THE RIDER ON THE RED HORSE
Jack was glad to get away from Perth, to ride out and leave no vestige
of his soul behind, for them to work mischief on. He saddled his horse
before dawn, and still before sun was up, he was trotting along beside
the river. He loved the world, the early morning, the sense of newness.
It was natural to him to like the world, the trees, the sky, the
animals, and even, in a casual way, people. It was his nature to like
the casual people he came across. And, casually, they all liked him. It
was only when he approached nearer, into intimacy, that he had a
revulsion.
In the casual way of life he was good-humored, and could get on with
almost everybody. He took them all at their best, and they responded.
For on the whole, people are glad to be taken at their best, on trust.
But when he went further, the thing broke down. Casually, he could get
on with anybody. Intimately, he could get on with nobody. In intimate
life, he was quiet and unyielding, often oppressive. In the casual way,
he was most yielding and agreeable. Therefore it was his friends who
suffered most from him.
He knew this. He knew that Monica and Lennie suffered from his aloofness
and a certain arrogance, in intimate life. So friendly with everybody,
he was. And at the centre, not really friendly even with his wife and
his dearest friends. Withheld, unyielding, exacting even in his silence,
he kept them in a sort of suspense.
As he rode his bright bay stallion on the soft road, he became aware of
this. Perhaps his horse was the only creature with which he had the
right relation. He did not love it, but he harmonised with it. As if,
between them, they made a sort of centaur. It was not love. It was a
sort of understanding in power and mastery and crude life. A harmony
even more than an understanding. As if he himself were the breast and
arms and head of the ruddy, powerful horse, and it, the flanks and
hoofs. Like a centaur. It had a real joy in riding away with him to the
bush again. He knew by the uneven, springy dancing. And he had perhaps a
greater joy. The animal knew it in the curious pressure of his knees,
and the soft rhythm of the bit. Between them, they moved in a sort of
triumph.
The red stallion was always glad when Jack rode alone. It did not like
company, particularly human company. When Jack rode alone, his horse had
a curious bubbling, exultant movement. When he rode in company, it went
in a more suppressed way. And when he stopped to talk to people, in his
affable, rather loving manner, the horse became irritable, chafing to go
on. He had long ago realised that the bay could not bear it when he
reined in and stayed chatting. His voice, in its amiable flow, seemed to
irritate the animal. And it did not like Lennie. Lucy, the old mare,
loved Lennie. Most horses liked him. But Jack's stallion got a bit
wicked, irritable with him.
And when Jack had made a fool of himself, as with Mary, and felt
tangled, he always craved to get on his horse Adam, to be put right. He
would feel the warm flow of life from the horse mount up him and wash
away in its flood the human entanglements in his nerves. And sometimes
he would feel guilty towards his horse Adam, as if he had betrayed the
natural passion of the horse, giving way to the human travesty.
Now, in the morning before sunrise, with the red horse bubbling with
exultance between his knees, his soul turned with a sudden jerk of
realisation away from his fellow-men. He really didn't want his
fellow-men. He didn't want that amiable casual association with them,
which took up so large a part of his life. It was a habit and a bluff on
his part. Also it was part of his nature. A certain real amiability in
him, and a natural kindly disposition towards his fellow-men combated
inside him with a repudiation of the whole trend of modern human life,
the emotional, spiritual, ethical, and intellectual trend. Deep inside
himself, he fought like a wild-cat against the whole thing. And yet,
because of a naturally amiably disposed, even benevolent nature in
himself, he took any casual individual into his warmth, and was
bosom-friends for the moment. Until, inevitably, after a short time the
individual betrayed himself a unit of the universal human trend, and
then Jack recoiled in anger and revulsion again.
This was a sort of dilemma. Monica, and Tom, and Lennie, who knew him
intimately, knew the absoluteness of his repudiation of mankind and
mankind's direction in general. They knew it to their cost, having
suffered from it. Therefore the anomaly of his casual intimacies and his
casual bosom-friend-ships was considerably puzzling and annoying to
them. He seemed to them false to himself, false to the other thing he
was trying to put across. Above all, it seemed false to _them_, his
real, old friends, towards whom he was so silently exacting and
overbearing.
This morning, after his fiasco with Mary, he vaguely realised himself.
