Ralph the Heir Part 38

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

IT IS ALL SETTLED.

In the last half of this month of October the Squire at Newton was very pressing on his lawyers up in London to settle the affairs of the property. He was most anxious to make a new will, but could not do so till his nephew had completed the sale, and till the money had been paid. He had expressed a desire to go up to London and remain there till all was done; but against this his son had expostulated, urging that his father could not hasten the work up in London by his presence, but would certainly annoy and flurry everybody in the lawyer's office. Mr. Carey had promised that the thing should be done with as little delay as possible, but Mr. Carey was not a man to be driven. Then again the Squire would be a miserable man up in London, whereas at the Priory he might be so happy among the new works which he had already inaugurated. The son's arguments prevailed,--especially that argument as to the pleasure of the Squire's present occupations,--and the Squire consented to remain at home.

There seemed to be an infinity of things to be done, and to the Squire himself the world appeared to require more of happy activity than at any previous time of his life. He got up early, and was out about the place before breakfast. He had endless instructions to give to everybody about the estate. The very air of the place was sweeter to him than heretofore. The labourers were less melancholy at their work. The farmers smiled oftener. The women and children were more dear to him. Everything around him had now been gifted with the grace of established owners.h.i.+p. His nephew Gregory, after that last dinner of which mention was made, hardly came near him during the next fortnight. Once or twice the Squire went up to the church during week days that he might catch the parson, and even called at the parsonage. But Gregory was unhappy, and would not conceal his unhappiness. "I suppose it will wear off," said the Squire to his son.

"Of course it will, sir."

"It shall not be my fault if it does not. I wonder whether it would have made him happier to see the property parcelled out and sold to the highest bidder after my death."

"It is not unnatural, if you think of it," said Ralph.

"Perhaps not; and G.o.d forbid that I should be angry with him because he cannot share my triumph. I feel, however, that I have done my duty, and that n.o.body has a right to quarrel with me."

And then there were the hunters. Every sportsman knows, and the wives and daughters of all sportsmen know, how important a month in the calendar is the month of October. The real campaign begins in November; and even for those who do not personally attend to the earlier work of the kennel,--or look after cub-hunting, which during the last ten days of October is apt to take the shape of genuine hunting,--October has charms of its own and peculiar duties. It is the busiest month in the year in regard to horses. Is physic needed?

In the Squire's stables physic was much eschewed, and the Squire's horses were usually in good condition. But it is needful to know, down to a single line on the form, whether this or that animal wants more exercise,--and if so, of what nature. We hold that for hunters which are worked regularly throughout the season, and which live in loose boxes summer and winter, but little exercise is required except in the months of September and October. Let them have been fed on oats throughout the year, and a good groom will bring them into form in two months. Such at least was the order at the Newton stables; and during this autumn,--especially during these last days of October,--this order was obeyed with infinite alacrity, and with many preparations for coming joys. And there are other cares, less onerous indeed, but still needful. What good sportsman is too proud, or even too much engaged, to inspect his horse's gear,--and his own? Only let his horses' gear stand first in his mind! Let him be sure that the fit of a saddle is of more moment than the fit of a pair of breeches;--that in riding the length, strength, and nature of the bit will avail more,--should at least avail more,--than the depth, form, and general arrangement of the flask; that the question of boots, great as it certainly is, should be postponed to the question of shoes; that a man's seat should be guarded by his girths rather than by his spurs; that no run has ever been secured by the brilliancy of the cravat, though many a run has been lost by the insufficiency of a stirrup-leather. In the stables and saddle-room, and throughout the whole establishment of the house at Newton, all these matters were ever sedulously regarded; but they had never been regarded with more joyful zeal than was given to them during this happy month. There was not a stable-boy about the place who did not know and feel that their Mr. Ralph was now to take his place in the hunting-field as the heir to Newton Priory.

And there were other duties at Newton of which the crowd of riding-men know little or nothing. Were there foxes in the coverts?

