The Fox in the Attic Read Online Free Page A

halfway up a rope?
    Or take the story of that disastrous fox-hunt (it had been Uncle Arthur speaking this time, sitting on Augustine’s little bed one evening and feeding him with bread-and-milk). Wolves, imported by a noble Polish exile to make his new Pembrokeshire home more homelike, were alleged to have crossed with the local foxes and brought forth monstrous hybrid young: hence, ultimately, Uncle Arthur’s bedtime story of those little terrified figures in Pink clinging in trees with a pack of huge red ravening foxes howling underneath (the story had been told with relish, for the Master of Otterhounds had despised fox-hunters “sitting dry-arse on their horses all day” almost as he had despised Liberals).
    These particular grotesques were only hearsay, and perhaps even fabulous. But as well as his uncles there were plenty of other notable “outsides” Augustine had seen among his elders with his own eyes. There was Dr. Brinley, for instance: who was legendary, but living still. Dr. Brinley was an aged adored fox-hunting coroner never even half sober even when on a horse. Once Augustine as a schoolboy had pulled off his cap in the High Street at Penrys Cross out of respect for the dead; but it proved to be the coroner not the corpse they were carrying into Court.
    Another notable grotesque here had been the late rector: parson not person, a mere clerical keeper of pigs that used to get loose during Service. From his pulpit he could see into his rectory garden, and Sunday after Sunday what he saw there made him falter and repeat himself and then suddenly explode into a cry of “ Pigs! ” that startled strangers no end. At that cry the rectory children (they had left the sty open deliberately of course) would rise and sidle out of their pew, bow to the altar before turning their backs on it, mince down the aisle with their muffs and prayer-books and Sunday hats ... and the moment they were through the church door burst into loud whoops as they scampered off.
    The late bishop (who had a beard like old Kruger’s) came to luncheon here at Newton one day: it was 1916, and Henry was home on embarkation leave. The rector was there, but the reverend wits had now begun noticeably to fail and so Uncle Arthur asked the bishop himself to say Grace. The rector protested—etiquette was for him to say Grace, and he struggled to his feet. But after “For what we are about to receive ... the usual form of words must have escaped him, for he stumbled on ex tempore: “The plump chicken, the three excellent vegetables ...” Then he sat down, seething with indignation and muttering what sounded like “May the Lord in His mercy blast and braise us all!”
    Next Sunday he announced from the pulpit a momentous discovery: Johns the Baptist and Evangelist were one and the same person! He was stuttering with excitement, but Augustine heard no more because Uncle William, startled at the news, dropped his eyeglass in his ear-trumpet and began fishing for it with a bunch of keys. Uncle Arthur in his senior corner of the family box-pew kept commenting “Damn’ young fool!” (he was unaware of the loudness of his own voice, of course) “Oh the silly damn’ fool!” then snatched the ear-trumpet from his brother’s hand and dislodged the eyeglass by putting the trumpet to his lips and blowing a blast like the horn of Roland.
    As the scene came back to him now Augustine burst out laughing in the echoing, comfortable room those two old men had made: which should have been Henry’s: but which instead was his.
    A breath of wind came through the opened window. In the dusk something white fluttered off the marble fireplace shelf where it had been propped and Augustine struck a match to look at it. It was an engraved and emblazoned invitation-card:
    The High Steward and Worshipful Court
    of
    FLEMTON
    Request
    â€”and then his name, and so on.
    At the sight of that card