Jonah and Co. (20 page)

Little wonder that we sailed into Zumaya – all red roofs, white walls and royal-blue timbers – with full hearts, flushed and exulting. The twenty precious minutes which had just gone by were charged with the spirit of the Odyssey.

Arrived at the village, we stopped, to wait for the others. So soon as they came, we passed on slowly along the road to Deva. Perhaps a mile from Zumaya we ate our lunch…

The comfortable hush which should succeed a hearty meal made in the open air upon a summer’s day was well established. Daphne and Adèle were murmuring conversation: in a low voice Jill was addressing Berry and thinking of Piers: pipe in mouth, Jonah was blinking into a pair of field-glasses: and I was lying flat upon my back, neither smoking nor sleeping, but gradually losing consciousness with a cigarette in my hand.

I had come to the point of postponing through sheer lethargy the onerous duty of lifting the cigarette to my lips, when, with an oath that ripped the air, Jonah started to his feet.

Sleep went flying.

I sat up amazedly, propping myself on my hands…

With dropped jaw, my cousin was staring through the glasses as a man who is looking upon sudden death. While I watched, he lowered them, peered into the distance, clapped them again to his eyes, let them fall, glanced swiftly to right and left, shut his mouth with a snap, and made a dash for the cars…

With his hand upon Ping’s door, he turned and pointed a trembling forefinger along the valley.

“There’s Zed,” he cried. “My horse. Haven’t seen him since Cambrai. Leading a team, and they’re flogging him.”

I fancy he knew I should join him, for he never closed Ping’s door. As he changed into second, I swung myself inboard. A moment later we were flying along the dusty road…

Zed had been Jonah’s charger for over three years. Together, for month after month, the two had endured the rough and revelled in the smooth. They had shared misery, and they had shared ease. Together, many times, they had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And, while the animal must have loved Jonah, my cousin was devoted to the horse. At last came Cambrai…

Jonah was shot through the knee and sent to England. And Zed – poor Zed disappeared.

My cousin’s efforts to trace him were superhuman. Unhappily his groom had been killed, when Jonah was wounded, and, though all manner of authorities, from the Director of Remounts downwards, had lent their official aid, though a most particular description had been circulated and special instructions issued to all the depots through which the horse might pass, to his lasting grief Jonah had never heard of Zed again.

And now… I found myself praying that he had not been mistaken.

Jonah was driving like a man possessed.

We tore up a rise, whipped round a bend and, coming suddenly upon a road on our right, passed it with locked wheels.

The noise my cousin made, as he changed into reverse, showed that his love for Zed was overwhelming.

We shot backward, stopped, stormed to the right and streaked up a shocking road at forty-five… We flashed into a hamlet, turned at right angles, missed a waggon by an inch and flung up a frightful track towards a farm…

Then, before I knew what had happened, we had stopped dead, and Jonah’s door was open and he was limping across the road.

In the jaws of a rude gateway stood a waggon of stones. Harnessed to this were three sorry-looking mules and, leading them, the piteous wreck of what had been a blue roan. The latter was down – and out.

For this the immediate reason was plain.

The teamster, better qualified for the treadmill, had so steered his waggon that the hub of its off fore wheel had met the gatepost. This he had not observed, but, a firm believer in the omnipotency of the lash, had determined to reduce the check, whatever might be its cause, by methods of blood and iron. Either because he was the most convenient or by virtue of his status, the leader had received the brunt of the attack. That is, of course, one way of driving…

The blue roan was down, and his master had just kicked him in the belly when Jonah arrived.

The Spaniard was a big fellow, but my cousin has wrists of steel… He took the whip from its owner as one takes a toy from a baby. Then with the butt he hit him across the mouth. The Spaniard reeled, caught his foot on a stone and fell heavily. Jonah threw down the whip and took off his coat.

“I don’t want to kill him,” he said quietly.

When the other rose, he looked extremely ugly. This was largely due to the fact that most of his front teeth were missing and that it was difficult, because of the blood, to see exactly where his face ended and his mouth began. The look in his eyes, however, was suggesting the intent to kill.

