"THIS WILL DO."
Mr. Sharp's young horse, being highly fed and victualled for the long
ride to London, and having been struck in the eye unjustly, and jarred
in the brain by the roar of a pistol and whizz of a bullet between his
pricked ears, was now in a state of mind which offered no fair field
for pure reasoning process. A better-disposed horse was never foaled;
and possibly none--setting Dobbin aside, as the premier and quite
unapproachable type--who took a clearer view of his duties to the
provider of corn, hay, and straw, and was more ready to face and
undergo all proper responsibilities.
Therefore he cannot be fairly blamed, and not a pound should be
deducted from his warrantable value, simply because he now did what
any other young horse in the world would have felt to be right. He
stared all around to ask what was coming next, and he tugged on the
bridle, with his fore-feet out, as a leverage against injustice, and
his hind-legs spread wide apart, like a merry-thought, ready to hop
anywhere. At the same time he stared with great terrified eyes, now at
the man who had involved him in these perils, and now at the darkening
forest which might hold even worse in the background.
Mr. Sharp was not in the mood for coaxing, or any conciliation. His
left foot was crushed so that he could only hop, and to put it to the
ground was agony; his own son had turned against him; and a
contemptible clod had outwitted him; disgrace, and ruin, and death
stared at him; and here was his favourite horse a rebel! He fixed his
fierce eyes on the eyes of the horse, and fairly quelled him with
fury. The eyes of the horse shrank back, and turned, and trembled, and
blinked, and pleaded softly, and then absolutely fawned. Being a very
intelligent nag, he was as sure as any sound Christian of the
personality of the devil--and, far worse than that, of his presence
now before him.
He came round whinnying to his master's side, as gentle as a lamb, and
as abject as a hang-dog; he allowed the lame lawyer to pick up his
whip, and to lash him on his poor back, without a wince, and to lead
him (when weary of that) to a stump, from which he was able to mount
again.
"Thank you, you devil," cried Mr. Sharp, giving his good horse another
swinging lash; "it is hopeless altogether to ride after the cart. That
part of the play is played out and done with. The pious papa and the
milk-and-water missy rush into each other's arms. And as for me--well,
well, I have learned to make a horse obey me. Now, sir, if you please,
we will join the ladies--gently, because of your master's foot."
He rode back quietly along the track over which he had chased the
Carrier's cart; and his foot was now in such anguish that the whole of
his wonderful self-command was needed to keep him silent. He set his
hard lips, and his rigid nose was drawn as pale as parchment, and the
fire of his eyes died into the dulness of universal rancour. No
hard-hearted man can find his joy in the sweet soft works of nature,
any more than the naked flint nurses flowers. The beauty of the young
May twilight flowing through the woven wood, and harbouring, like a
blue bloom, here and there, in bays of verdure; while upward all the
great trees reared their domes once more in summer roofage, and
stopped out the heavens; while in among them, finding refuge, birds
(before the dark fell on them) filled the world with melody; and all
the hushing rustle of the well-earned night was settling down--through
all of these rode Mr. Sharp, and hated every one of them.
Presently his horse gave a little turn of head, but was too cowed down
to shy again; and a tall woman, darkly clad, was standing by the
timber track, with one hand up to catch his eyes.
"You here, Cinnaminta!" cried the lawyer with surprise. "I have no
time now. What do you want with me?"
"I want you to see the work of your hand--your only child, dead by
your own blow!"
Struck with cold horror, he could not speak. But he reeled in the
saddle, with his hand on his heart, and stared at Cinnaminta.
"It is true," she said softly; "come here and see it. Even for you,
Luke Sharp, I never could have wished a sight like this. You have
ruined my life; you have made my people thieves; the loss of my
children lies on you. But to see your only son murdered by yourself is
too bad even for such as you."
"I never meant it--I never dreamed it--God is my witness that I never
did. I thought his head was a great deal thicker."
Sneerer as he was, he meant no jest now. He simply spoke the earnest
truth. In his passion he had struck men before, and knocked them down,
with no great harm; he forgot his own fury in this one blow, and the
weight of his heavily-loaded whip.
"If you cannot believe," she answered sternly, supposing him to be
jeering still, "you had better come here. He was a kind, good lad,
good to me, and to my last child. I have made him look very nice. Will
you come? Or will you go and tell his mother?"
Luke Sharp looked at her in the same sort of way in which many of his
victims had looked at him. Then he touched his horse gently, having
had too much of rage, and allowed him to take his own choice of way.
The poor horse, having had a very bad time of it, made the most of
this privilege. Setting an example to mankind (whose first thought is
not sure to be of home) the poor fellow pointed the white star on his
forehead towards his distant stable. Oxford was many a bad mile away,
but his heart was set upon being there. Sleepily therefore he jogged
along, having never known such a day of it.
While he thought of his oat-sieve sweetly, and nice little nibbles at
his clover hay, and the comfortable soothing of his creased places by
a man who would sing a tune to him, his rider was in a very different
case, without one hope to turn to.
The rising of the moon to assuage the earth of all the long sun fever,
the spread of dewy light, and quivering of the nerves of shadow, and
then the soft, unfeatured beauty of the dim tranquillity, coming over
Luke Sharp's road, or flitting on his face, what difference could they
make to its white despair? He hated light, he loathed the shade, he
scorned the meekness of the dapple, and he cursed the darkness.
Out of sight of the road, and yet within a level course of it, there
lay, to his knowledge, a deep, and quiet, and seldom-troubled
forest-pool. This had long been in his mind, and coming to the
footpath now, he drew his bridle towards it.
The moon was here fenced out by trees, and thickets of blackthorn, and
ivy hanging like a funeral pall. Except that here at the lip of
darkness, one broad beam of light stole in, and shivered on gray boles
of willow, and quivered on black lustrous smoothness of contemptuous
water.
To the verge of this water Luke Sharp rode, with his horse prepared
for anything. He swept with his keen eyes all the length of liquid
darkness, ebbing into blackness in the distance. And he spoke his last
words--"This will do."
Then he drove his horse into the margin of the pool, till the water
was up to the girths, and the broad beams of the moon shone over them.
Here he drew both feet from the stirrup-irons, and sat on his saddle
sideways, sluicing his crushed and burning foot, and watching the
water drip from it. And then he carefully pulled from the holster the
pistol that still was loaded, took care that the flint and the priming
were right, and turning his horse that he might escape, while the man
fell into deep water, steadfastly gazed at the moon, and laid the
muzzle to his temple, justly careful that it should be the temple, and
the vein which tallied with that upon which he had struck his son.
A blaze lit up the forest-pool, and a roar shook the pall of ivy; a
heavy plash added to the treasures of the deep, and a little flotilla
of white stuff began to sail about on the black water, in the
commotion made by man and horse. When Mr. Sharp was an office-boy, his
name had been "Little Big-brains."