The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

“I think I can,” Harry said; “and I can shoot pretty well, and jump some.”

“What's your weight? I bet you we weigh even, or I weigh most. I bet you Jack Morris beats you at birds or a mark, at five-and-twenty paces. I bet you I jump farther than you on flat ground, here on this green.”

“I don't know Mr. Morris's shooting—I never saw either gentleman before—but I take your bets, my lord, at what you please,” cries Harry, who by this time was more than warm with Burgundy.

“Ponies on each!” cried my lord.

“Done and done!” cried my lord and Harry together. The young man thought it was for the honour of his country not to be ashamed of any bet made to him.

“We can try the last bet now, if your feet are pretty steady,” said my lord, springing up, stretching his arms and limbs, and looking at the crisp, dry grass. He drew his boots off, then his coat and waistcoat, buckling his belt round his waist, and flinging his clothes down to the ground.

Harry had more respect for his garments. It was his best suit. He took off the velvet coat and waistcoat, folded them up daintily, and, as the two or three tables round were slopped with drink, went to place the clothes on a table in the eating-room, of which the windows were open.

Here a new guest had entered; and this was no other than Mr. Wolfe, who was soberly eating a chicken and salad, with a modest pint of wine. Harry was in high spirits. He told the Colonel he had a bet with my Lord March—would Colonel Wolfe stand him halves? The Colonel said he was too poor to bet. Would he come out and see fair play? That he would with all his heart. Colonel Wolfe set down his glass, and stalked through the open window after his young friend.

“Who is that tallow-faced Put with the carroty hair?” says Jack Morris, on whom the Burgundy had had its due effect.

Mr. Warrington explained that this was Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfe, of the 20th Regiment.

“Your humble servant, gentlemen!” says the Colonel, making the company a rigid military bow.

“Never saw such a figure in my life!” cries Jack Morris. “Did you—March?”

“I beg your pardon, I think you said March?” said the Colonel, looking very much surprised.

“I am the Earl of March, sir, at Colonel Wolfe's service,” said the nobleman, bowing. “My friend, Mr. Morris, is so intimate with me, that, after dinner, we are quite like brothers.”

Why is not all Tunbridge Wells by to hear this? thought Morris. And he was so delighted that he shouted out, “Two to one on my lord!”

“Done!” calls out Mr. Warrington; and the enthusiastic Jack was obliged to cry “Done!” too.

“Take him, Colonel,” Harry whispers to his friend.

But the Colonel said he could not afford to lose, and therefore could not hope to win.

“I see you have won one of our bets already, Mr. Warrington,” my Lord March remarked. “I am taller than you by an inch or two, but you are broader round the shoulders.”

“Pooh, my dear Will! I bet you you weigh twice as much as he does!” cries Jack Morris.

“Done, Jack!” says my lord, laughing. “The bets are all ponies. Will you take him, Mr. Warrington?”

“No, my dear fellow—one's enough,” says Jack.

“Very good, my dear fellow,” says my lord; “and now we will settle the other wager.”

Having already arrayed himself in his best silk stockings, black satin-net breeches, and neatest pumps, Harry did not care to take off his shoes as his antagonist had done, whose heavy riding-boots and spurs were, to be sure, little calculated for leaping. They had before them a fine even green turf of some thirty yards in length, enough for a run and enough for a jump. A gravel walk ran around this green, beyond which was a wall and gate-sign—a field azure, bearing the Hanoverian White Horse rampant between two skittles proper, and for motto the name of the landlord and of the animal depicted.

My lord's friend laid a handkerchief on the ground as the mark whence the leapers were to take their jump, and Mr. Wolfe stood at the other end of the grass-plat to note the spot where each came down. “My lord went first,” writes Mr. Warrington, in a letter to Mrs. Mountain, at Castlewood, Virginia, still extant. “He was for having me take the lead; but, remembering the story about the Battel of Fontanoy which my dearest George used to tell, I says, 'Monseigneur le Comte, tirez le premier, s'il vous play.' So he took his run in his stocken feet, and for the honour of Old Virginia, I had the gratafacation of beating his lordship by more than two feet—viz., two feet nine inches—me jumping twenty-one feet three inches, by the drawer's measured tape, and his lordship only eighteen six. I had won from him about my weight before (which I knew the moment I set my eye upon him). So he and Mr. Jack paid me these two betts. And with my best duty to my mother—she will not be displeased with me, for I bett for the honor of the Old Dominion, and my opponent was a nobleman of the first quality, himself holding two Erldomes, and heir to a Duke. Betting is all the rage here, and the bloods and young fellows of fashion are betting away from morning till night.

“I told them—and that was my mischief perhaps—that there was a gentleman at home who could beat me by a good foot; and when they asked who it was, and I said Col. G. Washington, of Mount Vernon—as you know he can, and he's the only man in his county or mine that can do it—Mr. Wolfe asked me ever so many questions about Col. G. W., and showed that he had heard of him, and talked over last year's unhappy campane as if he knew every inch of the ground, and he knew the names of all our rivers, only he called the Potowmac Pottamac, at which we had a good laugh at him. My Lord of March and Ruglen was not in the least ill-humour about losing, and he and his friend handed me notes out of their pocket-books, which filled mine that was getting very empty, for the vales to the servants at my cousin Castlewood's house and buying a horse at Oakhurst have very nearly put me on the necessity of making another draft upon my honoured mother or her London or Bristol agent.”

These feats of activity over, the four gentlemen now strolled out of the tavern garden into the public walk, where, by this time, a great deal of company was assembled: upon whom Mr. Jack, who was of a frank and free nature, with a loud voice, chose to make remarks that were not always agreeable. And here, if my Lord March made a joke, of which his lordship was not sparing, Jack roared, “Oh, ho, ho! Oh, good Gad! Oh, my dear earl! Oh, my dear lord, you'll be the death of me!” “It seemed as if he wished everybody to know,” writes Harry sagaciously to Mrs. Mountain, “that his friend and companion was an Erl!”