The Squire had all his life been a staunch preserver, thinking more of a vixen with her young cubs than he would of any lady in the land with her first-born son. During the last spring and summer, however, things had made him uncomfortable; and he had not personally inquired after the well-being of each nursery in the woods as had been his wont. Ralph, indeed, had been on the alert, and the keepers had not become slack;--but there had been a whisper about the place that the master didn't care so much about the foxes as he used to do. They soon found out that he cared enough now. The head-keeper opened his eyes very wide when he was told that the Squire would take it as a personal offence if the coverts were ever drawn blank. It was to be understood through the county that at Newton Priory everything now was happy and prosperous. "We'll get up a breakfast and a meet on the lawn before the end of the month," said the Squire to his son.

"I hate hunt breakfasts myself, but the farmers like them." From all which the reader will perceive that the Squire was in earnest.

Ralph hunted all through the latter days of October, but the Squire himself would not go out till the first regular day of the season.

"I like a law, and I like to stick to it," he said. "Five months is enough for the horses in all conscience." At last the happy day arrived,--Wednesday, the 2nd of November,--and the father and son started together for the meet in a dog-cart on four wheels with two horses. On such occasions the Squire always drove himself, and professed to go no more than eight miles an hour. The meet was over in the Berks.h.i.+re county in the neighbourhood of Swallowfield, about twelve miles distant, and the Squire was in his seat precisely at half-past nine. Four horses had gone on in the charge of two grooms, for the Squire had insisted on Ralph riding with a second horse. "If you don't, I won't," he had said; and Ralph of course had yielded.

Just at this time there had grown up in the young man's mind a feeling that his father was almost excessive in the exuberance of his joy,--that he was displaying too ostensibly to the world at large the triumph which he had effected. But the checking of this elation was almost impossible to the son on whose behalf it was exhibited.

Therefore, to Ralph's own regret, the two horses had on this morning been sent on to Barford Heath. The Squire was not kept waiting a moment. Ralph lit his cigar and jumped in, and the Squire started in all comfort and joy. The road led them by Darvell's farm, and for a moment the carriage was stopped that a word might be spoken to some workman. "You'd better have a couple more men, Miles. It won't do to let the frost catch us," said the Squire. Miles touched his hat, and a.s.sented. "The house will look very well from here," said the Squire, pointing down through a line of trees. Ralph a.s.sented cheerily; and yet he thought that his father was spending more money than Darvell's house need to have cost him.

They reached Barford Heath a few minutes before eleven, and there was a little scene upon the occasion. It was the first recognised meet of the season, and the Squire had not been out before. It was now known to almost every man there that the owner of Newton Priory had at last succeeded in obtaining the reversion of the estate for his own son; and though the matter was one which hardly admitted of open congratulation, still there were words spoken and looks given, and a little additional pressure in the shaking of hands,--all of which seemed to mark a triumph. That other Ralph had not been known in the county. This Ralph was very popular; and though of course there was existent some amount of inner unexpressed feeling that the proper line of an old family was being broken, that for the moment was kept in abeyance, and all men's faces wore smiles as they were turned upon the happy Squire. He hardly carried himself with as perfect a moderation as his son would have wished. He was a little loud,--not saying much to any one openly about the property, uttering merely a word or two in a low voice in answer to the kind expressions of one or two specially intimate friends; but in discussing other matters,--the appearance of the pack, the prospects of the season, the state of the county,--he was not quite like himself. In his ordinary way he was a quiet man, not often heard at much distance, and contented to be noted as Newton of Newton rather than as a man commanding attention by his conduct before other men. There certainly was a difference to-day, and it was of that kind which wine produces on some who are not habitual drinkers. The gases of his life were in exuberance, and he was as a balloon insufficiently freighted with ballast. His buoyancy, unless checked, might carry him too high among the clouds. All this Ralph saw, and kept himself a little aloof. If there were aught amiss, there was no help for it on his part; and, after all, what was amiss was so very little amiss.

"We'll draw the small gorses first," said the old master, addressing himself specially to Mr. Newton, "and then we'll go into Barford Wood."

