National Velvet (16 page)

    
In the end Velvet took Sir Pericles and rode alone to Tablet Gully.

    
In Tablet Gully the piebald cropped, moving from tuft to tuft in sun and shadow, and flashing as he moved. The bone of his shoulder, thrown up by his stooping neck, rippled under his sliding skin. His parti-coloured
mane hung forward over his neck, and his long tail tipped the ground.

    
He swung round with the sun. His teeth tore evenly as he worked. Now his quarters could be seen, slightly pear-shaped and faulty, but strong. His hocks, too thick, but straight and clean, waded in the burnt grasses. He lifted a sloping pastern finished with a pink hoof, and bit a fly off his leg. The clouds reared overhead, the legendary gully with its dead man's tablet was heavy with steady sun and shielded from the wind.

    
Among the scabious flowers on the north slope sat Velvet, steady as a gorse-bush, cross-legged, and watching the horse. She had tied Sir Pericles to a gate in the valley behind her.

    
Sitting like a Buddha, dreaming of the horse, riding the horse in dreams. A piece of cake and a Mar's Bar beside her in a paper bag, and the insects hummed and the mauve August flowers hardly moved. Just to look at him her heart beat violently with ambition. Her strong and inexperienced imagination saw no barriers. She was capable of apprehending death and of conceiving fame—in her own way, not for herself but for her horse. For a shilling she had won this wild creature that did not know its strength. In this valley, tucked away, she had got glory. What she meant to do made her heart beat afresh. She looked steadily at the piebald as though she pitied him. Eating his grass, prince, with his kingdom waiting for him! Her hand stole out and pulled the Mar's Bar from its bag, and she sucked its heavy stump, made from milk chocolate, toffee and nuts.

    
All the Hullocks were creeping with dowdy animals at livery. But here in Tablet Gully moved on its clever legs this living horse. Pulling gently at a blister on her heel she rode him in her mind. She would dazzle the world with this spot of luck, she and the creature together, breathing like one body, trying even to death, till their hearts burst. She would place her horse where he belonged, in history. She clasped the Mar's Bar like a prophet's child, with both hands.

    
“Leaders have been cut from coaches to do it . . .” she whispered as she rose. “Even horses out of carts. Why not him?”

    
A halter made of rope lay behind her and picking it up she walked gently down the valley holding it behind her frock. The piebald stared at her, interested. He loved humanity, and had it not been for the exceptional grass in Tablet Gully would have been off to the village long before this.

    
Frankly he watched her come, nostrils slightly distended and both calm eyes upon her, the blue eye and that white eye where the pied colour streaked across his cheek. She paused beside him and slipped the halter over his head. He shook his neck to free it from flies and came with her willingly.

    
They reached Sir Pericles, who snorted at sight of them and danced his hind-quarters, looking from side to side, catching his soft nose on the reins. How could his mistress walk so out of valleys leading horses? He was intrigued and excited, jealous, pleased to see her again. Velvet loosed and mounted him, and the piebald walked
sedately at their sides, striking out his fore feet in his own peculiar gait.

    
They reached a field not far away, enclosed by a stone wall, and Velvet changed the saddle and bridle, tying Sir Pericles with the halter to the gate. She mounted the piebald, and walked and trotted him quietly in large circles. His mouth was a mixture of lead and rubber. He had no notion how to obey the bit but imagined that to turn his neck was all that was wanted. He would trot onwards with his neck turned to one side like a horse that has no face. Velvet had to rock him with her knees to get him out of his orbit, and even then it was no more than a bewildered stagger to one side. She set him into a canter. It was clumsy and gallant, and accomplished with snorts. He flung his powerful white head up into the air and nearly smashed his rider's precious plate. Sir Pericles watched. The flashing piebald snorted excitedly round the field. Above him sat the noble child, thin as famine, bony as a Roman, aquiline nose and domed white forehead, tufted loonily with her cotton hair. Velvet, with her great teeth and her parted lips, her eye sockets and the pale eyes in them, looked like a child model for a head of Death, an eager, bold, young Death. She was thinking of something far outside the field. She was thinking of horses, great horses, as she sat her horse.

    
Turning in a flash in the middle of the field she drove him on with her knees. They went at the wall together. Over the grasses, over the tufts and mounds, both knitted in excitement, the horse sprang to the surge of
her heart as her eyes gazed between his ears at the blue top of the flint wall. She bent slightly and held him firm and steady, her hands buried in the flying mane firm on the stout muscles of his neck. She urged him no more, there was no need, but sat him still. He was a natural jumper. She did not attempt to dictate to him. They cleared the wall together, wildly, ludicrously high, with savage effort and glory, and twice the power and the force that was needed. Velvet felt his hindquarters drop when they should have hitched. But there was so much space to spare that the piebald could afford it. Nevertheless it was an intemperate and outlandish jump.

    
She rode him back to his own valley and loosed him, then returned home alone on Sir Pericles, parading in dreams. As she approached the village she was outlined against the sunset, on the brow of a Hullock. Stirrups short, angled knee and leg etched on the side of the saddle; childish, skeleton hands waving with the ebb and flow of the horse's mouth on the reins; hands that seemed knotted and tied like a bunch of flowers with streamers going from them, swinging together, knuckle to knuckle, thumb to thumb, while she sat erect above them, her face held on the wand of her body. The straw hair floated and stared above the wide-open eyes.

    
Sir Pericles walked like Velvet sat. His soft mouth held the snaffle as a retriever carries a bird. Yet he arched his neck as though his bit were a bit of thorns, and his long, almond, Chinese eyes looked both backward and forward at once. He seemed to be watching
from either end of the agate stuff that was his window, watching Velvet's leg, watching the horizon before him. The oxygen in the evening air intoxicated him. In the eye of little Sir Pericles something soft and immortal shone.

