"Horses," she said showing sharp teeth, "are nothing for a man with your
bile--poy-boy--curry comber, smelling of saddle soap--lovely!" She
shrivelled up her nose, touching his arm: "Yes, but better things. I
will show you--you shall be a gentleman--fine clothes, you will like
them, they feel nice." And laughing she turned on one high heel, sitting
down. "I like horses, they make people better; you are amusing,
intelligent, you will see--"
"A lackey!" he returned passionately throwing up his arm, "what is there
in this for you, what are you trying to do to me? The
family--askance--perhaps--I don't know."
He sat down pondering. He was getting used to it, or thought he was, all
but his wordy remonstrances. He knew better when thinking of his horses,
realizing that when he should have married this small, unpleasant and
clever woman, he would know them no more.
It was a game between them, which was the shrewder, which would win out?
He? A boy of ill breeding, grown from the gutter, fancied by this woman
because he had called her ridiculous, or for some other reason that he
would never know. This kind of person never tells the truth, and this,
more than most things, troubled him. Was he a thing to be played with,
debased into something better than he was, than he knew?
Partly because he was proud of himself in the costume of a groom, partly
because he was timid, he desired to get away, to go back to the stables.
He walked up to the mirrors as if about to challenge them, peering in.
He knew he would look absurd, and then knew, with shame, that he looked
splendidly better than most of the gentlemen that Freda Buckler knew. He
hated himself. A man who had grown out of the city's streets, a fine
common thing!
She saw him looking into the mirrors, one after the other, and drew her
mouth down. She got up, walking beside him in the end, between him and
them, taking his arm.
"You shall enter the army--you shall rise to General, or Lieutenant at
least--and there are horses there, and the sound of stirrups--with that
physique you will be happy--authority you know," she said shaking her
chin, smiling.
"Very well, but a common soldier--"
"As you like--afterward."
"Afterward?"
"Very well, a common soldier."
He sensed something strange in her voice, a sort of irony and it took
the patience out of him:
"I have always been common, I could commit crimes, easily, gladly--I'd
like to!"
She looked away. "That's natural," she said faintly, "it's an instinct
all strong men have--"
She knew what was troubling him, thwarted instincts, common beautiful
instincts that he was being robbed of. He wanted to do something final
to prove his lower order; caught himself making faces, idiot faces, and
she laughed.
"If only your ears stuck out, chin receded," she said, "you might look
degenerate, common, but as it is--"
And he would creep away in hat, coat and cane to peer at his horses,
never daring to go in near them. Sometimes when he wanted to weep he
would smear one glove with harness grease, but the other one he held
behind his back, pretending one was enough to prove his revolt.
She would torment him with vases, books, pictures, making a fool of him
gently, persistently, making him doubt by cruel means, the means of
objects he was not used to, eternally taking him out of his sphere.
"We have the best collection of miniatures," she would say with one knee
on a low ottoman, bringing them out in her small palm.
"Here, look."
He would put his hands behind him.
"She was a great woman--Lucrezia Borgia--do you know history--" She put
it back again because he did not answer, letting his mind, a curious
one, torment itself.
"You love things very much, don't you?" she would question because she
knew that he had a passion for one thing only. She kept placing new
ladders beneath his feet, only to saw them off at the next rung, making
him nothing more than a nervous irritable experiment. He was uneasy,
like one given food to smell and not to taste, and for a while he had
not wanted to taste, and then curiosity began, and he wanted to, and he
also wanted to escape, and he could do neither.
Well, after he had married her, what then? Satisfy her whim and where
would he be? He would be nothing, neither what he had been nor what
other people were. This seemed to him, at times, her wish--a sort of
place between lying down and standing up, a cramped position, a slow
death. A curious woman.
This same evening he had looked at her attentively for the first time.
Her hair was rather pretty, though too mousy, yet just in the nape of
the neck, where it met the lawn of the collar it was very attractive.
She walked well for a little woman too.
