III
At nine o’clock next morning my cold fingers were making their usual bungling efforts to tie a white stock neatly; but as I had never been shown how to do it, my repeated failures didn’t surprise me, though I was naturally anxious not to disgrace the Rectory on my first appearance at a meet of the Ringwell Hounds. The breakfast bell was supplemented by Stephen’s incitements to me to hurry up; these consisted in cries of “Get-along-forrid” and similar hunt-servant noises, which accentuated my general feeling that I was in for a big day. While I was putting the final touches to my toilet I could hear him shouting to the two Scotch terriers who were scuttling about the lawn: (he was out there having a look at that important thing, the weather).
Fully dressed and a bit flurried, I stumped downstairs and made for the low buzz of conversation in the dining-room. Purposing to make the moderately boisterous entry appropriate to a hunting morning, I opened the door. After a moment of stupefaction I recoiled into the passage, having beheld the entire household on its knees, with backs of varying sizes turned toward me: I had entered in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. After a temporizing stroll on the lawn I reentered the room unobtrusively; Stephen handed me a plate of porridge with a grin and no other reference was made to my breach of decorum.
After breakfast he told me that I’d no more idea of tying a stock than an ironmonger; when he had retied it for me he surveyed the result with satisfaction and announced that I now “looked ready to compete against all the cutting and thrusting soldier-officers in creation.”
By a quarter past ten the Rector was driving me to the meet in the buggy—the groom having ridden his horse on with Stephen, who was jogging sedately along on Jerry. The Rector, whose overcoat had an astrakhan collar, was rather reticent, and we did the five miles to the meet without exchanging many remarks. But it was a comfort, after my solitary sporting experiments, to feel that I had a couple of friendly chaperons, and Stephen had assured me that my hireling knew his way over every fence in the country and had never been known to turn his head. My only doubt was whether his rider would do him credit. We got to the meet in good time, and Mr. Whatman, a very large man who kept a very large livery-stable and drove a coach in the summer, was loquacious about the merits of my hireling, while he supervised my settlement in the saddle, which felt a hard and slippery one.
As I gathered up the thin and unflexible reins I felt that he was conferring a privilege on me by allowing me to ride the horse—a privilege for which the sum of thirty-five shillings seemed inadequate repayment. My mount was a wiry, nondescript-coloured animal, sober and unexcitable. It was evident from the first that he knew much more about the game than I did. He was what is known as a “safe conveyance” or “patent-safety”; this more than atoned for his dry-coated and ill-groomed exterior. By the time I had been on his back an hour I felt more at home than I had ever done when out with the Dumborough.
The meet was at The Five Bells, a wayside inn close to Basset Wood, which was the chief stronghold of fox-preservation in that part of the Ringwell country. There was never any doubt about finding a fox at Basset. Almost a mile square, it was well-rided and easy to get about in, though none too easy to get a fox away from. It was also, as Stephen remarked when we entered it, an easy place to get left in unless one kept one’s eyes and ears skinned. And his face kindled at the delightful notion of getting well away with the hounds, leaving three parts of the field coffee-housing at the wrong end of the covert. It was a grey morning, with a nip in the air which made him hopeful that “hounds would fairly scream along” if they got out in the open and, perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt a keen pleasure in the idea of sitting down and cramming my horse at every obstacle that might come in our way.
In the meantime I had got no more than a rough idea of the seventy or eighty taciturn or chattering riders who were now making their way slowly along the main-ride while the huntsman could be heard cheering his hounds a little way off among the oaks and undergrowth. I had already noticed several sporting farmers in blue velvet caps and long-skirted black coats of country cut. And scarlet-coated Colonel Hesmon had proffered me a couple of brown-gloved fingers with the jaunty airified manner of a well-dressed absentminded swell. He was on his corky little grey cob, and seemed to be having rather a rough ride. In fact the impetuous behaviour of the cob suggested that the Colonel had yet to find the key to his mouth.
An open space toward the top end of the wood formed a junction of the numerous smaller paths which were tributaries of that main channel—the middle-ride. At this point of vantage a few of the more prominent characters from among the field had pulled up, and since the hounds had yet to find a fox I was able to take a few observations of people who afterwards became increasingly familiar to me in my mental conspectus of the Ringwell Hunt. Among them was the Master, of whom there is little to be said except that he was a rich man whose resignation was already rumoured. His only qualification was his wealth, and he had had the bad luck (or bad judgment) to engage a bad huntsman. Needless to say the Master’s perplexities had been aggravated by the criticisms and cavillings of subscribers who had neither the wealth, knowledge, nor initiative necessary for the office which this gentleman had found so ungrateful. Much of this I had already learned at the Rectory, where he was given his due for having done his best to hunt the country in handsome style. Sitting there that morning on a too-good-looking, well-bred horse, he seemed glum and abstracted, as though he suspected that most of his field would poke fun at him when his back was turned. One of his troubles was that he’d never learnt how to blow his horn properly, and his inexpert tootlings afforded an adequate excuse for those who enjoyed ridiculing him.
