“Cold grew the foggy morn: the day was brief:
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf:
The dew dwelt ever on the herb, the woods
Roared with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods.
All green was vanished, save the pine and yew,
That still displayed their melancholy hue,
Save the green holly with its berries red,
And the green moss that o’er the gravel spread.”
It was the last day of November, and, consequently, the concluding
one of the first month of regular hunting, that I was left at home
in consequence of indisposition. The huntsman had given me the night
before a dose of something which tasted horribly bitter, and I tried
to reject taking it; but, from my position between his knees, and his
ramming a bullock’s horn half down my throat, I was obliged to swallow
the nauseous mixture against my will. Between the effects of this, and
the mortification of being deprived of the pleasure of a day’s hunting,
my spirits became sadly depressed, and I could do nothing but creep
about the court whining, and feeling as miserable a dog as any on four
feet.
The day was very windy, and the light clouds, looking like fleecy wool,
scudded before the gale, charged with rain; but with the exception of
a few drops which occasionally fell, there was nothing as yet but the
threatening of the flooding storm.
Sighing, moaning, whistling, screaming--now in fitful gusts, then in
one solid sweep, mighty nature’s breath snaps the tree top and rends
up the gnarled roots of a century’s growth. On, on, he goes. Bough,
branch, twig, and leaf--clinging like affection to the dead--he
whirls and scatters in his stormy path, and with mad delight flings
destruction in his wake. O-ho for the wind. Away, o’er heath and waste,
and through dark and deep woods, and by lone churchyards, humming
through ivy-twined belfries, and jarring rickety casements, shaking old
hinges, and ripping up thatched eaves and roofs, he holds his course,
like a fiery unchecked steed. O-ho for the wind. Breasting the wave,
he drives the surge high, and higher yet. Rolling mountains, topped
with white and hissing foam, duck from cresting clouds to the wide
chasms below. O-ho for the wind--death to others is fun to him. A ship!
Boldly she braves his mighty thrust. Again. With one fell swoop, and,
quivering, down to the depths she sinks. O-ho for the wind.
It was late in the day, and darkness began to drop around before there
were any symptoms of my companions’ return. At length I heard the
welcome clink of the horses’ feet along the gravel road leading to the
kennel, and shortly afterwards old Mark threw open the door, and in
they trotted.
“Well,” said I, as Trimbush entered “what sport?”
“Oh!” replied he, “none at all. Such a wind as this,” continued he, “is
as bad as a blind fog or a hard frost; for the result is just the same.
We can do nothing with a fox while it lasts.”
“I didn’t think of that,” rejoined I, “or I should not have been so
envious of ye all day.”
“Might as well have been at home,” returned the old hound, in a
grumbling humour.
“You found?” said I.
“Of course we did,” he replied. “We never get a blank day. They are too
staunch and true preservers in _our_ country for that to take place.”
My companion was now called to take his turn in the warm bath, which
Mark had prepared, and after his body and limbs were well laved, he was
ordered into the lodging-room, where there was plenty of clean straw to
roll in.
“There’s nothing like this,” said Trimbush, rubbing his back, with all
his feet in the air. “There’s nothing like this,” repeated he, “after a
cold, wretched day. It warms one’s blood, prevents rheumatism, and is a
real blessed preventative to many disorders. I like my bath as well as
my meal.”
“You are no bad judge,” replied I, laughing.
“I should say not,” returned he. “I should say that I was anything but
a bad judge between what’s good for us and what is not.”
After all had been washed, and each had enjoyed a good tumble among the
straw, Mark summoned them to the feeding-room, where a bountiful meal
was ready for their sharpened appetites. When this was finished--and
it did not occupy many minutes--they were conducted to another
lodging-house, so that there might be no damp or chill remaining from
the wet straw in the one used as the _drying_ apartment. Nothing could
be more perfect than all the arrangements made for our health and
comfort, and yet, in themselves, they consisted of little more than a
simple method of doing that well, which would have occupied quite as
much time and trouble in the end to do badly.
“There,” remarked Trimbush, with his ribs sticking out as if they were
well lined within, “now I feel comfortable, and at peace with all the
world.”
“Except the foxes in it,” replied I.
“Oh!” rejoined he, “I have no enmity towards them. It’s the combined
joy of finding, running, and beating them, and the pleasure of----”
“Eating them,” added I.
“Well?” continued he, as if weighing the sentence, “I suppose we may
say that, too; but I am rather doubtful about it.”
