The man put down his slasher, with care, after first wiping the blade. He straightened himself with care, being somewhat cramped from stooping. For a moment he stood, staring now with much attention at Frampton, for he meant to paint his portrait, with much exactness, at his favourite bar that night. After this had filled his mind, he turned up his eyes, gulped, and went down into the recesses of his memory, after odds and ends of words not used for years, perhaps.
Presently he began unexpectedly with words which went at first both above and below the tune, till he got to something midway between.
“Tom Jerkin was the huntsman, sir; my father used to know him in his latter day, when he’d come down a bit; for he had fall, Tom did, and never rode another ride. He couldn’t continue huntsman, not after the fall, so the gentlemen made him a cap, to set him up. But Tom spent it in a few weeks. Then, after that, he went about with the terriers and that, all he could, but it wasn’t much of a living, after being a huntsman and getting crowns and sovereigns and that from every lord in the land, so he came down in the world, as pride does.”
“How does the song go on, from there?”
“There comes a chorus, sir, there, what all are supposed to join in. It goes somehow. . . . There. . . . I do believe I’ve forgot the chorus. It goes with a bit of a cry, like it was the hounds joining in.
No, that doesn’t seem quite right to me. There was something came in before then about twice ten long miles.”
“I take it, that it’s a song about a fox-hunt?”
“Yes, like I’m singing it to you. It’s a song about the Spirr Wood Day. It was a day about the first of November. They drew the covert here and found a fox. Some said he wasn’t a fox and couldn’t ’a been, but must have been a wolf got away from a circus, for the dance he led ’em, but Tom Jerkin, who talked to my father, and who was in the covert and saw the fox, and was away with the hounds over that field there, Tom, who’d a right to know, and saw the fox, he said it was a fox, and not a very big one, just a small dog-fox, with a bit out of his ear. He may ’a been little, but he was good; little and good, as a Welshman’s cow, as we say.”
“And then he went away?”
“Yes, of course he did. Like I’m trying to sing to you, if you wouldn’t put me out of mind. And ever since then, the Tunster Hounds have drawed this cover the first day of the season, because in memory:
“They’ll have to find some other covert,” Frampton thought. “They will open here no more.” He spoke to the old man: “But tell me,” he said, “did they catch their fox on this day, whenever it was?”
He tried to judge, when the day had been. Zine was over seventy. He might have heard the song during the latest ’sixties, from a man who had heard it from Tom Jerkin, in the ’thirties, who might have learned it twenty years before.
“Tell me,” Frampton said, “have you lived all your life at Weston Mullples?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, “all my life. I’ve not been much of a traveller, except once with the old Rector to a rose show in London. That would ’a been the year of the first Jubilee, in old Mr. Drew’s time.”
“Did you ever hear of Sir Jocelyn Petersbury?”
“No, sir.”
“He lived at
“No, sir; never. Mr. Knares-Yocksir lived in Mullples, and his fathers before him.”
“This was the man who was there a hundred and fifty years ago, before the Knares-Yocksirs ever bought the place. He built a theatre and gave plays. Sir Jocelyn Petersbury.”
“No, sir.”
The local mind had remembered the fox-hunt, but not the giver of
“Tell me,” Frampton said, “in this famous fox-hunt, did they kill the fox?”
“No, they didn’t catch him,” the man said. “He took ’em all up and down, all day long, and in the evening, he brought ’em all that was left, the three of ’em, back to this Spirr Wood, where they lost ’un. Lots of horses dropped dead, that day, ah, and Mr. Flaggon had his back twisted; he was never what you could call straight, after that, Mr. Flaggon.”
“Where did Mr. Flaggon come from?”
“Mr. Flaggon? He was a London gentleman.”