Chief among these was Nigel Croplady. When I first observed him he was sitting sideways on his compact short-tailed brown horse; a glossy top-hat was tilted over his nose. His supercilious, clean-shaven face was preoccupied with a loose-lipped inspection of his own left leg; his boot-tops were a delicate shell-pink, and his well-cleaned white “leathers” certainly justified his self-satisfied scrutiny of them.
“That blighter’s always talking about getting a flying-start,” remarked Stephen in an undertone, “but when hounds run he’s the most chickenhearted skirter in Sussex.” I was able to verify this later in the day when I saw him go irresolutely at a small fence on a bank, pull his horse across it with a shout of “Ware wire!” and hustle away in search of a gate, leaving a hard-riding farmer to take it in his stride—the wire having been an improvisation of Croplady’s over-prudent mind.
The group which I was watching also included two undemonstrative elderly men (both of whom, said Stephen, were fifty pound subscribers and important covert owners) and several weather-beaten ladies, none of whom looked afraid of a liberal allowance of mud and water.
The Rev. Colwood (who was on a one-eyed screw which his soldier-son had picked up for seventeen pounds at a sale of Army remounts) now joined the group. He was sitting well forward in the saddle with the constrained look of a man who rather expects his horse to cross its front legs and pitch him over its head. Beside him, on a plump white weight-carrier, was a spare-built middle-aged man in a faded pink coat who scattered boisterous vociferations on everybody within hail. “Morning, Master. Morning, Mrs. Moffat. Morning, Nigel.” His beaming recognitions appeared to include the whole world in a sort of New Year’s Day greeting. And “Hallo, Stephen ole man,” he shouted, turning in our direction so suddenly that his animal’s rotund hind quarters bumped the Rector’s horse on his blind side and nearly knocked him over. The collision culminated when he grabbed my hand and wrung it heartily with the words, “Why, Jack, my lad, I thought you were still out in India!” I stared at him astonished, while his exuberance became puzzled and apologetic.
“Is it Jack?” he asked, adding, with a loud laugh, “No, it’s some other young bloke after all. But you’re the living split of Steve’s elder brother—say what you like!”
In this way I became acquainted with one of the most popular characters in the Hunt. Arthur Brandwick was a doctor who had given up his small country practice some years before. “Always merry and bright” was his motto, and he now devoted his bachelor energies to the pursuit of the fox and the conversion of the human race to optimism.
A solemn purple-faced man, who had been eyeing me as if he also had his doubts about my identity, now came up and asked me for a sovereign. This was Mr. McCosh, the Hunt secretary, and it was my first experience of being “capped” as a stranger. I produced the gold coin, but he very civilly returned it when Stephen informed him that I was staying at the Rectory.
Just as these negotiations concluded, a chorus of excited hallooings on the outskirts of the wood proclaimed that Reynard had been viewed by some pedestrians.
“Those damned foot people again! I’ll bet a tenner they’ve headed him back!” sneered Croplady, whose contempt for the lower classes was only equalled by his infatuation for a title. (His family were old-established solicitors in Downfield, but Nigel was too great a swell to do much work in his father’s office, except to irritate the clients, many of whom were farmers, with his drawling talk and dandified manners.)
“Come on, Snowball!” exclaimed Brandwick, shaking his corpulent white steed into a canter, and away he went along the main-ride, ramming his hat down on his head with the hand that held his whip and scattering mud in every direction.
“Chuckle-headed old devil! Mad as a hatter but as kindhearted as they make ’em,” said Stephen, watching him as he dipped in and out of the hollows with his coattails flapping over his horse’s wide rump. And without any undue haste he started off along one of the smaller rides with myself and my hireling at his heels.
Everybody hustled away into the wood except the stolid secretary and two other knowledgeable veterans. Having made up their minds that the fox would stick to the covert, they remained stock-still like equestrian statues, watching for him to cross the middle-ride. They were right. Foxhunting wiseacres usually are (though it was my wilful habit in those days to regard everyone who preferred going through a gate to floundering over a fence as being unworthy of the name of sportsman).
Later on, while Stephen and I were touring the covert with our ears open, we overtook a moody faced youth on a handsome bay horse. “Hullo, Tony! I thought you’d parted with that conspicuous quad of yours at Tatts last week,” exclaimed Stephen, riding robustly up alongside of him and giving the bay horse a friendly slap on his hind quarters.
Young Lewison (I remembered what Stephen had said about him and the expensive hunter which he “couldn’t ride a hair of”) informed us that the horse had been bought by a Warwickshire dealer and then returned as a slight whistler. “I’m sick of the sight of him,” he remarked, letting the reins hang listlessly on the horse’s neck.
