V + 

November, with its darkening afternoons and smell of burning weeds, found me gradually becoming acclimatized to “the new mare,” as I importantly called her (using Dixonian phraseology). The groom was able to give me all his attention, since my aunt never rode in the winter. We now went longer distances; sometimes he would tell me that we were “on the edge of the Dumborough country,” and he would pull up and point out to me, a few miles away, some looming covert where they often went to draw. + 

The Dumborough, as I afterwards discovered, was a scrambling sort of country to hunt in⁠—heavily wooded and hilly. But as we turned away from its evening-lighted landscape I would listen eagerly to Dixon’s anecdotes of the sport he had seen there. He spoke often of Mr. Macdoggart, Lord Dumborough’s hard-riding agent, and how one year he had seen him win the Hunt Steeplechase by a short head from a famous “gentleman-rider”; and how, another year, Mr. Macdoggart had got concussion of the brain while riding in the same race. + 

Our afternoon expeditions usually took us in the Dumborough direction, and I suspect that Dixon always had a faint hope that we might “chip in with the hounds,” though he knew too well that the foxes rarely ran our way. He also showed an increasing antipathy to the high road, and was continually taking shortcuts across the country. + 

“It’ll do them good to have a pipe-opener,” he would say, turning in at a gate and setting his horse going up a long stretch of meadow, and my confidence in Sheila increased as I scuttled after him. + 

Sometimes he would pretend to be “riding a finish,” and I would say, “Tom, show me how Mr. Macdoggart won the Hunt Cup on Nobleman.” + 

I had never seen a race in my life; nor had I ever been to a meet of the hounds. But I assiduously studied the novels of Surtees, of which my aunt had a complete set. She dipped into them herself now and again, and we often used to talk about Mr. Jorrocks. + 

As Christmas approached Dixon drew her attention to my rapid improvement as a rider. Finally he took the bull by the horns and intimated that it would do me no harm to go and have a look at the hounds. She seemed taken aback by this, but he assured her that he would only take me as far as the meet. When she suggested that he could drive me there in the dogcart Dixon’s face assumed such an air of disapproval that she gave way at once, and it became only a matter of waiting for the next “near meet.” + 

“I think, ’m, you can rely on me to take proper care of Master George,” he remarked rather stiffly; the next moment he looked at me with a grin of delight followed by a solemn wink with the eye furthest away from my aunt. + 

A few days later I found him studying the local paper in the leather-smelling little harness-room. “They’re meeting at Finchurst Green on Saturday,” he announced with appropriate seriousness. It was an important moment in my life. Finchurst Green was not quite nine miles away. + 

It was a grey and chilly world that I went out into when I started for my first day’s foxhunting. The winter-smelling air met me as though with a hint that serious events were afoot. Silently I stood in the stable-yard while Dixon led Sheila out of her stall. His demeanour was businesslike and reticent. The horses and their accoutrements were polished up to perfection, and he himself, in his dark-grey clothes and hard black hat, looked a model of discretion and neatness. The only one who lacked confidence was myself. + 

Stuffing a packet of sandwiches into my pocket and pulling on my uncomfortably new gloves, I felt half-aware of certain shortcomings in my outward appearance. Ought one really to go out hunting in a brown corduroy suit with a corduroy jockey-cap made to match the suit? Did other boys wear that sort of thing?⁠ ⁠… I was conscious, too, that Dixon was regarding me with an unusually critical eye. Mute and flustered, I mounted. Sheila seemed very fresh, and the saddle felt cold and slippery. As we trotted briskly through the village everything had an austerely unfamiliar look about it, and my replies to Dixon were clumsy and constrained. + 

Yet the village was its ordinary village-self. The geese were going single file across the green, and Sibson, the lame shoeing-smith, was clinking his hammer in the forge as usual. He peered out at us as we passed, and I saluted him with a slightly forlorn wave of the hand. He grinned and ducked his head. Sheila had had her shoes looked to the day before, so he knew all about where we were going. + 

As we jogged out of the village Dixon gazed sagaciously at the sky and said with a grim smile, “I’ll bet they run like blazes today, there’s just the right nip in the air,” and he made the horses cock their ears by imitating the sound of a hunting-horn⁠—a favourite little trick of his. Secretly I wondered what I should do if they “ran like blazes.” It was all very well for him⁠—he’d been out hunting dozens of times! + 

