CHAPTER XVI

Among the entertainments proper to the season, which the family about this time witnessed, was the polo match in the Champion Cup Tournament between the ‘Magpies’ and the ‘Handley Cross’ teams.

The former team was composed of Captain Hobson, Major Vaughan, Mr. Thynne, and Major Lee; the latter played Mr. Rich, Major Anselm, Captain Neil Haig, and Colonel Renton; Colonel St. Quintin, timekeeper, and Mr. John Watson and Major Kirke, umpires.

The girls were wildly interested, having seen Captain Neil Haig (who put in the first big hit) play in Melbourne.

On that occasion, four Englishmen played the best team in Australia, composed of the three brothers Camperdown and Mr. Wellesley. It came off on the Moonee Valley ground; it was a notable society function—Her Excellency Lady Brassey, the wife of the Governor of the day, presenting the prizes on the ground.

It was stubbornly contested, but ended in a draw; Colonel St. Quintin, who happened to be in Australia at the time, acted as umpire.

So much interested in the game were they, so lost in admiration of the beauty and high quality of the ponies, that, hearing there were to be two club games played at Hurlingham on the following Wednesday, they arranged to attend. To their surprise and delight Lord Roberts and Lady Aileen arrived to witness the play.

Lord Harrington’s team consisted of the Duke of Westminster, Captain Neil Haig, his Lordship himself, and Mr. de Kooep. A close finish, with a draw, was the result. The day was lovely, the play admirable, but one feature of the meeting particularly interested the Australian contingent. Vanda, whose eyes seemed to be everywhere, exclaimed suddenly: ‘Why, there’s our West Australian friend Gerald Branksome; and, just fancy! it must be his wife with him. We heard he was to be married this month, in London, to the daughter of a high official in Albany, or Perth, or somewhere. How pretty she is—so well dressed too! What fun meeting them here! Don’t you see them, Hermie? What a swell Gerald looks—tall hat—frocker—most accurate!’

The pair of spectators thus favourably reviewed were seen to be in conversation with Captain Haig, after which, the recent bridegroom retired into the recesses of the dressing pavilion, whence he shortly emerged in full polo costume, a few minutes before the Victoria Cross Race was started. A tall, well-built, fair-haired young man, he slipped into the saddle on a club pony, led out for him, with the ease of a practised performer, after carefully altering the stirrup leathers. The game included dismounting, and lifting to the saddle a dummy, presumably a wounded comrade, and afterwards clearing the hurdles on the course—a feat requiring more than average strength, activity, and horsemanship. This feat was performed at least once, during the late Boer War, by a member of a New South Wales contingent. He deliberately returned under fire for the purpose—the feat taking place during a very hot encounter with the Boers, who had ambushed a scouting party. The leaden hail was so close and deadly that the clothes of the rescuer and his comrade were riddled. Neither was seriously injured, but the poor ‘Waler’ who gamely carried his riders out of danger received his death wound. The Australian—for such he was—was accorded the rare and precious, almost unique, decoration of the ‘Queen’s Scarf.’

There were no bullets flying during the more peaceful contest which the club’s courtesy provided for the guest from a far country, none the less was there need of a strong arm and exceptional horsemanship. He was apparently no novice, inasmuch as, after dismounting and remounting with enviable activity, he finally won on the post, to the great joy and pride of his wife, and those friends who hailed from the gold-strewn lands under the Southern Cross. The President congratulated him in the handsomest manner, requesting his Australian address, in order that the prize for the race, which would be forwarded, might reach him safely.

So the Hurlingham expedition closed in a manner equally pleasing to the champion of Australian horsemanship and his compatriots. They went home together and heard all about the wedding, ‘in the merry month of May,’ and the honeymoon cottage on the river, where the nightingale sang to sympathetic listeners, and recalled Heine’s delicious poem. Nothing would satisfy the Bannerets but a ‘sacred promise,’ as Vanda called it, that they should stay for a week at Hexham when they returned from Paris, for which city of delights they were leaving on the morrow.

After such feats of horsemanship the youthful division became clamorous for half a dozen hunters, as the stable quad. (Eric said) was disgracefully empty. What were _one_ pair of carriage horses, another of ponies for their mother’s phaeton, the governor’s park hack, and one or two others? The hackney was a darling for beauty and manners, though the pater persisted in saying that in pace, elasticity, endurance—in fact, as an all-round horse—he was not a patch upon the famous Gaucho, or Graysteel, which he rode in his youth in Australia. He admitted that Count D’Orsay walked fast, cantered easily, trotted fairly, and, like his namesake and Private Willis, was very generally admired. No fault could be found with his manners and appearance. But where would he be at the end of a seventy-mile ride, which old Graysteel had several times performed, off _grass_, with ease to himself and comfort to his rider. Besides, he did _not_ believe in hackney blood. They were very sweet to look at—perfect almost in shape, carriage, and other requisites for ornamental equitation.

