A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald (simple ebook reader TXT) 📖

not to offer himself, but to give easy opportunity to any who might wish to know him. I learned afterward that he knew my name and suspected my person: being rather prejudiced in my favour because of the kind of thing I wrote, he was now waiting to see whether approximation would follow.

"Pardon my rude lingering," I said; "that lovely animal is enough to make one desire nearer acquaintance with his owner. I don't think I ever saw such a perfect creature!"

I remembered the next moment that I had heard said of Mr. Skymer that he liked beasts better than men, but I soon found this was only one of the foolish things constantly said of honest men by those who do not understand them.

There are women even who love dogs and dislike children; but, nauseous fact as this is, it is not so nauseous as the fact that there are men who believe in no animal rights, or in any God of the animals, and think we may do what we please with them, indulging at their cost an insane thirst after knowledge. Injustice may discover facts, but never truth.

"I grant him nearly a perfect creature," he answered, "But he is far more nearly perfect than you yet know him! Excuse me for speaking so confidently; but if we were half as far on for men, as Memnon is for a horse, the kingdom of heaven would be a good deal nearer!"

"He seems an old horse!"

"He is an old horse-much older than you can think after seeing him come over that paling as he did. He is forty."

"Is it possible!"

"I know and can prove his age as certainly as my own. He is the son of an Arab mare and an English thoroughbred.-Come here, Memnon!"

The horse, who had been standing behind like a servant in waiting, put his beautiful head over his master's shoulder.

"Memnon," said Mr. Skymer, "go home and tell Mrs. Waterhouse I hope to bring a gentleman with me to lunch."

The horse walked gently past us, then started at a quick trot, which almost immediately became a gallop.

"The dear fellow," said his master, "would not gallop like that if he were on the hard road; he knows I would not like it."

"But, excuse me, how can the animal convey your message?-how communicate what he knows, if he does understand what you say to him?"

"He will at least take care that the housekeeper look in his mane for the knot which perhaps you did not observe me tie in it."

"You have a code of signals by knots then?"

"Yes-comprising about half a dozen possibilities.-I hope you do not object to the message I sent! You will do me the honour of lunching with me?"

"You are most kind," I answered-with a little hesitation, I suppose, fearing to bore my new acquaintance.

"Don't make me false to horse and housekeeper, Mr. Gowrie," he resumed.-"I put the horse first, because I could more easily explain the thing to Mrs. Waterhouse than to Memnon."

"Could you explain it to Memnon?"

"I should have a try!" he answered, with a peculiar smile.

"You hold yourself bound then to keep faith with your horse?"

"Bound just as with a man-that is, as far as the horse can understand me. A word understood is binding, whether spoken to horse, or man, or pig. It makes it the more important that we can do so little, must work so slowly, for the education of the lower animals. It seems to me an absolute horror that a man should lie to an inferior creature. Just think-if an angel were to lie to us! What a shock to find we had been reposing faith in a devil."

"Excuse me-I thought you said an angel !"

"When he lied, would he not be a devil?-But let us follow Memnon, and as we walk I will tell you more about him."

He turned to the wood.

"The horse," I said, pointing, "went that way!"

"Yes," answered his master; "he knew it was nearer for him to take the long way round. If I had started him and one of the dogs together, the horse would have gone that way, and the dog taken the path we are now following."

We walked a score or two of yards in silence.

"You promised to tell me more about your wonderful horse!" I said.

"With pleasure. I delight in talking about my poor brothers and sisters! Most of them are only savages yet, but there would be far fewer such if we did not treat them as slaves instead of friends. One day, however, all will be well for them as for us-thank God."

"I hope so," I responded heartily. "But please tell me," I said, "something more about your Memnon."

Mr. Skymer thought for a moment.

"Perhaps, after all," he rejoined, "his best accomplishment is that he can fetch and carry like a dog. I will tell you one of his feats that way. But first you must know that, having travelled a good deal, and in some wild countries, I have picked up things it is well to know, even if not the best of their kind. A man may fail by not knowing the second best! I was once out on Memnon, five and twenty miles from home, when I came to a cottage where I found a woman lying ill. I saw what was wanted. The country was strange to me, and I could not have found a doctor. I wrote a little pencil-note, fastened it to the saddle, and told the horse to go home and bring me what the housekeeper gave him-and not to spare himself. He went off at a steady trot of ten or twelve miles an hour. I went into the cottage, and, awaiting his return, did what I could for the woman. I confess I felt anxious!"

