The Talking Horse, and Other Tales

I wiped my brow. 'You are not going to ask me to climb that thing?' I faltered.

'Well,' he suggested, 'if you will just arrange yourself upon the cross-trees in a negligent attitude, upside down, with your tongue protruded as if for medical inspection, I shall be perfectly satisfied.'

I tried argument. 'I should have no objection in the world,' I said; 'it's an excellent idea – only, do sailors ever climb masts in that way? Wouldn't it be better to have the thing correct while we're about it?'

'I was not aware that you were a sailor,' he said; 'are you?'

I was afraid to say I was, because I apprehended that, if I did, it might occur to him to put me through some still more frightful performance.

'Come,' he said, 'you won't compel me to shed blood so early in the afternoon, will you? Up with you.'

I got up, but, as I hung there, I tried to obtain a modification of some of the details. 'I don't think,' I said artfully, 'that I'll put out my tongue – it's rather overdone, eh? Everybody is taken with his tongue out nowadays.'

'It is true,' he said, 'but I am not well enough known in the profession yet to depart entirely from the conventional. Your tongue out as far as it will go, please.'

'I shall have a rush of blood to the head, I know I shall,' I protested.

'Look here,' he said; 'am I taking this photograph, or are you?'

There was no possible doubt, unfortunately, as to who was taking the photograph. I made one last remonstrance. 'I put it to you as a sensible man,' I began; but it is a waste of time to put anything to a raving lunatic as a sensible man. It is enough to say that he carried his point.

'I wish you could see the negative!' he said as he came back from his laboratory. 'You were a little red in the face, but it will come out black, so it's all right. That carte will be quite a novelty, I flatter myself.'

I groaned. However, this was the end; I would get away now at all hazards, and tell the police that there was a dangerous maniac at large. I got down from the mast with affected briskness. 'Well,' I said, 'I mustn't take advantage of your good nature any longer. I'm exceedingly obliged to you for the – the pains you have taken. You will send all the photographs to this address, please?'

'Don't go yet,' he said. 'Are you an equestrian, by the way?'

If I could only engage him in conversation I felt comparatively secure.

'Oh, I put in an appearance in the Row sometimes, in the season,' I replied; 'and, while I think of it,' I added, with what I thought at the time was an inspiration, 'if you will come with me now, I'll show you my horse – you might take me on horseback, eh?' I did not possess any such animal, but I wanted to have that door unlocked.

'Take you on horseback?' he repeated. 'That's a good idea – I had rather thought of that myself.'

'Then come along and bring your instrument,' I said, 'and you can take me at the stables; they're close by.'

'No need for that,' he replied cheerfully. 'I'll find you a mount here.'

And the wretched lunatic went behind the screen and wheeled out a small wooden quadruped covered with large round spots!

'She's a strawberry roan,' he said; 'observe the strawberries. So, my beauty, quiet, then! Now settle yourself easily in the saddle, as if you were in the Row, with your face to the tail.'

'Listen to me for one moment,' I entreated tremulously. 'I assure you that I am not in the habit of appearing in Rotten Row on a spotted wooden horse, nor does any one, I assure you —any one mount a horse of any description with his face towards the crupper! If you take me like that, you will betray your ignorance – you will be laughed at!'

When people tell you it is possible to hoodwink the insane by any specious show of argument, don't believe them; my own experience is that demented persons can be quite perversely logical when it suits their purpose.

'Pardon me,' he said, 'you will be laughed at possibly – not I. I cannot be held responsible for the caprices of my clients. Mount, please; she'll carry you perfectly.'

'I will,' I said, 'if you'll give me the revolver to hold. I – I should like to be done with a revolver.'

'I shall be delighted to do you with a revolver,' he said grimly, 'but not yet; and if I lent you the weapon now, I could not answer for your being able to hold the horse as well – she has never been broken in to firearms. I'll hold the revolver. One – two – three.'

I mounted; why had I not disregarded the expense and gone to Lenz and Kamerer? Lenz does not pose his customers by the aid of a revolver. Kamerer, I was sure, would not put his patrons through these degrading tomfooleries.

He took more trouble over this than any of the others; I was photographed from the back, in front, and in profile; and if I escaped being made to appear abjectly ridiculous, it can only be owing to the tragic earnestness which the consciousness of my awful situation lent to my expression.