    
Velvet had laid down the piebald and her ambitions and was thinking comfortably of the coming gymkhana. In her mind she rose at white-painted gates and fences. Her knees crisped with her thoughts in the saddle and she leant forward. Sir Pericles never altered his tossing walk. His head and tail, both like plumes, flirted, and he walked within her dream with a spot of gold upon his eyeball.

    
It was not the silver cup standing above the windblown tablecloth that Velvet saw—but the perfection of accomplishment, the silken co-operation between two actors, the horse and the human, the sense of the lifting of the horse-soul into the sphere of human obedience, human effort, and the offering to it of the taste of human applause. All this she had learnt already from the trained mouth and the kneeling will of Sir Pericles.

    
And as the dim sense of this understanding sighed up and down her body it entered too into Sir Pericles' nerves, and through his nerves to his comprehension. Velvet lived her round of jumps, lips parted, the sunset shining on her golden mouth. She rose and fell at the triple bar, the water-jump, the gate, the imitation wall. She heard the hands, palm on palm, threshing the noise of applause. Sir Pericles dreamt it too, a wild dream
beyond his understanding, but to be recognised when the taste came again.

    
His hoofs came down sweetly on violets, grass and knitted thyme, clanking on a flint, breaking the crisp edge of a wheel rut. He took in everything, behind, before, and from the body astride him. Below, the chimneys were smoking up like poplars and a light was lit in the cobbler's shop.

    
They sidled together down the steep grassy banks towards the village.

    
“Velvet!” said Mally out of the darkness by the bottom gate.

    
“That you, Mally. Open the gate.”

    
“Who's wired it up like this?” Mally wrenched at the twist of wire. She opened it and horse and child passed through. “The piebald's out again. Nobody knew you bin riding him but us. Came thunderin' down the street ten minutes ago.”

    
“Where's he now? Father angry?”

    
“Went down to the sea as usual, an' slid about. Went crackin' up a side street. Father doesn't know. Better not let him. He's bin carrying on about the horses. It would be the limit if he found the piebald had started cracking down the street again.”

    
“F'e broke a leg!” said Velvet in a voice of horror. “F'e did! Might. Easily.”

    
“You can't go after him now. It's pitch. Thurs stars coming.”

    
Sir Pericles gave a whinny. There came a sharp, near
answer, and the piebald stalked out of the shadows, gleaming in the dusk.

    
“He's here!” Velvet's marvelling whisper, as she slipped off Sir Pericles and held out her hand. The piebald came nearer, breathing hard.

    
“Mount, mount!” said Mally. “Get on again! He'll follow. He won't think you want to catch him.”

    
“What'll we do with him?” said Velvet as she scrambled back.

    
“I'll go an' get a halter and we'll try an' put him. . . . Put him in Miss Ada's box to-night and put her in the toolhouse!”

    
The piebald followed, threshing his head, snorting the pleasant village smells, till they reached the yard of the cottage. He drooped his neck for the halter like a horse born in a kitchen. Soon Miss Ada stood among the spades and shovels.

    
“Poor old darling Ada,” said Velvet, as she pushed the shovels to safety behind a wooden case. “Get half the bedding from the loose-box, Mally. The piebald won't miss it. He's never had any before. I'll get Ada some oats to make her happy.”

    
“What'll father say . . . about the piebald being in?”

    
“He won't know. I'll take him back early in the morning.”

    
“Bet he neighs in the night. We'll shut both doors. He might try and jump the bottom one. Let's give him . . . What'll we give him?”

    
“Just hay,” said Velvet. “He's not accustomed to oats.”

    
“D'you know . . .” said Mally suddenly, pausing with an armful of hay.

    
“What?”

    
“He'll be worse than ever after this. He'll be coming back every night to get a night's lodging and a supper! You never saw . . .”

    
“What?”

    
“The way he came down the village street, slipping and sliding and snorting and his eyes shining.”

    
“He's like a prince!” said Velvet.

    
“Eh?”

    
“Just a thing I thought,” said Velvet. “I pretend he's a prince.”

    
At supper everyone ate with memories behind them. Edwina had been kissed by Teddy for the first time. Her nails had shocked and enchanted him. Merry had oiled the canary's stump, and was worrying about what she should call him. She had got a list of gods' names and a birthday list of girls'. It was so hard to know the sex of canaries.

    
Mally and Velvet were thinking of what they had got in the stable, the prince who might kick up a row in the night. Donald was asleep now, stitches in his foot, blood and spit mingled in his dreams. He yelped from time to time in his sleep like a puppy.

    
“Whur's Jacob?” said Mr. Brown suddenly as he ate.

    
“After they bitches,” said Mi, with resentment.

    
“Seem bad this August.”

    
“Bitches? Terrible they are. Crown's got one an'
Ede's got one. That Jacob he . . .” Words failed, and slightly redder than before Mi continued to eat.

    
As the door opened for the pudding's entry they heard the impatient hammer of a hoof on wood. Mr. Brown continued to munch his bread. Mi sat up and his eyes flickered upon Velvet's face.

    
“I'm not hungry any more. Can I get down, mother?” said Velvet.

    
“Say your grace,” said Mr. Brown.

    
“F'whatayave receivedthankGod,” said Velvet, pushing her chair in, and went out in the dark. At the corner of the yard and the road four apple trees were enclosed by a broken fence. They were laden with little sweet apples and the ground was littered with the wind-blowings. She gathered two handfuls and went to the stable with them.

    
Mi hung about the yard all the evening, whistling for Jacob and looking down the road. Once he opened the top portion of the loose-box and looked in, grinning.

    
“Gettin' on all right?” he enquired. Velvet was sitting on the manger.