Free The Blue Field by John Moore Page B

riotous pack in England; and as most of them were pursuing moorhens, whimpering after water-rats, or simply standing at the edge of the osier-bed and waving their sterns, the fox cub had a fairly good start. It ran in a circle for about two miles, and gave the Hunt their fastest gallop of the season; but the hounds were close behind it when it came lolloping back towards the farmhouse and slipped through the hedge-gap near William’s drive gate.
    William had heard the hounds, and as he rushed out to rescue his fox cub he had armed himself, rather absurdly, with a shotgun, which in any case was unloaded. He was in time to see the hounds pull down the cub in his orchard – it was their first and last kill in the open during the whole of that season – and he was also in time to intercept General Bouverie and the rest of the field as they came puffing and snorting, a long way behind the hounds, full gallop up to his gate. There he confronted them, looking rather like a prophet of old with his bristling white beard, holding the shotgun at the ready.
    General Bouverie, a mild and courteous person when he was not on horseback, always became so excited during a hunt that he went purple in the face, blasted everybody he encountered with weird and terrible oaths, and demanded of them in furious tones, ‘Have you seen my fox, damn you?’ Peaceful shepherds, market-gardeners ploughing their land, and even passing motorists who were not aware there was a fox for miles, were often cursed up hill and down dale because they were too stupefied by the General’s dementedappearance to answer this terrifying question. But now, as the General pounded up to the gate and yelled out to William, ‘Have you seen my fox, damn you?’ he received a reply which he had certainly never had before.
    â€˜I have seen
my
fox,’ said William sternly, ‘and your hounds have just killed it.’
    â€˜Your fox?’ spluttered General Bouverie, who believed like all Masters of Foxhounds that he had a prescriptive right to all the foxes within the boundaries of his hunting-country, ‘What the devil do you mean by
your
fox?’ And he uttered his favourite oath, which was the most extraordinary one I have ever heard: ‘Fishcakes and haemorrhoids!’
    â€˜All the same,’ said William, with quiet dignity, ‘it was my fox; and this is my land; and if any of you dares to step over the boundary of my land I’ve got a gun.’
    A ridiculous situation arose, in which everybody talked except William. A woman with a drawling voice said, ‘The fellow must be drunk,’ several times. General Bouverie’s huntsman encouraged his hounds from a distance (although they needed no encouragement) to ‘tear ’im up, my beauties, tear ’im and worry ’im, worry, worry, worry!’ The General himself called upon fishcakes and haemorrhoids repeatedly but with diminishing conviction. And the Secretary of the Hunt, who was a lawyer, endeavoured to reason with William in a very learned way by pointing out that foxes, like other wild beasts, were legally considered to be animals
ferae naturae,
that is to say of a wild nature, in which the law recognized no private property whatsoever.
    But William, who was somewhat
ferae naturae
himself, took no notice. Perhaps he didn’t even listen, perhaps he was too full of grief for his little fox and of horror at the worrying noises of the hounds. But he continued to stand at the gate holding the gun awkwardly (for he hardly everused it) and looking rather like a stiff sentry ‘On guard’ in a bad Victorian oleograph. Anon the huntsman blew his horn, and the hounds began to come back to him in twos and threes, bloody and stinking of fox, carrying tatters of fur in their mouths. General Bouverie called and cursed them alliteratively:
    â€˜Hey, Barmaid, Bosphorus, blast the bitch, Bellman, Bountiful! Here, Dimple, Daisy, Dairymaid,