CHAPTER XVI.
CAPTAIN STANDISH CHOOSES A HORSE.
Havinggained her point, and secured the promise of a saddle-horse, Bella wasted no time in getting herself ready to ride him. She was far too wise a little woman to exhibit herself publicly on horseback, before she had learned how to ride. She drove to Great Yafford early next morning, was measured for a habit by the best tailor in the town, and from the tailor’s went to a riding school in the suburbs, where the daughters of the plutocracy learned to sit straight in their saddles, and to take desperate leaps over a pole two feet from the tan floor.
Here Mrs. Piper arrived early enough to attire herself in a borrowed riding-habit, and to get an hour’s private lesson before the daily class began.
‘It is so very long since I’ve ridden,’ she said to the master—a being of hybrid aspect, in whom the swing and swagger of the cavalry soldier was curiouslymixed with the distinctive graces of the circus rider, ‘my husband is afraid I might feel nervous on horseback.’
‘Is it very long, ma’am?’ asked the master, with a view to the selection of an animal of exceptional docility.
‘Well, yes,’ said Bella, who, in her present stage of being, had never ridden anything more dangerous than a wooden rocking-horse. ‘It is rather a long time.’
‘Tame Cat,’ roared the master to his subordinate, and in about five minutes a horse of nondescript appearance—the kind of animal which seems to be grown on purpose for riding-masters and flymen—a creature with a straight neck, splay feet, and a rat tail, but gifted with an expression of patient longsuffering which, from a moral point of view, atoned for his want of beauty.
Bella was mounted on Tame Cat, the master mounted a tall ugly chestnut with a white blaze on his face, and the two horses began to circumambulate the barn-like building at a solemn walk. Then came the exciting canter, and then the mathematical trot,which was for first too much for even Bella’s natural aptitude at doing everything she particularly wanted to do. At the end of the hour, however, there was a marked improvement, and the master complimented his new pupil.
‘You were a good deal out of practice, ma’am,’ he said, ‘but you’ll get into it again nicely in a dozen lessons.’
‘I shall come every morning for a week,’ said Bella, ‘and you must teach me as much as you can in the shortest possible time. Suppose I were to take a double lesson, two hours instead of one.’
‘You might find it too fatiguing.’
‘I don’t mind fatigue a bit,’ answered Bella, curiously forgetful of her depressed state of health. ‘I shall take a two hours’ lesson to-morrow. But, remember, you are not to tell anybody about my coming here. It seems so foolish for a person of my age to be taking riding lessons.’
‘Lor’ bless your heart, ma’am, there’s ladies that come here old enough to be your grandmother. You should see them go round in the canter, with their poor old elbows waggling.’
For six days Bella pursued this secret course of instruction. She contrived to have particular business in Great Yafford every morning. Once she went to carry a hamper of good things to the dear girls at Miss Turk’s, twice to her dressmaker, once to her milliner, once to change books at the library, once to make an early call upon Mrs. Wigzell.
Mr. Piper accompanied her sometimes, but she dropped him at his club, and he in no way interfered with her liberty. At the end of the week the habit was sent home from the tailor’s, and Bella had learned to ride. She had jumped the pole successfully at its greatest altitude, and it seemed to her simple soul that there was nothing she could not achieve in the hunting-field. She had learned to sit straight, to keep her right shoulder back, to trot easily round a corner. The riding-master dismissed her with an assurance that she was a first-rate horse-woman, which he could very well afford to do, as she had paid him a guinea a lesson and made him a present at parting.
‘If you really mean me to have a horse, Mr. Piper, I think Captain Standish would be kindenough to choose one for me. You know what a judge he is.’
‘I’ve heard people say as much,’ assented Piper, ‘and I must confess he rides and drives pretty tidy cattle. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t choose your horse myself. It will be my money that’ll have to pay for it, not Captain Standish’s.’
‘My dear Mr. Piper, horses are so out of your line. You might choose some big clumsy creature—very handsome in his way, no doubt, like the Flemish dray horses, but quite unsuited for me. And you know when you bought the bays you never noticed the splint in Juno’s fore-leg.’
