“I hope so, I’m sure,” Frampton said.
“Yes, I suppose you do; but why, Fram?”
“I’m not religious in any way. You were generous to me in that. You helped me to see that unless religion is a mystical thing, it is not important to the soul. I loathe sport, because it is based on cruelty. No man would tolerate the torture of sport if he would consider it. Think of the outcry there would be if, I will not say grown men and women, but boys were to chase a cat, or a dog, or a pony, with dogs. It would be counted an infamy and the boys would be birched by magistrates’ order, or have their souls examined by some analyst. Yet sportsmen (grown men and women, mind you; mature beings) are permitted to run stags, foxes and otters to death in every county of the land. These same people are quick enough to raise a stir, if some lout or brute draws a badger or has a main of cocks. Then they’ll hunt a stag or a fox or an otter till he drops; and boast of it in the Press for years, especially if a few horses are killed. ‘Grand day with the Tunster: Stag takes to sea: Seven couple of hounds drowned’: you know the kind of tosh. And then the tripe about all these fellows being born cavalry leaders and the rest of it. And the improvement in the breed of horses. What is the hunter good for, except hunting? He isn’t any use for draught. As for chargers, I hope we’ve come to the end of them. As to the devotion of the fox-hunter for his favourite horse, it may exist, and probably does; but I’ve seen several hunting men scrap their old hunters after years of service. . . .
“You were saying that the English are giving up their two pleasures, Puritanism and fox-hunting, for a third pleasure, the taking of patent medicines. D’ye know, I take that for a sign of life. They realise they aren’t up to the mark and are trying to make themselves fit. Presently, they’ll learn that they’ll not be really well till they work in the fields again, in the open air, and eat the fresh food they raise; then they’ll find that health will suggest and cause pleasure enough. Long before then, though, they’ll drop a few of the forms of death they love most, including Mansell’s matchless guns. They’ll drop a lot of bunk and a deal of blah before they get to that point.”
“They’ll drop what we call civilisation.”
“Yes. And what does it amount to? Money-snatching in cities and fox-hunting in the country. Who would be tuppence the worse if the whole of Europe died to-night?”
The old man looked at his son with sad eyes; Margaret’s death had made him cynical, as he had feared it might.
“The world would be the worse,” he said; “some right ways are being tried, as well as some wrong ones. But, think over my suggestion about hunting, or at least riding. There is something in being a part of one’s community, whatever it may be; a man gets strength from it. All the mess in the world seems to me to come from that one point, that the governors are out of touch with the governed. You’ll find that they’ll expect you to hunt. In that Mullples district, hunting is the main occupation and interest of the inhabitants. The paper said that the chap with the broken thigh had brought it, that is the Tunster pack, to a fine pitch of perfection. He’s a fox-hunter who knows his business, it said.”
“I suppose it isn’t a difficult business,” Frampton growled. “Judging by the people who do it most. Few of them do anything else and couldn’t if they had to. Imagine them on a committee. They were in charge in the early part of the War, and a pretty lot of tombstones are raised to their credit.”
“You’re unjust to them, Fram,” the old man said. “The vote of the world is for them. I regret it, perhaps, but I don’t cavil at it. In this case, the thing that weighs is beauty. The beauty of the hunt is so great that people forget the cruelty.”
“Don’t tell me that the fox-hunters care for the beauty,” his son said. “They like the swank and the display. If they cared for beauty, there’d be more of it in the towns and houses they live in. They don’t; they don’t give a tuppeney curse for anything about it, but going fast in an expensive suit.”
“My own youth would have been the poorer without that beauty,” the old man said. “However, you will presently be settled where you can judge of it better than I. I had nothing to put in its place; you have.”
Frampton had to spend the next week at the Works picking up the strings and resuming control. At the end of the week, he took train to Tatchester, meaning to spend the week-end at Mullples. It was to be his first home-coming.
He had so loathed the thought of going home without Margaret that he had put it off as long as he could; it was now a time of beginning frost, short days and fluttering leaves. The line kept beating in his brain, about the little house “we built to be so gay with.” He had never gone to Mullples from Tatchester with Margaret; he chose that route so that he might not be reminded of her; but he was reminded of her cruelly continually. He had seen most of the landmarks on the line with her, at one time or another. There were women in the compartment with him of the kinds he most loathed; creatures with plucked eyebrows, machined hair, rouged lips, scarlet nails; all smoking. The sight of them filled him with rage; they were left and she had been taken; he could see no sense nor justice in it.
“It’s part of the infernal game called Life,” he thought.
He bought an evening paper and read it as the train sped through the fields. At the end of the paper, his eye caught a familiar name in the column headed “Hunting Gossip.” He read the paragraph through.
‘Lovers of sport will be delighted to hear that Col. Annual-Tilter will hunt the Tunster country during the regrettable absence of the Master, whose broken bone we are glad to learn is progressing satisfactorily. Col. Annual-Tilter is no stranger to the Tunster country, and hopes to show as good sport as his predecessor.’
“The hell he hopes it,” Frampton muttered to himself. “Annual-Tilter again, that dud in the Anti-Progress Office, who turned down my gun in the War, and blocked even the trial of it for a year. Hopes to show as good sport as his predecessor, does he? Let him not come near Mullples, he and his damnation pack.”
His old rage with the dud rose up in him. He had longed to fire a few rounds of his gun through Annual-Tilter’s foolish head. Now Tilter might be bringing his hounds to draw Spirr. Would he, by George? Just let him try. The thought of having a little of his own back was almost more than he could bear.
The train drew up at the dismal station of Tatchester. He descended; his driver, who had been waiting for him, ran up and took his gear. Looking back at the train, Frampton saw the hated Colonel himself getting down from one of the smoking compartments in the same carriage. It was dark by this time, and Tatchester station was ill-lit, as ever, but the Colonel was unmistakable.
“The same simple English character,” Frampton muttered. “But if I’d a mouth like that, I’d either grow a moustache or have it sewn up.”
The Colonel’s mouth was not his strong point, but he was not a bad-looking man; he bore himself well. As he looked about him under one of the light-standards, a lady advanced to meet him; she was the lady who had spoken to Frampton in Spirr Wood a few weeks before. She was dressed at much greater cost and less success than on the last occasion, having been to a sherry-party; Frampton caught a reek of sherry and scent from her as she passed. She hailed the Colonel in her rather high, cracked voice.