As we neared the meet I became more and more nervous. Not many of the hunting people came from our side of the country, and we saw no other horsemen to distract my attention until we rounded a bend of the road, and there at last was Finchurst Green, with the hounds clustering in a corner and men in red coats and black coats moving to and fro to keep their horses from getting chilled. But this is not the last meet that I shall describe, so I will not invent details which I cannot remember, since I was too awed and excited and self-conscious to be capable of observing anything clearly. + 

Once we had arrived, Dixon seemed to become a different Dixon, so dignified and aloof that I scarcely dared speak to him. Of course I knew what it meant: I was now his “young gentleman,” and he was only the groom who had brought me to “have a look at the hounds.” But there was no one at the meet who knew me, so I sat there, shy and silent⁠—aware of being a newcomer in a strange world which I did not understand. Also I was quite sure that I should make a fool of myself. Other people have felt the same, but this fact would have been no consolation to me at the time, even if I could have realized it. + 

My first period of suspense ended when with much bobbing up and down of hats the cavalcade moved off along the road. I looked round for Dixon, but he allowed me to be carried on with the procession; he kept close behind me, however. He had been sensible enough to refrain from confusing me with advice before we started, and I can see now that his demeanour continued to be full of intuitive tactfulness. But he was talking to another groom, and I felt that I was being scrutinized and discussed. I was riding alongside of a large, lolloping lady in a blue habit; she did not speak to me; she confined herself to a series of expostulatory remarks to her horse which seemed too lively and went bouncing along sideways with its ears back, several times bumping into Sheila, whose behaviour was sedately alert. + 

Soon we turned in at some lodge-gates, crossed the corner of an undulating park, and then everyone pulled up outside a belt of brown woodland. The hounds had disappeared, but I could hear the huntsman’s voice a little way off. He was making noises which I identified as not altogether unlike those I had read about in Surtees. After a time the chattering crowd of riders moved slowly into the wood which appeared to be a large one. + 

My first reaction to the “field” was one of mute astonishment. I had taken it for granted that there would be people “in pink,” but these enormous confident strangers overwhelmed my mind with the visible authenticity of their brick-red coats. It all felt quite different to reading Surtees by the schoolroom fire. + 

But I was too shy to stare about me, and every moment I was expecting an outburst of mad excitement in which I should find myself galloping wildly out of the wood. When the outbreak of activity came I had no time to think about it. For no apparent reason the people around me (we were moving slowly along a narrow path in the wood) suddenly set off at a gallop and for several minutes I was aware of nothing but the breathless flurry of being carried along, plentifully spattered with mud by the sportsman in front of me. Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled up. Sheila automatically followed suit, shooting me well up her neck. The next moment everyone turned round and we all went tearing back by the way we had come. I found Dixon in front of me now, and he turned his head with a grin of encouragement. + 

Soon afterwards the hunt came to a standstill in an open space in the middle of the wood: the excitement seemed to be abating, and I felt that foxhunting wasn’t so difficult as I’d expected it to be. A little way below I could hear a confused baying of the hounds among the trees. Then, quite close to where I had halted, a tall man in a blue velvet cap and vermilion coat came riding out from among the undergrowth with one arm up to shield his face from the branches. His face was very red and he seemed upset about something. Turning in my direction he bawled out in an angry voice, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re here for?” + 

For a moment I sat petrified with terror and amazement. He was riding straight at me, and I had no time to wonder what I had done to incur his displeasure. So I stared helplessly until I was aware that he had passed me and was addressing someone immediately behind my horse’s heels.⁠ ⁠… Looking round I saw a surly-featured elderly man with side-whiskers: he was on foot and wore the weathered garments of a gamekeeper. + 

“What the hell do you mean by leaving the main-earth unstopped?” the infuriated voice continued. + 

“Very sorry, m’lord,” the man mumbled, “but I never heard you was coming till this morning, and⁠—” + 

“Don’t answer me back. I’ll get you sacked for this when Major Gamble comes down from Scotland. I tell you I’m sick of you and your goddamned pheasants,” and before the man could say any more the outraged nobleman was pushing his way into the undergrowth again and was bawling “Go on to Hoath Wood, Jack,” to the invisible huntsman. + 

I looked at Dixon, whose horse was nibbling Sheila’s neck. “That’s the Master,” he said in a low voice, adding, “his lordship’s a rough one with his tongue when anyone gets the wrong side of him.” Silently I decided that Lord Dumborough was the most terrifying man I had ever encountered.⁠ ⁠… + 

