There is a long, mysterious thrill, a murmur rather felt than heard,
a shudder of profundity, which traverses the woodland hollows at the
sunʼs departure. In autumn most especially, when the glory of trees is
saddening, and winter storms are in prospect, this dark disquietude
moves the wood, this horror at the nightfall, and doubt of the coming
hours. Touched as with a subtle stream, the pointlets of the oak–leaves
rise, the crimped fans of the beech are fluttered, and lift their
glossy ovals, the pendulous chains of the sycamore swing; while the
poplar flickers its silver skirts, the tippets and ruffs of the ivy are
ruffling, and even the three–lobed bramble–leaf cannot repress a shiver.
Touched with a stream at least as subtle, we, who are wandering among
the dark giants, shiver and shrink, we know not why; and our hearts
beat faster, to feel how they beat. The cause is the same both for tree
and for man. Earthly nature has not learned to count upon immortality.
Therefore all her works, unaided, loathe to be undone.
Whether it were this, or his craving for his dinner, that made Sir
Cradock Nowell feel chilled, as he waited under the shuddering trees
for his friend John Rosedew—far be it from me to say, because it
may have been both, sir. And the other cause to which he always
ascribed it—after the event—to wit, a divine afflatus of diabolical
presentiment, is one we have no faith in, until we own to nightmare.
Anyhow, there he was, for upwards of an hour; and no John Rosedew
came up the hill, which Sir Cradock did not feel it at all his duty
to descend, on the very safe presentiment of the distress _revocare
gradum_.
Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas
of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow
bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious
insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who
understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly
nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by
this time he could set papers in the _barbara celarent_ of the most
recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to
that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many
points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought
to trot.
“Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt
he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite an _equus
tolutarius_. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”.
Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some
cytisus.
“Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or
if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—_incertus ibidem
sudor_—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it; _urit
avenœ_, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit
devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by
my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien
sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not
a Christian”.
A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was
beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort
Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear,
he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.
Cob Coræbus by this time knew his master thoroughly; and exercising
his knowledge cleverly, made his shoes last longer. If the weather
felt muggy and “trying”—from an equine view of probation—if the road
was rough and against the grain, even if the forest–fly came abroad
upon business, Coræbus used (in sporting parlance) to “shut up”
immediately. This he did, not in a defiant tone, not in a mode to
provoke antagonism; he was far too clever a horse for that; but with
every appearance of a sad conviction that his master had no regard
for him. At this earnest appeal to his feelings, John Rosedew would
dismount in haste, and reflect with admiration upon the weeping steeds
of Achilles, or the mourning horse of Mezentius, while he condemned
with acrimony the moral conveyed by a song he had heard concerning
the “donkey wot wouldnʼt go”. Then he would loosen the girths, and,
remonstrating with Coræbus for his want of self–regard, carefully wipe
with his yellow silk pocket–handkerchief first all the accessible parts
of the cob that looked at all uncomfortable, and then his own capacious
forehead. This being done, he would search around for a juicy mouthful
of grass, or dive for an apple or slice of carrot—Coræbus at the same
time diving nasally—into the depths of his black coat pocket, where
he usually discovered his lunch, which he had altogether forgotten.
While the horse was discussing this little refreshment, John would put
his head on one side, and look at him very knowingly, revolving in his
mind a question which very often presented itself, whether Coræbus were
descended from Corytha or Hirpinus.
However this may have been—and from his “staying qualities” one would
have thought him rather a chip from the old block of Troy—he was the
first horse good John Rosedew had ever called his own; and he loved and
admired him none the less for certain calumnies spread by the envious
about seedy–toes, splints, and spavins. Of these crimes, whatever they
might be, the parson found no mention in Xenophon, Pliny, or Virgil,
and he was more than half inclined to believe them clumsy modern
figments. As for the incontestable fact that Coræbus began to whistle
when irrationally stimulated beyond his six miles an hour, why, that
John Rosedew looked upon as a classical accomplishment, and quoted a
line from Theocritus. Very swift horses were gifted with this peculiar
power, for the safety of those who would otherwise be the victims
of their velocity, even as the express train always whistled past
Brockenhurst station.
After contemplating the animal till admiration was exhausted, and
wondering why some horses have hairy, while others have smooth ankles,
he would refresh himself with a reverie about the Numidian cavalry;
then declaring that Jem Pottles was “impolitiæ notandus”, he would pass
his arm through the bridle, and calling to mind the Pæon young lady who
unduly astonished Darius, pull an old book from some inner pocket, and
stroll on, with Coræbus sniffing now and then at his hat–brim.
