I was quite close by one morning when the fox, who was smelling about
after me, I suppose because it had liked my brother so much, got caught
in the big trap which was covered over artfully with earth and baited
with some stuff which stank horribly. I remember it looked very like my
own hind-legs. The fox, not being able to find me, went to this filth
and tried to eat it.
Then suddenly there was a dreadful fuss. The fox yelped and flew into
the air. I saw that a great black thing was fast on its forepaw. How
that fox did jump and roll! It was quite wonderful to see her. She
looked like a great yellow ball, except for a lot of white marks about
the head, which were her teeth. But the trap would not come away,
because it was tied to a root with a chain.
At last the fox grew tired and, lying down, began to think, licking its
paw as it thought and making a kind of moaning noise. Next it commenced
gnawing at the root after trying the chain and finding that its teeth
would not go into it. While it was doing this I heard the sound of a
man somewhere in the wood. So did the fox, and oh! it looked so
frightened. It lay down panting, its tongue hanging out and its ears
pressed back against its head, and whisked its big tail from side to
side. Then it began to gnaw again, but this time at its own leg. It
wanted to bite it off and so get away. I thought this very brave of the
fox, and though I hated it because it had eaten my brother and tried to
eat me, I felt quite sorry.
It was about half through its leg when the man came. I remember that he
had a cat with a little red collar on its neck, and an owl in his hand,
both of them dead, for he was Giles, the head-keeper, going round his
traps. He was a tall man with sandy whiskers and a rough voice, and he
carried a single-barrelled gun under his arm.
You see, now that I am dead I know the use of these things, just as I
understand all that was said, though of course at the time it had no
meaning for me. Still I find that I have forgotten nothing, not one
word from the beginning of my life to the end.
The keeper, who was on his way to the place where he nailed the
creatures he did not like by dozens upon poles, looked down and saw the
fox. “Oh! my beauty,” he said, “so I have got you at last. Don’t you
think yourself clever trying to bite off that leg. You’d have done it
too, only I came along just in time. Well, good night, old girl, you
won’t have no more of my pheasants.”
Then he lifted the gun. There was a most dreadful noise and the fox
rolled over and lay still.
“There you are, all neat and tidy, my dear,” said the keeper. “Now I
must just tuck you away in the hollow tree before old Grampus sneaks
round and sees you, for if he should it will be almost as much as my
place is worth.”
Next he set his foot on the trap and, opening it, took hold of the fox
by the fore-legs to carry it off. The cat and the owl he stuffed away
into a great pocket in his coat.
“Jemima! don’t you wholly stink,” he said, then gave a most awful yell.
The fox wasn’t quite dead after all, it was only shamming dead. At any
rate it got Giles’ hand in its mouth and made its teeth meet through
the flesh.
Now the keeper began to jump about just as the fox had done when it set
its paw in the trap, shouting and saying all sorts of things that
somehow I don’t think I ought to repeat here. Round and round he went
with the fox hanging to his hand, like hares do when they dance
together, for he couldn’t get it off anyhow. At last he tumbled down
into a pool of mud and water, and when he got up again all wet through
I saw that the fox was really dead. But it had died biting, and now I
know that this pleased it very much.
It was just then that the man whom the keeper had called Grampus came
up. He was a big, fat man with a very red face, who made a kind of
blowing noise when he walked fast. I know now that he was the lord of
all the other men about that place, that he lived in the house which
looked over the sea, and that the boy and girl who put me in with the
yellow-toothed rabbit were his children. He was what the farmers called
“a first-rate all-round sportsman,” which means, my friend—but what is
your name?
“Oh! Mahatma,” I answered at hazard.
“Which means, my friend Mahatma, that he spent most of the year in
killing the lower animals such as me. Yes, he spent quite eight months
out of the twelve in killing us one way and another, for when there was
no more killing to be done in his own country, he would travel to
others and kill there. He would even kill pigeons from a trap, or young
rooks just out of their nests, or rats in a stack, or sparrows among
ivy, rather than not kill anything. I’ve heard Giles say so to the
under-keeper and call him ‘a regular slaughterer’ and ‘a true-blood
Englishman.’
