chopping as a cross sea off Portland Bill, tried his wind and powers of elocu tion to the uttermost. There was only one practicable place within a hundred yards in the next oppos ing bullfinch, and Dick, seeing it lay fairly in Geoffrey's line, and jealous of waiting for a lead, bore to the right for a place of his own, and lost no great ground by it, for in the next field the hounds swung in the same direction to a cocked-hat spinney, scarcely three acres in superficies.

But it was not the fox's point — merely a momen tary foil and shelter ; and, running the tangled underwood with twice the ease of the twenty-four inch hounds who pressed upon him, he was through and away before they had got fifty yards deep in the bram bles, and had warned him by their music that there was no rest for the wicked. The slight delay of running a bit of cover was, however, a Godsend to nags already the worse, more or less, for bellows to mend; and Geoffrey Ashton's weight carrier was showing plainly by his sobbing flanks how hard and how straight he had been pushed to keep the master's "fourteen seven" so far and so well in the van. Dick Thorpe, as he pulled into a trot round the corner of the spinney, had time to take stock of the stranger from Estwell Grange ; upright, well-made, regular-featured, and with about thirty summers on his shoulders, to judge from general appearances.

More than this he had not time to scrutinize, for Random and Reckless topped the boundary fence out of cover, the rest of the pack following eagerly to their challenge as they took up the scent at the lower end of the dingle, and the realities of the race recommenced. It was no shame to Geoffrey Ashton that before another two miles had been covered he saw the pinks of his huntsman, his friend and the stranger, careering a full enclosure's distance ahead of him. Do all he would, his sixteen-two bay could do no more than keep within hail of them ; and the Master, giving away twenty-one pounds and up wards to the heaviest of the leaders, could not but realize bitterly the adage, that " it is the pace that kills." " There's only three in it, sir," said Jem Fane, exultingly, as he and Dick took ad vantage of a grassy bridle road that lay along the line for a good half mile, " and that strange chap can go fairish.

I'll say that for him." " How long is this to last, Jem ?" asked Dick, as they neared the end of the lane, with a low bridle gate leading out of it on to a bit of common, over which the hounds were straining speedily as ever. "Can't say, sir; but I know about how much longer my horse'll last, and that aint another ten minutes if we don't check, and yours is worse for wear." "She's got some distance in her yet, though she is a young un," and Dick patted her lathering neck, and then gathered her for the hand-gate, which she took in her stride, while Jem's horse played the castanets over it. " There's the Squire a bit back behind us/' said Jem, a few minutes later, "and there's that t'other chap as handy as can be on the right, but there's no one else nigher than the next parish. A real good thing as ever I knew.

Come up, 'oss!" But Jem's horse, on the contrary, came down in attempting to negotiate a low fence with ditch towards, that a school boy's pony might have taken in his stride. " Take my mare, Jem ! " said Dick, sacrificing for the moment even his jealousy of the stranger's riding to the interests of the pack, as he pulled up by the fallen horse. " Take my horn, sir, that's all, and don't let the new chap take the shine out of you ; oss '11 be all right in a minute or two, he's only shook the wind out of him." And Dick pulled the black mare together and started again on his way, a hundred yards to the bad of the stranger, owing to the delay, though the latter was riding rather wide of the hounds. Pride of place would depend much upon the direction of the next swing of the hounds. There came a watercourse in a hollow, running for four or five fields; as luck would have it, the fox followed the line of the hollow, and the hollow curved to the left.

As they once more quitted the gully, and opened on to pastures, Dick and the stranger were abreast, and the hounds a good two hundred yards ahead of either. Far back up the hollow three or four horsemen could be seen, nearly a mile to the bad, and before them, a mile and a half in front, lay Sutton Park, and its home covers, the haven where the fox would be. But his limbs were weary, and wet, and dirt-clotted, and the instinct of self-preservation drove him to turn sharp under a hedge - row a hundred yards farther on. The hounds poured through the meuse, held straight on, and then threw up their heads in the middle of the field. Ere they had fairly spread to their own cast, Dick and his rival were up with them, making largish gaps as they entered the field, while their horses hardly rose a couple of feet to the fence.

