HERMITS AND HORSES
“Oh, do go on!” begged the Dormitory, intrigued by Stella’s mysterious
accents.
“Not that I know much, but it’s so _queer_!” Stella, however, was
evidently only too willing to oblige, so far as was possible. “All alone
he lives! Looking out on the sea. All the windows that face the moorland
are barred up. Of course, he’s mad!”
“Who? The old man?” inquired Gretta.
“Yes, or why ever would he live there like that?”
“He might be a--hermit.” Margot spoke rather slowly. “There was one that
we knew, living in the Bush. He’d made a clearing-place there--just
because he wanted to, and because he loved the Bush. He wasn’t mad at
all. He’d come to us for food, sometimes. And sometimes I’d ride out and
take him some.”
“Ride!” The Dormitory forgot the “Little House” and its inmate. “Did you
ride in the Bush?”
“Yes, of course I rode. Why not? Dad and mother did. We all did. I
helped in a sheep round-up once; I was always riding. Once I had to swim
my horse over a river that was in flood. The horse was frightened, then;
and so would I have been, only Long Jake was there to tell me what to
do. He and dad had to do it often--swim their horses, I mean; because
they were always riding for miles round the cattle-station.”
“And how did you swim your horse?” inquired Josy excitedly. “I wonder
you weren’t drowned.”
“That was what I thought, just at first. I think the horse thought so,
too. But Long Jake told me just to take my legs out of the stirrups and
hold the pommel tight. To give him plenty of rein, too, and to let
myself sort of float over the saddle. The horse did the rest. Boko, it
was--my own horse.” Margot gave a little sigh as she suddenly came to
earth in the Cliff School dormitory again, and found herself brushing
her hair. “I say, Stella, I didn’t mean to interrupt about your old man.
How do you take him food?”
“Food! And he isn’t _mine_!” Stella tossed a shiny head. “I’ve never
even seen him,” continued the old man’s next neighbour. “He simply
never comes out; and if he did I’d be terrified. I suppose he’s got some
arrangement with the village shop; and the farm sends him milk, I think.
Perhaps dad keeps an eye on things, being rector, you see. But I know
that not even _he’s_ been inside! He’s called heaps of times, though,
and never got any answer to his knocks. As for the gipsies....”
“The _gipsies_!” repeated everyone.
“Oh, we’ve got heaps of gipsies on the moor. It’s common land, or
something; and they may pitch their tents there, dad says, by law, so
long as they behave themselves. They’re there most of the year, too,
because they’re horse-dealing gipsies, who go from fair to fair buying
horses and selling them again. Well, mother says there’s one good point
about the old man--he _does_ keep the gipsies away from our stretch of
moor. They won’t camp within a mile of his little house. They say he’s a
witch, or something of that sort.”
“He can’t be a witch; they’re women,” put in Josy. “Whatever does he
do?”
“Well, a wizard then. Oh, it’s nothing, really. Once a horse strayed
round his house and hurt itself and had to be destroyed, and the
gipsies lost money. At least, that’s what they said; they came and
begged because of it, but dad sent them away. Gipsies tell awful lies.”
“They do.” Gretta, the housekeeper, spoke up. “I remember buying a fern
from a gipsy woman. For dad’s surgery it was; for his birthday. And it
hadn’t a single bit of root--just fern leaves stuck into a pot. It cost
a shilling, too.” Gretta sighed again at the remembrance of her feelings
at the time. It was almost a relief when Margot’s clear-cut tones broke
in.
“Gretta, not always, though. Gipsies don’t always tell lies.”
There was a queer tone in Margot’s voice; half-shy and half-eager, and
the Dormitory turned to look at her. “I mean, they _do_ know true
things, just because they live out-of-doors; things that other people
don’t know. Long Jake said so. Not only gipsies, of course; but anyone
who’s lived in the open. Long Jake learned horse language from the men
in the Bush.”
“Horse language!” repeated Stella, in a superior tone. “Why, there’s not
such a thing!”
“Isn’t there, indeed? There _is_!” Margot suddenly dropped her brush
and her shy tone of voice at the same time, and flared up like a rocket.
“Didn’t I tell you that Long Jake said so. And he could speak it,
too--talk to horses and understand them.” Margot turned her back to the
company and pressed her lips together.
“Oh, Margot, _do_ go on!” begged Josy, almost weeping in eagerness.
“Gretta and I believe everything Long Jake says. And Stella, you must,
too!”
“Oh, well, come to that, I do; without all that fuss, though,” said
Stella, flushing.
“Well, that’s all right, then.” Margot, evidently realizing that here
was as much of an apology as anyone had ever extracted from Stella, and
being quite incapable of bearing any grudge, turned. “Only, if you’re
going to say that it’s gipsy lies, you needn’t listen; because it’s not.
Mother was there, and she saw it.” Margot swallowed before she went on.