To any one who bears in mind what a punctual body Time is, this
account of the rectorʼs doings will make it not incredible that he
was often late for dinner. But he never lost reckoning altogether in
his circumnavigation, because his leisure did not begin till he had
passed the “Jolly Foresters”; for there he must be by a certain hour,
or Coræbus would feel aggrieved, and so would Mrs. Cripps, who always
looked for him at or about 1.30 P.M. For some mighty fine company
was to be had by a horse who could behave himself, in the stable
of the “Jolly Foresters”, about middle–day on a Wednesday. Several
high–stepping buggy–mares, one or two satirical Broughamites, even
some nags who gave a decided tone to the neighbourhood, silver–hamed
Clevelands, and champ–the–bit Clydesdales: even these were not too
proud—that they left for vulgarian horses—to snort and blow hard at
the “Forestersʼ” oats, and then eat them up like winking. To this
select circle our own Coræbus had been admitted already, and his
conversational powers admired, when he had produced an affidavit that
his master was in no way connected with trade.
Coræbus now bade fair to be spoiled by all this grand society. Every
Wednesday he came home less natural, more coxcombical. He turned up
his nose at many good horses, whom he had once respected, fellows who
wandered about in the forest, and hung down their chins when the rain
came! And then he became so affected and false, with an interesting
languor, when Amy jumped out to caress him! Verily, friend Coræbus,
thou shalt pay out for this! What call, pray, hast thou to become a
humbug, from seeing how men do flourish?
John Rosedew awoke quite suddenly to the laws of time and season, as
the hazel branches came over his head, and he could see to read no
longer. The grey wood closed about him, to the right hand and to the
left; the thick shoots of the alder, the dappled ash, and the osier,
hustled among the taller trees whose tops had seen the sunset; tufts
of grass, and blackberry–tangles, hipped dog–roses leaning over them,
stubby clumps of buckthorn, brake–fern waving six feet high where the
ground held moisture—who, but an absent man, would have wandered at
dusk into such a labyrinth?
“ʼActum est’ with my dinner”, exclaimed the parson aloud, when he awoke
to the situation; “and what, perhaps, is more important to thee, at
least, Coræbus, thine also is ‘pessum datum’. And there is no room
to turn the horse round without scratching his eyes and his tail
so. Nevertheless, this is a path, or at one time must have been so;
‘semita, callis, tramesʼ—that last word is the one for it, if it be
derived from ‘traho’ (which, however, I do not believe)—for, lo! there
has been a log of wood dragged here even during a post–diluvial period:
we will follow this track to the uttermost; what says the cheerful
philosopher:—‘_παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις ὁδόν_’. Surely a gun, nay, two,
or, more accurately, two explosions; now for some one to show us the
way. Coræbus, be of good cheer, there is supper yet in thy _φάτνῃ_,
not _ἐϋξέστῳ_; advance then thy best foot. Why not?—seest thou an
_ἔιδωλον_? Come on, I say, mine horse—Great God!——” And he was silent.
Tired as he was, Coræbus had leaped back from the leading rein,
then cast up his head and snorted, and with a glare of terror stood
trembling. What John Rosedew saw at that moment was stamped on his
heart for ever. Across his narrow homeward path, clear in the grey
light, and seeming to creep, was the corpse of Clayton Nowell, laid
upon its left side, with one hand to the heart, the wan face stark and
spread on the ground, the body stretched by the final throe. The pale
light wandered over it, and showed it only a shadow. John Rosedewʼs
nerves were stout and strong, as of a man who has injured none; he had
buried hundreds of fellow–men, after seeing them die; but, for the
moment, he was struck with a mortal horror. Back he fell, and drove
back his horse; he could not look at the dead manʼs eyes fixed intently
upon him. One minute he stood shivering, and the ash–leaves shivered
over him. He was conscious somehow of another presence which he could
not perceive. Then he ran up, like a son of God, to what God had left
of his brother. The glaze (as of ground glass) in the eyes, the smile
that has swooned for ever, the scarlet of the lips turned out with the
chalky rim of death, the bulge of the broad breast, never again to rise
or fall in breathing—is there one of these changes we do not know,
having seen them in our own dearest ones?
But a worse sight than of any dead man—dead, and gone home to his
Father—met John Rosedewʼs quailing eyes, as he turned towards the
opening. It was the sight of Cradock Nowell, clutching his gun with one
hand, and clinging hard with the other, while he hung from the bank
(which he had been leaping) as a winding–sheet hangs from a candle.
The impulse of his leap had failed him, smitten back by horror; it was
not in him to go back, nor to come one foot forward. The parson called
him by his name, but he could not answer; only a shiver and a moan
showed that he knew his baptism. The living was more startled, and more
startling, than the dead.