But Bluebell and Careless hit off the line in the corner of the field, and the chorus opened in recognition, while two or three friendly gaps facilitated matters for the riders, over the next three pastures. "Yonder he goes! Tally-ho, forrard!" shouted the stranger, as the fox was seen struggling up to Sutton Park palings, and the. hounds not a hundred yards from the brush. The two men had not interchanged a word so far: innate jealousy, besides the necessity of most carefully watching their horses every stride, prompted each to be taci turn. Now came the tug of war: a mile of pasture in front of them, which the fox could never hope to cross alive, and between them and the park a 4 ft. 6 in. palisade, and a ditch on the far side. 'It's over, or nowhere, that's what it is to be," said Dick to himself, as he scanned the obstacle, a hundred and fifty yards in front of him, pulled the mare up to a trot, and, finally, a walk; while the stranger glanced exultingly at him, then braced himself to his task, and roused OUR TURN NOW."—/.

IS. up his tired horse as he neared the paling. "Lead aint everything or anything now, my buck," snapped Dick to himself. " There's one for you anyhow — we're no more than quits whatever comes," as the stranger's horse kneed the top palisade heavily, and came down like a sack of guano, but on the right side. "Come up, old gal! it's our turn now," and the mare, freshened somewhat by her hundred yards walk, and vigorously re minded by spurs of her duty, cocked her ears, gathered herself together, grunted as she struck the top palings with a hind fetlock, scrambled as she landed, but righted herself in half a dozen strides, and was alone in her glory. Dick cast his eyes triumphantly at the stranger, standing by his fallen horse, which had not yet recovered his wind from his cropper, and then, glancing once more A Hunt Cup; or, 16 forward, saw the hounds some five hundred yards ahead of him close and cluster in a melee, proclaiming a kill in the open as an appropriate finale to the run of the season.

"You'll let me have the brush, won't you, old boy?" said Dick to the Master, ten minutes later, when dismemberment was complete. "Brush! of course Dick; you've earned a couple of them, if I had them to give you, for maintaining the honour of the old country. We should have looked small if a stranger had taken the shine out of the whole crew of us." "He had the best of me up to the park palings ; but I pulled back a bit to give the mare her wind, else I don't think I should have got over them any more than he did." "That's a useful sort of horse of his, Dick, and he seems the right sort himself too; I've asked him to dine with me next Thursday, so you will have a chance of cultivating him that evening. Let's go in and invite ourselves to some of old Ferrers' luncheon."

Chapter II. Tete-a-tete

"KSSJOU must have spoilt your dinner, Mr.iaj[ Dick, by eating such a lunch at Sutton Park, and so late in the after noon," said a slight, fair girl to the latter, as he led the black mare down a deep hedged lane, and walked alongside of her chesnut hack, with his hand on its mane. It would be waste of time, and might perhaps spoil effect, were I to enter into detail of Fanny Jepson's face, style, figure, and features. Each connoisseur has his own ideal of female beauty; let him assimi late her to that, and as such represent the heroine of my narrative. Figure and phy siognomy are variable, characters are more uniform, more constant quantities (speaking mathematically) — constant, perchance, in every inconstancy. So let Fanny Jep son's picture be what you will, and let her disposition be left to me to sketch ; she has many a prototype in fair womanhood.

Dick replied to her — " I earned my lunch, so I could not deny it to myself, though it came better late than never; and as to spoiling my appetite, I am too well pleased to be off my feed, any more than Bessie here; she's always good at her corn, however hard the day has been." 2 — " You've been thinking of her, and talk ing of her ever since we started, and haven't bestowed a thought on me," said Fanny, with a grave look of mock injury that sufficed to make Dick shift his hand from the chesnut's mane to the pommel of her saddle. "I've been talking to you, haven't I? and if I have been praising her, does she not deserve it, since she has enabled me to give you the brush of the gamest fox of the season." " Yes, she's a good Bessie. I had no right to be jealous of her." And Fanny leant across to place her hand on Bessie's mane, and it ended by Dick taking the hand in his.

" Gently, Dick, old boy, there's some body coming in front. People will be saying that we are engaged, or I do not know what not, if they notice us going on like that." Dick took away his hand, and looked up into Fanny's face, as if he would have no earthly objection to such a supposition be coming a reality. The comer, a sturdy farmer, who touched his hat courteously to each of them as he went by, passed on out of sight, while the two rode on without speaking. At last Dick broke the silence. "Why do you speak as if we were not engaged? Do you not consider that we are, Fanny?" "Yes, just as much as any two people can be who are not supposed to know their own minds or to be free agents. You see, Dick, you know I don't care, and never did care, for any one else, only papa would say I'm too young to know my own mind; and if he heard or suspected any such thing, he'd quarrel with you and be so cross with me.

