The Wouldbegoods (17 page)

The fox was cold, but its fur was so pretty, and its tail and its little feet. Dicky strung the dogs on the leash; they were so much interested we thought it was better.

‘It does seem horrid to think it’ll never see again out of its poor little eyes,’ Dora said, blowing her nose.

‘And never run about through the wood again, lend me your hanky, Dora,’ said Alice.

‘And never be hunted or get into a hen roost or a trap or anything exciting, poor little thing,’ said Dicky.

The girls began to pick green chestnut leaves to cover up the poor fox’s fatal wound, and Noel began to walk up and down making faces, the way he always does when he’s making poetry. He cannot make one without the other. It works both ways, which is a comfort.

‘What are we going to do now?’ H.O. said; ‘the huntsman ought to cut off its tail, I’m quite certain. Only, I’ve broken the big blade of my knife, and the other never was any good.’

The girls gave H.O. a shove, and even Oswald said, ‘Shut up’, for somehow we all felt we did not want to play fox hunting any more that day. When his deadly wound was covered the fox hardly looked dead at all.

‘Oh, I wish it wasn’t true!’ Alice said.

Daisy had been crying all the time, and now she said, ‘I should like to pray God to make it not true.’

But Dora kissed her, and told her that was no good – only she might pray God to take care of the fox’s poor little babies, if it had had any, which I believe she has done ever since.

‘If only we could wake up and find it was a horrid dream,’ Alice said.

It seems silly that we should have cared so much when we had really set out to hunt foxes with dogs, but it is true. The fox’s feet looked so helpless. And there was a dusty mark on its side that I know would not have been there if it had been alive and able to wash itself.

Noel now said, ‘This is the piece of poetry’:

‘Let’s have a funeral,’ said H.O. This pleased everybody, and we got Dora to take off her petticoat to wrap the fox in, so that we could carry it to our garden and bury it without bloodying our jackets. Girls’ clothes are
silly in one way, but I think they are useful too. A boy cannot take off more than his jacket and waistcoat in any emergency, or he is at once entirely undressed. But I have known Dora take off two petticoats for useful purposes and look just the same outside afterwards.

We boys took it in turns to carry the fox. It was very heavy. When we got near the edge of the wood Noel said –

‘It would be better to bury it here, where the leaves can talk funeral songs over its grave for ever, and the other foxes can come and cry if they want to.’ He dumped the fox down on the moss under a young oak tree as he spoke.

‘If Dicky fetched the spade and fork we could bury it here, and then he could tie up the dogs at the same time.’

‘You’re sick of carrying it,’ Dicky remarked, ‘that’s what it is.’ But he went on condition the rest of us boys went too.

While we were gone the girls dragged the fox to the edge of the wood; it was a different edge to the one we went in by – close to a lane – and while they waited for the digging or fatigue party to come back, they collected a lot of moss and green things to make the fox’s long home soft for it to lie in. There are no flowers in the woods in August, which is a pity.

When we got back with the spade and fork we dug a hole to bury the fox in. We did not bring the dogs back, because they were too interested in the funeral to behave with real, respectable calmness.

The ground was loose and soft and easy to dig when we had scraped away the broken bits of sticks and the
dead leaves and the wild honeysuckle; Oswald used the fork and Dicky had the spade. Noel made faces and poetry – he was struck so that morning – and the girls sat stroking the clean parts of the fox’s fur till the grave was deep enough. At last it was; then Daisy threw in the leaves and grass, and Alice and Dora took the poor dead fox by his two ends and we helped to put him in the grave. We could not lower him slowly – he was dropped in, really. Then we covered the furry body with leaves, and Noel said the Burial Ode he had made up. He says this was it, but it sounds better now than it did then, so I think he must have done something to it since:

When this had been said we filled in the grave and covered the top of it with dry leaves and sticks to make it look like the rest of the wood. People might think it was a treasure, and dig it up, if they thought there was anything buried there, and we wished the poor fox to sleep sound and not to be disturbed.

The interring was over. We folded up Dora’s bloodstained pink cotton petticoat, and turned to leave the sad spot.

We had not gone a dozen yards down the lane when we heard footsteps and a whistle behind us, and a scrabbling and whining, and a gentleman with two fox terriers had called a halt just by the place where we had laid low the ‘little red rover’.

The gentleman stood in the lane, but the dogs were digging – we could see their tails wagging and see the dust fly. And we
saw where
. We ran back.

‘Oh, please, do stop your dogs digging there!’ Alice said.

The gentleman said ‘Why?’

‘Because we’ve just had a funeral, and that’s the grave.’

The gentleman whistled, but the fox-terriers were not trained like Pincher, who was brought up by Oswald. The gentleman took a stride through the hedge gap.

‘What have you been burying – pet dicky bird, eh?’ said the gentleman, kindly. He had riding breeches and white whiskers.

We did not answer, because now, for the first time, it came over all of us, in a rush of blushes and uncomfortableness, that burying a fox is a suspicious act. I don’t know why we felt this, but we did.

Noel said dreamily –

‘We found his murdered body in the wood, And dug a grave by which the mourners stood.’

But no one heard him except Oswald, because Alice and Dora and Daisy were all jumping about with the jumps of unrestrained anguish, and saying, ‘Oh, call them off! Do! do! – oh, don’t, don’t! Don’t let them dig.’

Alas! Oswald was, as usual, right. The ground of the grave had not been trampled down hard enough, and he had said so plainly at the time, but his prudent counsels had been overruled. Now these busy-bodying, meddling, mischief-making fox terriers (how different from Pincher, who minds his own business unless told otherwise) had scratched away the earth and laid bare the reddish tip of the poor corpse’s tail.

