Have you ever calculated how much respect you can buy with a sudden
half-crown?
A railway porter will give you quite a lot, an hotel porter will
unbend slightly, and under its influence even a taxi-cab driver, if
the fare is about seven and sixpence, will appear fairly human. But
if you want your money's worth, go briskly into Aldridge's or
Tattersall's on the day of a horse sale, walk up to a man who wears a
white jacket and holds a whip, give him half a crown and say at the
same time: "Selling any hunters to-day?" You know at once that you
have made a hit. As an American would say, he reacts immediately.
In one swift eye-sweep he has made a mental note of you; he knows the
kind of horse he thinks you ride, the way you will ride it, and so
on. He looks knowing, a quality shared by all men even remotely
connected with the sale of horseflesh, and, slightly closing one eye,
he whispers:
"Come with me, sir!"
* * *
You are in a stable facing the posteriors of many horses. The
hunters, the aristocrats of the sale, are boxed together in a corner,
but there are big hefty carthorses and sturdy hacks of every kind.
You look down the catalogue: "Bay mare, has been ridden side-saddle
and astride." What lovely girl rode her side-saddle and astride, you
wonder, called her "Nelly," and came to the stable every morning with
a lump of sugar?
"Look out, sir!" says your admirer, as he taps Nelly's hocks lightly
with his whip, causing her to swerve round and show you a dilated
pupil and a suspiciously poised near-side hoof. "Now, sir, that's
your 'oss, that is!"
You don't deceive him. You don't explain that you are only doing
this for fun, to while away a weary hour, to banish ennui. On he
goes, a natural-born auctioneer. She's your weight, she is, and she
has a lovely mouth, she has, and he wouldn't be surprised if she was
a marvellous jumper, he wouldn't....
For one half-crown and a minimum amount of attention you can spend
hours with this man prodding flanks, feeling hocks, and running your
hand over withers, but the best thing to do is to run down the
horses, call them "rough stuff," and go off into the yard where they
are having a sale.
Now horse fancying has created a unique type of man familiar to you
in the country, but never seen in London except at these sales. When
you regard them _en masse_ the effect is remarkable. You feel that
if a coach-and-four suddenly drove in they could all take seats and
drive out looking like one of Cruikshank's illustrations in Dickens.
People would say: "What are they advertising?"
They are horse-faced, thin, bow-legged, and some of them actually
suck straws--most difficult things to find in London these days if
you contract the habit. They wear little fawn coats with pearl
buttons and tight little gaiters well up on the tops of their boots;
and they walk with a roll. You have seen a wicked man in a night
club on the movies look at the heroine. He screws up his eyes and
looks straight at her ankles, and then slowly insults her with his
eyes as his gaze ascends. These horsey men look at horses just like
that: their eyes glance contemptuously at hoofs, linger sneeringly on
fetlocks, wander disparagingly over other parts of the anatomy, then
they say: "Wind sucker," or "Roarer," or "Eats her bedding," and
light a cigar.
* * *
Into the ring is led a chestnut mare.
She is a lovely thing, and you can tell by the way she trembles and
tosses her head that she is not having a good time. She does not
understand. There are many things she does understand. She
understands the man into whose waistcoat it is so good to place her
moist muzzle, she understands the slightest move of him in the
saddle, and she loves to obey when, feeling the faintest pressure of
his knees, she breaks into a canter over soft grass, and falls again
into a trot, to find his hand patting her sleek neck.
Why isn't he here? He has never let others take control of her
before! In a moment, no doubt, he will come and drive all these men
off; and then they will go out together to their own place as they
have always done. She looks round. Whinnies. But her man is not
there.
Then the auctioneer, a little fellow in a silk hat, explains that
this splendid chestnut mare, sound in wind and limb and eye, is being
sold to save her summer keep. The horse fanciers come a step nearer,
they whisper, they begin to bid....
Bang! The hammer descends. The little chestnut mare starts suddenly
as if she knew that she had got a new master.
* * *
They lead her out under the wide arch of the livery stable, and in
the proud tossing of her head and her backward looks you seem to
read: "Where is that man of mine, and why--why doesn't he come?"