He had no idea, of course, that he was facing perhaps the one man living who could have thrashed a champion…

It is not often that you will see half a dozen of the most illustrious members of the National Sporting Club attending an Assault-at-Arms held at a public school. Three years running I had that honour. The gentlemen came to see Jonah. And though no applause was allowed during the boxing, they always broke the rule… In due season my cousin went to Oxford… In his second year, in the Inter-University contest, he knocked his opponent out in seven seconds. The latter remained unconscious for more than six hours, each crawling one of which took a year off Jonah’s life. From that day my cousin never put on the gloves again…

All, however, that the Spaniard saw was a tall lazy-looking man with a game leg, who by his gross interference had taken him by surprise.

He lowered his head and actually ran upon his fate…

I have never seen “punishment” at once so frightful and so punctiliously administered. Jonah worked with the swift precision of the surgeon about the operating table. He confessed afterwards that his chief concern was to keep his opponent too blind with rage to see the wisdom of capitulation. He need not have worried.

When it had become obvious that the blessed gifts of sight, smell, and hearing had been almost wholly withdrawn from the gentleman, when, in fact, he had practically ceased attempting to defend himself, and merely bellowed with mortification at every stinging blow, Jonah knocked him sprawling on to the midden, and drew off his wash-leather gloves.

The next moment he was down on his knees beside the roan, plucking at the rough harness with trembling fingers.

Once the horse sought to rise, but at Jonah’s word he stopped and laid down his head.

Between us we got him clear. Then we stood back, and Jonah called him.

With a piteous effort the roan got upon his legs. That there was back trouble and at least one hock was sprung I saw at a glance. The horse had been broken down. He was still blowing badly, and I ran for the flask in the car. When I came back, Jonah was caressing his charger with tears running down his cheeks…

There is a listlessness, born of harsh treatment, suckled on dying hopes, reared on the bitter memory of happier days, which is more eloquent than tears. There is an air of frozen misery, of a despair so deep that a kind word has come to lose its meaning, which none but horses wear.

Looking upon Zed, I felt ashamed to be a man.

Gaunt, filthy, and tottering, the flies mercilessly busy about three shocking sores, the roan was presenting a terrible indictment to be filed against the Day of Judgment. ‘…And not one of them is forgotten before God…’ But there was worse than pain of body here. The dull, see-nothing eyes, the heavy-laden head, the awful-stricken mien, told of a tragedy to make the angels weep – an English thoroughbred, not dead, but with a broken heart.

We had administered the brandy, Jonah was bathing a sore, and I had made a wisp and was rubbing Zed down, when —

“Good day,” said a voice.

With his arms folded upon the sill, a little grey-headed man was watching us from a window.

I looked up and nodded.

“Good day,” I said.

“Ah like boxing,” said the man. “Ah’ve bin twelve years in the States, an’ Ah’d rather see boxing than a bull-fight. You like baseball?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve never seen it,” I said.

“Haven’t missed much,” was the reply. “But Ah like boxing. You visiting Spain?”

“For a few days.”

“’S a fine country. Bin to Sevilla?”

Entirely ignoring the violence which he had just witnessed, to say nothing of our trespass upon his property and our continued attention to his horse, the farmer proceeded to discuss the merits and shortcomings of Spain with as much detached composure as if we had met him in a tavern.

At length Jonah got up.

“Will you sell me this horse?”

“Yes,” said the man. “Ah will.”

“What d’you want for him?”

“Five hundred pesetas.”

“Right,” said Jonah. “Have you got a halter?”

The man disappeared. Presently he emerged from a door halter in hand.

The twenty pounds passed, and Zed was ours.

Tenderly my cousin fitted the halter about the drooping head.

“One more effort, old chap,” he said gently, turning towards the gate…

Out of compassion for the mules, I drew the farmer’s attention to the hub which was nursing the gatepost.

He just nodded.

“Pedro could never drive,” he said.

“I should get a new carter,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. Then he jerked his head in the direction of the carcase upon the midden.

“He is my step-father. We do not speak,” he said simply.

We found the others in the hamlet through which we had passed. There I handed over Ping to Adèle, and thence Jonah and Zed and I walked to Zumaya.