"You well might," I said: "why should you say confess ?"

"Because I had no business to be anxious."

"It was your business to do all for her you could."

"I was doing that! If I hadn't been, I should have had good cause to be anxious! But I knew that another was looking after her; and to be anxious was to meddle with his part!"

"I see now," I answered, and said nothing more for some time.

"What a lather poor Memnon came back in! You should have seen him! He had been gone nearly five hours, and neither time nor distance accounted for the state he was in. I did not let him do anything for a week. I should have had to sit up with him that night, if I had not been sitting up at any rate. The poor fellow had been caught, and had made his escape. His bridle was broken, and there were several long skin wounds in his belly, as if he had scraped the top of a wall set with bits of glass. How far he had galloped, there was no telling."

"Not in vain, I hope! The poor woman?"

"She recovered. The medicine was all right in a pocket under the flap of the saddle. Before morning she was much better, and lived many years after. Memnon and I did not lose sight of her.-But you should have seen the huge creature lying on the floor of that cabin like a worn-out dog, abandoned and content! I rubbed him down carefully, as well as I could, and tied my poncho round him, before I let him go to sleep. Then as soon as my patient seemed quieted for the night, I made up a big fire of her peats, and they slept like two babies, only they both snored.-The woman beat," he added with a merry laugh. "It was the first, almost the only time I ever heard a horse snore.-As we walked home next day he kept steadily behind me. In general we walked side by side. Either he felt too tired to talk to me, or he was not satisfied with himself because of something that had happened the day before. Perhaps he had been careless, and so allowed himself to be taken. I do not think it likely."

"What a loss it will be to you when he dies!" I said.

He looked grave for an instant, then replied cheerfully-

"Of course I shall miss the dear fellow-but not more than he will miss me; and it will be good for us both."

"Then," said I,-a little startled, I confess, "you really think-" and there I stopped.

"Do you think, Mr. Gowrie," he rejoined, answering my unpropounded question, "that a God like Jesus Christ, would invent such a delight for his children as the society and love of animals, and then let death part them for ever? I don't."

"I am heartily willing to be your disciple in the matter," I replied.

"I know well," he resumed, "the vulgar laugh that serves the poor public for sufficient answer to anything, and the common-place retort: 'You can't give a shadow of proof for your theory!'-to which I answer, 'I never was the fool to imagine I could; but as surely as you go to bed at night expecting to rise again in the morning, so surely do I expect to see my dear old Memnon again when I wake from what so many Christians call the sleep that knows no waking.'-Think, Mr. Gowrie, just think of all the children in heaven-what a superabounding joy the creatures would be to them!-There is one class, however," he went on, "which I should like to see wait a while before they got their creatures back;-I mean those foolish women who, for their own pleasure, so spoil their dogs that they make other people hate them, doing their best to keep them from rising in the scale of God's creation."

"They don't know better!" I said. For every time he stopped, I wanted to hear what he would say next.

"True," he answered; "but how much do they want to know the right way of anything? They have good and lovely instincts-like their dogs, but do they care that there is a right way and a wrong way of following them?"

We walked in silence, and were now coming near the other side of the small wood.

"I hope I shall not interfere with your plans for the day!" I said.

"I seldom have any plans for the day," he answered. "Or if I have, they are made to break easily. In general I wait. The hour brings its plans with it-comes itself to tell me what is wanted of me. It has done so now. And see, there is Memnon again in attendance on us!"

There, sure enough, was the horse, on the other side of the paling that here fenced the wood from a well-kept country-road. His long neck was stretched over it toward his master.

"Memnon," said Mr. Skymer as we issued by the gate, "I want you to carry this gentleman home."

I had often enough in my youth ridden without a saddle, but seldom indeed without some sort of bridle, however inadequate: I did not, at the first thought of the thing, relish mounting without one a horse of which all I knew was that he and his master were on better terms than I had ever seen man and horse upon before. But even while the thought was passing through my head, Memnon was lying at my