Dixon was explaining that our fox had gone to ground and I heard another man near me saying: “That blighter Gamble thinks of nothing but shooting. The place is crawling with birds, and the wonder is that we ever found a fox. Last time we were here we drew the whole place blank, and old D. cursed the keeper’s head off and accused him of poisoning the foxes, so I suppose he did it to get a bit of his own back!” Such was my introduction to the mysteries of “earth-stopping.”⁠ ⁠… + 

The comparatively mild activities of the morning had occupied a couple of hours. We now trotted away from Major Gamble’s preserves. It was about three miles to Hoath Wood; on the way several small spinneys were drawn blank, but Hoath Wood was a sure find, so Dixon said, and a rare place to get a gallop from. This caused a perceptible evaporation of the courage which I had been accumulating, and when there was a halt for the hunt-servants to change on to their second horses I made an attempt to dispel my qualms by pulling out my packet of sandwiches. + 

While I was munching away at these I noticed for the first time another boy of about my own age. Dixon was watching him approvingly. Evidently this was a boy to be imitated, and my own unsophisticated eyes already told me that. He was near enough to us for me to be able to observe him minutely. A little aloof from the large riders round him, he sat easily, but very upright, on a corky chestnut pony with a trimmed stump of a tail and a neatly hogged neck. + 

Reconstructing that far-off moment, my memory fixes him in a characteristic attitude. Leaning slightly forward from the waist, he straightens his left leg and scrutinizes it with an air of critical abstraction. He seems to be satisfied with his smart buff breeches and natty brown gaiters. Everything he has on is neat and compact. He carries a small crop with a dark leather thong, which he flicks at a tuft of dead grass in a masterly manner. An air of self-possessed efficiency begins with his black bowler hat, continues in his neatly tied white stock, and gets its finishing touch in the short, blunt, shining spurs on his black walking boots. (I was greatly impressed by the fact that he wore spurs.) All his movements were controlled and modest, but there was a suggestion of arrogance in the steady, unrecognizing stare which he gave me when he became conscious that I was looking at him so intently. Our eyes met, and his calm scrutiny reminded me of my own deficiencies in dress. I shifted uneasily in my saddle, and the clumsy unpresentable old hunting-crop fell out of my hand. Dismounting awkwardly to pick it up, I wished that it, also, had a thong (though this would make the double reins more difficult to manage), and I hated my silly jockey-cap and the badly fitting gaiters which pinched my legs and always refused to remain in the correct position (indicated by Dixon). When I had scrambled up on to Sheila again⁠—a feat which I could only just accomplish without assistance⁠—I felt what a poor figure I must be cutting in Dixon’s eyes while he compared me with that other boy, who had himself turned away with a slight smile and was now soberly following the dappled clustering pack and its attendant redcoats as they disappeared over the green rising ground on their way to Hoath Wood. + 

By all the laws of aunthood we should by now have been well on our way home. But Dixon was making a real day of it. The afternoon hunt was going to be a serious affair. There never appeared to be any doubt about that. The field was reduced to about forty riders, and the chattersome contingent seemed to have gone home. We all went into the covert and remained close together at one end. Dixon got off and tightened my girths, which had got very loose (as I ought to have noticed). A resolute-looking lady in a tall hat drew her veil down after taking a good pull at the flask which she handed back to her groom. Hard-faced men rammed their hats on to their heads and sat silently in the saddle as though, for the first time in the day, they really meant business. My heart was in my mouth and it had good reason to be there. Lord Dumborough was keeping an intent eye on the ride which ran through the middle of the covert. + 

“Cut along up to the top end, Charlie,” he remarked without turning his head; and a gaunt, ginger-haired man in a weather-stained scarlet coat went off up the covert in a squelchy canter. + 

“That’s Mr. Macdoggart,” said Dixon in a low voice, and my solemnity increased as the legendary figure vanished on its mysterious errand. + 

Meanwhile the huntsman was continuing his intermittent yaups as he moved along the other side of the wood. Suddenly his cheers of encouragement changed to a series of excited shoutings. “Hoick-holler, hoick-holler, hoick-holler!” he yelled and then blew his horn loudly; this was followed by an outbreak of vociferation from the hounds, and soon they were in full cry across the covert. I sat there petrified by my private feelings; Sheila showed no symptoms of agitation; she merely cocked her ears well forward and listened. + 