As he took the last I rolled off the horse, completely prostrated. 'I think,' I gasped faintly, 'I would rather be shot at once —without waiting to be taken in any other positions. I really am not equal to any more of this!' (He was quite capable, I felt, of photographing me in a perambulator, if it once occurred to him!)

'Compose yourself,' he said soothingly, 'I have obtained all I wanted. I shall not detain you much longer. Your life, I may remark, was never in any imminent danger, as this revolver is unloaded. I have now only to thank you for the readiness with which you have afforded me your co-operation, and to assure you that early copies of each of the photographs shall be forwarded for Miss Waverley's inspection.'

'Miss Waverley!' I exclaimed; 'stay, how do you know that name?'

'If I mistake not, it was her photograph that you kindly brought for my guidance. I ought to have mentioned, perhaps, that I once had the honour of being engaged to her – until you (no doubt from the highest motives) invested my little gift of song with a flavour of unromantic ridicule. That ridicule I am now enabled to repay, with interest calculated up to the present date.'

'So you are Iris's poet!' I burst out, for, somehow, I had not completely identified him till that moment. 'You scoundrel! do you think I shall allow you to circulate those atrocious caricatures with impunity? No, by heavens! my solicitor shall – '

'I rely upon the document you were kind enough to furnish,' he said quietly. 'I fear that any legal proceedings you may resort to will hardly avert the publicity you seem to fear. Allow me to unfasten the door. Good-bye; mind the step on the first landing. Might I beg you to recommend me amongst your friends?'

I went out without another word; he was mad, of course, or he would not have devised so outrageous a revenge for a fancied injury, but he was cunning enough to be my match. I knew too well that if I took any legal measures, he would contrive to shift the whole burden of lunacy upon me. I dared not court an inquiry for many reasons, and so I was compelled to pass over this unparalleled outrage in silence.

Iris made frequent inquiries after the promised photograph, and I had to parry them as well as I could – which was a mistake in judgment on my part, for one afternoon while I was actually sitting with her, a packet arrived addressed to Miss Waverley.

I did not suspect what it might contain until it was too late. She recognised that photographs were inside the wrappings, which she tore open with a cry of rapture – and then!

She had a short fainting fit when she saw the Gainsborough hat, and as soon as she revived, the extraordinary appearance I presented upside down on the mast sent her into violent hysterics. By the time she was in a condition to look at the equestrian portraits she had grown cold and hard as marble. 'Go,' she said, indicating the door, 'I see I have been wasting my affection upon a vulgar and heartless buffoon!'

I went – for she would listen to no explanations; and indeed I doubt whether, even were she to come upon this statement, it would serve to restore my tarnished ideal in her estimation. But, though I have lost her, I am naturally anxious (as I said when I began) that the public should not be misled into drawing harsh conclusions from what, if left unexplained, may doubtless have a singular appearance.

It is true that, up to the present, I have not been able to learn that any of those fatal portraits have absolutely been exposed for sale, though I direct my trembling steps almost every day to Regent Street, and search the windows of the Stereoscopic Company with furtive and foreboding eyes, dreading to be confronted with presentments of myself – Bedell Gruncher, 'Vitriol,' the great critic! – lying across a chair in a state of collapse, sucking my thumb in a Gainsborough hat, or bestriding a ridiculous wooden horse with my face towards its tail!

But they cannot be long in coming out now; and my one hope is that these lines may appear in print in time to forestall the prejudice and scandal which are otherwise inevitable. At all events, now that the world is in possession of the real facts, I am entitled to hope that the treatment to which I have been subjected will excite the indignation and sympathy it deserves.

PALEFACE AND REDSKIN

A COMEDY-STORY FOR GIRLS AND BOYS

ACT THE FIRST

WHERE IS THE ENEMY?

It was a very hot afternoon, and Hazel, Hilary, and Cecily Jolliffe were sitting under the big cedar on the lawn at The Gables. Each had her racket by her side, and the tennis-court lay, smooth and inviting, close by; but they did not seem inclined to play just then, and there was something in the expression of all three which indicated a common grievance.

'Well,' said Hazel, the eldest, who was nearly fourteen, 'we need not have excited ourselves about the boys' holidays, if we had only known. They don't give us much of their society – why, we haven't had one single game of cricket together yet!'

