Читать книгу Cradock Nowell (Vol. 1-3) - R. D. Blackmore - Страница 23

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There is a long, mysterious thrill, a murmur rather felt than heard, a shudder of profundity, which traverses the woodland hollows at the sunʼs departure. In autumn most especially, when the glory of trees is saddening, and winter storms are in prospect, this dark disquietude moves the wood, this horror at the nightfall, and doubt of the coming hours. Touched as with a subtle stream, the pointlets of the oak–leaves rise, the crimped fans of the beech are fluttered, and lift their glossy ovals, the pendulous chains of the sycamore swing; while the poplar flickers its silver skirts, the tippets and ruffs of the ivy are ruffling, and even the three–lobed bramble–leaf cannot repress a shiver.

Touched with a stream at least as subtle, we, who are wandering among the dark giants, shiver and shrink, we know not why; and our hearts beat faster, to feel how they beat. The cause is the same both for tree and for man. Earthly nature has not learned to count upon immortality. Therefore all her works, unaided, loathe to be undone.

Whether it were this, or his craving for his dinner, that made Sir Cradock Nowell feel chilled, as he waited under the shuddering trees for his friend John Rosedew—far be it from me to say, because it may have been both, sir. And the other cause to which he always ascribed it—after the event—to wit, a divine afflatus of diabolical presentiment, is one we have no faith in, until we own to nightmare. Anyhow, there he was, for upwards of an hour; and no John Rosedew came up the hill, which Sir Cradock did not feel it at all his duty to descend, on the very safe presentiment of the distress revocare gradum.

Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by this time he could set papers in the barbara celarent of the most recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought to trot.

“Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite an equus tolutarius. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”. Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some cytisus.

“Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—incertus ibidem sudor—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it; urit avenœ, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not a Christian”.

A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear, he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.

Cob Coræbus by this time knew his master thoroughly; and exercising his knowledge cleverly, made his shoes last longer. If the weather felt muggy and “trying”—from an equine view of probation—if the road was rough and against the grain, even if the forest–fly came abroad upon business, Coræbus used (in sporting parlance) to “shut up” immediately. This he did, not in a defiant tone, not in a mode to provoke antagonism; he was far too clever a horse for that; but with every appearance of a sad conviction that his master had no regard for him. At this earnest appeal to his feelings, John Rosedew would dismount in haste, and reflect with admiration upon the weeping steeds of Achilles, or the mourning horse of Mezentius, while he condemned with acrimony the moral conveyed by a song he had heard concerning the “donkey wot wouldnʼt go”. Then he would loosen the girths, and, remonstrating with Coræbus for his want of self–regard, carefully wipe with his yellow silk pocket–handkerchief first all the accessible parts of the cob that looked at all uncomfortable, and then his own capacious forehead. This being done, he would search around for a juicy mouthful of grass, or dive for an apple or slice of carrot—Coræbus at the same time diving nasally—into the depths of his black coat pocket, where he usually discovered his lunch, which he had altogether forgotten. While the horse was discussing this little refreshment, John would put his head on one side, and look at him very knowingly, revolving in his mind a question which very often presented itself, whether Coræbus were descended from Corytha or Hirpinus.

However this may have been—and from his “staying qualities” one would have thought him rather a chip from the old block of Troy—he was the first horse good John Rosedew had ever called his own; and he loved and admired him none the less for certain calumnies spread by the envious about seedy–toes, splints, and spavins. Of these crimes, whatever they might be, the parson found no mention in Xenophon, Pliny, or Virgil, and he was more than half inclined to believe them clumsy modern figments. As for the incontestable fact that Coræbus began to whistle when irrationally stimulated beyond his six miles an hour, why, that John Rosedew looked upon as a classical accomplishment, and quoted a line from Theocritus. Very swift horses were gifted with this peculiar power, for the safety of those who would otherwise be the victims of their velocity, even as the express train always whistled past Brockenhurst station.

After contemplating the animal till admiration was exhausted, and wondering why some horses have hairy, while others have smooth ankles, he would refresh himself with a reverie about the Numidian cavalry; then declaring that Jem Pottles was “impolitiæ notandus”, he would pass his arm through the bridle, and calling to mind the Pæon young lady who unduly astonished Darius, pull an old book from some inner pocket, and stroll on, with Coræbus sniffing now and then at his hat–brim.