To find a box at the station was more than we had dared hope for, but there it was – empty and waiting to be returned to San Sebastian. Beneath the influence of twenty-five pesetas, the station-master saw no good reason why it should not be returned by the evening train.

We left Jonah to accompany his horse and hurried home by car to seek a stable.

When we sat down to dinner that night at eight o’clock, Jonah called for the wine-list and ordered a magnum of champagne.

When the wine was poured, he raised his glass and looked at me.

“Thank you for helping me,” he said. He glanced round with his eyes glowing. “And all of you for being so glad.” He drank and touched Adèle upon the shoulder. “In a loose-box, up to his knees in straw, with an armful of hay to pick over, and no congestion… Have you ever felt you wanted to get up and dance?” He turned to Berry. “Brother, your best. May you spot the winner tonight, as I did this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” said Berry, “thank you. I must confess I’d been hoping for some sort of intuition as to what to do. But I’ve not had a hint so far. Perhaps, when I get to the table… It’s silly, of course. One mustn’t expect too much, but I had the feeling that I was going to be given a tip. You know. Like striking a dud egg, and then putting your shirt on a horse called ‘Attar of Roses.’ …Never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Why did you call him ‘Zed’?”

“Short for ‘Zero,’” said Jonah. “I think my groom started it, and I—”

“Zero,” said Berry quietly. “I’m much obliged.”

It was a quarter to eleven, and Berry had lost one hundred and seventy pounds.

Across her husband’s back Daphne threw me a despairing glance. Upon the opposite side of the table, Adèle and Jill, one upon either side of Jonah, stared miserably before them. I lighted my tenth cigarette and wondered what Berry had done…

The table was crowded.

From their points of vantage the eight croupiers alternately did their business and regarded the assembly with a bored air.

A beautifully dressed American, who had been losing, observed the luck of her neighbour, a burly Dutchman, with envious eyes. With a remonstrance in every fingertip, a débonnaire Frenchman was laughingly upbraiding his fellow for giving him bad advice. From above his horn-rimmed spectacles an old gentleman in a blue suit watched the remorseless rake jerk his five pesetas into “the Bank” in evident annoyance. Cheek by jowl with a dainty Englishwoman, who reminded me irresistibly of a Dresden shepherdess, a Spanish Jew, who had won, was explosively disputing with a croupier the amount of his stake. Two South Americans were leaning across the table, nonchalantly “plastering the board.” A little old lady, with an enormous bag, was thanking an elegant Spaniard for disposing her stake as she desired. Finger to lip, a tall Spanish girl in a large black hat was sizing her remaining counters with a faint frown. A very young couple, patently upon their honeymoon, were conferring excitedly…

“
Hagan juego, Señores
.”

The conference between the lovers became more intense.

“
Esta hecho
?”

“Oh, be quick!” cried the girl. “Between ‘7’ and ‘8,’ Bill. Between…”

As the money went on —

“
No va mas
,” cried the croupier in charge.

Two pairs of eyes peered at the revolving wheel. They did not notice that the Dutchman, plunging at the last moment upon ‘MANQUE,’ had touched their counter with his cuff and moved it to ‘9.’

The ball lost its momentum, poppled across the ridges, and leaped to rest.

“
Nueve
.”

Two faces fell. I wondered if a new frock had vanished into air…

With the edge of his rake a croupier was tapping their counter and looking round for the claimant.

For a second the Jew peered about him. Then he pointed to himself and stretched out his hand.

I called to the croupier in French.

“No. It belongs to Monsieur and Madame. I saw what happened. That gentleman moved it with his cuff.”

“
Merci, Monsieur
.”

With a sickly leer the pretender rallied the croupier, confidentially assured the dainty Englishwoman that he did not care, and, laughing a little too heartily, waved the thirty-five pounds towards their bewildered owners.

“B-but it isn’t mine,” stammered the boy.

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “Your counter was moved. I saw the whole thing.” I hesitated. Then, “If you’ll take an old hand’s advice, you’ll stop now. A thing like that’s invariably the end of one’s luck.”