“It was in the Bush once,” she said. “We were driving along one of those
‘corduroy roads,’ you know; that’s what they call them, because they’re
made of logs laid side by side. Awfully jolty; we were in one of dad’s
buggies. And we came upon”--Margot brushed her hair vigorously--“a
horse, you know. It had got its master with it, of course; but it had
fallen down. It was done-up and down-and-out; and oh!... I can’t tell
you.” Margot’s voice shook.
“Go on,” begged Josy.
“Well, then, even dad and Long Jake couldn’t do anything. And its master
said it had been lying there for hours. They were a long way from a
water-hole, so he couldn’t get it a drink; but it wasn’t a drink it
wanted, really, for we’d got water, and we gave it some. Its master was
just a ‘sundowner’ man--travelling on to the next farm for work; it was
shearing-time. And he’d picked up the horse cheap at a sale. Its
previous owner had died, you see. And this man said there was nothing to
do but just to leave it there, and mother said, ‘Oh, no!’ And I....”
Margot stopped. “Well, it simply couldn’t be left; and it wouldn’t get
up. And dad and Long Jake did everything they could, and then....”
“Oh, hurry, do! Did it recover, after all?” begged Josy, half in tears
herself.
“Listen! It simply couldn’t move; I don’t really think it _could_,
until.... Suddenly, what do you think Long Jake did? The horse was
lying, you know, right across the road, and Long Jake knelt down beside
it. And he put both his arms round its neck.” Margot’s voice was shaky.
“And ... just held it. The sort of way mother might have held _me_, you
know, if I were to cry--only, of course, I never do. And then he put his
lips to its ears and just whispered. And, after a few minutes, the
horse--_Oh!_” Margot gave a little, gaspy laugh. “It was like a fairy
tale, only better. The horse twitched its ears and opened its shut eyes,
and it gave a little whinnying sound. It understood. Long Jake went on
whispering and stroking its head; yes, and _kissing_ it. And then,
suddenly”--a tear rolled down Margot’s cheek, though she did not know
it--“it gave a kind of shake and tried to get up. They all helped it,
and it struggled up and stood there, and--it sort of smiled!--mother
said she saw that, too--and it threw up its darling head and started
again.”
No one in the dormitory said a word for a few minutes, and Margot began
to brush her hair steadily.
“I’d have ... bought that horse,” said Josy. “I bet its owner had been
unkind to it.”
“He hadn’t. No, he hadn’t. He was quite kind, but he didn’t
understand--that’s what Long Jake said afterwards--that the horse was
missing its old master who had died, and that it was feeling unhappy
because of that,” said Margot. “I dare say the horse has grown fond of
him by now.”
“But however did Long Jake find it out?” burst in Stella doubtfully.
“The horse told him, I suppose.” Margot spoke quietly. “You see, it’s
all very well to say that gipsies tell lies. Perhaps they do. But it was
one of the old Bush people--the ‘blacks,’ they call them out there--who
taught Long Jake how to whisper to the horses. Long Jake said that,
compared to _them_, he knew nothing about it, really. It was ... because
they loved horses that they could do it, Long Jake said; and it was
only, I suppose, because he felt so horribly sorry for the horse that he
simply had to try to see what he could do. The ‘blacks’ know much more
than that, too. They know all sorts of woodcraft secrets about tracking
and trailing, things you wouldn’t understand here in schools.” Margot
broke off.
“Well, did Long Jake learn about them?” inquired Stella.
“Yes, the ‘blacks’ taught him a lot. He beat out a fire once, that had
got started in the scrub in the hot weather and might have meant awful
damage--you see, the Bush was so near. He had some method that the
‘blacks’ had taught him. And he knew a way of _making_ fires, too, that
he’d learned from them. A big cane, pointed at one end, and with its
point placed inside a hole made in another cane. Then he twirled the
point round and round inside the hole; and smoke came, and then fire. He
did that while we were camping, and it quite dazzled me--his quickness,
I mean. But he said the ‘blacks’ could do it ten times quicker. Oh, and
that time I was lost in the Bush. I’d have been fifty times more
frightened if I hadn’t remembered something he’d told me. ‘Always bear
to the left; and think of that and nothing else,’ he’d said. Well, I
did; and I found my way back to the water-hole where we’d been camping.
Only, of course, they’d left it to look for me. It was lovely to see
them coming back!”
“What was it like--being lost?” inquired Josy.
“Oh, it was only for two hours, you know; but it seemed far, far longer.
There wasn’t anything, exactly, to be afraid of. What made you feel so
dreadfully queer was the ‘great hush’ in the Bush; that’s what they call
it. The feeling of the bigness, you know, and the dreadful quietness all
round you. But you can grow to love it, too; the ‘hush’ of the Bush, I
mean--not being lost, of course. People like that old hermit just can’t
go away. ‘The Bush takes them’--that’s what Long Jake said.”