He vaguely realised that he had to make a change. The casual intimacies
were really a self-betrayal. But they made his life easy. It was the
easiest way for him to encounter people. To suppress for the time being
his deepest self, his thoughts, his feelings, his vital repudiation of
the way of human life now, and to play at being really pleasant and
ordinary. He liked to think that most people, casually and
superficially, were nice. He hated having to withdraw.
But now, after the fiasco with Mary, he realised again his necessity to
withdraw. To pass people by. They were all going in the opposite
direction to his own. Then he was wrong to rein up and pretend a
bosom-friendship for half an hour. As he did so, he was only being borne
down stream, in the old, deadly direction, against himself.
Even his horse knew it: even old Adam. He pressed the animal's sides
with his legs, and made a silent pact with him: not to make this
compromise of amiability and casual friendship, not forever to be
reining up and allowing himself to be carried backwards in the weary
flood of the old human direction. To forfeit the casual amiabilities,
and go his way in silence. To have the courage to turn his face right
away from mankind. His soul and his spirit had already turned away. Now
he must turn away his face, and see them all no more.
"I never want to see their faces any more," he said aloud to himself.
And his horse between his thighs danced and began to canter, as the sun
came sparkling up over the horizon. Jack looked into the sun, and knew
that he must turn his own face aside forever from the people of his
world, not look at them or communicate with them again, not any more.
Cover his own face with shadow, and let the world pass on its way,
unseen and unseeing.
And he must know as he knew his horse, not face to face, never any more
face to face, but communicating as he did with his stallion Adam, from a
pressure of the thighs and knees. The arrows of the Archer, who is also
a centaur.
Vision is no good. It is no good seeing any more. And words are no good.
It is useless to talk. We must communicate with the arrows of sightless,
wordless knowledge, as Jack communicated with his horse, by a pressure
of the thighs and knees.
The sun had risen gold above the far-off ridge of the bush. Jack drew up
at an inn by the side of the road, to eat breakfast. He left his horse
at the hitching-post near the door, and went into the bar parlour. There
was a smell of mutton chops frying, and he was hungry.
As he sat eating, he heard his horse neighing fiercely. He pricked his
ears. Again Adam's powerful neigh, and far off a high answering call of
a mare. He went out quickly to the door of the inn. Adam stood by the
post, his feet apart, his ears erect, his head high up, looking with
flashing eyes back down the road. How beautiful he was! in the
newly-risen sun shining bright almost as fire, every fibre of him on the
alert, tall and overweening. And down the road, a grey horse, cloud
colour, running eagerly forwards, its rider, a young lady, flushing
scarlet and trying to hold up her mare. It was no good. The mare's
shrill, wild neigh came answering the stallion's, and the lady rider was
powerless to hold her creature back. Strong, like bells in his deep
chest, came the stallion's call once more. And lifting her head as she
ran on swift, light feet, the mare sang back.
The girl was Hilda Blessington. Jack took his horse and quickly ran him,
rearing and flaming, round to the stable. There he shut him up, though
his feet were thudding madly on the wooden floor, and his powerful
neighing shook the place with a sound like fire.
The grey mare came running straight to the stable, carrying its
helpless, scarlet-flushing rider. Jack lifted the girl down, and held
the mare. There was a terrific thudding from the stable.
"I'll put her in the paddock, shall I?" said Jack.
"I think you'd better," she said.
He looked uneasily at the stable, whence came a sound of something going
smash. The shut-up stallion sounded like an enclosed thunderstorm.
"Shall I put them both in the paddock?" said Jack. "It seems the
simplest thing to do."
"Yes," she murmured in confusion. "Perhaps you'd better."
She was rather frightened. The duet of neighing was terrific, like the
bells of some wild cathedral going at full clash. The landlord of the
inn came running up. Jack was just slipping the mare's saddle off.
"Steady! Steady!" he said. Then to the landlord: "Take her to the
paddock and turn her loose. I'm going to turn the horse loose with her."
The landlord dragged the frantic grey animal away, while she screamed
and reared and pranced.
Jack ran to the stable door, calling to his horse. He opened carefully.
The first thing he saw was the blazing eyes of the stallion. The horse
had broken the halter, and had his nose and his wild eyes at the door,
prepared to charge. Jack called to him again, and managed to get in
front of him and close the door behind him. The animal was listening to
two things at once, thinking two things at once. He was quivering in
every fibre, in a state almost of madness. Yet he stood quite still
while Jack slipped off the loosened saddle.
