The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (167 page)

THE FOX’S BURIAL ODE

‘Dear Fox, sleep here, and do not wake, We picked these leaves for your sake You must not try to rise or move, We give you this with our love. Close by the wood where once you grew Your mourning friends have buried you. If you had lived you’d not have been (been proper friends with us, I mean). But now you’re laid upon the shelf, Poor fox, you cannot help yourself, So, as I say, we are your loving friends—And here your Burial Ode, dear Foxy, ends. P. S.—When in the moonlight bright The foxes wander of a night, They’ll pass your grave and fondly think of you, Exactly like we mean to always do. So now, dear fox, adieu! Your friends are few But true To you. Adieu!’

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.

Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël, who scorned to ask for mercy. Dicky got purple and Noël 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?’

Dickie 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 Noël 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 Noël’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 for ever.’

‘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 Noël’s ear once more reposing in the other.

I thought Noël 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 Noël 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, ‘Noël 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 Noël’s ear and Alice snuggled up to Noël 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.

‘I can’t help it,’ he said, ‘we didn’t kill it, and that’s all there is to it.’

The white-whiskered magistrate may have been master of the fox-hounds, but he was not master of his temper, which is more important, I should think, than a lot of beastly dogs.

He said several words which Oswald would never repeat, much less in his own conversing, and besides that he called us ‘obstinate little beggars.’

Then suddenly Albert’s uncle entered in the midst of a silence freighted with despairing reflections. The M.F.H. got up and told his tale: it was mainly lies, or, to be more polite, it was hardly any of it true, though I supposed he believed it.

‘I am very sorry, sir’ said Albert’s uncle, looking at the bullets.

‘You’ll excuse my asking for the children’s version?’

‘Oh, certainly, sir, certainly,’ fuming, the fox-hound magistrate replied.

Then Albert’s uncle said, ‘Now Oswald, I know I can trust you to speak the exact truth.’

So Oswald did.

Then the white-whiskered fox-master laid the bullets before Albert’s uncle, and I felt this would be a trial to his faith far worse than the rack or the thumb-screw in the days of the Armada.

And then Denny came in. He looked at the fox on the table.

‘You found it, then?’ he said.

The M.F.H. would have spoken but Albert’s uncle said, ‘One moment, Denny; you’ve seen this fox before?’

‘Rather,’ said Denny; ‘I—’

But Albert’s uncle said, ‘Take time. Think before you speak and say the exact truth. No, don’t whisper to Oswald. This boy,’ he said to the injured fox-master, ‘has been with me since seven this morning. His tale, whatever it is, will be independent evidence.’

But Denny would not speak, though again and again Albert’s uncle told him to.

‘I can’t till I’ve asked Oswald something,’ he said at last. White Whiskers said, ‘That looks bad—eh?’

But Oswald said, ‘Don’t whisper, old chap. Ask me whatever you like, but speak up.’

So Denny said, ‘I can’t without breaking the secret oath.’

So then Oswald began to see, and he said, ‘Break away for all you’re worth, it’s all right.’

And Denny said, drawing relief’s deepest breath, ‘Well then, Oswald and I have got a pistol—shares—and I had it last night. And when I couldn’t sleep last night because of the toothache I got up and went out early this morning. And I took the pistol. And I loaded it just for fun. And down in the wood I heard a whining like a dog, and I went, and there was the poor fox caught in an iron trap with teeth. And I went to let it out and it bit me—look, here’s the place—and the pistol went off and the fox died, and I am so sorry.’

‘But why didn’t you tell the others?’

‘They weren’t awake when I went to the dentist’s.’

‘But why didn’t you tell your uncle if you’ve been with him all the morning?’

‘It was the oath,’ H. O. said—

‘May I be called a beastly sneak

If this great secret I ever repeat.’

White Whiskers actually grinned.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I see it was an accident, my boy.’ Then he turned to us and said—

‘I owe you an apology for doubting your word—all of you. I hope it’s accepted.’

We said it was all right and he was to never mind.

But all the same we hated him for it. He tried to make up for his unbelievingness afterwards by asking Albert’s uncle to shoot rabbits; but we did not really forgive him till the day when he sent the fox’s brush to Alice, mounted in silver with a note about her plucky conduct in standing by her brothers.

We got a lecture about not playing with firearms, but no punishment, because our conduct had not been exactly sinful, Albert’s uncle said, but merely silly.

The pistol and the cartridges were confiscated.

I hope the house will never be attacked by burglars. When it is, Albert’s uncle will only have himself to thank if we are rapidly overpowered, because it will be his fault that we shall have to meet them totally unarmed, and be their almost unresisting prey.

CHAPTER 10

THE SALE OF ANTIQUITIES

It began one morning at breakfast. It was the fifteenth of August—the birthday of Na
poleon the Great, Oswald Bastable, and another very nice writer. Oswald was to keep his birthday on the Saturday, so that his Father could be there. A birthday when there are only many happy returns is a little like Sunday or Christmas Eve. Oswald had a birthday-card or two—that was all; but he did not repine, because he knew they always make it up to you for putting off keeping your birthday, and he looked forward to Saturday.

Albert’s uncle had a whole stack of letters as usual, and presently he tossed one over to Dora, and said, ‘What do you say, little lady? Shall we let them come?’

But Dora, butter-fingered as ever, missed the catch, and Dick and Noël both had a try for it, so that the letter went into the place where the bacon had been, and where now only a frozen-looking lake of bacon fat was slowly hardening, and then somehow it got into the marmalade, and then H. O. got it, and Dora said—