'And then to have the impudence to tell us that they didn't care much about our sort of cricket!' said Hilary, 'when I can throw up every bit as far as Jack, and it takes Guy three overs to bowl me! It's beastly cheek of them.'

'Hilary!' cried Cecily, 'what would mother say if she heard you talk like that?'

'Oh, it's the holidays!' said Hilary, lazily. 'Besides, it is a shame! They would have played with us just as they used to, if it hadn't been for that Clarence Tinling.'

'Yes,' Hazel agreed, 'he hates cricket. I do believe that's the reason why he invented this silly army, and talked Jack and Guy into giving up everything for it.'

'They haven't any will of their own, poor things!' said Hilary.

'You forget, Hilary,' put in Cecily, 'Tinling is the guest. They ought to give way to him.'

'Well,' said Hilary, 'it's ridiculous for great boys who have been two terms at school to go marching about with swords and guns. Big babies!'

Perhaps there was a little personal feeling at the bottom of this, for she had offered herself for enlistment, and had been sternly rejected on the ground of her sex.

'I wish he would go, I know that,' said Hazel, making a rather vicious little chop at her shoe with her racket; 'those boys talk about nothing but their stupid army from morning to night. Uncle Lambert says they make him feel quite gunpowdery at lunch. And what do you think is the last thing they've done? – put up a great fence all round their tent, and shut themselves up there all day!'

'Except when they're sentries and hide,' put in Hilary; 'they're always jumping up somewhere and wanting you to give the countersign. It isn't like home, these holidays!'

'Perhaps,' suggested Cecily, 'it makes things safer, you know.'

'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as such domestic offices ever are.

'Look out!' cried Hilary, presently; 'they're coming. Don't let's take the least notice of them. They hate that more than anything.'

From the shrubbery filed three boys, the first and tallest of whom wore an imposing dragoon's helmet with a crimson plume, and carried a sabretache and crossbelts, and wore red caps like those of the French army; they carried guns on their shoulders.

'Halt! 'Tention! Dis-miss!' shouted the commanding officer, and the army broke off with admirable precision.

'Don't be alarmed,' said the General considerately to the three girls; 'the army is only out on fatigue duty.'

'Then wouldn't the army like to sit down?' suggested Hilary, forgetting all about her recent proposal.

'Ah, you don't understand,' said General Tinling with some pity. 'It's a military term.'

He was a pale, puffy boy, with reddish hair and freckles, who was evidently fully alive to the dignity of his position.

'Suppose we let military things alone for a little while,' said Hazel. 'We want the army to come and play tennis. You will, won't you, Jack and Guy? and Cis will umpire – she likes it.'

'I don't mind a game,' said Jack.

'I'll play, if you like,' added Guy; but he had forgotten that the General was a bit of a martinet.

'That's nice discipline,' he said. 'I don't know whether you know it; but in some armies you'd be court-martialled for less than that.'

'Well, may we, then?' asked Guy a little impatiently.

'No salute now!' cried his superior. 'I shall never make you fellows smart. Why, at the Haversacks, last Easter, there were half a dozen of us, and we drilled like machines. Of course you mayn't play tennis – this is only a bivouac; and it's over now. Attention! The left wing of the force will occupy the shrubbery; the right will push on and blow up the gate.

'Which of us is the left wing?' inquired Guy.

'You are, of course.'

'Oh, all right; only you said Jack was just now,' grumbled Guy, who was evidently a little disposed to rebel at being deprived of his tennis.

'Look here,' said the General; 'either let's do the thing thoroughly, or not do it at all. It's no pleasure to me to be General, I can tell you; and if I can't have perfect discipline in the ranks – why, we might as well drop the army altogether!'

'Oh, all right,' said Jack, who was a sweet-tempered boy, 'we won't do it again.'

And they went off to carry out their separate instructions, Clarence Tinling remaining by the cedar.

'I have to be a little sharp now and then,' he explained. 'Why, if I didn't keep an iron rule over them, they'd be getting insubordinate in no time. You mustn't think I've any objection to their playing tennis, or anything of that sort; only discipline must be kept up; though it seems severe, perhaps, to you.'