Then again he began to jump. Already he had smashed in one side of the
stall, and had a bleeding fetlock. Jack got hold of the broken halter,
and opened the door. The horse, like a great ruddy thunderbolt, sprang
out of the stable, jerking Jack with him. The man, with a flying jump,
got on the bright, brilliant bare back of the stallion, and clung there
as the creature, swerving on powerful haunches past the terrified Hilda,
ran with a terrific, splendid neighing towards the paddock, moving
rhythmic and handsome.
There was the grey mare at the gate, inside, neighing back, and the
landlord keeping guard. The men had to be very quick, the one to open
the gate, the other to slip down.
Jack left the broken halter-rope dangling from his horse's head--it was
broken quite short--and went back into the yard.
"What a commotion!" he said laughingly, to the flushed, deeply
embarrassed girl. "But you won't mind if your grey mare gets a foal to
my horse?"
"Oh no," she said. "I shall like it."
"Why not?" said he. "They'll be all right. There's the landlord and
another fellow there with them. Will you come in? Have you had
breakfast? Come and eat something."
She went with him into the bar parlour, where he sat down again to eat
his half-cold mutton chops. She was silent and embarrassed, but not
afraid. The colour still was high in her young, delicate cheeks, but her
odd, bright, round, dark-grey eyes were fearless above her fear. She had
really a great dread of everything, especially of the social world in
which she had been brought up. But her dread had made her fearless.
There was something slightly uncanny about her, her quick, rabbit-like
alertness and her quick, open defiance, like some unyielding animal. She
was more like a hare than a rabbit: like a she-hare that will fight all
the cats that are after her young. And she had a great capacity for
remaining silent and remote, like a quaint rabbit unmoving in a corner.
"Were you riding this way by accident?" he asked her.
"No," she said quickly. "I hoped I might see you. Mary said you were
leaving early in the morning."
"Why did you want to see me?" he asked, amused.
"I don't know. But I did."
"Well, it was a bit of a hubbub," he laughed.
She glanced at him sharply, warily, on the defensive, and then laughed
as well, with a funny little chuckle.
"Why did you leave so suddenly?" she asked.
"No, it wasn't sudden. I'd had enough."
"Enough of what?"
"Everything."
"Even of Mary?"
"Chiefly of Mary."
She eyed him again sharply, wonderingly, searchingly, then again gave
her odd little chuckle of a laugh.
"Why 'chiefly of Mary'?" she asked. "I think she's so nice. She'd make
me such a good step-mother."
"Do you want one?" he asked.
"Yes, I do rather. Then my father would want to get rid of me. I should
be in the way."
"And do you want to be got rid of?"
"Yes, I do rather."
"What for?"
"I want to go right away."
"Back to England?"
"No. Not that. Never there again. Right away from Perth. Into the
unoccupied country. Into the North-West."
"What for?"
"To get away."
"What from?"
"Everything. Just everything."
"But what would you find when you'd got away?"
"I don't know. I want to try. I want to try."
She had such an odd, definite decisiveness and self-confidence, he was
very much amused. She seemed the queerest, oddest, most isolated bird he
had ever come across. Exceedingly well-bred, with all the charm of pure
breeding. By nature, timorous like a hare. But now, in her queer state
of rebellion, like a hare that is perfectly fearless, and will go its
own way in determined singleness.
"You must come and see Monica and me when we move to the North-West.
Would you like to?"
"Very much. When will that be?"
"Soon. Before the year is out. Shall I tell Monica you're coming? She'd
be glad of another woman."
"Are you sure you want me?"
"Quite."
"Are you sure everybody will want me? I shan't be in the way? Tell me
quite frankly."
"I'm sure everybody will want you. And you can't be in the way, you are
much too wary."
"I only seem it."
"Do come, though."
"I should love to."
"Well, do. When could you come?"
"Any time. Tomorrow if you wish. I am quite independent. I have a
certain amount of money, from my mother. Not much, but enough for all I
want. And I am of age. I am quite free.--And I think if I went, father
would marry Mary. I wish he would."
"Why?"
"Then I should be free."
"But free what for?"
"Anything. Free to breathe. Free to live. Free not to marry. I know they
want to get me married. They've got their minds fixed on it. And I'm
afraid they'll force me to do it, and I don't want it."
"Marry who?"
"Oh, nobody in particular. Just somebody, don't you know."
"And don't you want to marry?" asked Jack, amused.
