Chapter 26

The Paddock Close

The girl's voice broke in on them.

"I'm going home now," she cried abruptly.

"Right," answered Silver. "May I come along?"

As he swung round, he saw the girl already jogging away. He pursued leisurely, anxious to talk about Make-Way-There, the Paris Meeting, and Chukkers and Monkey Brand's gossip. But she flitted away in front of him. As he drew up to her she broke into a canter, and the young man took a pull.

His intuitions, like those of most slow-brained men, were unusually swift and sure. It was as though Nature, the Dispenser of Justice, to compensate him for an apparent dearth in one direction, had endowed him richly in another.

"Woa, my little lad, woa then!" he murmured as Heart of Oak bounced and fretted to catch the retreating roan.

He realised that the girl had withdrawn within herself again. On the cliff, in the excitement of action, she had forgotten herself for the moment. Now she was cold and shy once more, retreating behind her barriers, closing her visor. It was as though she had admitted him too close; and to recover herself must now swing to the other extreme.

Obedient to her will, he kept several lengths behind her. When she found he did not draw up alongside, she slackened her pace. He felt her resistance was dying down in answer to his non-resistance. She was shoving against emptiness, and getting no good from it.

As they came to the crest of the Downs and began the descent of the hill, Boy dropped into a walk.

Below them the long roofs of Putnam's showed, weathered among the sycamores.

As the girl passed into the Paddock Close he was riding at her side again.

The Paddock Close was a vast enclosure, fenced off from the Downs, an ideal nursery and galloping ground for young stock.

There was hill and valley; here and there a group of trees for shade in the dog-days; a great sheltered bottom fringed by a wood that ran out into the Close like a peninsula; and the wall of the Downs to give protection from the east.

As they walked together down the hill, Boy was looking about her.

"Where's the mare?" she asked.

They were the first words she had spoken.

"Which mare?" asked Silver

"Four Pound."

He glanced round. The young stock were standing lazily under the trees, swishing their tails, and stamping off the flies. But the old mare had forsaken her usual haunt.

Then far away on the edge of a bed of bracken in the bottom, something like a piece of brown paper caught his eye. It rose and fell and flapped in the wind.

Boy saw it, too, and darted off.

"Call Billy Bluff!" she cried over her shoulder; but Billy had already trotted off to the yard to renew the pleasant task of tormenting Maudie and the fan-tails.

The girl made at a canter for the brown paper struggling on the edge of the bracken.

As she came closer she raised a swift hand to steady the man pounding behind her.

The brown paper was a new-born foal, woolly, dun of hue, swaying on uncertain legs. The little creature, with the mane and tail of a toy horse, looking supremely pathetic in its helplessness, wavered ridiculously in the wind. It was all knees and hocks, and fluffy tail that wriggled, and jelly-like eyes. Its tall, thin legs were stuck out before and behind like those of a wooden horse. It stood like one dazed, staring blankly before it, absorbed in the new and surprising action of drawing breath through widespread nostrils; quavered and then collapsed, only to attempt to climb to its feet again.

Close beside her child lay the mother, her neck extended along the green, her eyes blood-shot.

As the girl rode up, the old mare raised her gaunt, well-bred head and snorted, but made no effort to rise.

Boy dismounted.

"Hold Ragamuffin, will you?" she said.

Silver, himself dismounted now, obeyed.

Boy knelt in the bracken and felt the mare's heart.

The young man stood some distance off and watched her.

"Pretty bad, isn't she?" he said gravely.

"Go and tell mother, please," replied the girl, still on her knees. "And send one of the lads with a rug and a wheelbarrow."

The young man walked away down the hillside, leading the two ponies.

Left alone, Boy brushed away the flies that had settled in black clouds on the mare's face. The foal repeated its ungainly efforts, whimpering in a deep and muffled voice, like the wind in a cave. The urge of hunger was on it, and it did not understand why it was not satisfied. Boy went to it, and thrust her thumbs into its soft and toothless mouth. The foal, entirely unafraid, sucked with quivering tail and such power that the girl thought her thumbs would be drawn off. The old mare whinnied, jealous, perhaps, of her usurped function.

In another moment Mrs. Woodburn's tall and stately form came through the gate and laboured up the hill. She was wearing a white apron and carried a sheet in her hand.

Soon she stood beside her daughter, breathing deeply, and looking down upon the mare.

"Bad job, Boy," she said.

"Have you brought a thermometer?" asked the girl.

Mrs. Woodburn nodded, and inserted the instrument under the old mare's elbow, laying an experienced hand on her muzzle.

"If she'd make an effort," she said in her slow way. "But she can't be bothered. That's Black Death."

Silver, looking ridiculously elegant in his shirt-sleeves and spotless breeches, came up the hill toward them, trundling a dingy stable barrow. Behind him trotted a lad, trailing a rug.

"We must just let her bide," said Mrs. Woodburn. "Lay that sheet over her, George, to keep the flies off, and get a handful of sweet hay and put it under her nose to peck at it. You've brought the barrow, Mr. Silver. Thank you."

"Can you lift the foal in?" asked Boy.

"I guess," answered the young man, stripping up sleeves in which the gold links shone.

"Oh! your poor clothes!" cried Mrs. Woodburn. "Whatever would your mother say? Put on my apron, do."

The young man obeyed, gravely and without a touch of self-consciousness, binding the apron about his waist; and to Boy at least he appeared, so clad, something quite other than ludicrous.

"Can you manage it, d'you think?" she asked in her serious way.

"I guess," answered the young man.

He blew elaborately on his hands, made belief to lick them, and bowed his back to the lifting. There were no weak spots in that young body. It was good all through.

Strong as he was tender, he gathered the little creature. A moment it sprawled helplessly in his arms, all legs and head. Then he bundled it into the barrow.

The old mare whinnied.

"Put the rug over her head so she can't see," said Mrs. Woodburn.

The foal stood a moment in the barrow, then it collapsed, lying like a calf with a woolly tail, its long legs projecting over the side.

Silver grasped the handles of the barrow.

"Is it all right?" asked Boy.

"I guess," replied the young man, and trundled his load away down the hill.

The girl walked beside the barrow, one hand steadying the foal, who reared an uncanny head.

They passed through the yard, jolted noisily over the cobbles, and turned into a great cool loose-box, deep in moss-litter.

"I'll go and get the bottle," said the girl. "George, just run and bring a couple of armfuls of litter-grass off the stack and pile it in that corner."

When she returned with the bottle, the barrow was empty, and the foal lay quiet on a heap of brown grass in the corner.

It whinnied and essayed to stand.

"It's coming, honey," said Boy in her deep, comforting voice.

The foal sucked greedily and with quivering tail.

From outside in the yard came the pleasant clatter of horses' feet on the cobbles.

The string was returning.

In another moment Old Mat was standing in the door of the loose-box, grunting to himself, as he watched the little group within.

Boy, in her long riding-coat, stood in the dim loose-box, her fair hair shining, tilting the bottle, while the foal, with lifted head and ecstatic tail, sucked.

Silver, still in his shirt-sleeves, watched with folded arms.

"Colt foal I see," grunted the old man. "That's a little bit o' better. Four-Pound-the-Second, I suppose you'll call him."