Gazing at the nice-looking animal, I inwardly compared him with dear old Harkaway. The comparison was all in favour of the returned whistler, whose good points were obvious even to my inexperienced eyes. In fact, he was almost suspiciously good-looking, though there was nothing flashy about his fine limbs, sloping shoulders, and deep chest.
“His wind can’t be very bad if you’d never noticed it,” remarked Stephen, eyeing him thoughtfully, “and he certainly does look a perfect gentleman.”
Meanwhile the horse stood there as quiet as if he were having his picture painted. “I wish to goodness someone would give me fifty pounds for him,” exclaimed Lewison petulantly, and I had that queer sensation when an episode seems to have happened before. The whole scene was strangely lit up for me; I could have sworn that I knew what he was going to say before a single word was out of his mouth. And when, without a second’s hesitation, I replied, “I’ll give you fifty pounds for him,” I was merely overhearing a remark which I had already made.
Young Lewison looked incredulous; but Stephen intervened, with no sign of surprise, “Damn it, George, you might do worse than buy him, at that price. Hop off your hireling and see what he feels like.”
I had scarcely settled myself in the new saddle when there was a shrill halloa from a remote side of the covert. We galloped away, leaving Lewison still whoaing on one leg round the hireling, who was eager to be after us.
“Well, I’m jiggered! What an enterprising old card you are!” ejaculated Stephen, delightedly slapping his leg with his crop and then leaning forward to listen for the defect in the bay horse’s wind. “Push him along, George,” he added; but we were already galloping freely, and I felt much more like holding him back. “Dashed if I can hear a ghost of a whistle!” muttered Stephen, as we pulled up at a hunting-gate out of Basset Wood.
“We’re properly left this time, old son.” He trotted down the lane and popped over a low heave-gate into a grass field. My horse followed him without demur. There wasn’t a trace of the hunt in sight, but we went on, jumping a few easy fences, and my heart leapt with elation at the way my horse took them, shortening and then quickening his stride and slipping over them with an ease and neatness which were a revelation to me.
“This horse is an absolute dream!” I gasped as Stephen stopped to unlatch a gate.
But Stephen’s face now looked fit for a funeral. “They must have run like stink and we’ve probably missed the hunt of the season,” he grumbled.
A moment later his face lit up again. “There’s the horn—right-handed—over by the Binsted covers!” And away he went across a rushy field as fast as old Jerry could lay legs to the ground.
A lot of hoof-marks and a gap in a big boundary fence soon showed us where the hunt had gone. We were now on some low-lying meadows, and he said it looked as if we’d have to jump the Harcombe brook. As we approached it there was a shout from downstream and we caught sight of someone in distress. A jolly faced young farmer was up to his armpits in the water with his horse plunging about beside him.
“Hullo, it’s Bob Millet and his tubed mare!” Stephen jumped off Jerry and hurried to the rescue.
“I’m having the devil’s own job to keep the water out of my mare,” shouted Millet, who didn’t seem to be worrying much about getting soaked to the skin.
“Haven’t you got a cork?” inquired Stephen.
“No, Mr. Colwood, but I’m keeping my finger on the hole in her neck. She’ll be drowned if I don’t.”
This peculiar situation was solved by Stephen, who held the mare by her bridle and skilfully extricated her after several tremendous heaves and struggles.
We then crossed the brook by a wooden bridge a few hundred yards away—young Millet remarking that he’d never come out again without his cork. Soon afterwards we came up with the hounds, who had lost their fox and were drawing the Binsted covers without much enthusiasm. Colonel Hesmon commiserated with us for having missed “quite a pretty little dart in the open.” If he’d been on his brown mare, he said, he’d have had a cut at the Harcombe brook. “But this cob of mine won’t face water,” he remarked, adding that he’d once seen half the Quorn field held up by a brook you could have jumped in your boots.
The huntsman now enlivened the deflated proceedings by taking his hounds to a distant holloa on the other side of the brook. A man on a bicycle had viewed our fox returning to Basset Wood. The bicyclist (Stephen told me as we passed him in the lane where he’d been providing the flustered huntsman with exact information) was none other than the genius who reported the doings of the Hunt for the Southern Daily News. In the summer he umpired in county cricket matches, which caused me to regard him as quite a romantic personality.
While they were hunting slowly back to the big wood on a very stale line, young Lewison reappeared on my hireling. Looking more doleful than ever, he asked how I liked Cockbird. Before I had time to answer Stephen interposed with “He makes a distinct noise, Tony, and his wind’s bound to get worse. But my friend Sherston likes the feel of him and he’ll give you fifty.”