“Yet, my friend Mahatma, I say in the light of the truth which has come
to me, that according to his knowledge Grampus was a good man. Thus,
what little time he had to spare from sport he passed in helping his
brother men by sending them to prison. Although of course he never
worked or earned anything, he was very rich, because money flowed to
him from other people who had been very rich, but who at last were
forced to travel this Road and could not bring it with them. If they
could have brought it, I am sure that Grampus would never have got any.
However, he did get it, and he aided a great many people with that part
of it which he found he could not spend upon himself. He was a very
good man, only he liked killing us lower creatures, whom he bred up
with his money to be killed.
“Go on with your story, Hare,” I said; “when I see this Red-faced Man I
will judge of him for myself. Probably you are prejudiced about him.”
“I daresay I am,” answered the Hare, rubbing its nose; “but please
observe that I am not speaking unkindly of Grampus, although before I
have done you may think that I might have reason to do so. However, you
will be able to form your own opinion when he comes here, which I am
sure he does not mean to do for many, many years. The world is much too
comfortable for him. He does not wish to leave it.”
“Still he may be obliged to do so, Hare.”
“Oh! no, people like that are never obliged to do anything they do not
like. It is only poor things such as you and I, Mahatma, which must
suffer. I can see that you have had a great deal to bear, and so have
I, for we were born to suffering as the Red-faced Man was born to
happiness.”
“Go on with your story, Hare,” I repeated. “You are becoming
metaphysical and therefore dull. The time is short and I want to hear
what happened.”
“Quite so, Mahatma. Well, Grampus came up breathing very heavily and
looking very red in the face. He held his hat in one hand and a large
crooked stick in the other, and even the top of his head, on which no
hair grew, was red, for he had been running.
“What the deuce is the matter?” he puffed. “Oh! it is you, Giles, is
it? What are you doing, sir, looking like that, all covered with blood
and mud? Has a poacher shot you, or what?”
“No, Squire,” answered Giles humbly, touching his hat. “I have shot a
poacher, that’s all, and it has given me what for,” and he lifted the
body of the fox from the water.
“A fox,” said Grampus, “a fox! Do you mean to say, Giles, that you have
dared to shoot a fox, and a vixen with a litter too? How often have I
told you that, although I keep harriers and not fox-hounds, you are
never to touch a fox. You will get me into trouble with all my
neighbours. I give you a month’s notice. You will leave on this day
month.”
“Very well, Squire,” said Giles, “I’ll leave, and I hope you’ll find
some one to serve you better. Meanwhile I didn’t shoot the dratted fox.
At least I only shot her after she’d gone and got herself into a trap
which I had set for that there Rectory dog what you told me to make off
with on the quiet, so that the young lady might never know what become
of it and cry and make a fuss as she did about the last. Then seeing
that she was finished, with her leg half chewed off, I shot her, or
rather I didn’t shoot her as well as I should, for the beggar gave a
twist as I fired, and now she’s bit me right through the hand. I only
hopes you won’t have to pay my widow for it, Squire, under the Act, as
foxes’ bites is uncommon poisonous, especially when they’ve been
a-eating of rotten rabbit.”
“Dear me!” said the Red-faced Man softening, “dear me, the beast does
seem to have bitten you very badly. You must go and be cauterised with
a red-hot iron. It is painful but the best thing to do. Meanwhile, suck
it, Giles, suck it! I daresay that will draw out the poison, and if it
doesn’t, thank my stars! I am insured. Look here, a minute or two can
make no difference, for if you are poisoned, you are poisoned. Where
can we put this brute? I wouldn’t have it seen for ten pounds.”
“There’s an old pollard, Squire, about five yards away down near the
fence, which is hollow and handy,” said Giles.
“Quite so,” he answered, “I know it well. Do you bring the—dog, Giles.