'It doesn't seem to be half bad fun for you, at all events,' said Hazel.

'Of course,' added Hilary, whose cheeks were flushed and eyes suspiciously bright as she plucked all the blades of grass that were within her reach, 'we're glad if you're enjoying being here; but it's a little slow for us girls. You might give the army a half-holiday now and then.'

'An army, especially a small army, like ours,' said Clarence, grandly, 'ought to be constantly prepared for action; else it's no use. Then, look at the protection it is. Why, we've just built a fortified place close to the kitchen garden, where you could all retire to if we were attacked; and, properly provisioned, we could hold out for almost any time.'

'Thank you,' said Hilary. 'I should feel a good deal safer in the box-room. And then, who's going to attack us?'

'Well, you never know,' replied Clarence; 'but, if they did come, it's something to feel we should be able to defend ourselves.'

'Yes, Hilary,' Cecily remarked, 'an army would certainly be a great convenience then.'

'That would depend on what it did,' said her sister. 'It wouldn't be much of a convenience if it ran away.'

'I don't think Jack and Guy would ever do that,' observed Hazel.

'I suppose that means that you think I should?' inquired Clarence, who was quick at discovering personal allusions.

'I wasn't thinking about you at all,' said Hazel, with supreme indifference; 'we don't know you well enough to say whether you're brave or not – we do know our brothers.'

'There wouldn't be much sense in my being the General if I wasn't the bravest, would there?' he demanded.

'Well, as to that, you see,' retorted Hilary, 'we don't see much sense in any of it.'

'Girls can't be expected to see sense in anything,' he said sulkily.

'At all events, no one can be expected to see bravery till there's some danger,' said Hazel; 'and there isn't the least!'

'That's all you know about it; but I've something more important to do than stay here squabbling. I'm off to see what the army's up to.' And he marched off with great pomp.

When he had disappeared, Hilary remarked frankly, 'Isn't he a pig?'

'I don't think it's nice to call our visitors "pigs," Hilary!' remonstrated Cecily, 'and he's not really more greedy than most boys.'

'Don't lecture, Cis. I didn't mean he was that kind of pig – I said he was a pig. And he is!' said Hilary, not over lucidly. 'I wonder what Jack and Guy can see in him. I thought that when they wrote asking him to be invited, that he'd be sure to be such a jolly boy!'

'He may be a jolly boy – at school,' was all that even the tolerant Cecily could find to urge in his favour.

'I believe,' said Hazel, 'that they're not nearly so mad about him as they were – didn't you notice about the tennis just now?'

'He bullies them – that's what it is,' explained Hilary; 'only with talking, I mean, of course, but he talks such a lot, and he will have his own way, and, if they say anything, he reminds them he's a visitor, and ought to be humoured. I wish it was any use getting Uncle Lambert to speak to him – but he's so stupid!'

'Is he, though?' said a lazy voice from behind the cedar.

'Oh, Uncle Lambkin!' cried Hilary, 'I didn't know you were there!'

'Don't apologise,' was the answer. 'I know it must be a trial to have an uncle on the verge of imbecility – but bear with me. I am at least harmless.'

'Of course we know you're really rather clever,' said Hazel, 'but you are stupid about some things – you never interfere, whatever people do!'

'Don't I, really?' said their uncle, as he disposed himself on his back, and tilted his hat over his nose; 'you do surprise me! What a mistake for a man to make, who has come down for perfect quiet! Whom shall I begin to interfere with?'

'Well, you might snub that horrid Tinling boy, instead of encouraging him, as you always do!'

'Encourage him! He's got a fine flow of martial enthusiasm, and a good supply of military terms, and I listen when he gives me long accounts of thrilling engagements, when he came out uncommonly strong – and the enemy, so far as I can gather, never came out at all. I'm passive, because I can't help myself; and then he amuses me in his way – that's all.'

'Do you believe he's brave, uncle?'

'I only know that I saw him kill two wasps with his teaspoon,' was the reply. 'They don't award the Victoria Cross for it – but it's a thing I couldn't have done myself.'

'I should hope not!' exclaimed Hilary; 'but everybody knows you're a coward,' she added (she did not intend this remark to be taken seriously), 'and you're awfully lazy. Still, there are some things you might do!'

