“Brute!” exclaimed his brother.
“They’re hot on him now,” said Hampton. At this time the whole side of the hill was ringing with the music of the hounds.
“He was out then, but Dick turned him,” said Larry. Dick was one of the whips.
“Will you be so kind, Mr. Morton,” asked the Senator, “as to tell me whether they’re hunting yet? They’ve been at it for three hours and a half, and I should like to know when they begin to amuse themselves.”
Just as he had spoken there came from Dick a cry that he was away. Tony, who had been down at the side of the gorse, at once jumped into it, knowing the passage through. Lord Rufford, who for the last five or six minutes had sat perfectly still on his horse, started down the hill as though he had been thrown from a catapult. There was a little hand-gate through which it was expedient to pass, and in a minute a score of men were jostling for the way, among whom were the two Botseys, our friend Runciman, and Larry Twentyman, with Kate Masters on the pony close behind him. Young Hampton jumped a very nasty fence by the side of the wicket, and Lord Rufford followed him. A score of elderly men, with some young men among them too, turned back into a lane behind them, having watched long enough to see that they were to take the lane to the left, and not the lane to the right. After all there was time enough, for when the men had got through the hand-gate the hounds were hardly free of the covert, and Tony, riding up the side of the hill opposite, was still blowing his horn. But they were off at last, and the bulk of the field got away on good terms with the hounds. “Now they are hunting,” said Mr. Morton to the Senator.
“They all seemed to be very angry with each other at that narrow gate.”
“They were in a hurry, I suppose.”
“Two of them jumped over the hedge. Why didn’t they all jump? How long will it be now before they catch him?”
“Very probably they may not catch him at all.”
“Not catch him after all that! Then the man was certainly right to poison that other fox in the wood. How long will they go on?”
“Half an hour perhaps.”
“And you call that hunting! Is it worth the while of all those men to expend all that energy for such a result? Upon the whole, Mr. Morton, I should say that it is one of the most incomprehensible things that I have ever seen in the course of a rather long and varied life. Shooting I can understand, for you have your birds. Fishing I can understand, as you have your fish. Here you get a fox to begin with, and are all brokenhearted. Then you come across another, after riding about all day, and the chances are you can’t catch him!”
“I suppose,” said Mr. Morton angrily, “the habits of one country are incomprehensible to the people of another. When I see Americans loafing about in the barroom of an hotel, I am lost in amazement.”
“There is not a man you see who couldn’t give a reason for his being there. He has an object in view—though perhaps it may be no better than to rob his neighbour. But here there seems to be no possible motive.”
XI
From Impington Gorse
The fox ran straight from the covert through his well-known haunts to Impington Park, and as the hounds were astray there for two or three minutes there was a general idea that he too had got up into a tree—which would have amused the Senator very much had the Senator been there. But neither had the country nor the pace been adapted to wheels, and the Senator and the Paragon were now returning along the road towards Bragton. The fox had tried his old earths at Impington High wood, and had then skulked back along the outside of the covert. Had not one of the whips seen him he would have been troubled no further on that day—a fact, which if it could have been explained to the Senator in all its bearings, would greatly have added to his delight. But Dick viewed him; and with many holloas and much blowing of horns, and prayers from Captain Glomax that gentlemen would only be so good as to hold their tongues, and a full-tongued volley of abuse from half the field against an unfortunate gentleman who rode after the escaping fox before a hound was out of the covert, they settled again to their business. It was pretty to see the quiet ease and apparent nonchalance and almost affected absence of bustle of those who knew their work—among whom were especially to be named young Hampton, and the elder Botsey, and Lord Rufford, and, above all, a dark-visaged, long-whiskered, sombre, military man who had been in the carriage with Lord Rufford, and who had hardly spoken a word to anyone the whole day. This was the celebrated Major Caneback, known to all the world as one of the dullest men and best riders across country that England had ever produced. But he was not so dull but that he knew how to make use of his accomplishment, so as always to be able to get a mount on a friend’s horses. If a man wanted to make a horse, or to try a horse, or to sell a horse, or to buy a horse, he delighted to put Major Caneback up. The Major was sympathetic and made his friend’s horses, and tried them, and sold them. Then he would take his two bottles of wine—of course from his friend’s cellar—and when asked about the day’s sport would be oracular in two words, “Rather slow,” “Quick spurt,” “Goodish thing,” “Regularly mulled,” and suchlike. Nevertheless it was a great thing to have