To any one who bears in mind what a punctual body Time is, this account of the rectorʼs doings will make it not incredible that he was often late for dinner. But he never lost reckoning altogether in his circumnavigation, because his leisure did not begin till he had passed the “Jolly Foresters”; for there he must be by a certain hour, or Coræbus would feel aggrieved, and so would Mrs. Cripps, who always looked for him at or about 1.30 P.m. For some mighty fine company was to be had by a horse who could behave himself, in the stable of the “Jolly Foresters”, about middle–day on a Wednesday. Several high–stepping buggy–mares, one or two satirical Broughamites, even some nags who gave a decided tone to the neighbourhood, silver–hamed Clevelands, and champ–the–bit Clydesdales: even these were not too proud—that they left for vulgarian horses—to snort and blow hard at the “Forestersʼ” oats, and then eat them up like winking. To this select circle our own Coræbus had been admitted already, and his conversational powers admired, when he had produced an affidavit that his master was in no way connected with trade.

Coræbus now bade fair to be spoiled by all this grand society. Every Wednesday he came home less natural, more coxcombical. He turned up his nose at many good horses, whom he had once respected, fellows who wandered about in the forest, and hung down their chins when the rain came! And then he became so affected and false, with an interesting languor, when Amy jumped out to caress him! Verily, friend Coræbus, thou shalt pay out for this! What call, pray, hast thou to become a humbug, from seeing how men do flourish?

John Rosedew awoke quite suddenly to the laws of time and season, as the hazel branches came over his head, and he could see to read no longer. The grey wood closed about him, to the right hand and to the left; the thick shoots of the alder, the dappled ash, and the osier, hustled among the taller trees whose tops had seen the sunset; tufts of grass, and blackberry–tangles, hipped dog–roses leaning over them, stubby clumps of buckthorn, brake–fern waving six feet high where the ground held moisture—who, but an absent man, would have wandered at dusk into such a labyrinth?

“ʼActum est’ with my dinner”, exclaimed the parson aloud, when he awoke to the situation; “and what, perhaps, is more important to thee, at least, Coræbus, thine also is ‘pessum datum’. And there is no room to turn the horse round without scratching his eyes and his tail so. Nevertheless, this is a path, or at one time must have been so; ‘semita, callis, tramesʼ—that last word is the one for it, if it be derived from ‘traho’ (which, however, I do not believe)—for, lo! there has been a log of wood dragged here even during a post–diluvial period: we will follow this track to the uttermost; what says the cheerful philosopher:—‘παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις ὁδόν’. Surely a gun, nay, two, or, more accurately, two explosions; now for some one to show us the way. Coræbus, be of good cheer, there is supper yet in thy φάτνῃ, not ἐϋξέστῳ; advance then thy best foot. Why not?—seest thou an ἔιδωλον? Come on, I say, mine horse—Great God!—— ” And he was silent.

Tired as he was, Coræbus had leaped back from the leading rein, then cast up his head and snorted, and with a glare of terror stood trembling. What John Rosedew saw at that moment was stamped on his heart for ever. Across his narrow homeward path, clear in the grey light, and seeming to creep, was the corpse of Clayton Nowell, laid upon its left side, with one hand to the heart, the wan face stark and spread on the ground, the body stretched by the final throe. The pale light wandered over it, and showed it only a shadow. John Rosedewʼs nerves were stout and strong, as of a man who has injured none; he had buried hundreds of fellow–men, after seeing them die; but, for the moment, he was struck with a mortal horror. Back he fell, and drove back his horse; he could not look at the dead manʼs eyes fixed intently upon him. One minute he stood shivering, and the ash–leaves shivered over him. He was conscious somehow of another presence which he could not perceive. Then he ran up, like a son of God, to what God had left of his brother. The glaze (as of ground glass) in the eyes, the smile that has swooned for ever, the scarlet of the lips turned out with the chalky rim of death, the bulge of the broad breast, never again to rise or fall in breathing—is there one of these changes we do not know, having seen them in our own dearest ones?

But a worse sight than of any dead man—dead, and gone home to his Father—met John Rosedewʼs quailing eyes, as he turned towards the opening. It was the sight of Cradock Nowell, clutching his gun with one hand, and clinging hard with the other, while he hung from the bank (which he had been leaping) as a winding–sheet hangs from a candle. The impulse of his leap had failed him, smitten back by horror; it was not in him to go back, nor to come one foot forward. The parson called him by his name, but he could not answer; only a shiver and a moan showed that he knew his baptism. The living was more startled, and more startling, than the dead.