And now suppose — just suppose — he were to ask me whether we were engaged. Suppose he were to sus pect such a thing, what could I say? Well, by rights, I'm not my own mistress, and could not engage myself against his will till I am twenty-one ; so in that way I could reply I was not engaged, because, you see, I couldn't be if he didn't choose it; but that would not matter so long as we understood each other, would it, Dick?" "I'd rather have the truth told straight out at once, if the worst came to the worst, Fanny," said Dick bluntly, putting his hand back to the pommel of the saddle. "And get you warned off the premises and me locked up in the school-room, and then you'd go and marry somebody else just to console yourself," said she laughing. "Don't be ungenerous, Fanny," said Dick, looking up full at her.

"And don't be angry with me, then," and it was her hand this time that was placed in his, as he grasped the pommel of her saddle. "You never saw me cross with you; but you should not, darling, say such things, not even in jest. You won't again?" "Can you forgive her?" I think Dick would have kissed her then and there, as she looked down upon him, had he been in the saddle ; but his neck was not long enough to reach up the three feet that intervened between them, and she was hardly hoyden enough gratuitously to meet him half-way. So all he did was to put her hand to his lips, and console himself by kissing the wrist just below the glove, and she drew it away as if to box his ears, and — only stroked his whiskers. (Dick was not guilty of a moustache.) "Well, Dick, you haven't said how the farm is going on."

" First-rate — and wheat fifty-six shillings a quarter; that was how I came to buy Bessie at the beginning of the season." "And what has become of old Colo nist?" "He takes his turn too; and so does the Milkman; but I shall sell one of these two. I can't afford to keep more than two play horses, nor can I spare more than three days' hunting a week." "Then why did you buy Bessie?" "I wanted something with more blood; she is all but thoroughbred. Geoffrey Ash ton is going to give a thirty-guinea cup at the Dustenham steeplechases at the end of the season, for horses that have been hunted with his or neighbouring packs, and I have got an eye to it. There will be a goodish sweepstake besides attached to it; so that was half the reason why I bought Bessie. She is as good as thoroughbred — but I know her pedigree, and she isn't quite, so she won't carry a penalty — and she has never run in a public race, or been in a training stable, else she could not start at all."

"How glad I should be if you won it, Dick!" "I'll lay the stakes by towards house furnishing," replied Dick, looking up at her. "What a long time you look forward to, Dick — you're in such a hurry. Aint we very happy as we are?" Dick could not at all deny that he was especially happy; but then he hoped to be happier still. "And you're counting your chickens be fore they're half hatched. Suppose Bessie should be beaten, Dick?" "She beat the best of them to-day, and I must ride nearly a stone heavier than that man Stephens." "Oh! I wanted to ask you, Dick; who is he? Mr. Ferrers asked him into lunch — don't you think he is a very good-looking man?" "Yes; I suppose he is." "And then he rides very well; he must have done so — remember," as Dick looked up at her, "he was only beaten by you!" "Yes! he was well mounted, and he rode very well too," said Dick, candidly, yet with innate and unconscious antagonism as he spoke.

"But you haven't said who he is, Dick." "His name is Stephens." "Yes, I know that." "And he has just taken Estwell Grange for the season." "And who is he, and where does he come from?" "I know no more, only what Geoffrey Ashton told me casually during the run. Are you going to dine, then, at Stanton on Thursday?" 'Yes; papa and I are. I promised papa I would write and accept the invita tions, and I quite forgot. I must post the letter as soon as I get home." There was a sound of wheels behind them, and Geoffrey Ashton pulled up his dog-cart to a walk as he overtook them. "Well, you two cousins, how are you getting on?" said he. Dick blushed; Fanny did nothing of the sort, and replied, with a sunny smile — " Dick is escorting me home. Papa has gone round by Dustenham. How good of your hounds, Mr. Ashton, to kill a fox almost under the lawn, while we were look ing on.

