Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1805 page)

‘The farther I am from the window,’ he said, ‘the better, Brother Francis, I shall be pleased.  I have nothing in common with the one prevalent idea of all those people who are passing in the street.  Why should I care to look at them?’

‘I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea of a great many of them, either,’ answered Goodchild, thinking of the sporting gentlemen whom he had met in the course of his wanderings about Doncaster.  ‘But, surely, among all the people who are walking by the house, at this very moment, you may find — ’

‘Not one living creature,’ interposed Thomas, ‘who is not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them.  Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over the whole surface of the earth.  Taking the horse as an animal in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from every point of view.’

‘Thomas,’ said Goodchild, ‘confinement to the house has begun to affect your biliary secretions.  I shall go to the chemist’s and get you some physic.’

‘I object,’ continued Thomas, quietly possessing himself of his friend’s hat, which stood on a table near him, — ’I object, first, to the personal appearance of the horse.  I protest against the conventional idea of beauty, as attached to that animal.  I think his nose too long, his forehead too low, and his legs (except in the case of the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with the size of his body.  Again, considering how big an animal he is, I object to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution.  Is he not the sickliest creature in creation?  Does any child catch cold as easily as a horse?  Does he not sprain his fetlock, for all his appearance of superior strength, as easily as I sprained my ankle!  Furthermore, to take him from another point of view, what a helpless wretch he is!  No fine lady requires more constant waiting-on than a horse.  Other animals can make their own toilette: he must have a groom.  You will tell me that this is because we want to make his coat artificially glossy.  Glossy!  Come home with me, and see my cat, — my clever cat, who can groom herself!  Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth!  Then, again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous fool!  He will start at a piece of white paper in the road as if it was a lion.  His one idea, when he hears a noise that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it.  What do you say to those two common instances of the sense and courage of this absurdly overpraised animal?  I might multiply them to two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath, which I never do.  I prefer coming at once to my last charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it affects his moral character.  I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery.  I brand him publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the confidence reposed in him.  What do you mean by laughing and shaking your head at me?’

‘Oh, Thomas, Thomas!’ said Goodchild.  ‘You had better give me my hat; you had better let me get you that physic.’

‘I will let you get anything you like, including a composing draught for yourself,’ said Thomas, irritably alluding to his fellow-apprentice’s inexhaustible activity, ‘if you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and hear me out.  I say again the horse is a betrayer of the confidence reposed in him; and that opinion, let me add, is drawn from my own personal experience, and is not based on any fanciful theory whatever.  You shall have two instances, two overwhelming instances.  Let me start the first of these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality which the Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still perpetually trumpeting through the world by means of popular report and books on Natural History?  I see the answer in your face: it is the quality of being Sure-Footed.  He professes to have other virtues, such as hardiness and strength, which you may discover on trial; but the one thing which he insists on your believing, when you get on his back, is that he may be safely depended on not to tumble down with you.  Very good.  Some years ago, I was in Shetland with a party of friends.  They insisted on taking me with them to the top of a precipice that overhung the sea.  It was a great distance off, but they all determined to walk to it except me.  I was wiser then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined to be carried to the precipice.  There was no carriage-road in the island, and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a sedan-chair, which is naturally what I should have liked best.  A Shetland pony was produced instead.  I remembered my Natural History, I recalled popular report, and I got on the little beast’s back, as any other man would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the sureness of his feet.  And how did he repay that confidence?  Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon.  Picture to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low stony hills.  Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud.  Place just behind me the legs, the body, and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony, all stretched flat on the ground, and you will have produced an accurate representation of a very lamentable fact.  And the moral device, Francis, of this picture will be to testify that when gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies, they will find to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but broken reeds.  There is my first instance — and what have you got to say to that?’

‘Nothing, but that I want my hat,’ answered Goodchild, starting up and walking restlessly about the room.