"Just so," said the Squire; "the gorses first by all means. I remember when there was always a fox at Barford Gorse. Come along. I hate to see time wasted. You'll be glad to hear we're full of foxes at Newton. There were two litters bred in Bostock Spring;--two, by Jove! in that little place. Dan,"--Dan was his second horseman,--"I'll ride the young one this morning. You have Paddywhack fresh for me about one." Paddywhack was the old Irish horse which had carried him so long, and has been mentioned before. There was nothing remarkable in all this. There was no word spoken that might not have been said with a good grace by any old sportsman, who knew the men around him, and who had long preserved foxes for their use;--but still it was felt that the Squire was a little loud. Ralph the son, on whose behalf all this triumph was felt, was silenter than usual, and trotted along at the rear of the long line of hors.e.m.e.n.

One specially intimate friend of his,--a man whom he really loved,--hung back with the object of congratulating him. "Ralph,"

said George Morris, of Watheby Grove, a place about four miles from the Priory, "I must tell you how glad I am of all this."

"All right, old fellow."

"Come; you might show out a little to me. Isn't it grand? We shall always have you among us now. Don't tell me that you are indifferent."

"I think enough about it, G.o.d knows, George. But it seems to me that the less said about it the better. My father has behaved n.o.bly to me, and of course I like to feel that I've got a place in the world marked out for me. But--"

"But what?"

"You understand it all, George. There shouldn't be rejoicing in a family because the heir has lost his inheritance."

"I can't look at it in that line."

"I can't look at it in any other," said Ralph. "Mind you, I'm not saying that it isn't all right. What has happened to him has come of his own doings. I only mean that we ought to be quiet about it. My father's spirits are so high, that he can hardly control them."

"By George, I don't wonder at it," said George Morris.

There were three little bits of gorse about half-a-mile from Barford Wood, as to which it seemed that expectation did not run high, but from the last of which an old fox broke before the hounds were in it. It was so sudden a thing that the pack was on the scent and away before half-a-dozen men had seen what had happened. Our Squire had been riding with c.o.x, the huntsman, who had ventured to say how happy he was that the young squire was to be the Squire some day. "So am I, c.o.x; so am I," said the Squire. "And I hope he'll be a friend to you for many a year."

"By the holy, there's d.i.c.k a-hallooing," said c.o.x, forgetting at once the comparatively unimportant affairs of Newton Priory in the breaking of this unexpected fox. "Golly;--if he ain't away, Squire."

The hounds had gone at once to the whip's voice, and were in full cry in less time than it has taken to tell the story of "the find." c.o.x was with them, and so was the Squire. There were two or three others, and one of the whips. The start, indeed, was not much, but the burst was so sharp, and the old fox ran so straight, that it sufficed to enable those who had got the lead to keep it. "Tally-ho!" shouted the Squire, as he saw the animal making across a stubble field before the hounds, with only one fence between him and the quarry. "Tally-ho!"

It was remarked afterwards that the Squire had never been known to halloo to a fox in that way before. "Just like one of the young 'uns, or a fellow out of the town," said c.o.x, when expressing his astonishment.

But the Squire never rode a run better in his life. He gave a lead to the field, and he kept it. "I wouldn't 'a spoilt him by putting my nose afore 'is, were it ever so," said c.o.x afterwards. "He went as straight as a schoolboy at Christmas, and the young horse he rode never made a mistake. Let men say what they will, a young horse will carry a man a brush like that better than an old one. It was very short. They had run their fox, pulled him down, broken him up, and eaten him within half an hour. Jack Graham, who is particular about those things, and who was, at any rate, near enough to see it all, said that it was exactly twenty-two minutes and a half. He might be right enough in that, but when he swore that they had gone over four miles of ground, he was certainly wrong. They killed within a field of Heckfield church, and Heckfield church can't be four miles from Barford Gorse. That they went as straight as a line everybody knew. Besides, they couldn't have covered the ground in the time.

The pace was good, no doubt; but Jacky Graham is always given to exaggeration."

