Ignoble men, unworthy of the animals they have subjugated, bred the woe in the spirit of their creatures. St. Mawr, that bright horse, one of the kings of creation in the order below man, it had been a fulfilment for him to serve the brave, reckless, perhaps cruel men of the past, who had a flickering, rising flame of nobility in them. To serve that flame of mysterious further nobility. Nothing matters, but that strange flame, of inborn nobility that obliges men to be brave, and onward plunging. And the horse will bear him on.
But now where is the flame of dangerous, forward-pressing nobility in men? Dead, dead, guttering out in a stink of self-sacrifice whose feeble light is a light of exhaustion and laissez-faire.
And the horse, is he to go on carrying man forward into this? — this gutter?
No! Man wisely invents motor-cars and other machines, automobile and locomotive. The horse is superannuated for man.
But alas, man is even more superannuated for the horse.
Dimly in a woman’s muse, Lou realised this, as she breathed the horse’s sadness, his accumulated vague woe from the generations of latter-day ignobility. And a grief and a sympathy flooded her, for the horse. She realised now how his sadness recoiled into these frenzies of obstinacy and malevolence. Underneath it all was grief, an unconscious, vague, pervading animal grief, which perhaps only Lewis understood, because he felt the same. The grief of the generous creature which sees all ends turning to the morass of ignoble living.
She did not want to say any more to the horse: she did not want to look at him any more. The grief flooded her soul, that made her want to be alone. She knew now what it all amounted to. She knew that the horse, born to serve nobly, had waited in vain for someone noble to serve. His spirit knew that nobility had gone out of men. And this left him high and dry, in a sort of despair.
As she walked away from him, towards the gate, slowly he began to walk after her.
Phoenix came striding through the gate towards her.
“You not afraid of that horse?” he asked sardonically, in his quiet, subtle voice.
“Not at the present moment,” she replied, even more quietly, looking direct at him. She was not in any mood to be jeered at.
And instantly the sardonic grimace left his face, followed by the sudden blankness, and the look of race misery in the keen eyes.
“Do you want me to be afraid?” she said, continuing to the gate.
“No, I don’t want it,” he replied, dejected.
“Are you afraid of him yourself?” she said, glancing round. St. Mawr had stopped, seeing Phoenix, and had turned away again.
“I’m not afraid of no horses,” said Phoenix.
Lou went on quietly. At the gate, she asked him: “Don’t you like St. Mawr, Phoenix?”
“I like him. He’s a very good horse.”
“Even after what he’s done to Sir Henry?”
“That don’t make no difference to him being a good horse.”
“But suppose he’d done it to you?”
“I don’t care. I say it my own fault.”
“Don’t you think he is wicked?”
“I don’t think so. He don’t kick anybody. He don’t bite anybody. He don’t pitch, he don’t buck, he don’t do nothing.”
“He rears,” said Lou.
“Well, what is rearing?” said the man, with a slow, contemptuous smile.
“A good deal, when a horse falls back on you.”
“That horse don’t want to fall back on you, if you don’t make him. If you know how to ride him. That horse wants his own way some time. If you don’t let him, you got to fight him. Then look out!”
“Look out he doesn’t kill you, you mean!”
“Look out you don’t let him,” said Phoenix, with his slow, grim, sardonic smile.
Lou watched the smooth, golden face with its thin line of moustache and its sad eyes with the glint in them. Cruel — there was something cruel in him, right down in the abyss of him. But at the same time, there was an aloneness, and a grim little satisfaction in a fight, and the peculiar courage of an inherited despair. People who inherit despair may at last turn it into greater heroism. It was almost so with Phoenix. Three-quarters of his blood was probably Indian and the remaining quarter, that came through the Mexican father, had the Spanish-American despair to add to the Indian. It was almost complete enough to leave him free to be heroic.
“What are we going to do with him, though?” she asked. “Why don’t you and Mrs. Witt go back to America — you never been West. You go West.”
“Where, to California?”
“No. To Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado or Wyoming, anywhere. Not to California.”