‘It wasn’t my business,’ growled Mr. Piper. ‘I paid for a vet’s opinion.’
‘Precisely, and got cheated in spite of him. Now Captain Standish is not like a veterinary surgeon. He’ll get no commission. You had better let him choose a horse for me.’
‘Well, my dear, if you like him to do so I’ve no objection. I’ve promised you a horse, and I won’t go from my bargain. Come, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll write you a cheque for a hundred, and youand Standish can settle the business between you. If he’s clever enough to get a good horse for seventy-five, you can spend the difference on a new gown. You’re never tired of getting new gowns.’
Mr. Piper wrote the cheque and went his way, with a mind untainted by jealousy. He trusted this pretty young wife of his with the guardianship of his honour, as implicitly as he had trusted homely middle-aged Mrs. Piper the first. He knew that Bella was not faultless. He was far from feeling perfect satisfaction with all her ways. He knew that she was spending his money like water. But the hideous idea that she could dishonour him, were it only in thought, had not yet poisoned his peace.
The cheque was written on a Thursday, and in the afternoon Captain Standish appeared among the commercial aristocracy who now recognised Mrs. Piper’s Thursday afternoons as a pleasant way of wasting a couple of hours, airing their self-importance, and exercising their carriage horses.
‘Has Piper consented to your hunting this season?’ asked the captain, eagerly.
He was just so much in love as to feel that thehunting-field would be an arid waste without Bella.
‘He has consented to my riding, and he has given me a hundred pounds to buy a horse. Here is the cheque, and if you really don’t mind the trouble of choosing one——’
‘You shall have the handsomest horse in Yorkshire,’ said the captain, putting the cheque in his waistcoat pocket.
‘But a hundred pounds won’t be enough for that, will it?’ asked Bella. ‘One hears of such extravagant prices being given for horses now-a-days.’
‘It will be quite enough, as I shall manage.’
‘Ah, you are so clever about horse-flesh. Our coachman says the horses you ride are something wonderful.’
‘I don’t ride screws,’ said the captain, with a well-satisfied air.
He had a lofty pity for the poor creatures who had to ride anything they could get, and be thankful, and to dress themselves respectably upon something under that eight hundred a year which Brummel declared to be the lowest amount upon which a gentleman could clothe himself.
Early in the next week Bella received a little note from the captain, written at one of his London clubs.
‘Dear and liege lady,’—
‘I have bought you a perfect hunter, the gem of Sir Lionel Hawtree’s stud, sold at Tattersall’s this afternoon. I shall bring him to you on Thursday morning. Be ready for a preliminary canter in the park. He is young, and full of playfulness, but without an atom of vice. He is quite the handsomest thing you ever saw—black as my hat, and with the sinews of a gladiator, as light as an antelope, and as strong as a lion. I long to see you mounted on him.
‘Yours always,‘Stephen Standish.’
Bella felt pleased, but slightly doubtful as to the advantage of such a combination of strength, playfulness, and agility. The horses she had ridden at Mr. Hammerman’s Riding Academy had not been given to playfulness. Nor did she feel sure that a creature with gladiatorial sinews and leonine strength would be altogether the nicest thing to ride. Shemight be tired before he was. However, she was full of pride at the idea of having a horse of such distinguished beauty, and of being able to lord it over the Miss Porkmans, who were very proud of their horsemanship, and very fond of talking about their hairbreadth ‘scapes and ventures, and how they had taken it out of their horses, which, according to their own account, were of a very wild and dangerous breed. Bella had no doubt she would be able to take it out of the black. She was glad he was black. There is something so common about a bay. She could hardly rest till Thursday morning came. She went half-a-dozen times to the stables to see that the black’s loose box was properly prepared, with its fringes and decorations of plaited straw, and all the newest improvements in stable fittings. She was walking up and down the broad gravel drive in front of the portico, when the captain appeared, riding his handsome chestnut, followed by a groom, who led a creature so clothed and knee-capped and hooded, that nothing was visible but checked kerseymere. He appeared, furthermore, to have a monstrous hump, which gave him the appearance of a Bactrian camel.