But there was a ‘want’ somewhere: he doubted if they could jump; he questioned if they could stay; and, it was a hard thing to state, but after you got away from the slow paces he was afraid they were even _rough_—one ‘perfect’ animal that he tried certainly was so. In a slow, rocking-horse sort of canter he was tolerable, but after that he lifted you almost out of the saddle at every stride.

‘Come, I say, sir!’ said Reggie; ‘you mustn’t begin crabbing the horses of your ancestral home, and all that, before you’ve been a year in England—sounds provincial, doesn’t it? It takes time, as you have often said, to pick up a first-class hackney anywhere. Give the old country time, and you’ll get hold of a covert hack or two that will put these old favourites out of your head.’

‘That there are plenty of good goers to be had here I never denied,’ he said, with a musing expression, ‘but when I think of Hope, The Gaucho, and Graysteel, none of them can do _that_. You boys were too young to recollect the horses I rode and drove when your mother and I were living on our western cattle station, or visiting the sheep-run in Riverina.’

‘Oh, tell us about them—now do!’ coaxed Vanda, seating herself promptly on the floor, and leaning against her indulgent parent’s knee. ‘Mother rode, and drove, then—didn’t she?’

‘Yes, indeed! she was a bold horsewoman, a good whip too. Absolutely fearless—so much so that I often anticipated her coming to grief. However, she never did. So she must have been clever or lucky, above the average.’

‘Now then, sir, about the horses? How were they bred, and what could they do?’

‘Well, they were chiefly compounded of English thorough-bred and high-caste blood, middle-sized, but fast, hardy, tireless, and sure-footed to a marvellous degree. The two best all-round hacks I ever owned were Hope and The Gaucho. The latter, the show horse of the stud, was the offspring of a South American mare, imported from Valparaiso in early colonial days. Your respected father was a trifle more active then, and used to break in his own colts.’

‘Is that why all Walers buck-jump, as people say?’ suggested Eric.

‘Perfect nonsense!’ returned the senior, slightly ‘drawn.’ ‘Of the dozen and a half colts which I broke to saddle—single and double harness, and to carry a lady—hardly one but was as well mannered as any horse in the Row, besides having various accomplishments which English horses could never dream of.’

‘What sort were they?’

‘Travelling over rough, stony country by night as well as day, besides those of the Australian camp horse or “cutter out.” These include coolness and courage, when ridden through a drove of a thousand excited cattle, keeping close up to a sharp-horned savage, shoulder against shoulder, or following up, the rider’s stockwhip making hair and hide fly; racing neck and neck for one minute, and perhaps the next stopping dead and wheeling within his own tracks, to block a sudden break back to the herd,—this violent exercise kept up from sunrise to sunset, with perhaps a trifle of a dozen miles extra before the station yards are reached. The “cutting out” work, or separation of fat or strange animals from the general herd, collected on camp, is not very unlike polo—except that a second horse is rarely used either by squatter or stockrider.’

‘How long did the “breaking” and “making” business take?’ demanded Eric.

‘Truth to tell, it was short work, and rather rough. As two-year-olds the colts were roped, and handled unceremoniously, after the bush fashion of the day.’

‘Wild as the wild deer, and untamed; By spur and saddle undefiled,’

quoted Reggie. ‘You must have had an exciting time, sir.’

‘By no means; full as they were of pluck, they were hereditarily free from vice. Before the end of the first week I rode one colt thirty miles, alone and unattended. He was perfectly quiet, and jumped logs like an old horse; the other was much the same—free and temperate.’

‘But your groom helped you, and the stabling counts for something?’

‘There was no groom, neither any stable. They were kept in the yard, with the surcingle and mouthing-bit on by day, and paddocked by night—grass and water _à discrétion_.’

‘And what was the outcome of this cow-boy treatment?’

‘They turned out accomplished hackneys. Quiet in saddle and harness, and carried a lady—as per advertisement.’

‘Oh, how nice!’ said Vanda; ‘what colour?’

‘Bright bay, with black points. Graysteel excepted.’

‘What about paces?’

