CHAPTER XXXI. THE SEXTON’S OLD HORSE

I stood and watched the last gleam of the white leopardess melt away,

then turned to follow my guide--but reluctantly. What had I to do with

sleep? Surely reason was the same in every world, and what reason could

there be in going to sleep with the dead, when the hour was calling the

live man? Besides, no one would wake me, and how could I be certain of

waking early--of waking at all?--the sleepers in that house let morning

glide into noon, and noon into night, nor ever stirred! I murmured, but

followed, for I knew not what else to do.

The librarian walked on in silence, and I walked silent as he. Time and

space glided past us. The sun set; it began to grow dark, and I felt in

the air the spreading cold of the chamber of death. My heart sank lower

and lower. I began to lose sight of the lean, long-coated figure, and at

length could no more hear his swishing stride through the heather.

But then I heard instead the slow-flapping wings of the raven; and, at

intervals, now a firefly, now a gleaming butterfly rose into the rayless

air.

By and by the moon appeared, slow crossing the far horizon.

“You are tired, are you not, Mr. Vane?” said the raven, alighting on a

stone. “You must make acquaintance with the horse that will carry you in

the morning!”

He gave a strange whistle through his long black beak. A spot appeared

on the face of the half-risen moon. To my ears came presently the

drumming of swift, soft-galloping hoofs, and in a minute or two, out of

the very disc of the moon, low-thundered the terrible horse. His mane

flowed away behind him like the crest of a wind-fighting wave, torn

seaward in hoary spray, and the whisk of his tail kept blinding the eye

of the moon. Nineteen hands he seemed, huge of bone, tight of skin, hard

of muscle--a steed the holy Death himself might choose on which to ride

abroad and slay! The moon seemed to regard him with awe; in her scary

light he looked a very skeleton, loosely roped together. Terrifically

large, he moved with the lightness of a winged insect. As he drew near,

his speed slackened, and his mane and tail drifted about him settling.

Now I was not merely a lover of horses, but I loved every horse I saw.

I had never spent money except upon horses, and had never sold a horse.

The sight of this mighty one, terrible to look at, woke in me longing to

possess him. It was pure greed, nay, rank covetousness, an evil thing

in all the worlds. I do not mean that I could have stolen him, but that,

regardless of his proper place, I would have bought him if I could. I

laid my hands on him, and stroked the protuberant bones that humped a

hide smooth and thin, and shiny as satin--so shiny that the very shape

of the moon was reflected in it; I fondled his sharp-pointed ears,

whispered words in them, and breathed into his red nostrils the breath

of a man’s life. He in return breathed into mine the breath of a horse’s

life, and we loved one another. What eyes he had! Blue-filmy like the

eyes of the dead, behind each was a glowing coal! The raven, with wings

half extended, looked on pleased at my love-making to his magnificent

horse.

“That is well! be friends with him,” he said: “he will carry you all the

better to-morrow!--Now we must hurry home!”

My desire to ride the horse had grown passionate.

“May I not mount him at once, Mr. Raven?” I cried.

“By all means!” he answered. “Mount, and ride him home.”

The horse bent his head over my shoulder lovingly. I twisted my hands

in his mane and scrambled onto his back, not without aid from certain

protuberant bones.

“He would outspeed any leopard in creation!” I cried.

“Not that way at night,” answered the raven; “the road is

difficult.--But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder

than to run, and its meed is the fuller. Go on, my son--straight to

the cottage. I shall be there as soon as you. It will rejoice my wife’s

heart to see son of hers on that horse!”

I sat silent. The horse stood like a block of marble.

“Why do you linger?” asked the raven.

“I long so much to ride after the leopardess,” I answered, “that I can

scarce restrain myself!”

“You have promised!”

“My debt to the Little Ones appears, I confess, a greater thing than my

bond to you.”

“Yield to the temptation and you will bring mischief upon them--and on

yourself also.”

“What matters it for me? I love them; and love works no evil. I will

go.”

But the truth was, I forgot the children, infatuate with the horse.

Eyes flashed through the darkness, and I knew that Adam stood in his

own shape beside me. I knew also by his voice that he repressed an

indignation almost too strong for him.