‘I should have ridden him over myself, but I would not bring him to you with the dust of the road upon him,’ said the captain, dismounting, and shaking hands, a lingering hand-shake with a tender little pressure at the end. ‘Now, Dobbs, off with the clothes.’
The black was stripped in a minute or two, and stood before them in all his beauty, a glossy-coated, thoroughbred, finely moulded creature, with a backward roll of his full eye, and an alert movement of his delicate ear, common to horses of his high breeding.
‘Isn’t he perfect?’ asked the captain, contemplating his purchase with the eye of pride.
‘He is lovely, and I don’t know how to thank you,’ answered Bella, watching the black’s restless eyeball; ‘but isn’t he dreadfully high-spirited? You know I don’t pretend to be a Diana Vernon.’
‘You could not do anything badly if you tried,’ said the captain. ‘Don’t be alarmed. Erebus has a lovely temper. With your light little hand on his snaffle, and with a comfortable bit in his mouth, he’ll go as gently as a Shetland pony.’
‘Is he called Erebus?’
‘Yes, he was sold under that name. You can change it if you like.’
‘No, I think it’s rather a good name,’ answered Bella, patting Erebus’s velvet nose, a liberty which he endured with perfect affability. ‘It isn’t common.’
The Miss Porkmans’ horses were called Prince and Daisy.
The cause of the hump-like appearance which had puzzled Bella was a very handsome side-saddle of quilted doeskin—quite the perfection of a saddle.
‘I ventured to have him measured for a saddle directly I decided on buying him for you,’ explained the captain. ‘The saddlers had to work day and night to get it finished by yesterday evening. You must please to accept the saddle as my humble offering.’
‘Oh, I really couldn’t,’ exclaimed Bella. ‘It’s too good of you, but I’m sure Mr. Piper would not allow——’
‘I’ll answer for Mr. Piper’s approval. And now run and put on your habit, and try Erebus’s paces over that smooth bit of turf.’
Bella ran away and reappeared in about ten minutes, looking the prettiest little huntress imaginable, perfectly dressed from the top of her neat chimney-pot to the point of her morocco boot. She had forgotten nothing.
Captain Standish lifted her into the saddle, gave her the reins, and then mounted by her side. They walked quietly to the stretch of turf, and then and there, the instant he felt the grass under his hoofs, Erebus bolted with his light burden.
She sat him splendidly, feeling as if her last hour were come. After making a wild circuit of a mile or so, he consented to be pulled up, and stood looking the image of innocence, when Captain Standish rode slowly up to him.
‘I hope you didn’t think me cruel for not riding after you,’ said the captain. ‘My horse would have only made yours go faster. I saw you were mistress of him. He suits you to a nicety. But you shouldn’t indulge him with that kind of spurt often. It isn’t good form.’
‘N—no,’ faltered Bella, who had no more controlover the black than she had over the hastening clouds in the autumn sky.
‘Now we’ll go for a ride over the moor, and you shall take it out of him,’ said the captain.
They went upon the moor, and the black took it out of Bella, for she went home after a two hours ride more exhausted than she had ever felt in her life before.
There had been no opportunity even for the captain to breathe the sweet poison of his unhallowed love in his companion’s ear, although they were alone together under the wide heaven. The black had absorbed the attention of both. He was a creature of infinite resources, and of as much variety as the serpent of old Nile. They never knew what he might be doing next.
‘Do you really think I shall be able to hunt with him?’ asked Bella, when she dismounted, faint and exhausted, at her own door.
‘I’m sure of it. You have a first-rate seat. It’s only your hands that want a little more education. When we have had half-a-dozen rides together you will be able to do what you like with Erebus. Iwould not have bought him for you if there had been an atom of vice in him. But before you ride him to hounds I’ll hunt him a day or two myself, and see how he takes his fences.’
‘Perhaps that would be best,’ said Bella. ‘Mr. Piper is so nervous about my riding. Certainly, Erebus is a most lovely creature. He must be very cheap for a hundred pounds.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the captain, smiling, ‘he may fairly be called a bargain—at that price.’