And then, for the first time, I heard a sound which has thrilled generations of foxhunters to their marrow. From the far side of the wood came the long shrill screech (for which it is impossible to find an adequate word) which signifies that one of the whips has viewed the fox quitting the covert. “Gone Away” it meant. But before I had formulated the haziest notion about it Lord Dumborough was galloping up the ride and the rest of them were pelting after him as though nothing could stop them. As I happened to be standing well inside the wood and Sheila took the affair into her own control, I was swept along with them, and we emerged on the other side among the leaders. + 

I cannot claim that I felt either excitement or resolution as we bundled down a long slope of meadowland and dashed helter-skelter through an open gate at the bottom. I knew nothing at all except that I was out of breath and that the air was rushing to meet me, but as I hung on to the reins I was aware that Mr. Macdoggart was immediately in front of me. My attitude was an acquiescent one. I have always been inclined to accept life in the form in which it has imposed itself upon me, and on that particular occasion, no doubt, I just felt that I was “in for it.” It did not so much as occur to me that in following Mr. Macdoggart I was setting myself rather a high standard, and when he disappeared over a hedge I took it for granted that I must do the same. For a moment Sheila hesitated in her stride. (Dixon told me afterwards that I actually hit her as we approached the fence, but I couldn’t remember having done so.) Then she collected herself and jumped the fence with a peculiar arching of her back. There was a considerable drop on the other side. Sheila made no mistake, but as she landed I left the saddle and flew over her head. I had let go of the reins, but she stood stock-still while I sat on the wet ground. A few moments later Dixon popped over a gap lower down the fence and came to my assistance, and I saw the boy on the chestnut pony come after him and gallop on in a resolute but unhurrying way. I scrambled to my feet, feeling utterly ashamed. + 

“Whatever made you go for it like that?” asked Dixon, who was quite disconcerted. + 

“I saw Mr. Macdoggart going over it, and I didn’t like to stop,” I stammered. By now the whole hunt had disappeared and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. + 

“Well, I suppose we may as well go on.” He laughed as he gave me a leg-up. “Fancy you following Mr. Macdoggart over the biggest place in the fence. Good thing Miss Sherston couldn’t see you.” + 

The idea of my aunt seemed to amuse him, and he slapped his knee and chuckled as he led me onward at a deliberate pace. Secretly mortified by my failure I did my best to simulate cheerfulness. But I couldn’t forget the other boy and how ridiculous he must have thought me when he saw me rolling about on the ground. I felt as if I must be covered with mud. About half an hour later we found the hunt again, but I can remember nothing more except that it was beginning to get dark and the huntsman, a middle-aged, mulberry faced man named Jack Pitt, was blowing his horn as he sat in the middle of his hounds. The other boy was actually talking to him⁠—a privilege I couldn’t imagine myself promoted to. At that moment I almost hated him for his cocksureness. + 

Then to my surprise, the Master himself actually came up and asked me how far I was from home. In my embarrassment I could only mutter that I didn’t know, and Dixon interposed with “About twelve miles, m’lord,” in his best manner. + 

“I hear he’s quite a young thruster.”⁠ ⁠… The great man glanced at me for a moment with curiosity before he turned away. Not knowing what he meant I went red in the face and thought he was making fun of me. + 

Now that I have come to the end of my first day’s hunting I am tempted to moralize about it. But I have already described it at greater length than I had intended, so I will only remind myself of the tea I had at an inn on the way home. The inn was kept by a friend of Dixon’s⁠—an ex-butler who “had been with Lord Dumborough for years.” I well remember the snug fire-lit parlour where I ate my two boiled eggs, and how the innkeeper and his wife made a fuss over me. Dixon, of course, transferred me to them in my full status of “one of the quality,” and then disappeared to give the horses their gruel and get his own tea in the kitchen. I set off on the ten dark miles home in a glow of satisfied achievement, and we discussed every detail of the day except my disaster. Dixon had made inquiries about “the other young gentleman,” and had learnt that his name was Milden and that he was staying at Dumborough Park for Christmas. He described him as a proper little sportsman; but I was reticent on the subject. Nor did I refer to the question of our going out with the hounds again. By the time we were home I was too tired to care what anybody in the world thought about me. + 