‘You shall have it in a minute,’ rejoined Thomas.  ‘My second instance’ — (Goodchild groaned, and sat down again) — ’My second instance is more appropriate to the present time and place, for it refers to a race-horse.  Two years ago an excellent friend of mine, who was desirous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and who was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my legs to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their part, offered to make me a present of one of his horses.  Hearing that the animal in question had started in life on the turf, I declined accepting the gift with many thanks; adding, by way of explanation, that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane, upon which no sane man of my character and habits could be expected to seat himself.  My friend replied that, however appropriate my metaphor might be as applied to race-horses in general, it was singularly unsuitable as applied to the particular horse which he proposed to give me.  From a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been the idlest and most sluggish of his race.  Whatever capacities for speed he might possess he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount of training had ever brought them out.  He had been found hopelessly slow as a racer, and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, and was fit for nothing but a quiet, easy life of it with an old gentleman or an invalid.  When I heard this account of the horse, I don’t mind confessing that my heart warmed to him.  Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the back of a steed as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before my eyes.  I went to look at the horse in the stable.  Nice fellow! he was fast asleep with a kitten on his back.  I saw him taken out for an airing by the groom.  If he had had trousers on his legs I should not have known them from my own, so deliberately were they lifted up, so gently were they put down, so slowly did they get over the ground.  From that moment I gratefully accepted my friend’s offer.  I went home; the horse followed me — by a slow train.  Oh, Francis, how devoutly I believed in that horse I how carefully I looked after all his little comforts!  I had never gone the length of hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the expense of hiring one to wait upon him.  If I thought a little of myself when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for money, I thought also of my horse.  When the man at the shop afterwards offered me spurs and a whip, I turned from him with horror.  When I sallied out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the means of hurrying my steed.  He proceeded at his own pace every step of the way; and when he stopped, at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy sigh, and turned his sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him home again, as I might take home an artless child who said to me, “If you please, sir, I am tired.”  For a week this complete harmony between me and my horse lasted undisturbed.  At the end of that time, when he had made quite sure of my friendly confidence in his laziness, when he had thoroughly acquainted himself with all the little weaknesses of my seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant.  Without the slightest provocation from me, with nothing passing him at the time but a pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from a state of sluggish depression to a state of frantic high spirits.  He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully.  I sat on him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell off.  No, Francis! this is not a circumstance to be laughed at, but to be wept over.  What would be said of a Man who had requited my kindness in that way?  Range over all the rest of the animal creation, and where will you find me an instance of treachery so black as this?  The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may have some reason for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to contribute to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread.  The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry at the time, to say nothing of the further justification of being a total stranger to me.  The very flea who surprises me in my sleep may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my turn, am always ready to murder him when I am awake.  I defy the whole body of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off the ground that I have taken in regard to the horse.  Receive back your hat, Brother Francis, and go to the chemist’s, if you please; for I have now done.  Ask me to take anything you like, except an interest in the Doncaster races.  Ask me to look at anything you like, except an assemblage of people all animated by feelings of a friendly and admiring nature towards the horse.  You are a remarkably well-informed man, and you have heard of hermits.  Look upon me as a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly add to the many obligations which Thomas Idle is proud to owe to Francis Goodchild.’

Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, disputatious Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his head back on the sofa-pillow, and calmly closed his eyes.

At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling companion boldly from the impregnable fortress of common sense.  But Thomas, though tamed in body by drastic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.

The view from the window after Saturday’s breakfast is altogether changed.  The tradesmen’s families have all come back again.  The serious stationer’s young woman of all work is shaking a duster out of the window of the combination breakfast-room; a child is playing with a doll, where Mr. Thurtell’s hair was brushed; a sanitary scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer’s braces were put on.  No signs of the Races are in the streets, but the tramps and the tumble-down-carts and trucks laden with drinking-forms and tables and remnants of booths, that are making their way out of the town as fast as they can.  The Angel, which has been cleared for action all the week, already begins restoring every neat and comfortable article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable place.  The Angel’s daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never saw, nor more quietly expert in their business, nor more superior to the common vice of being above it), have a little time to rest, and to air their cheerful faces among the flowers in the yard.  It is market-day.  The market looks unusually natural, comfortable, and wholesome; the market-people too.  The town seems quite restored, when, hark! a metallic bray — The Gong-donkey!

The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is here, under the window.  How much more inconceivably drunk now, how much more begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much more stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible broom to his tender toes, who shall say!  He cannot even shake the bray out of himself now, without laying his cheek so near to the mud of the street, that he pitches over after delivering it.  Now, prone in the mud, and now backing himself up against shop-windows, the owners of which come out in terror to remove him; now, in the drinking-shop, and now in the tobacconist’s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and makes his way into the parlour, and where he gets a cigar, which in half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now dancing, now dozing, now cursing, and now complimenting My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his heels, occasionally braying, until suddenly, he beholds the dearest friend he has in the world coming down the street.