We all saw it — it might have been done on purpose." "It was exceedingly good of you, Miss Jepson, to select such a day for a visit to Sutton, to grace the finish of one of the best days I have known since I have had the hounds." And Geoffrey Ashton bowed with the courtesy of one of the old school, though himself still on the right side of thirty. "I see Dick has given you the brush — very proper of him. By the bye, are we to have the pleasure of seeing you and your papa at dinner on Thursday?" " Oh, thank you. I had just written to Mrs. Ashton this morning to say that we should be most happy, Mr. Ashton." " That's well. Au revoir, then. I must not make my wife wait for dinner. Good night, Miss Jepson. Good night, Dick, old boy." And he rattled on, Dick was silent for a minute or two; then he suddenly said — "I thought you said you had not yet written to the Ashtons, Fanny?"

"No, but I mean to, Dick — it's all the same." "But, Fanny! you said you didn't, that you hadn't — you shouldn't, darling!" "It slipped out somehow, Dick. I didn't exactly mean it, you know. Now, don't scold me, I won't say it again. There, forgive me, I won't be naughty again." Dick's sole reply was to release his hold on the chesnut's pommel, and to climb into Bessie's saddle. "Why do you do that, Dick? Why are you so angry with me?" And the tone was ominously suggestive of crying. But Dick was now upon vantage ground, in more than one sense of the word. He pressed Bessie up alongside of the chesnut, and said, as he leant over to Fanny — "Angry with you! Does that look like being angry, Fanny?" Judge for yourselves what words or gesture were comprised in "that." Fanny was passive for an instant, and it was she this time, not Dick, that blushed.

Then in vindication, she said — "Oh, Dick! you mustn't! Suppose some body was looking — and we can see over the hedges, you know — what would they ■say?"

Chapter III Hark Back

\^ra|HEN Dick Thorpe took his degree raj&fl at Oxford, his friends, and they were many, speculated for him what future line he should pursue — what profession he should follow. Left an orphan, with a small indepen dence of his own, just sufficient to keep him in bread, cheese, breeches, boots, and a hunter or two — just too little to enable him to set up house with the smallest pretensions to the styleof a country gen tleman, there were apprehensions that he would let his competence, as has been the case with hundreds of young men similarly circumstanced, prove a stumbling-block rather than a Godsend to him in after life — a temptation to idleness and procras tination, rather than a nest-egg to become the nucleus for the accumulations of future industry. But Dick was not quite such a fool as he looked.

He did not, it is true, rise kindly at a suggestion from a distant relative, engaged in mercantile pursuits, that Dick should study business in the city for a year, and then join him in partnership. Dick had not necessarily, like Leech's dandy in Punch, " the greatest aversion to all kinds of business," but he pleaded, like Black Douglas, that he loved better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak, and, fighting shy of merchandise, was congratulated two years after for his fore thought, when the name of the mercan tile cousin unexpectedly appeared in the Gazette. And if Dick had one time half-listened to the representations of other friends, and had contemplated a fling in the sans souci life of a cavalry regiment, he never fully ripened to the idea, and finally tried to persuade himself that there was no attrac tion ulterior to the legitimate pursuit of agriculture, seasoned duly with a worship of Diana and the cultivation of Geoffrey Ashton's estimable society, that at last tempted him to take a lease of a farm upon the latter's estate, which, besides being located in an eminently social county, was within a couple of miles or so of the country house of Thomas Jepson, his cousin, a retired lawyer, widower, and parent of the demoiselle just emancipated from the school-room, whose acquaintance we succeeded in making in the preceding chapter."

" Blood is thicker than water," pleaded Dick to his conscience, "and it's always nice to be in the neighbourhood of one's own relations." So Dick set up house in a small, social, and bachelor style at " The Hurst," helped Geoffrey Ashton to shoot over the estate, took a holiday to London once a year, fortuitously about the time of Ascot or Epsom, rose with the lark, sat out his rubber with the hardest of night birds, was eminently sober and proper, was always seen at church on a Sunday morning, and often contrived to lunch with his cousin on his return from the said worship. He hunted an orthodox three days a week from November 2nd to the end of March, did duty in the County Eleven during summer months, and withal found his farm — a large proportion of which was grazing stock — prosper fairly ; for the cattle plague had not yet inundated the Midlands, to compel farmers to kill off their stock to save the lives of the same.