Yeast: a Problem | Page 8

and a faint but knowing whimper drove St. Francis out of all
heads, and Lancelot began to stalk slowly with a dozen horsemen up
the wood-ride, to a fitful accompaniment of wandering hound-music,
where the choristers were as invisible as nightingales among the thick
cover. And hark! just as the book was returned to his pocket, the sweet
hubbub suddenly crashed out into one jubilant shriek, and then swept
away fainter and fainter among the trees. The walk became a trot--the
trot a canter. Then a faint melancholy shout at a distance, answered by
a 'Stole away!' from the fields; a doleful 'toot!' of the horn; the dull
thunder of many horsehoofs rolling along the farther woodside. Then
red coats, flashing like sparks of fire across the gray gap of mist at the
ride's-mouth, then a whipper-in, bringing up a belated hound, burst into
the pathway, smashing and plunging, with shut eyes, through
ash-saplings and hassock-grass; then a fat farmer, sedulously pounding
through the mud, was overtaken and bespattered in spite of all his
struggles;-- until the line streamed out into the wide rushy pasture,
startling up pewits and curlews, as horsemen poured in from every side,
and cunning old farmers rode off at inexplicable angles to some well-
known haunts of pug: and right ahead, chiming and jangling sweet
madness, the dappled pack glanced and wavered through the veil of
soft grey mist. 'What's the use of this hurry?' growled Lancelot. 'They
will all be back again. I never have the luck to see a run.'
But no; on and on--down the wind and down the vale; and the canter
became a gallop, and the gallop a long straining stride; and a hundred
horsehoofs crackled like flame among the stubbles, and thundered
fetlock-deep along the heavy meadows; and every fence thinned the
cavalcade, till the madness began to stir all bloods, and with grim
earnest silent faces, the initiated few settled themselves to their work,
and with the colonel and Lancelot at their head, 'took their pleasure

sadly, after the manner of their nation,' as old Froissart has it.
'Thorough bush, through brier, Thorough park, through pale;'
till the rolling grass-lands spread out into flat black open fallows,
crossed with grassy baulks, and here and there a long melancholy line
of tall elms, while before them the high chalk ranges gleamed above the
mist like a vast wall of emerald enamelled with snow, and the winding
river glittering at their feet.
'A polite fox!' observed the colonel. 'He's leading the squire straight
home to Whitford, just in time for dinner.'
* * * * *
They were in the last meadow, with the stream before them. A line of
struggling heads in the swollen and milky current showed the hounds'
opinion of Reynard's course. The sportsmen galloped off towards the
nearest bridge. Bracebridge looked back at Lancelot, who had been
keeping by his side in sulky rivalry, following him successfully through
all manner of desperate places, and more and more angry with himself
and the guiltless colonel, because he only followed, while the colonel's
quicker and unembarrassed wit, which lived wholly in the present
moment, saw long before Lancelot, 'how to cut out his work,' in every
field.
'I shan't go round,' quietly observed the colonel.
'Do you fancy I shall?' growled Lancelot, who took for granted--poor
thin-skinned soul! that the words were meant as a hit at himself.
'You're a brace of geese,' politely observed the old squire; 'and you'll
find it out in rheumatic fever. There--"one fool makes many!" You'll
kill Smith before you're done, colonel!' and the old man wheeled away
up the meadow, as Bracebridge shouted after him,--
'Oh, he'll make a fine rider--in time!'

'In time!' Lancelot could have knocked the unsuspecting colonel down
for the word. It just expressed the contrast, which had fretted him ever
since he began to hunt with the Whitford Priors hounds. The colonel's
long practice and consummate skill in all he took in hand,--his
experience of all society, from the prairie Indian to Crockford's, from
the prize-ring to the continental courts,--his varied and ready store of
information and anecdote,-- the harmony and completeness of the
man,--his consistency with his own small ideal, and his consequent
apparent superiority everywhere and in everything to the huge awkward
Titan-cub, who, though immeasurably beyond Bracebridge in intellect
and heart, was still in a state of convulsive dyspepsia, 'swallowing
formulae,' and daily well-nigh choked; diseased throughout with that
morbid self- consciousness and lust of praise, for which God prepares,
with His elect, a bitter cure. Alas! poor Lancelot! an unlicked bear,
'with all his sorrows before him!'--
'Come along,' quoth Bracebridge, between snatches of a tune, his
coolness maddening Lancelot. 'Old Lavington will find us dry clothes,
a bottle of port, and a brace of