‘Fast and good, remarkable trotters, but if touched on the curb would lead off on the right foot at an easy canter. Hope walked fast, but The Gaucho could never be got to do so, though I tried him for hours and days patiently. His dam, the Chileno mare, an animal of great courage and endurance, had the same failing. But like his half-brother, Hope, he could jump his own height, was absolutely incapable of falling, and had been ridden eighty miles between “sun and sun” more than once. He, too, was quiet and staunch in harness.’

‘Think they’d do in the Market Harborough country?’ queried Reggie doubtfully.

‘Of course; brooks and trappy enclosures would be a novelty, but they were clever, and would soon come to know their way about. Rails they preferred, the stiffer the better. Walls, being straightforward obstacles, they rather liked. And with twelve stone up I shouldn’t fear their being in the first flight. Hope won a steeplechase, over stiff post and rail country, against a strong field, and another half-brother, Maythorn, a son of The Premier, imported—sold to a hard-riding friend. Morton Gray, of Gray Court, gave a lead to the Master of the Melbourne Hounds, the well-known George Wharton, over the Bootles gap, a stiff four-railer, with a “cap” on top, bringing up the height to nearly five feet, and finished a long day’s run without “putting a toe” on rail or wall. He was a fine hackney also; and, as a camp horse, a great performer. These horses were reared in the Western district of Victoria, then, as now, admitted to be, for soil, climate, and pasturage, unequalled in Australia. And now I think we have “talked horse” enough for the present.’

* * * * *

The important question of buying a few hunters had been decided. Now was the time to buy, before the hunting season set in. Mr. Banneret very properly considered that the best animals were the cheapest in the end; and there was no occasion to economise, the safety of his children being the principal consideration. A sale of hunters taking place at Tattersall’s in a few days, he secured a few really good ones to begin with. First and foremost, The Marchioness, a wonderful brown mare, for 350 guineas—rather extravagant, paterfamilias could not help thinking, but the recollection of his last bank-balance hardened his heart. She would set Hermione off, who had fine hands and seat; and as she was a front ranker with the Quorn, with faultless manners, and declared perfectly sound by two eminent vets., the cheque was handed over. Vanda was provided with the Admiral, at £180—an extremely safe, strong, experienced hunter, that ‘you couldn’t throw down.’ ‘Just the thing for a young lady as was doing her first season,’ the stud groom said; ‘only wanted lettin’ alone, and trustin’ to his discretion, like.’ He under-rated Vanda’s abilities, however, as succeeding seasons were to demonstrate. The boys got one apiece; paterfamilias a couple—one of which Mrs. Banneret could ride on occasion, when she went to see a throw off. Their united values totted up to a sum which caused Mr. Banneret to give a low whistle, accustomed as he had become to his personal liability for fabulous amounts lately. ‘I wonder what I should have thought of such a purchase in old times?’ passed through his mind. ‘However, everything is comparative; when I gave a cheque for ten thousand for the first payment in the Bundawarra station, I thought it was an investment that required careful management and some good luck to carry through. But I little thought I should ever draw one for two hundred thousand odds, which the Hexham estate comes to—what the upkeep of it will cost is for the future to proclaim. However, I see the last accounts from West Australia show the month’s “clean up” to be a hundred and seventy thousand fine ounces, worth best part of a million sterling, with the reef growing wider and richer as it goes down. However, it seems nothing like so good as some of these Rand mines in South Africa. We live and learn. Let us hope these young people of ours will estimate their pecuniary position at its proper value. Their early education has certainly tended to that end. The stud seems growing fast; however, there is plenty of room. They say the stables were commenced on this grand scale by the present Earl’s grandfather, and were left unfinished for forty years. He had a lucky win on the turf, and made haste to utilise it by completing the main building, where the clock-tower stands. Had he only known! But of how many men—even nations—may not that be said! Some day, perhaps, a classic-quoting critic may fire off _de te fabula narratur_ at some member of the Banneret family, now so high above the arrows of fate!’

* * * * *

Summer in England! What an idyllic season it was. Now these young people from a far country began to realise the immense, the incalculable superiority of a land with a thousand years of history behind it! Think of it—dwell on it—try to grasp the immeasurable distinction of belonging to such a kingdom, if not born within its sea-bordered, sheltered bounds! Consider the inviolate sea! Behold the land where no foe has set unconquered foot since great Alfred drove Dane and Norseman far from her cliffs and beaches. The land where nobles and commoners, alike resentful of tyranny, refused to wait till constitutional resistance ripened into rebellion, but stood strong, patient, though menacing, till an overawed tyrant signed the great Charter of Runnymede, which for all time gave pledge and assurance of that justice never more to be delayed or bartered to the commons of England; not alone to them, but to the states, possessions, nations planted by her hand, and, except by their own act and deed, secure of that priceless heritage for all time.

