In front of a spacious fireplace of the old kind, when the logs were
well alight, and men with pipes and glasses were gathered before it in
great easeful chairs, and the wild weather outside and the comfort
that was within, and the season of the year--for it was Christmas--and
the hour of the night, all called for the weird or uncanny, then out
spoke the ex-master of foxhounds and told this tale.
I once had an odd experience too. It was when I had the Bromley and
Sydenham, the year I gave them up--as a matter of fact it was the last
day of the season. It was no use going on because there were no foxes
left in the county, and London was sweeping down on us. You could see
it from the kennels all along the skyline like a terrible army in
grey, and masses of villas every year came skirmishing down our
valleys. Our coverts were mostly on the hills, and as the town came
down upon the valleys the foxes used to leave them and go right away
out of the county and they never returned. I think they went by night
and moved great distances. Well it was early April and we had drawn
blank all day, and at the last draw of all, the very last of the
season, we found a fox. He left the covert with his back to London and
its railways and villas and wire and slipped away towards the chalk
country and open Kent. I felt as I once felt as a child on one
summer's day when I found a door in a garden where I played left
luckily ajar, and I pushed it open and the wide lands were before me
and waving fields of corn.
We settled down into a steady gallop and the fields began to drift by
under us, and a great wind arose full of fresh breath. We left the
clay lands where the bracken grows and came to a valley at the edge of
the chalk. As we went down into it we saw the fox go up the other side
like a shadow that crosses the evening, and glide into a wood that
stood on the top. We saw a flash of primroses in the wood and we were
out the other side, hounds hunting perfectly and the fox still going
absolutely straight. It began to dawn on me then that we were in for a
great hunt, I took a deep breath when I thought of it; the taste of
the air of that perfect Spring afternoon as it came to one galloping,
and the thought of a great run, were together like some old rare wine.
Our faces now were to another valley, large fields led down to it,
with easy hedges, at the bottom of it a bright blue stream went
singing and a rambling village smoked, the sunlight on the opposite
slopes danced like a fairy; and all along the top old woods were
frowning, but they dreamed of Spring. The "field" had fallen of and
were far behind and my only human companion was James, my old first
whip, who had a hound's instinct, and a personal animosity against a
fox that even embittered his speech.
Across the valley the fox went as straight as a railway line, and
again we went without a check straight through the woods at the top. I
remember hearing men sing or shout as they walked home from work, and
sometimes children whistled; the sounds came up from the village to
the woods at the top of the valley. After that we saw no more
villages, but valley after valley arose and fell before us as though
we were voyaging some strange and stormy sea, and all the way before
us the fox went dead up-wind like the fabulous Flying Dutchman. There
was no one in sight now but my first whip and me, we had both of us
got on to our second horses as we drew the last covert.
Two or three times we checked in those great lonely valleys beyond the
village, but I began to have inspirations, I felt a strange certainty
within me that this fox was going on straight up-wind till he died or
until night came and we could hunt no longer, so I reversed ordinary
methods and only cast straight ahead and always we picked up the scent
again at once. I believe that this fox was the last one left in the
villa-haunted lands and that he was prepared to leave them for remote
uplands far from men, that if we had come the following day he would
not have been there, and that we just happened to hit off his journey.
Evening began to descend upon the valleys, still the hounds drifted
on, like the lazy but unresting shadows of clouds upon a summer's day,
we heard a shepherd calling to his dog, we saw two maidens move
towards a hidden farm, one of them singing softly; no other sounds,
but ours, disturbed the leisure and the loneliness of haunts that
seemed not yet to have known the inventions of steam and gun-powder
(even as China, they say, in some of her further mountains does not
yet know that she has fought Japan).
And now the day and our horses were wearing out, but that resolute fox
held on. I began to work out the run and to wonder where we were. The
last landmark I had ever seen before must have been over five miles
back and from there to the start was at least ten miles more. If only
we could kill! Then the sun set. I wondered what chance we had of
killing our fox. I looked at James' face as he rode beside me. He did
not seem to have lost any confidence yet his horse was as tired as
mine. It was a good clear twilight and the scent was as strong as
ever, and the fences were easy enough, but those valleys were terribly
trying and they still rolled on and on. It looked as if the light
would outlast all possible endurance both of the fox and the horses,
if the scent held good and he did not go to ground, otherwise night
would end it. For long we had seen no houses and no roads, only chalk
slopes with the twilight on them, and here and there some sheep, and
scattered copses darkening in the evening. At some moment I seemed to
realise all at once that the light was spent and that darkness was
hovering, I looked at James, he was solemnly shaking his head.
Suddenly in a little wooded valley we saw climb over the oaks the
red-brown gables of a queer old house, at that instant I saw the fox
scarcely heading by fifty yards. We blundered through a wood into full
sight of the house, but no avenue led up to it or even a path nor were
there any signs of wheel-marks anywhere. Already lights shone here and
there in windows. We were in a park, and a fine park, but unkempt
beyond credibility; brambles grew everywhere. It was too dark to see
the fox any more but we knew he was dead beat, the hounds were just
before us,--and a four-foot railing of oak. I shouldn't have tried it
on a fresh horse the beginning of a run, and here was a horse near his
last gasp. But what a run! an event standing out in a lifetime, and
the hounds close up on their fox, slipping into the darkness as I
hesitated. I decided to try it. My horse rose about eight inches and
took it fair with his breast, and the oak log flew into handfuls of
wet decay--it rotten with years. And then we were on a lawn and at the
far end of it the hounds were tumbling over their fox. Fox, hounds and
light were all done together at the of a twenty-mile point. We made
some noise then, but nobody came out of the queer old house.
I felt pretty stiff as I walked round to the hall door with the mask
and the brush while James went with the hounds and the two horses to
look for the stables. I rang a bell marvellously encrusted with rust,
and after a long while the door opened a little way revealing a hall
with much old armour in it and the shabbiest butler that I have ever
known.
I asked him who lived there. Sir Richard Arlen. I explained that my
horse could go no further that night and that I wished to ask Sir
Richard Arlen for a bed for the night.
"O, no one ever comes here, sir," said the butler.