On the grassy open rise beyond the cross tracks, where a signpost stood, Ferse was running towards the north side of the hill.
‘A second track goes down there, I remember.’
‘It’s all chance, but we can’t stop now.’
Ferse had ceased to run, he was walking slowly with stooped head up the rise. They watched him from behind their yew tree till he vanished over the hill’s shoulder.
‘Now!’ said Hilary.
It was a full half mile, and both of them were over fifty.
‘Not too fast, old man,’ panted Hilary; ‘we mustn’t bust our bellows.’
They kept to a dogged jog, reached the shoulder, over which Ferse had vanished, and found a grass track trailing down.
‘Slowly does it now,’ gasped Hilary.
Here too the hillside was dotted with bushes and young trees, and they made good use of them till they came to a shallow chalk pit.
‘Let’s lie up here a minute, and get our wind. He’s not going off the Down or we’d have seen him. Listen!’
From below them came a chanting sound. Adrian raised his head above the pit side and looked over. A little way down by the side of the track lay Ferse on his back. The words of the song he was droning out came up quite clearly:
‘Must I go bound, and you go free?
Must I love a lass that couldn’t love me?
Was e’er I taught so poor a wit
As love a lass, would break my heart.’
He ceased and lay perfectly still; then, to Adrian’s horror, his face became distorted; he flung his fists up in the air, cried out: ‘I won’t – I won’t be mad!’ and rolled over on his face.
Adrian dropped back.
‘It’s terrible! I must go down and speak to him.’
‘We’ll both go – round by the track – slow – don’t startle him.’
They took the track which wound round the chalk pit. Ferse was no longer there.
‘Quietly on, old son,’ said Hilary.
They walked on in a curious calm, as if they had abandoned the chase.
‘Who can believe in God?’ said Adrian.
A wry smile contorted Hilary’s long face.
‘In God I believe, but not a merciful one as we understand the word. On this hillside, I remember, they trap. Hundreds of rabbits suffer the tortures of the damned. We used to let them out and knock them on the head. If my beliefs were known, I should be unfrocked. That wouldn’t help. My job’s a concrete one. Look! A fox!’
They stood a moment watching his low fulvous body steal across the track.
‘Marvellous beast, a fox! Great places for wild life, these wooded chines; so steep, you can’t disturb them – pigeons, jays, woodpeckers, rabbits, foxes, hares, pheasants – every mortal thing.’
The track had begun to drop, and Hilary pointed
Ahead, beyond the dip into the chine they could see Ferse walking along a wire fence.
They watched till he vanished then reappeared on the side of the hill, having rounded the corner of the fence.
‘What now?’
‘He can’t see us from there. To speak to him, we must somehow get near before we try, otherwise he’ll just run.’
They crossed the dip and went up along and round the corner of the fence under cover of the hawthorns. On the uneven hillside Ferse had again vanished.
‘This is wired for sheep,’ said Hilary, ‘Look! they’re all over the hill – Southdowns.’
They reached a top. There was no sign of him.
They kept along the wire, and reaching the crest of the next rise, stood looking. Away to the left the hill dropped steeply into another chine; in front of them was open grass dipping to a wood. On their right was still the wire fencing and rough pasture. Suddenly Adrian gripped his brother’s arm. Not seventy yards away on the other side of the wire Ferse was lying face to the grass, with sheep grazing close to him. The brothers crawled to the shelter of a bush. From there, unseen, they could see him quite well, and they watched him in silence. He lay so still that the sheep were paying him no attention. Round-bodied, short-legged, snub-nosed, of a greyish white, and with the essential cosiness of the Southdown breed, they grazed on, undisturbed.
‘Is he asleep, d’you think?’
Adrian shook his head. ‘Peaceful, though.’
There was something in his attitude that went straight to the heart; something that recalled a small boy hiding his head in his mother’s lap; it was as if the feel of the grass beneath his body, his face, his outstretched hands, were bringing him comfort; as if he were groping his way back into the quiet security of Mother Earth. While he lay like that it was impossible to disturb him.
The sun, in the west, fell on their backs, and Adrian turned his face to receive it on his cheek. All the nature-lover and country man in him responded to that warmth, to the scent of the grass, the song of the larks, the blue of the sky; and he noticed that Hilary too had turned his face to the sun. It was so still that, but for the larks’ song and the muffled sound of the sheep cropping, one might have said Nature was dumb. No voice of man or beast, no whirr of traffic came up from the weald.