He was raging still at the insolence of the Hunt in disregarding his wishes. Yet he knew that Bynd could never have countenanced such disregard? Who had arranged this? He was pretty sure that it had been arranged. As he crossed the field, he remembered suddenly how the hounds had given tongue outside the covert. It was one of those mild autumn days in which all scents hang heavy, almost like weight and warmth together upon the palate. What if the scent of fox had reached the pack overwhelmingly from outside the covert, and that they had dashed off uncontrollably, at head? He knew nothing of fox-hunting, but remembered the American’s remark, that a hunting dog doesn’t give a damn for conscience. As to the huntsman, well, he was one of the pack on a hunting morning; if the hounds were off, he would probably go with them, and ask nothing better.
At this point, he stopped dead. On the warm air a waft came upon his open mouth; he smelt again the anise of which the woman had partaken.
“That’s the explanation, is it?” he muttered. “Aniseed; an aniseed drag, to take the Hunt through Spirr.”
He stooped towards the ground; at one point a few feet from him aniseed must had been spilled; the place was rank with it. He went on to the covert, noting the damage to the fence. Tim, his warden, was not in his cottage. Three boys and two men were strolling in the wood; he told them to be out of it. The smell of aniseed led him through the wood, over the stream by the little bridge, and out of the wood on the far side to a point where several horsemen had waited for some time. Fusees, two half-cigars, and some cigarette-butts lay on the poachings of the hunters’ hooves.
“They were in the know,” he commented. “They knew that the hounds would run through Spirr, and break just here. This is all planned.”
There was no need to go farther. Occasional wafts of anise reached him. The tracks of the Hunt were printed plain across the field; they had gone off for Joys Bridge and Wicked Hill, as in the ballad. Lines of the ballad, which he had now seen, came into his mind.
His mind meditated evil, but he saw that it might be difficult to catch the culprits and do evil to them. After all, could it be an offence to trail a bit of old rabbit or herring dipped in aniseed along the ground? This had every symptom of being a rag, devised by a few bright young things. That hard-mouthed jade in his drive, who stank of anise, was one of the contrivers, no doubt; she and a few of her set had probably laid the drag, given a wink and a tip to the Hunt servants and all had followed, as the night the day.
He thought, also, that it was possible that the rag had not been devised against, or at least not wholly against, himself. Why should they not have devised it against the crusted old sports who swore by the Tunster Tradition? Might it not have been fun to a queer kind of fool to hear these fellows blethering later about “a wonderful run, sir, over the very line taken on the Spirr Wood Day?” But he put this thought from him. His shutting of Spirr had angered every sportsman in the Tunster country. And anyhow, the Hunt had known that he wished the Wood to be respected. Anyone who had seen his gate, chained, padlocked and wired fast, would have known that it was devised to keep people from passing through. Instead of regarding it, they had burst it open by force, lifted it from its hinges and left it unshipped. The Hunt had done that. Those fellows, whom he had seen urging two men to break his fence, would not have scrupled to bid others to lift the gate out of the way. Well, what he could do, he would do to trace the guilty. In any case, the hounds had trespassed; the Hunt was responsible for that. If he could make them squirm for it, he would. But he knew that poor old Bynd had nothing to do with it. Tilter was the lad, Annual-Tilter. His heart was raging for a victim, and at this point he thought of Timothy, his caretaker. Where was Timothy that morning of all mornings? Why had not Timothy seen the drag being laid and come to report? “He’s nothing but a damn young slacker,” he thought. But had the young slacker been bribed by the bright young things to be out of the way? Had he been lured out of the way? Well, after all, if he had gone to Stubbington to shop, it would have been no great sin. Anyhow, one young man could hardly have stopped a pack in full cry with their heads up.
However, he would deal with Tim later; he had some sleuthing to do. He meant to take casts of the footprints at the point where the hounds had “found” and gone off.