'If that means fielding long-leg till tea-time, I respectfully disagree. Irreverent girls, have you never been taught that a digesting uncle is a very solemn and sacred thing?'

'Now you are going to be idiotic again! But as to cricket – why, you must know that we never get a game now! And next summer I shall be too old to play!'

'I never mean to be too old for cricket,' said Hilary, with conviction; 'but we've had none for weeks, uncle, positive weeks!'

'Quite right, too!' observed Uncle Lambert, sleepily. 'Not a game for girls – only spoil your hands – do you think I want a set of nieces with paws like so many glovers' signs?'

'That's utter nonsense,' said Hazel, calmly, 'because we always play in gloves. Mother makes us. At least, when we did play. Now the boys will only play soldiers, and, if they do happen to be inclined for a set at tennis, Clarence comes up and orders them off as pickets or outposts, or something!'

'But he's not Bismarck or Boulanger, is he? I always understood this was a free country.'

'You know what Guy and Jack are – they can't bear their visitor to think he isn't welcome.'

'Well, they seem to have made him feel very much at home – but it isn't my business; if they choose to declare the house in a state of siege, and turn the garden into a seat of war, I can't help it – I'd rather they wouldn't, but it's your mother's affair, not mine!'

And he closed the discussion by lighting a cigarette, and relapsing into a contented silence.

Uncle Lambert was short and stout, with a round red face, a heavy auburn moustache, and little green eyes which never seemed to notice anything. His nieces were fond of him, though they often wished he would pay them the occasional compliment of talking sensibly; but he never did, and he spent all his time at The Gables in elaborately doing nothing at all.

Clarence Tinling had gone off in a decided huff – so much so indeed that he left his devoted army to carry out their rather misty manœuvres without any help from him. He was beginning to find a falling-off in their docility of late, which was no doubt owing to their sisters; it was excessively annoying to him that those girls should be so difficult to convince of the protective value of a fortress, and especially that they should decline to take his own superior nerve and courage for granted. And the worst of it was, nothing but some imminent danger was ever likely to convince them, such were their prejudice and narrow-mindedness.

Later that afternoon the family assembled for tea in the cool, shady dining-room; Mrs. Jolliffe, with a gentle anxiety on her usually placid face, sat at the head (Colonel Jolliffe was away shooting in the North just then). 'Where are all the boys?' she said, looking round the table. 'Why don't they come in?'

'It's no use asking us, mother,' said Hilary, 'we see so very little of them ever.'

'Very likely they are washing their hands,' said her mother.

'So like them!' murmured Uncle Lambert in confidence to his tea-cake. 'But here's the noble General, at all events. Well, Field Marshal, what have you done with the Standing Army?'

Tinling addressed himself to his hostess. 'Oh, Mrs. Jolliffe, I'm so sorry I was late, but I had just to run round to the stables for a minute. Oh, the other two? They're on duty – they're guarding the camp. In fact, I can't stay here very long myself.'

'But the poor dear boys must have their tea!' cried Mrs. Jolliffe.

'Well, you know,' said their veteran officer, as he helped himself to the marmalade, 'I don't think a little roughing it is at all a bad thing for them – teaches them that a soldier's life is not all jam.'

'No,' said Hazel, 'the General seems to get most of that.'

All Clarence said was: 'I'll trouble one of you girls for the tea-cake.'

'I don't think it's fair that the poor army should "rough," as you call it, while you stuff, Clarence,' said Hazel, indignantly. 'Mustn't they come in to tea, mother? It is such nonsense!'

'Yes, dear, run and call them in,' said Mrs. Jolliffe. 'I can't let my boys go without their meals, Clarence, it's so bad for them.'

'It's not discipline,' said the chief; 'still, if they must come, you had better take them this permit from me.' And he scribbled a line on a scrap of paper, which he handed to Hazel, who received it with the utmost disdain.

Hazel crossed the lawn and over a little rustic bridge to the kitchen garden and hothouses, beyond which was the paddock, where the fortress had been erected. It was a very imposing construction, built, with some help from the village carpenter, of portions of some disused fencing. The stockade had loopholes in it, and above the top she could see a fluttering flag and the point of a tent. Jack was perched up on a kind of look-out, and Guy was pacing solemnly before the covered entrance with a musket of very mild aspect over his shoulder.