We all turned to go without a word, it seemed to be no use staying any longer.

But in a moment the gentleman with the whiskers had got Noel and Dicky each by an ear – they were nearest him. H.O. hid in the hedge. Oswald, to whose noble breast sneakishness is, I am thankful to say, a stranger, would have scorned to escape, but he ordered his sisters to bunk in a tone of command which made refusal impossible.

‘And bunk sharp, too,’ he added sternly. ‘Cut along home.’

So they cut. The white-whiskered gentleman now encouraged his angry fox terriers, by every means at his command, to continue their vile and degrading occupation; holding on all the time to the ears of Dicky and Noel, who scorned to ask for mercy. Dicky got purple and Noel got white. It was Oswald who said –

‘Don’t hang on to them, sir. We won’t cut. I give you my word of honour.’

‘
Your
word of honour,’ said the gentleman, in tones for which, in happier days, when people drew their bright blades and fought duels, I would have had his heart’s dearest blood. But now Oswald remained calm and polite as ever.

‘Yes, on my honour,’ he said, and the gentleman dropped the ears of Oswald’s brothers at the sound of his firm, unswerving tones. He dropped the ears and pulled out the body of the fox and held it up.

The dogs jumped up and yelled.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you talk very big about words of honour. Can you speak the truth?’

Dicky said, ‘If you think we shot it, you’re wrong. We know better than that.’

The white-whiskered one turned suddenly to H.O. and pulled him out of the hedge.

‘And what does that mean?’ he said, and he was pink with fury to the ends of his large ears, as he pointed to the card on H.O.’s breast, which said, ‘Moat House Fox-Hunters’.

Then Oswald said, ‘We
were
playing at fox hunting, but we couldn’t find anything but a rabbit that hid, so
my brother was being the fox; and then we found the fox shot dead, and I don’t know who did it; and we were sorry for it and we buried it – and that’s all.’

‘Not quite,’ said the riding-breeches gentleman, with what I think you call a bitter smile, ‘not quite. This is my land and I’ll have you up for trespass and damage. Come along now, no nonsense! I’m a magistrate and I’m Master of the Hounds. A vixen, too! What did you shoot her with? You’re too young to have a gun. Sneaked your Father’s revolver, I suppose?’

Oswald thought it was better to be goldenly silent. But it was vain. The Master of the Hounds made him empty his pockets, and there was the pistol and the cartridges.

The magistrate laughed a harsh laugh of successful disagreeableness.

‘All right,’ said he, ‘where’s your licence? You come with me. A week or two in prison.’

I don’t believe now he could have done it, but we all thought then he could and would, what’s more.

So H.O. began to cry, but Noel spoke up. His teeth were chattering yet he spoke up like a man.

He said, ‘You don’t know us. You’ve no right not to believe us till you’ve found us out in a lie. We don’t tell lies. You ask Albert’s uncle if we do.’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said the White-Whiskered. But Noel’s blood was up.

‘If you do put us in prison without being sure,’ he said, trembling more and more, ‘you are a horrible tyrant like Caligula, and Herod, or Nero, and the Spanish Inquisition, and I will write a poem about it in prison, and people will curse you forever.’

‘Upon my word,’ said White Whiskers. ‘We’ll see about that,’ and he turned up the lane with the fox hanging from one hand and Noel’s ear once more reposing in the other.

I thought Noel would cry or faint. But he bore up nobly – exactly like an early Christian martyr.

The rest of us came along too. I carried the spade and Dicky had the fork. H.O. had the card, and Noel had the magistrate. At the end of the lane there was Alice. She had bunked home, obeying the orders of her thoughtful brother, but she had bottled back again like a shot, so as not to be out of the scrape. She is almost worthy to be a boy for some things.

She spoke to Mr Magistrate and said –

‘Where are you taking him?’

The outraged majesty of the magistrate said, ‘To prison, you naughty little girl.’

Alice said, ‘Noel will faint. Somebody once tried to take him to prison before – about a dog. Do please come to our house and see our uncle – at least he’s not – but it’s the same thing. We didn’t kill the fox, if that’s what you think – indeed we didn’t. Oh, dear, I do wish you’d think of your own little boys and girls if you’ve got any, or else about when you were little. You wouldn’t be so horrid if you did.’

I don’t know which, if either, of these objects the fox-hound master thought of, but he said –

‘Well, lead on,’ and he let go Noel’s ear and Alice snuggled up to Noel and put her arm round him.

It was a frightened procession, whose cheeks were pale with alarm – except those between white whiskers, and
they were red – that wound in at our gate and into the hall among the old oak furniture, and black and white marble floor and things.

Dora and Daisy were at the door. The pink petticoat lay on the table, all stained with the gore of the departed. Dora looked at us all, and she saw that it was serious. She pulled out the big oak chair and said, ‘Won’t you sit down?’ very kindly to the white-whiskered magistrate.

He grunted, but did as she said.

Then he looked about him in a silence that was not comforting, and so did we. At last he said –

‘Come, you didn’t try to bolt. Speak the truth, and I’ll say no more.’

We said we had.

Then he laid the fox on the table, spreading out the petticoat under it, and he took out a knife and the girls hid their faces. Even Oswald did not care to look. Wounds in battle are all very well, but it’s different to see a dead fox cut into with a knife.

Next moment the magistrate wiped something on his handkerchief and then laid it on the table, and put one of my cartridges beside it. It was the bullet that had killed the fox.

‘Look here!’ he said. And it was too true. The bullets were the same.

A thrill of despair ran through Oswald. He knows now how a hero feels when he is innocently accused of a crime and the judge is putting on the black cap, and the evidence is convulsive and all human aid is despaired of.