Free Love and the Loveless by Henry Williamson Page A

good manners.
    The huntsman, lean red face and hawk nose, wore a coat more pink than red with many rubbed-out weather-stains. He sat his grey horse, apart from the pack. The hounds were in a rough circle, squatting on their haunches apart from the riders. Two whippers-in, one of them a boy, in red coats, were guarding them. The hounds looked to be smaller than those he remembered at Rookhurst, and of a uniform pale yellow and white in colour.
    “Jim’s hunting the lady pack today. Very fast goin’. Look at their feet, like cats’.” A howl came from beyond a group of outbuildings , followed by other bayings. “That’s the dog pack—they know the little bitches are out today. Don’t look so serious. You’ll be all right. I shouldn’t try and take your own line, as you don’t know the country. Follow the rest of the field, most of ’m will go through gates, if you have any doubt about your horse. You know, of course, that hounds always have right of way? Never over-ride ’em. I got cussed good and proper once, by the master, for ridin’ ahead of him.”
    A butler, followed by three parlour-maids in dark brown uniform dresses and starched white caps with long tabs, came out of the house and went from rider to rider with trays holding glasses. After the serving of sherry there came a double toot on the horn, and to the noises of hooves on gravel the pack moved off, between the whippers-in, following the huntsman. Then the master led the field down an extension of the gravel drive and through two towering rhododendron clumps to an iron gate, held open by an old gardener with dundreary whiskers and felt hat in hand. They were now in the park. To the massed mournful singing of hounds in kennels, and the toot-toot-toot of the horn, the huntsman ahead began to trot, and the field behind, spreading fanwise over the grass, started to bob, shake, and struggle with horse-heads. Steady, Prince, steady! But Prince felt the general excitement, so did the rooks which rose cawing out of the oaks, to flap up and float into the pale sky, now clearing of the lower mists, and revealing patches of blue. The colour exhilarated Phillip, and he wanted to shout, feeling so greatly happy. Here he was, following a famous pack, accompanied by a groom with two spare leathers worn like bandoliers, told off by Hobart to see that he, Phillip Maddison Esquire (since he held His Majesty’s commission) was all right; while just in front All Weather Jack, thick-peaked buff cap withwide polished leather band set at an angle, was trotting cavalry-fashion , not rising up and down in the saddle but sitting out the bumps as though screwed to the saddle. All Weather Jack beckoned Phillip to come beside him.
    “We’re going to draw Galton Spinney in the middle of the plough you can see half right through the trees ahead. If there’s a fox there, he’ll probably come out at the far end. Anyway, I’ll show you where we can stand and get a view of both sides of the spinney.”
    At the end of the park the field waited, while the huntsman jumped a ditch; and followed by hounds and the flanking whips, entered the ploughed field, which lay in steeply laid furrows, causing the horses to stagger at times. Some of the field were making to the left of the park, where it joined a meadow. Others were jumping the ditch. Hobart said, “Follow me.” He put his horse at the ditch, it gathered itself and sprang over, while he clung like a frog. Feeling that everyone knew he was an amateur, Phillip turned Prince’s head and with indecisive pressure of calves hoped he would get over all right. His horse took him over, he lost an iron, it clanged as Prince galloped after the other horse. He pulled at its mouth, loose on the slippery saddle, somehow got his balance, and kicking his boot into the iron, felt steadier. Prince slowed to a trot beside the horse it had followed.
    About a dozen riders waited on a hillock immediately overlooking the hedge, and the lines of