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