Phoenix looked at her keenly, and she saw the desire dark in him. He wanted to go back. But he was afraid to go back alone, empty-handed, as it were. He had suffered too much, and in that country his sufferings would overcome him, unless he had some other background. He had been too much in contact with the white world, and his own world was too dejected, in a sense, too hopeless for his own hopelessness. He needed an alien contact to give him relief.
But he wanted to go back. His necessity to go back was becoming too strong for him.
“What is it like in Arizona?” she asked. “Isn’t it all pale-coloured sand and alkali, and a few cactuses, and terribly hot and deathly?”
“No!” he cried. “I don’t take you there. I take you to the mountains — trees — ” he lifted up his hand and looked at the sky — ”big trees — pine! Pino-real and pinovetes, smell good. And then you come down, piñon, not very tall, and cedro, cedar, smell good in the fire. And then you see the desert, away below, go miles and miles, and where the canyon go, the crack where it look red! I know, I been there, working a cattle ranch.”
He looked at her with a haunted glow in his dark eyes. The poor fellow was suffering from nostalgia. And as he glowed at her in that queer, mystical way, she too seemed to see that country, with its dark, heavy mountains holding in their lap the great stretches of pale, creased, silent desert that still is virgin of idea, its word unspoken.
Phoenix was watching her closely and subtly. He wanted something of her. He wanted it intensely, heavily, and he watched her as if he could force her to give it him. He wanted her to take him back to America, because, rudderless, he was afraid to go back alone. He wanted her to take him back: avidly he wanted it. She was to be the means to his end.
Why shouldn’t he go back by himself? Why should he crave for her to go too? Why should he want her there?
There was no answer, except that he did.
“Why, Phoenix,” she said, “I might possibly go back to America. But you know, Sir Henry would never go there. He doesn’t like America, though he’s never been. But I’m sure he’d never go there to live.”
“Let him stay here,” said Phoenix abruptly, the sardonic look on his face as he watched her face. “You come, and let him stay here.”
“Ah, that’s a whole story!” she said, and moved away.
As she went, he looked after her, standing silent and arrested and watching as an Indian watches. It was not love. Personal love counts so little when the greater griefs, the greater hopes, the great despairs and the great resolutions come upon us.
She found Mrs. Witt rather more silent, more firmly closed within herself, than usual. Her mouth was shut tight, her brows were arched rather more imperiously than ever, she was revolving some inward problem about which Lou was far too wise to inquire.
In the afternoon Dean Vyner and Mrs. Vyner came to call on Lady Carrington.
“What bad luck this is, Lady Carrington!” said the Dean. “Knocks Scotland on the head for you this year, I’m afraid. How did you leave your husband?”
“He seems to be doing as well as he could dot” said Lou. “But how very unfortunate!” murmured the invalid Mrs. Vyner. “Such a handsome young man, in the bloom of youth! Does he suffer much pain?”
“Chiefly his foot,” said Lou.
“Oh, I do so hope t
hey’ll be able to restore the ankle. Oh, how dreadful, to be lamed at his age!”
“The doctor doesn’t know. There may be a limp,” said Lou.
“That horse has certainly left his mark on two good-looking young fellows,” said the Dean. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Lady Carrington, I think he’s a bad egg.”
“Who, St. Mawr?” said Lou, in her American sing-song.
“Yes, Lady Carrington,” murmured Mrs. Vyner, in her invalid’s low tone. “Don’t you think he ought to be put away? He seems to me the incarnation of cruelty. His neigh. It goes through me like knives. Cruel! Cruel! Oh, I think he should be put away.”
“How put away?” murmured Lou, taking on an invalid’s low tone herself.
“Shot, I suppose,” said the Dean.
“It is quite painless. He’ll know nothing,” murmured Mrs. Vyner hastily. “And think of the harm he has done already! Horrible! Horrible!” she shuddered. “Poor Sir Henry lame for life, and Freddy Edwards disfigured. Besides all that has gone before. Ah, no, such a creature ought not to live!”;
“To live, and have a groom to look after him and feed him,” said the Dean. “It’s a bit thick, while he’s smashing up the very people that give him bread — or oats, since he’s a horse. But I suppose you’ll be wanting to get rid of him?”