“Mr. Vane,” he said, “do you not know why you have not yet done anything

worth doing?”

“Because I have been a fool,” I answered.

“Wherein?”

“In everything.”

“Which do you count your most indiscreet action?”

“Bringing the princess to life: I ought to have left her to her just

fate.”

“Nay, now you talk foolishly! You could not have done otherwise than you

did, not knowing she was evil!--But you never brought any one to life!

How could you, yourself dead?”

“I dead?” I cried.

“Yes,” he answered; “and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to

die.”

“Back to the old riddling!” I returned scornfully.

“Be persuaded, and go home with me,” he continued gently. “The

most--nearly the only foolish thing you ever did, was to run from our

dead.”

I pressed the horse’s ribs, and he was off like a sudden wind. I gave

him a pat on the side of the neck, and he went about in a sharp-driven

curve, “close to the ground, like a cat when scratchingly she wheels

about after a mouse,” leaning sideways till his mane swept the tops of

the heather.

Through the dark I heard the wings of the raven. Five quick flaps I

heard, and he perched on the horse’s head. The horse checked himself

instantly, ploughing up the ground with his feet.

“Mr. Vane,” croaked the raven, “think what you are doing! Twice already

has evil befallen you--once from fear, and once from heedlessness:

breach of word is far worse; it is a crime.”

“The Little Ones are in frightful peril, and I brought it upon them!” I

cried. “--But indeed I will not break my word to you. I will return, and

spend in your house what nights--what days--what years you please.”

“I tell you once more you will do them other than good if you go

to-night,” he insisted.

But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely

vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me

too stupid to listen to anything he said!

“Would you take from me my last chance of reparation?” I cried. “This

time there shall be no shirking! It is my duty, and I will go--if I

perish for it!”

“Go, then, foolish boy!” he returned, with anger in his croak. “Take the

horse, and ride to failure! May it be to humility!”

He spread his wings and flew. Again I pressed the lean ribs under me.

“After the spotted leopardess!” I whispered in his ear.

He turned his head this way and that, snuffing the air; then started,

and went a few paces in a slow, undecided walk. Suddenly he quickened

his walk; broke into a trot; began to gallop, and in a few moments his

speed was tremendous. He seemed to see in the dark; never stumbled, not

once faltered, not once hesitated. I sat as on the ridge of a wave. I

felt under me the play of each individual muscle: his joints were so

elastic, and his every movement glided so into the next, that not once

did he jar me. His growing swiftness bore him along until he flew rather

than ran. The wind met and passed us like a tornado.

Across the evil hollow we sped like a bolt from an arblast. No monster

lifted its neck; all knew the hoofs that thundered over their heads! We

rushed up the hills, we shot down their farther slopes; from the rocky

chasms of the river-bed he did not swerve; he held on over them his

fierce, terrible gallop. The moon, half-way up the heaven, gazed with

a solemn trouble in her pale countenance. Rejoicing in the power of my

steed and in the pride of my life, I sat like a king and rode.

We were near the middle of the many channels, my horse every other

moment clearing one, sometimes two in his stride, and now and then

gathering himself for a great bounding leap, when the moon reached the

key-stone of her arch. Then came a wonder and a terror: she began to

descend rolling like the nave of Fortune’s wheel bowled by the gods, and

went faster and faster. Like our own moon, this one had a human face,

and now the broad forehead now the chin was uppermost as she rolled. I

gazed aghast.

Across the ravines came the howling of wolves. An ugly fear began to

invade the hollow places of my heart; my confidence was on the wane! The

horse maintained his headlong swiftness, with ears pricked forward, and

thirsty nostrils exulting in the wind his career created. But there was

the moon jolting like an old chariot-wheel down the hill of heaven, with

awful boding! She rolled at last over the horizon-edge and disappeared,

carrying all her light with her.

The mighty steed was in the act of clearing a wide shallow channel when

we were caught in the net of the darkness. His head dropped; its impetus

carried his helpless bulk across, but he fell in a heap on the margin,

and where he fell he lay. I got up, kneeled beside him, and felt him all

over. Not a bone could I find broken, but he was a horse no more. I sat

down on the body, and buried my face in my hands.