"No. No, I don't. Not any of the people I meet. No! Not that sort of
man. No. Never!"
He burst into a laugh, and she, glancing in surprise at his amusement,
suddenly chuckled.
"Don't you like men?" he asked, still laughing.
"No. I don't. I dislike them very much."
Her quick, cool, alert manner of statement amused him more than anything.
"Not any men at all?"
"No. Not yet. And I dislike the idea of marriage. I just hate it. I
don't think I'd mind men so much, if it weren't' for marriage in the
background. I can't do with marriage."
"Might you like men without marriage?" he asked, laughing.
"I don't know," she said, with her odd precision. "So far it's all just
impossible. I can't stand it. All that sort of thing is impossible to
me. No, I don't care for men at all."
"What sort of thing is just impossible?" he asked.
"Men! Particularly a man. Impossible!"
Jack roared with laughter at her. She seemed rather to like being
laughed at. And her odd, cool, precise intensity tickled him to death.
"You want to be virgin in the virgin bush?" he asked.
She glanced at him quickly.
"Something like that," she said, with her little chuckle. "I think later
on, not now, not now--" she shook her head--"I might like to be a man's
second or third wife: if the other two were living. I would never be the
first. Never. You remember you talked about it."
She looked at him with her round, bright, odd eyes, like an elf or some
creature of the border-land, and as he roared with laughter, she smiled
quickly and with an odd, mischievous response.
"What you said the other night, when Aunt Matilda was so angry, made me
think of it.--She hates you," she added.
"Who, Aunt Matilda? Good job."
"Yes, very good job! Don't you think she's _terrible?_"
"I do," said Jack.
"I'm glad you do. I can't stand her. I like Mr. George. But I don't care
for it when he seems to like _me._"
Jack roared with laughter again, and again, from some odd corner of
herself, she smiled.
"Why do you laugh?" she said. But the infection of laughter made her
give a little chuckle.
"It's all such a real joke," he said.
"It is," she answered. "Rather a bad joke."
Slowly he formed a dim idea of her precise life, with a rather tyrannous
father who was fond of her in the wrong way, and brothers who had
bullied her and jeered at her for her odd ways and appearance, and her
slight deafness. The governess who had mis-educated her, the loneliness
of the life in London, the aristocratic but rather vindictive society in
England, which had persecuted her in a small way, because she was one of
the odd border-line people who don't and _can't_, really belong. She
kept an odd, bright, amusing spark of revenge twinkling in her all the
time. She felt that with Jack she could kindle her spark of revenge into
a natural sun. And without any compunction, she came to tell him.
He was tremendously amused. She was a new thing to him. She was one who
knew the world, and society, better than he did, and her hatred of it
was purer, more twinkling, more relentless in a quiet way. Her way was
absolutely relentless, and absolutely quiet. She had gone further along
that line than himself. And her fearlessness was of a queer, uncanny
quality, hardly human. She was a real border-line being.
"All right," he said, making a pact with her. "By Christmas we'll ask
you to come and see us in the North-West."
"By Christmas! It's a settled thing?" she said, holding up her
forefinger with an odd, warning, alert gesture.
"It's a settled thing," he replied.
"Splendid!" she answered. "I believe you'll keep your word."
"You'll see I shall."
She rose. The horses, quieted down, were caught and saddled and brought
round. She glanced from her blue-grey mare to his red stallion, and gave
her odd, squirrel-like chuckle.
"What a _contretemps_," she said. "It's like the sun mating with the
moon." She gave him a quick, bright, odd glance: some of the coolness of
a fairy.
"Is it!" he exclaimed, as he lifted her into the saddle. She was slim
and light, with an odd, remote reserve.
He mounted his horse.
"We go different ways for the moment," she said.
"Till Christmas," he answered. "Then the moon will come to the sun, eh?
Bring the mare with you. Shell probably be in foal."
"I certainly will. Goodbye, till Christmas. Don't forget. I shall expect
you to keep your word."
"I will keep my word," he said. "Goodbye till Christmas."
He rode away, laughing and chuckling to himself. If Mary had been a
fiasco, this was a real joke. A real, unexpected joke.
His horse travelled with quick, strong, rhythmic movement, inland, away
from the sea. At the last ridge he turned and saw the pale-blue ocean
full of light. Then he rode over the crest and down the silent grey
bush, in which he had once been lost.
THE END