How they enjoyed, how they admired and appreciated, all the feelings so characteristic of home life of which they had read and heard about since earliest childhood. The corn, the hayfields, with harvesters, gleaners, and nut-brown maids—wondering at the abundance of female labour, so unusual in the colonies, where women are too scarce and valuable to do field or dairy work for employers outside of the family circle. ‘Oh, the greenery of England! words cannot describe it!’ as an Australian lady exclaimed during her first summer in the ancestral home. ‘The delicious shadowy woodland, where, if the season be propitious, there comes not any wind or rain, where the green turf is a velvet carpet, flower-bespangled like an oriental purdah. Where the wood-rose and eglantine, daffodil and primrose, violet and woodbine, grace each cottage home!’

* * * * *

The greater number of the amusements and occupations proper to the summer time had been availed of and thoroughly enjoyed, when word came from Bruges that Lady Hexham had decided to accept Mrs. Banneret’s kind invitation to spend a fortnight with her at Hexham Hall. It would fit in with her arrangements (she said) inasmuch as she was coming over with her daughter, who was to stay on a visit to a relative for the remainder of the season, as their doctor believed a change would be beneficial. She would like to see her old home again, and Lord Hexham would remain in charge of the family while she was absent.

The missive was answered promptly, to the effect that Mrs. Banneret would be charmed to receive the Countess, and trusted that she would make Hexham her home as long as it suited her to remain in England, and would by no means confine her visit to the term mentioned. Great was the excitement which prevailed in the village of Hexham (the news having leaked out through some of the retainers still in service at the Hall) when the carriage and waggonette drove up to the station, and Lady Hexham, with her daughter and maid, descended. They were met and warmly welcomed by Mrs. Banneret and Hermione, but before they could reach the carriage there was a perfect rush to intercept them, headed by superannuated retainers still resident in the village, who begged, some indeed with tears, to be permitted to pay ‘their respects,’ as they expressed it, to their former mistress and her daughter. It was touching to witness the deep feeling of these survivals of a long-past feudal era. They were not permitted to kneel, but it was seen how much in accordance with their feelings this act of homage would have been.

‘Oh, milady! oh, milady!’ exclaimed the aged ex-gardener and his wife, in chorus with an infirm stable-helper, a keeper with one arm, and a deaf laundress. ‘What a mercy that ever we should ha’ lived to see your Ladyship and Miss Corisande. The Lord above be thanked for it, and bless His holy name!’

Lady Hexham had been a proud woman, and bore herself so even yet, through all the years of her comparative poverty; but the tears filled her eyes as she saw the servitors of their former state and grandeur make lowly obeisance before her.

‘Well, Benson? How d’ye do, Markham? Glad to see you all looking so well—and Peggy, and Mrs. Turton, too. I must come and see you in a day or two—I was afraid I should find some of you in the poorhouse.’

‘Yes, milady,’ said an ancient dame, whose gnarled weather-worn features betokened the octogenarian, ‘and so we should ha’ been, only for Madam here, and Muster Banneret; they wouldn’t let none on us go as ’ad bin old servants at the Hall. They found us work about the place—same as we’d bin used to.’

‘Perhaps you wouldn’t object, Lady Hexham, to their coming up to-morrow,’ interposed her hostess, ‘when they can have some bread and cheese and beer. You will then be able to hear about their affairs at your leisure. Come up to the Hall, Benson, at twelve o’clock, and bring any of the old servants with you. Tell them Lady Hexham would like to see them.’

Lady Hexham bowed without speaking—the words would not come; the sharp contrast between the new and the old regime had so powerfully affected her that she was unable to say what she intended.

The drive, short though it might be, was still impressive, and doubtless awakened older memories as they passed underneath the shadowy oaks, and marked the sun-rays glittering through the leaves of the great chestnuts of the avenue. For the rest, everything was as trim and well ordered as hands could make it. That perfect neatness of gravel and grass, flower-bed and foliage, which, in England, speaks of the abundant cheapness of skilled labour in that particular department, was combined with the most tasteful arrangement of lawn and grove and woodland, in broad effects of light and shade.

‘Banneret had ridden over to a neighbouring estate, but would join them at dinner,’ his wife said.

Meanwhile Miss Corisande was received by Hermione and Vanda, by whom she was carried off to her room, and duly placed in charge of a personal attendant.

