He pulled angrily at the bridle and Dobbin consented to stop. After giving Pettigrew a glance which might be interpreted as pitying or contemptuous according to fancy, he put his head down and began to munch contentedly at the very unattractive-looking herbage. Pettigrew formed a desperate resolution. There was, after all, only one suitable method of getting about on Exmoor, and, aged as he was, he proposed to employ it-at least, as far as the top of the hill. He gathered up the end of the reins in his hand, contrived to get his toe into the stirrup iron and laboriously heaved himself on to the pony’s back.
Dobbin’s reaction to this performance was reassuringly placid. He continued with his meal as though nothing had happened, until Pettigrew drew his attention to the change in affairs by hauling on the reins. He then consented to raise his head and, stimulated by a kick in the ribs, began to walk sedately up the hill.
For the next few minutes Pettigrew was fully occupied in keeping the pony’s head in the right direction. Dobbin now began to display a tendency to veer away down the slope, and when thwarted in this objective was apt to stop and resume his interrupted grazing. Pettigrew recognized with regret that his control of his steed was not all that it might have been. He was unprovided with a stick. His legs, the means by which, he seemed to remember, the true horseman could always convey his intentions to his mount, seemed quite inadequate to their task-possibly because the stirrup leathers were too short. As to the reins, he felt that they would have been more effective if the bit to which they were connected had not been a plain snaffle bar and Dobbin’s mouth not been so uncompromisingly hard. None the less, by cajolery, diplomacy and persistence, he contrived to achieve his purpose. Gradually the slope grew easier, the grass gave way to bracken, the bracken to ling, and he had arrived.
Pettigrew pulled Dobbin to a standstill and looked around him with deep satisfaction. This was the Exmoor of half a century ago-unchanged, unspoilt. By some trick of the landscape, even the offending road had disappeared behind a fold in the ground, and only an occasional murmur betrayed the passing of traffic from time to time. For the rest, there was-not silence, but a background of sounds appropriate to the scene-the constant murmur of water from below, the mew of a buzzard floating high overhead, and, once again, and not so very far away, the horn.
The pony evidently heard the horn, too, for he threw his head in the air and showed a disposition to move on. Pettigrew restrained him, and took the opportunity to lengthen his leathers by a couple of holes. With his legs in a normal position, he began to feel at ease in the saddle-astonishingly so, considering how long it was since he had last crossed a horse’s back. Riding, like swimming, was presumably one of the things that one did not forget, even after the passage of years. The feeling of confidence was altogether delightful. He clicked his tongue, plucked at the bridle, and found himself moving forward at a smart trot.
It did just pass through Pettigrew’s mind, as he set off, that somewhere on the moor there was wandering, dismounted and disconsolate, a man-or woman-to whom in due course he would have to surrender his mount. He even remembered that when that time came, the leathers would have to be shortened to their former length. But for the moment, there was nobody in sight, and almost at once he ceased altogether to give any thought to the hapless unknown whose misfortune had presented him with his ride. It might be said, indeed, that he ceased to have any rational thought at all, for from the moment that Dobbin began to step out he was in the full grip of the obsession that had been haunting him all day.
With one half of his mind he was perfectly well aware that he was an elderly, retired lawyer, quite unsuitably dressed for equestrian exercise-the silly pompous phrase floated before him, as plain as print-who was going to be extremely stiff next day if he continued to canter over rough ground in that fashion. (Exactly when the trot had turned into a canter he could not say. It must have been when he was thinking of something else.) With the other half, he was re-living intensely and vividly the experiences of half a century before. At intervals throughout the afternoon he had been doing no less; but now it was with a difference. For whereas then he had been eagerly snatching at every scrap of the past that memory brought back to his mind, consciously and pleasurably building up the vanished scene, now he found the images of the past pouring in upon him unbidden-and unwelcome. Back once more on Bolter’s Tussock, on horseback, he positively did not want to be reminded of what had happened the last time he had been there. The experience had been altogether too violent and too unpleasant. It came back to him now in extraordinary detail.
It wasn’t a hunting day, he remembered, just an ordinary afternoon towards the end of the holidays. He had been out on some errand or another and was on his way home to Sallowcombe, taking a short cut across the Tussock, cantering casually along with loose rein and looser legs, thinking of nothing in particular. Certainly not thinking of where he was going-the pony knew that without being told-nor of how he was riding. And then, in a flash, it had happened. The pony’s smooth gait had been violently broken as he propped out his fore legs and stopped, for all the world as though he were refusing at a jump, sliding forward the last foot or two with his neck extended outwards and downwards for what seemed an immense distance. And the boy on his back had slid too, down that endless neck, almost to the ground. Somehow he had saved himself, somehow struggled back eventually into the saddle, but in recollection it seemed that he had hung suspended there for a long time, head downwards, his face within a foot or two of another face, blindly staring up at him from the heather. It was in this guise that Francis Pettigrew had encountered death for the first time.
It is usually inadvisable to think about one thing while doing another, unless the thing being done is so familiar that its performance is virtually automatic. Riding, to someone completely out of practice, is best treated as a full-time occupation. Pettigrew in a normal mood was perfectly familiar with these truisms, but his mood at this moment was anything but normal. The pony’s violent shy took him completely by surprise. It was only by the narrowest margin that he saved himself from going over its head. As he strove to recover himself he saw out of the corner of his eye what it was that had frightened it. He had time for a glimpse only, but it was enough. As in a nightmare, he realized that once more there was a dead man on Bolter’s Tussock. The next instant he was at grips with another emergency. History repeated itself remorselessly. The pony bolted.
CHAPTER V. A Check
Pettigrew was not seriously alarmed at first. He realized that the unpredictable creature between his legs was momentarily out of control, but it seemed impossible that a mere pony could so remain for long with the weight of a full-grown man on its back. He had only to keep his head-and his seat-and all would be well. He was soon undeceived. The pony’s first few strides carried it up a slight rise and nearly on to the road, which suddenly appeared from nowhere almost under its feet. Then for some inexplicable reason, instead of continuing forwards, it swerved away suddenly to the left, and plunged onwards across the Tussock, over the brow of the hill and down the other side. About halfway down a slope that grew progressively steeper every instant, Pettigrew experienced real fear. He knew that he could not stop the pony. With a sudden qualm at the pit of his stomach he realized that the pony could now almost certainly not stop itself. At this speed and on this declivity, a fall was inevitable. Leaning back in his saddle, hauling till his arms ached at the iron-mouthed brute, he had a sudden, swift recollection of a drawing by Leech, depicting just such a scene as he must present-an incompetent rider being run away with down a steep incline. He could even remember the wording of the legend beneath: Our friend Mr. Noddy has a day with the Brookside Harriers. With his usual prudence he gets a horse accustomed to the hills. The vision of Mr. Noddy vanished in a spasm of sheer terror as he felt his mount’s hind legs sink beneath him. They slid for a yard or two down the hillside, in a miniature avalanche of earth and stones, and then the pony seemed to crumple up altogether as the descent ended abruptly on a piece of hard and level ground.