I concealed my surprise. Stephen had already assured me that the whistle was so slight as to be almost undetectable. He had also examined Cockbird’s legs and pronounced them perfect. Almost imperceptible, too, was the wink with which Stephen put me wise about his strategic utterance, and I met Lewison’s lacklustre eyes with contrived indifference as I reiterated my willingness to give him fifty. Internally, however, I was in a tumult of eagerness to call Cockbird my own at any price, and when my offer had been definitely accepted nothing would induce me to get off his back. We soon arranged that Mr. Whatman’s second horseman should call for the hireling at Lewison’s house on his way back to Downfield.
“We’ll send you your saddle and bridle tomorrow,” shouted Stephen, as Cockbird’s ex-owner disappeared along the lane outside Basset Wood. “Tony never thinks of anything except getting home to his tea,” he added.
We then exchanged horses, and though the hounds did very little more that afternoon, our enthusiasm about my unexpected purchase kept our tongues busy; we marvelled more and more that anyone could be such a mug as to part with him for fifty pounds. As we rode happily home to the Rectory Cockbird jogged smoothly along with his ears well forward. Demure and unexcited, he appeared neither to know nor to care about his change of ownership.
“Mr. Pennett can go to blazes!” I said to myself while I was blissfully ruminating in my bath before dinner. Stephen then banged on the door and asked if I intended to stay in there all night, so I pulled the plug out, whereupon the water began to run away with a screeching sound peculiar to that particular bathroom. (Why is it that up-to-date bathrooms have so much less individuality than their Victorian ancestors? The Rectory one, with its rough-textured paint and dark wooden casing, had the atmosphere of a narrow converted lumber-room, and its hotwater pipes were a subdued orchestra of enigmatic noises.)
While the water was making its raucous retreat my flippant ultimatum to the family solicitor was merged in a definite anxiety about paying for Cockbird. And then there was (an additional fifteen guineas) the question of my subscription to the Ringwell.
“Of course, you’ll enter him for our point-to-point,” Stephen had said while we were on our way home. “He’s a lot faster than Jerry, and he’ll simply walk away with the Heavy Weights. Send in your sub and start qualifying him at once. You’ve only got to bring him out eight times. He’s done nothing today, so you can have him out again on Wednesday.”
The idea of my carrying off the Colonel’s Cup had caused me delicious trepidations. But now, in the draughty bathroom and by the light of a bedroom candle, I was attacked by doubts and misgivings. It was easy enough for Stephen to talk about “qualifying” Cockbird; but how about my own qualifications as a race-rider? The candle flickered as if in ominous agreement with my scruples. There was a drop of water on the wick and the flame seemed to be fizzling toward extinction. Making it my fortune-teller, I decided that if it went out I should fall off at the first fence. After a succession of splutters it made a splendid recovery and spired into a confident survival.
At the dinner-table the Rector glowed with austere geniality while he carved the brace of pheasants which represented a day’s covert-shooting he’d had with Lord Dumborough—“a long-standing annual fixture of mine,” he called it. During our day’s hunting we had only caught occasional glimpses of him. But he had got away from Basset Wood with the hounds, and had evidently enjoyed himself in his reticent way. We discussed every small detail of our various experiences. Kind Mrs. Colwood kept up with the conversation as well as could be expected from an absentee who hadn’t ridden since she was quite a girl. She was interested and amused by hearing all about who had been out and what they had said, but she obviously found some difficulty in sharing her husband’s satisfaction about the clever way in which “Lord Nelson” (the one-eyed horse) had popped over a stile with an awkward takeoff and a drop on the landing-side. She must have endured many anxious hours while her family were out hunting, but her pinnacle of perturbation had been reached when Stephen rode in the Hunt Races—an ordeal which (unless Jerry went lame) was re-awaiting the next April. She could never be induced to attend “those horrible point-to-points” which, as she often said, would be the death of her.
On this particular evening my new horse was naturally the main topic, and his health was drunk in some port which had been “laid down” in the year of Stephen’s birth. After this ceremony the Rector announced that he’d heard for certain that the Master was sending in his resignation.
“Here’s to our next one,” he added, raising his glass again, “and I hope he’ll engage a first-rate huntsman.”
I assumed a sagacious air while they deplored the imperfections of Ben Trotter, and the way he was forever lifting his hounds and losing his head. Stephen remarked that whatever those humanitarian cranks might say, there was precious little cruelty to foxes when they were being hunted by a chap like Ben, who was always trying to chase his fox himself and never gave his hounds a chance to use their noses. The Rector sighed and feared that it was no use pretending that the Ringwell was anything but a cold-scenting country. We then adjourned to the study, where we soon had our noses close to the ordnance map. At this moment I can see Mr. Colwood quite clearly. With a slight frown he is filling his pipe from a tin of “Three Nuns” mixture; on the wall behind him hangs a large engraving of “Christ leaving the Praetorium.”