Sometimes she would pretend to be lively, would run a little, catch
herself at it, as if she had not intended to do it, and calm down once
more, or creeping up to him, stroking his arm, talking to him, she would
walk beside him softly, slowly, that he might not step out, that he
would have to crawl across the carpet.
Once he had thought of trying her with honesty, with the truth of the
situation. Perhaps she would give him an honest answer, and he had
tried.
"Now Miss Freda--just a word--what are you trying to do. What is it you
want? What is there in me that can interest you? I want you to tell
me--I want to know--I have got to ask someone, and I haven't anyone to
ask but you."
And for a moment she almost relented, only to discover that she could
not if she had wished. She did not know always what she meant herself.
"I'll tell you," she said, hoping that this, somehow, might lead her
into the truth, for herself, if not for him, but it did not. "You are a
little nervous, you will get used to it--you will even grow to like it.
Be patient. You will learn soon enough that there is nothing in the
world so agreeable as climbing, changing."
"Well," he said trying to read her, "And then?"
"That's all, you will regret the stables in the end--that's all." Her
nostrils quivered. A light came into her eyes, a desire to defy, to be
defied.
And then on this last night he had done something terrible, he had made
a blunder. There had been a party. The guests, a lot of them, were
mostly drunk, or touched with drink. And he too had too much. He
remembered having thrown his arms about a tall woman, gowned in black
with loose shoulder straps, dragging her through a dance. He had even
sung a bit of a song, madly, wildly, horribly. And suddenly he had been
brought up sharp by the fact that no one thought his behavior strange,
that no one thought him presumptuous. Freda's mother had not even moved
or dropped the kitten from her lap where it sat, its loud resolute purr
shaking the satin of her gown.
And he felt that Freda had got him where she wanted him, between two
rungs. Going directly up to her he said:
"You are ridiculous!" and twirled his moustache, spitting into the
garden.
And he knew nothing about what happened until he found himself in the
shrubbery crawling toward the corral, through the dusk and the dampness
of the leaves, carrying his cane, making sure of his hat, looking up at
the stars.
And now he knew why he had come. He was with his horses again. His
eyes, pressed against the bars, stared in. The black stallion in the
lead had been his special pet, a rough animal, but kindly, knowing. And
here they were once more, tearing up the grass, galloping about in the
night like a ball-room full of real people, people who wanted to do
things, who did what they wanted to do.
He began to crawl through the bars, slowly, deftly, and when half way
through he paused, thinking.
Presently he went on again, and drawing himself into the corral, his hat
and cane thrown in before him, he lay there mouth to the grass.
They were still running, but less madly, one of them had gone up the
Willow Road leading into a farther pasture, in a flare of dust, through
which it looked immense and faint.
On the top of the hill three or four of the horses were standing,
testing the weather. He would mount one, he would ride away, he would
escape. And his horses, the things he knew, would be his escape.
Bareback, he thought, would be like the days when he had taken what he
could from the rush of the streets, joy, exhilaration, life, and he was
not afraid. He wanted to stand up, to cry aloud.
And he saw ten or twelve of them rounding the curve, and he did stand
up.
They did not seem to know him, did not seem to know what to make of him,
and he stared at them wondering. He did not think of his white shirt
front, his sudden arising, the darkness, their excitement. Surely they
would know, in a moment more.
Wheeling, flaring their wet nostrils, throwing up their manes, striking
the earth in a quandary, they came on, whinnied faintly, and he knew
what it was to be afraid.
He had never been afraid and he went down on his knees. With a new
horror in his heart he damned them. He turned his eyes up, but he could
not open them. He thought rapidly, calling on Freda in his heart,
speaking tenderly, promising.
A flare of heat passed his throat, and descended into his bosom.
"I want to live. I can do it--damn it--I can do it. I can forge ahead,
make my mark."
He forgot where he was for a moment and found new pleasure in this
spoken admission, this new rebellion. He moved with the faint shaking of
the earth like a child on a woman's lap.
The upraised hoofs of the first horse missed him, but the second did
not.
And presently the horses drew apart, nibbling here and there, switching
their tails, avoiding a patch of tall grass.