Remember, it was a dog, not a fox.”
Then they went to the pollard, and as Giles’s hand was hurt the
Red-faced Man climbed up it, though Giles tried to prevent him.
“Now then, Giles,” he said, “give me the fox—I mean the dog, and I will
drop it down. Great Heavens! how this tree stinks. Has there been an
earth here?”
“Not as I knows of, Squire,” said Giles sullenly.
Grampus stretched his hand down into the hollow of the pollard and
dragged up a rotting fox by its tail.
“Giles,” he said, “you have been killing more foxes and hiding them in
this tree. Giles, I dismiss you at once and without a month’s wages.”
“All right, sir,” said Giles, “I’ll go, and I prays you’ll find some
one what will keep your hares which you must have, and your pheasants
which you must have, and your partridges which you must have, without
killing these varmints of foxes what eats the lot.”
The Red-faced Man descended from the tree holding his nose and looked
at Giles. Giles sucked his bleeding hand and looked at him.
“Foxes are very destructive animals,” said the Red-faced Man to Giles,
“especially when one shoots and keeps harriers.”
“They are that, sir,” said Giles to the Red-faced Man, “as only those
know what has to do with them.”
“Put the other in, Giles,” said the Red-faced man, “and when you have
time, throw some soil on to the top of the lot. This place smells
horrible. And look you here, Giles,” he added in a voice of thunder,
“if ever I find you killing a fox upon this property, you will be
dismissed at once, as I have often told you before. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Squire, I understand,” answered Giles, “and I’ll see to the
burying of them this same afternoon, if the pain in my hand will suffer
it.”
“Very well,” said the Red-faced Man, “that’s done with—except the cubs.
As you have killed the vixen you had better stink the cubs out of the
earth. I daresay they are old enough to look after themselves—at any
rate I hope so. And now, Giles, we must shoot some of these hares when
we begin on the partridges next week. There are too many of them, the
tenants are complaining, ungrateful beggars as they are, seeing that I
keep them for their sport.”
At this point I thought that I had heard enough, and slipped away when
their backs were turned. For, friend Mahatma, I had just seen a fox
shot, and now I knew what shooting meant.
About a week later I knew better still. It came about thus. By that
time the turnips I have mentioned, those that grew in the big field,
had swelled into fine, large bulbs with leafy tops. We used to eat them
at nights, and in the daytime to lie up among them in our snug forms.
You know, Mahatma, don’t you, that a form is a little hollow which a
hare makes in the ground just to fit itself? No hare likes to sleep in
another hare’s form. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I understand. It would be like a man wearing
another man’s boots.”
“I don’t know anything about boots Mahatma, except that they are hard
things with iron on them which kick one out of one’s form if one sits
too close. Once that happened to me. Well, my form was under a
particularly fine turnip that had some dead leaves beneath the green
ones. I chose it because, like the brown earth, they just matched the
colour of my back. I was sleeping there quite soundly when my sister
came and woke me.
“There are men in the field,” she said, her eyes nearly starting out of
her head with fear, for she was always very timid.
“I’m off.”
“Are you?” I answered. “Well, I think I shall stop here where I shan’t
be noticed. If we begin jumping over those turnips they will see us.”
“We might run down the rows, keeping our ears close to our backs,” she
remarked.
“No,” I said, “there are too many bare patches.”
At this moment a gun went ‘bang’ some way off; and my sister, like a
wise hare, scuttled away at full speed for the wood. But I only made
myself smaller than usual and lay watching and listening.
There was a good deal to see and hear; for instance, a covey of
partridges, troublesome birds that come scratching and fidgeting about
when one wants to sleep, were running to and fro in a great state of
concern.
“They are after us,” said the old cock.
“I remember the same thing last year. Come on, do.”
“How can I with all these young ones to look after?” answered the hen.
“Why, if once they are scattered I shall never find them again.”