The Squire was very proud of his performance, and, when Ralph came up, was loud in praise of the young horse. "Never was carried so well in my life,--never," said he. "I knew he was good, but I didn't know he would jump like that. I wouldn't take a couple of hundred for him." This was still a little loud; but the Squire at this moment had the sense of double triumph within, and was to be forgiven. It was admitted on all sides that he had ridden the run uncommonly well.

"Just like a young man, by Jove," said Jack Graham. "Like what sort of a young man?" asked George Harris, who had come up at the heel of the hunt with Ralph.

"And where were you, Master Ralph?" said the Squire to his son.

"I fancy I just began to know they were running by the time you were killing your fox," said Ralph.

"You should have your eyes better about you, my boy; shouldn't he, c.o.x?"

"The young squire ain't often in the wrong box," said the huntsman.

"He wasn't in the right one to-day," said the Squire. This was still a little loud. There was too much of that buoyancy which might have come from drink; but which, with the Squire, was the effect of that success for which he had been longing rather than hoping all his life.

From Heckfield they trotted back to Barford Wood, the master resolving that he would draw his country in the manner he had proposed to himself in the morning. There was some little repining at this, partly because the distance was long, and partly because Barford Woods were too large to be popular. "Hunting is over for the day," said Jack Graham. To this view of the case the Squire, who had now changed his horse, objected greatly. "We shall find in Barford big wood as sure as the sun rises," said he. "Yes," said Jack, "and run into the little wood and back to the big wood, and so on till we hate every foot of the ground. I never knew anything from Barford Woods yet for which a donkey wasn't as good as a horse." The Squire again objected, and told the story of a run from Barford Woods twenty years ago which had taken them pretty nearly on to Ascot Heath.

"Things have changed since that," said Jack Graham. "Very much for the better," said the Squire. Ralph was with him then, and still felt that his father was too loud. Whether he meant that hunting was better now than in the old days twenty years ago, or that things as regarded the Newton estate were better, was not explained; but all who heard him speak imagined that he was alluding to the latter subject.

Drawing Barford Woods is a very different thing than drawing Barford Gorses. Anybody may see a fox found at the gorses who will simply take the trouble to be with the hounds when they go into the covert; but in the wood it becomes a great question with a sportsman whether he will stick to the pack or save his horse and loiter about till he hears that a fox has been found. The latter is certainly the commoner course, and perhaps the wiser. And even when the fox has been found it may be better for the expectant sportsman to loiter about till he breaks, giving some little attention to the part of the wood in which the work of hunting may be progressing. There are those who systematically stand still or roam about very slowly;--others, again, who ride and cease riding by spurts, just as they become weary or impatient;--and others who, with dogged perseverance, stick always to the track of the hounds. For years past the Squire was to have been found among the former and more prudent set of riders, but on this occasion he went gallantly through the thickest of the underwood, close at the huntsman's heels. "You'll find it rather nasty, Mr.

Newton, among them brakes," c.o.x had said to him. But the Squire had answered that he hadn't got his Sunday face on, and had persevered.

They were soon on a fox in Barford Wood;--but being on a fox in Barford Wood was very different from finding a fox in Barford Gorse.

Out of the gorse a fox must go; but in the big woods he might choose to remain half the day. And then the chances were that he would either beat the hounds at last, or else be eaten in covert. "It's a very pretty place to ride about and smoke and drink one's friend's sherry." That was Jack Graham's idea of hunting in Barford Woods, and a great deal of that kind of thing was going on to-day. Now and then there was a little excitement, and cries of "away" were heard. Men would burst out of the wood here and there, ride about for a few minutes, and then go in again. c.o.x swore that they had thrice changed their fox, and was beginning to be a little short in his temper; the whips' horses were becoming jaded, and the master had once or twice answered very crossly when questioned. "How the devil do you suppose I'm to know," he had said to a young gentleman who had inquired, "where they were?" But still the Squire kept on zealously, and reminded Ralph that some of the best things of the season were often lost by men becoming slack towards evening. At that time it was nearly four o'clock, and c.o.x was clearly of opinion that he couldn't kill a fox in Barford Woods that day.