“Rico does,” murmured Lou.
“Very naturally. So should I. A vicious horse is worse than a vicious man — except that you are free to put him six feet underground, and end his vice finally, by your own act.”
“Do you think St. Mawr is vicious?” said Lou.
“Well, of course — if we’re driven to definitions! — I know he’s dangerous.”
“And do you think we ought to shoot everything that is dangerous?” asked Lou, her colour rising.
“But, Lady Carrington, have you consulted your husband? Surely his wish should be law, in a matter of this sort? And on such an occasion! For you, who are a woman, it is enough that the horse is cruel, cruel, evil! I felt it long before anything happened. That evil male cruelty! Ah!” and she clasped her hands convulsively.
“I suppose,” said Lou slowly, “that St. Mawr is really Rico’s horse: I gave him to him, I suppose. But I don’t believe I could let him shoot him, for all that.”
“Ah, Lady Carrington,” said the Dean breezily, “you can shift the responsibility. The horse is a public menace, put it at that. We can get an order to have him done away with, at the public expense. And among ourselves we can find some suitable compensation for you, as a mark of sympathy. Which, believe me, is very sincere! One hates to have to destroy a fine-looking animal. But I would sacrifice a dozen rather than have our Rico limping.”
“Yes, indeed,” murmured Mrs. Vyner.
“Will you excuse me one moment, while I see about tea,” said Lou, rising and leaving the room. Her colour was high, and there was a glint in her eyes. These people almost roused her to hatred. Oh, these awful, house-bred, house-inbred human beings, how repulsive they were!
She hurried to her mother’s dressing-room. Mrs. Witt was very carefully putting a touch of red on her lips.
“Mother, they want to shoot St. Mawr,” she said.
“I know,” said Mrs. Witt, as calmly as if Lou had said tea was ready.
“Well — ” stammered Lou, rather put out. “Don’t you think it cheek?”
“It depends, I suppose, on the point of view,” said Mrs. Witt dispassionately, looking closely at her lips. “I don’t think the English climate agrees with me. I need something to stand up against, no matter whether it’s great heat or great cold. This climate, like the food and the people, is most always lukewarm or tepid, one or the other. And the tepid and the lukewarm are not really my line.” She spoke with a slow drawl.
“But they’re in the drawing-room, mother, trying to force me to have St. Mawr killed.”
“What about tea?” said Mrs. Witt.
“I don’t care,” said Lou.
Mrs. Witt worked the bell-handle.
“I suppose, Louise,” she said, in her most beaming eighteenth-century manner, “that these are your guests, so you will preside over the ceremony of pouring out.”
“No, mother, you do it. I can’t smile to-day.”
“I can,” said Mrs. Witt.
And she bowed her head slowly, with a faint, ceremoniously-effusive smile, as if handing a cup of tea. Lou’s face flickered to a smile.
“Then you pour out for them. You can stand them better than I can.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Witt. “I saw Mrs. Vyner’s hat coming across the churchyard. It looks so like a crumpled cup and saucer, that I have been saying to myself ever since: ‘Dear Mrs. Vyner, can’t I fill your cup!’ — and then pouring tea into that hat. And I hear the Dean responding: ‘My head is covered with cream, my cup runneth over.’ — That is the way they make me feel.”
They marched downstairs, and Mrs. Witt poured tea with that devastating correctness which made Mrs. Vyner, who was utterly impervious to sarcasm, pronounce her ‘indecipherably vulgar’.
But the Dean was the old bull-dog, and he had set his teeth in a subject.
“I was talking to Lady Carrington about that stallion, Mrs. Witt.”
“Did you say stallion?” asked Mrs. Witt, with perfect neutrality.
“Why, yes, I presume that’s what he is.”
“I presume so,” said Mrs. Witt colourlessly.
“I’m afraid Lady Carrington is a little sensitive on the wrong score,” said the Dean.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Witt, leaning forward in her most colourless polite manner. “You mean the stallion’s score?”
“Yes,” said the Dean testily. “The horse St. Mawr.”