“About what?” inquired I.
“About the eating part of the business,” replied he. “It’s true that
we break up a fox, and swallow him as if we loved his carcase better
than any other kind of flesh. But, in my opinion, it is more from
the excitement we are worked into than from any desirable flavour he
possesses. A fox is too near ourselves for him to be considered proper
food for our stomachs. It’s approaching particularly close to dog
eating dog.”
“But that you did once,” said I.
“Yes,” responded Trimbush, carelessly, “I know I did, and might again,
under similar circumstances. It only shows,” he continued, “what we
will do when in a rage or in an excited state. There is nothing with
life, from an elephant to a cockroach, but we would have a shy at.”
“Then you don’t believe that we really love the varmint as a dainty
morsel?” rejoined I.
“No,” returned he, “I think not. Fancy, for instance, your killing and
eating the poor little vixen chained just outside the kennel door.”
“Ugh!” said I, disgusted at the thought.
“Does not that prove what I say?” asked my companion. “We pass her
continually in going out and coming in, and yet not one of us ever
thinks of making a meal of her. But if the fox was our _natural_ food,
we couldn’t help doing so, and the first opportunity that presented
itself she would be digested victuals.”
“But, perhaps, the fear of getting a good drubbing may operate as a
check to the inclinations of others,” observed I.
“If that were the case,” replied he, “how is it that the hounds, which
occasionally come home by themselves hungry, never make the slightest
attempt to injure her? Nothing would be easier than to kill and eat the
fox without the smallest risk of being discovered.”
“There’s great force in your argument,” I remarked.
“I flatter myself that there generally is,” returned the egotistical
old hound. “Now, look at a cat with a bird,” he resumed, “the cases
are very different. Whether the bird is wild or not--let it be on the
tree or in a cage--she will be equally disposed to make it her prey.
Birds, like mice, are her natural food; and she, therefore, takes them
without any other motive than to please her palate; but foxes, not
being ours, we require the ardour of the chase to make them agreeable
to _our_ tastes.”
“What do you think would be the effect if we were not allowed to break
the fox up?” inquired I.
“That we should be just as eager to find, run and pull him down,”
replied he. “You hear sometimes of men talking about hounds wanting
blood. It’s all nonsense. We may want to _kill_; but hounds never flag
from want of _blood_. All highly bred dogs like _us_ love sport, and
we hunt for the enjoyment of it; not for our bellies. But men are such
selfish beasts, and think so much about eating that they can’t give us
credit for being more disinterested than themselves.”
“You are very severe on our masters,” rejoined I.
“Not more so than they deserve,” returned Trimbush. “Not one in a
thousand of ’em thinks for himself; but just repeats that which he’s
told, and so they go on babble, babble, babble, with about as much
meaning and sense as a flock of cackling geese. It’s a strange thing,
too,” continued he, “that what they see in one case, forms no precedent
or guide to their addlepated brains in another. I don’t mean to compare
pointers, or setters, or greyhounds with _us_, of course; but they
never get blood, and yet they take as much pleasure in their work, and
are as eager to find game, as if every bird shot over them was plucked,
roasted, and served up in rich gravy, on silver, for their suppers.
Now, it is quite clear that they don’t hunt for blood, and, therefore,
why should we? It is true that we look for it at the finish from habit,
and because we are cheered even to take it, and I never feel wilder
than when Tom and Ted are _who-whooping_ over us; but, to say that we
absolutely require _blood_, is all nonsense.”
“But the more we kill, the greater kill-devils we become,” said I.
“That’s true,” added my companion. “As in everything else, the supreme
gratification lies in securing the object sought to be gained, and
the running into our fox is ours. The same rule would apply to our
killing but seldom, and consequently being generally disappointed, as
to pointers and setters having very few birds shot over them. Continued
mortification would render all much less ardent for the work, in
consequence of the dearth of the great _climax_ to sport; not from the
covetous, greedy, piggish, grovelling want of the material to lick our
chops.”
Finding Trimbush getting warm upon the subject, I thought it better not
to provoke the discussion further, and made no reply. The old hound,
however, continued to abuse mankind in general, for some minutes, for
entertaining such a low estimate of our motives in the chase, and wound
up his observations by saying, “It’s not to be wondered at; for true
sportsmen are born, like poets--chaps with as much music in their souls
as we have in our tongues--now and then; but fools come into the world
every second.”