But still the hounds were hunting. "Darned if they ain't back to the little wood again," said c.o.x to the Squire. They were at that moment in an extreme corner of an outlying copse, and between them and Barford Little Wood was a narrow strip of meadow, over which they had pa.s.sed half-a-dozen times that day. Between the copse and the meadow there ran a broad ditch with a hedge,--a rotten made-up fence of sticks and bushes, which at the corner had been broken down by the constant pa.s.sing of horses, till, at this hour of the day, there was hardly at that spot anything of a fence to be jumped. "We must cross with them again, c.o.x," said the Squire. At that moment he was nearest to the gap, and close to him were Ralph and George Morris, as well as the huntsman. But Mr. Newton's horse was standing sideways to the hedge, and was not facing the pa.s.sage. He, nevertheless, prepared to pa.s.s it first, and turned his horse sharply at it; as he did so, some bush or stick caught the animal in the flank, and he, in order to escape the impediment, clambered up the bank sideways, not taking the gap, and then balanced himself to make his jump over the ditch.

But he was entangled among the sticks and thorns and was on broken ground, and jumping short, came down into the ditch. The Squire fell heavily head-long on to the field, and the horse, with no further effort of his own, but unable to restrain himself, rolled over his master. It was a place as to which any horseman would say that a child might ride through if on a donkey without a chance of danger, and yet the three men who saw it knew at once that the Squire had had a bad fall. Ralph was first through the gap, and was off his own horse as the old Irish hunter, with a groan, collected himself and got upon his legs. In rising, the animal was very careful not to strike his late rider with his feet; but it was too evident to c.o.x that the beast in his attempt to rise had given a terrible squeeze to the prostrate Squire with his saddle.

In a moment the three men were on their knees, and it was clear that Mr. Newton was insensible. "I'm afraid he's hurt," said Morris. c.o.x merely shook his head, as he gently attempted to raise the Squire's shoulder against his own. Ralph, as pale as death, held his father's hand in one of his own, and with the other endeavoured to feel the pulse of the heart. Presently, before any one else came up to them, a few drops of blood came from between the sufferer's lips. c.o.x again shook his head. "We'd better get him on to a gate, Mr. Ralph, and into a house," said the huntsman. They were quickly surrounded by others, and the gate was soon there, and within twenty minutes a surgeon was standing over our poor old friend. "No; he wasn't dead,"

the surgeon said; "but--." "What is it?" asked Ralph, impetuously.

The surgeon took the master of the hunt aside and whispered into his ear that Mr. Newton was a dead man. His spine had been so injured by the severity of his own fall, and by the weight of the horse rolling on him while he was still doubled up on the ground, that it was impossible that he should ever speak again. So the surgeon said, and Squire Newton never did speak again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In a moment the three men were on their knees, and it was clear that Mr. Newton was insensible.]

He was carried home to the house of a gentleman who lived in those parts, in order that he might be saved the longer journey to the Priory;--but the length of the road mattered but little to him. He never spoke again, nor was he sensible for a moment. Ralph remained with him during the night,--of course,--and so did the surgeon.

At five o'clock on the following morning his last breath had been drawn, and his life had pa.s.sed away from him. George Morris also had remained with them,--or rather had come back to the house after having ridden home and changed his clothes, and it was by him that the tidings were at last told to the wretched son. "It is all over, Ralph!" "I suppose so!" said Ralph, hoa.r.s.ely. "There has never been a doubt," said George, "since we heard of the manner of the accident."

"I suppose not," said Ralph. The young man sat silent, and composed, and made no expression of his grief. He did not weep, nor did his face even wear that look of woe which is so common to us all when grief comes to us. They two were still in the room in which the body lay, and were standing close together over the fire. Ralph was leaning on his elbow upon the chimneypiece, and from time to time Morris would press his arm. They had been standing together thus for some twenty minutes when Morris asked a question.