“Just as you like, you know best,” said the cock. “Goodbye,” and away
he flew, while his wife and the rest ran to a little distance,
scattered and squatted.
Presently, looking back over my shoulders without turning my head, as a
hare can, I saw a line of men walking towards me. There was the
Red-faced Man whom Giles called Grampus behind his back and Squire to
his face. There was Giles himself, with his hurt hand tied up, holding
a kind of stick with a slit in it from which hung a lot of dead
partridges whose necks were in the slit. One of them was not dead or
had come to life again, for it flapped in the stick trying to fly away.
He held these in the hand that was tied up, and in the other, oh,
horror! was a dead hare bleeding from its nose. It looked uncommonly
like my mother, but whether it were or no I couldn’t be quite sure. At
least from that day neither my sister nor I ever saw her again. I
suppose you haven’t met her coming up this big white Road, have you,
Mahatma?
“No, no,” I answered impatiently, “I have already told you that you are
the first hare I have ever seen upon the Road. Please get on with your
story, or the Lights will change and the Gates be opened before I hear
its end.”
Just when I saw her I was thinking of running away, but the sight
terrified me so much that I could not stir. You see, Mahatma, I really
loved my mother as much as a hare can love anything, which is a good
deal.
Well, beyond Giles was, who do you think? That dreadful boy, Tom, with
a gun in his hand too. Did I say that they all had guns, except Giles
and some beater men, only that Tom’s was single-barrelled? Then there
were others whom I need not describe, stretching to left and right, and
worst of all, perhaps, there was Giles’s great black dog, a
silly-looking beast which always seemed to have its mouth open and its
tongue hanging out, and to be wagging a big tail like the fox’s, only
black and more ragged.
As I watched, up got the old hen partridge and one of her young ones
and flew towards me. The Red-faced Man lifted his gun and fired, once,
twice, and down came first the mother partridge and then the young one.
I forgot to say that Tom fired too at the old partridge, which fell
dead quite close to me, leaving a lot of feathers floating in the air.
As it fell Tom screeched out—
“I killed that, father.”
This made the Red-faced Man very angry.
“You young scoundrel,” he said, “how often have I told you not to shoot
at my birds under my nose? No sportsman shoots at another man’s birds,
and as for killing it, you were yards under the thing. If you do it
again I will send you home.”
“Sorry, father,” said Tom, adding in a low voice with a snigger, “I did
kill it after all. Dad thinks no one can hit a partridge except
himself.”
Just then up jumped my father near to Giles, and came leaping in front
of the Red-faced Man about twenty yards away from him.
“Mark hare!” shouted Giles, and Grampus, who was still glowering at Tom
and had not quite finished pushing the cartridges into his gun, shut it
up in a hurry and fired first one barrel and then the other. But my
father, who was very cunning, jumped into the air at the first shot and
ducked at the second, so that he was missed; at least I suppose that is
why he was missed.
Giles grinned and the Red-faced Man said, “Damn!” What does ‘damn’
mean, Mahatma? It was a very favourite word with the Red-faced Man, but
even now I can’t quite understand it.”
“Nor can I,” I answered. “Go on.”
“Well, my poor father next ran in front of Tom, who shot too and hit
him in the hind legs so that he rolled over and over in the turnips,
kicking and screaming. Have you ever heard a hare scream, Mahatma?”
“Yes, yes, it makes a horrid noise like a baby.”
“Wiped your eye that time, Dad,” cried Tom in an exultant voice.
“I don’t know about wiping my eye,” answered his father, turning quite
purple with rage, “but I wish you would be good enough, Thomas, not to
shoot my hares behind, so that they make that beastly row which upsets
me” (I think that the Red-faced Man was really kind at the bottom) “and
spoils them for the market. If you can’t hit a hare in front, miss it
like a gentleman.”
“As you do, Dad,” said Tom, sniggering again. “All right, I’ll try.”
“Giles,” roared Grampus, pretending not to hear, “send your dog and
fetch that hare. I can’t bear its screeching.”