‘We hope you will make yourself at home, in every sense of the word,’ said Hermione. ‘We feel like base usurpers. But I daresay we shall get over the feeling by degrees; you must try and do the same. In your case it will take rather longer, I fear.’

‘Don’t alarm yourself about that,’ replied the Honourable Corisande, who did not seem inclined to dwell upon the sentimental side of the affair. ‘I was too young to care much when we left the old Hall for good; indeed, I side with Dad, and vote it a jolly good thing that he’d been able to work off the encumbered estate so well. We look upon your father as our benefactor, I can tell you.’

‘That’s very sweet of you, I’m sure,’ said Vanda. ‘I know we shall be great friends directly. Are you fond of riding? We’ve got a few decent horses together, and hope to have more.’

‘Passionately; but, of course, I haven’t had much practice. There are none to speak of in Bruges. The English inhabitants are decayed gentlefolk like ourselves, and the horses belong to the canal boats mostly. It’s not half a bad old place, though—music and languages cheap, so it suits us down to the ground. We were very young then, whereas now’—and here the speaker cast a half-admiring, half-regretful glance around—‘we should enjoy a change now and then.’

‘In that case, perhaps you’d like a canter to-morrow after lunch? Hermione will lend you her horse, which is quite “well-mannered,” as English people say. Mine is rather “touchy,” which is Australian for nervous. Hermione’s habit will fit you, I think.’

This arrangement was carried out successfully. The girls went off, with a groom behind, ‘accoutred proper,’ ready to open gates or perform any service required. Hermione’s palfrey went smoothly and pleasantly, conducting himself to the entire satisfaction of the Honourable Corisande, who said she had no idea she could ride so well. The fact being, that she had plenty of nerve, and got on very well, having had an early experience of ponies—which indeed, from their sudden stoppages and occasional liability to kick, are by no means to be despised as a preparatory riding-school. So all was peace and joy when the girls returned. Lady Hexham had paid a visit to an old friend, to whom she had taken the opportunity to express her opinion of Mrs. Banneret and her daughters—entirely favourable, at the same time hinting that she had not expected quite such refined taste or good manners.

‘You know, my dear Kate, we are not accustomed to associate such qualities with wealthy colonists; and those fools of novelists persist in describing every one who makes money or a career out of England as either a vulgarian or a German Jew. We ought to know better, certainly, as every one’s younger sons or brothers have been going to Australia and New Zealand for generations. Why they should necessarily turn into clowns or roughs is hard to imagine, if we only took the trouble to think. But that’s the last thing English people do. We take everything for granted. I am enchanted with our successors, and quite endorse what Hexham says of them.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Simply, that the family resembled English gentlefolk, all over the world. That, short of giving the old place back to us, there was nothing they wouldn’t do. So it’s our fault if they are not our very good friends henceforth.’

So the neighbours parted, Lady Hexham well pleased to have renewed an old friendship under such reassuring conditions. And when, after returning to the Hall, the master of the house met them at dinner, the _entente cordiale_ became so advanced that the Bannerets might have been taken for the long-lost relations, returned from foreign parts, laden with the gold and jewels which _used to_ reward those who dared the dangers of the sea, the hazards of fever and war, in some far eastern kingdom, where grew the pagoda tree.

The evening, following a fatiguing day, was spent restfully—a little music, with more interchange of girlish experiences. For the guests an early retirement, although Corisande did not leave Vanda’s room for a ‘good hour,’ as the maid alleged, after she had been dismissed.

However, the three girls were up early, and, after a stroll through the shrubberies, quite ready for breakfast.

Though Lady Hexham had only intended to stay for a week, and was, in a general way, unused to changing her plans, she consented to remain for a fortnight, at the urgent request of the Banneret girls, who declared that they would be desolated if Corisande was torn from them before their garden party came off. This exceptional entertainment—which, indeed, had been decided upon long before the visit of the Hexhams came into view—was to be on a scale of grandeur such as had not been known in the county since the days of the grandfather of the present Earl, whose extravagant tastes and lavish expenditure had caused the financial ruin of the family. Gradually Lady Hexham seemed to weaken in her opposition to the idea, and lastly decided, after the receipt of a letter from her husband, that she really could not be so ungracious as to refuse an invitation so kindly made, so warmly pressed. Lastly, the great outwork having given way, the last entrenchment yielded. Lord Hexham stated his intention of bringing over his youngest daughter, who had been included in the earlier invitation, and sending her by rail from London. For himself—no! He was sincerely grateful for the great kindness shown to his wife and daughters, but he would prefer to pay a visit later in the season. And from this resolve he could not be moved.