“The stallion St. Mawr,” echoed Mrs. Witt, with utmost mild vagueness. She completely ignored Mrs. Vyner, who felt plunged like a specimen into methylated spirit. There was a moment’s full-stop.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Witt naively.
“You agree that we can’t have any more of these accidents to your young men?” said the Dean rather hastily.
“I certainly do!” Mrs. Witt spoke very slowly, and the Dean’s lady began to look up. She might find a loop-hole through which to wriggle into the contest. “You know, Dean, that my son-in-law calls me, for preference, belle-mère! It sounds so awfully English when he says it: I always see myself as an old grey mare with a bell round her neck, leading a bunch of horses.” She smiled a prim little smile, very conversationally. “Well!” and she pulled herself up from the aside. “Now as the bell-mare of the bunch of horses, I shall see to it that my son-in-law doesn’t go too near that stallion again. That stallion won’t stand mischief.”
She spoke so earnestly that the Dean looked at her with round, wide eyes, completely taken aback.
“We all know, Mrs. Witt, that the author of the mischief is St. Mawr himself,” he said, in a loud tone.
“Really! you think that?” Her voice went up in American surprise. “Why, how strange — !” and she lingered over the last word.
“Strange, eh? — After what’s just happened?” said the Dean, with a deadly little smile.
“Why, yes! Most strange! I saw with my own eyes my son-in-law pull that stallion over backwards, and hold him down with the reins as tight as he could hold them; pull St. Mawr’s head backwards on to the ground, till the groom had to crawl up and force the reins out of my son-in-law’s hands. Don’t you think that was mischievous on Sir Henry’s part?”
The Dean was growing purple. He made an apoplectic movement with his hand. Mrs. Vyner was turned to a seated pillar of salt, strangely dressed up.
“Mrs. Witt, you are playing on words.”
“No, Dean Vyner, I am not. My son-in-law pulled that horse over backwards and pinned him down with the reins.”
“I am sorry for the horse,” said the Dean, with heavy sarcasm.
“I am very,” said Mrs. Witt, “sorry for that stallion: very!” Here Mrs. Vyner rose as if a chair-s
pring had suddenly pro-pelled her to her feet. She was streaky pink in the face.
“Mrs. Witt,” she panted, “you misdirect your sympathies. That poor young man — in the beauty of youth.”
“Isn’t he beautiful — ” murmured Mrs. Witt, extravagantly in sympathy. “He’s my daughter’s husband!” And she looked at the petrified Lou.
“Certainly!” panted the Dean’s wife. “And you can defend that — that — ”
“That stallion,” said Mrs. Witt. “But you see, Mrs. Vyner,” she added, leaning forward female and confidential, “if the old grey mare doesn’t defend the stallion, who will? All the blooming young ladies will defend my beautiful son-in-law. You feel so warmly for him yourself! I’m an American woman, and I always have to stand up for the accused. And I stand up for that stallion. I say it is not right. He was pulled over backwards and then pinned down by my son-in-law — who may have meant to do it, or may not. And now people abuse him. — Just tell everybody, Mrs. Vyner and Dean Vyner” — she looked round at the Dean — ”that the belle-mère’s sympathies are with the stallion.”
She looked from one to the other with a faint and gracious little bow, her black eyebrows arching in her eighteenth-century face like black rainbows, and her full, bold, grey eyes absolutely incomprehensible.
“Well, it’s a peculiar message to have to hand round, Mrs. Witt,” the Dean began to boom, when she interrupted him by laying her hand on his arm and leaning forward, looking up into his face like a clinging, pleading female:
“Oh, but do hand it, Dean, do hand it,” she pleaded, gazing intently into his face.
He backed uncomfortably from that gaze.
“Since you wish it,” he said, in a chest voice.
“I most certainly do — ” she said, as if she were wishing the sweetest wish on earth. Then turning to Mrs. Vyner:
“Good-bye, Mrs. Vyner. We do appreciate your coming, my daughter and I.”
“I came out of kindness — — ” said Mrs. Vyner.
“Oh, I know it, I know it,” said Mrs. Witt. “Thank you so much. Good-bye! Good-bye, Dean! Who is taking the morning service on Sunday? I hope it is you, because I want to come.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 546