So that great black dog rushed forward and caught my poor father in its
big mouth, although he tried to drag himself away on his front paws,
and after that I shut my eyes.
Then a lot of partridges got up and there was any amount of banging,
though most of them were missed. This made the Red-faced Man angrier
than ever. He took off his hat and waved it, bellowing—
“Call back that brute of a dog of yours, Giles. Call it back at once or
I’ll shoot it.”
So Giles called, “Nigger. Come you ’ere, Nigger! Nigg, Nigg, Nigg!”
But Nigger rushed about putting up partridges all over the place while
Grampus stamped and shouted and every one missed everything, till at
last Tom sat down on the turnips and roared with laughter.
At length, after Giles had beaten Nigger till he broke a stick over
him, making him howl terribly, order was restored, and the line having
reformed, began to march down on me. For, Mahatma, I was so frightened
by what had happened to my father, and I think my mother, that I didn’t
remember what he, I mean my dead father, had told me, always to run
away when there is a chance, as poor hares can only protect themselves
by flight.
So as I had lost the chance I thought that I would just sit tight,
hoping that they would not see me. Nor indeed would they if it hadn’t
been for that horrible Tom.
During the confusion the mother partridge which the Red-faced Man had
shot had been forgotten by everybody except Tom. Tom, you see, was
certain that he had shot it himself, being a very obstinate boy, and
was determined to retrieve it as his own.
Now that partridge had fallen within a yard of me, with its beak and
claws pointing to the sky, and when the line had passed where we lay
Tom lagged behind to look for it. He did not find it then, whether he
ever found it afterwards I am sure I don’t know. But he found me.
“By Jove! here’s a hare,” he said, and made a grab at me just as he had
done in the furze bush.
Well, I went. Tom shot when I wasn’t more than four yards from him, and
the whole charge passed like a bullet between my hind legs and struck
the ground under my stomach, sending up such a shower of earth and
stones that I was knocked right over.
“I’ve hit it!” yelled Tom, as he crammed another cartridge into his
single-barrelled gun.
By the time that it was loaded I was quite thirty yards away and going
like the wind. Tom lifted the gun.
“Don’t shoot!” roared the Red-faced Man.
“Mind that there boy!” bellowed Giles.
I was running down between two rows of turnips and presently butted
into a lad who was bending over, I suppose to pick up a partridge. At
any rate his tail—“do you call it his tail, Mahatma?”
“That will do,” I answered.
“Well, his tail was towards me; it looked very round and shiny. The
shot from Tom’s gun hit it everywhere. I wish they had all gone into
it, but as he was so far away the charge scattered and six of the
bullets struck me. Oh! they did hurt. Put your hand on my back,
Mahatma, and you will feel the six lumps they made beneath the grey
tufts of hair that grew over them, for they are still there.”
Forgetting that we were on the Road, I stretched out my hand; but, of
course, it went quite through the hare, although I could see the six
little grey tufts clearly enough.
“You are foolish, Hare; you don’t remember that your body is not here
but somewhere else.”
“Quite true, Mahatma. If it were here I could not be talking to you,
could I? As a matter of fact, I have no body now. It is—oh, never mind
where. Still, you can see the grey tufts, can’t you? Well, I only hope
that those shot hurt that fat boy half as much as they did me. No, I
don’t mean that I hope it now, I used to hope it.”
My goodness! didn’t he screech, much worse than my father when his legs
were broken. And didn’t everybody else roar and shout, and didn’t I
dance? Off I went right over the fat boy, who had tumbled down, up to
the end of the field, then so bewildered was I with shock and the
burning pain, back again quite close to them.
But now nobody shot at me because they all thought the boy was killed
and were gathered round him looking very solemn. Only I saw that the
Red-faced Man had Tom by the neck and was kicking him hard.
After that I saw no more, for I ran five miles before I stopped, and at
last lay down in a little swamp near the seashore to which my mother
had once taken me. My back was burning like fire, and I tried to cool
it in the soft slush.