Chapter VII: Hermits and Horses

“Oh, do go on!” begged the Dormitory, intrigued by Stella’s mysterious accents.

“Not that I know much, but it’s so _queer_!” Stella, however, was evidently only too willing to oblige, so far as was possible. “All alone he lives! Looking out on the sea. All the windows that face the moorland are barred up. Of course, he’s mad!”

“Who? The old man?” inquired Gretta.

“Yes, or why ever would he live there like that?”

“He might be a--hermit.” Margot spoke rather slowly. “There was one that we knew, living in the Bush. He’d made a clearing-place there--just because he wanted to, and because he loved the Bush. He wasn’t mad at all. He’d come to us for food, sometimes. And sometimes I’d ride out and take him some.”

“Ride!” The Dormitory forgot the “Little House” and its inmate. “Did you ride in the Bush?”

“Yes, of course I rode. Why not? Dad and mother did. We all did. I helped in a sheep round-up once; I was always riding. Once I had to swim my horse over a river that was in flood. The horse was frightened, then; and so would I have been, only Long Jake was there to tell me what to do. He and dad had to do it often--swim their horses, I mean; because they were always riding for miles round the cattle-station.”

“And how did you swim your horse?” inquired Josy excitedly. “I wonder you weren’t drowned.”

“That was what I thought, just at first. I think the horse thought so, too. But Long Jake told me just to take my legs out of the stirrups and hold the pommel tight. To give him plenty of rein, too, and to let myself sort of float over the saddle. The horse did the rest. Boko, it was--my own horse.” Margot gave a little sigh as she suddenly came to earth in the Cliff School dormitory again, and found herself brushing her hair. “I say, Stella, I didn’t mean to interrupt about your old man. How do you take him food?”

“Food! And he isn’t _mine_!” Stella tossed a shiny head. “I’ve never even seen him,” continued the old man’s next neighbour. “He simply never comes out; and if he did I’d be terrified. I suppose he’s got some arrangement with the village shop; and the farm sends him milk, I think. Perhaps dad keeps an eye on things, being rector, you see. But I know that not even _he’s_ been inside! He’s called heaps of times, though, and never got any answer to his knocks. As for the gipsies....”

“The _gipsies_!” repeated everyone.

“Oh, we’ve got heaps of gipsies on the moor. It’s common land, or something; and they may pitch their tents there, dad says, by law, so long as they behave themselves. They’re there most of the year, too, because they’re horse-dealing gipsies, who go from fair to fair buying horses and selling them again. Well, mother says there’s one good point about the old man--he _does_ keep the gipsies away from our stretch of moor. They won’t camp within a mile of his little house. They say he’s a witch, or something of that sort.”

“He can’t be a witch; they’re women,” put in Josy. “Whatever does he do?”

“Well, a wizard then. Oh, it’s nothing, really. Once a horse strayed round his house and hurt itself and had to be destroyed, and the gipsies lost money. At least, that’s what they said; they came and begged because of it, but dad sent them away. Gipsies tell awful lies.”

“They do.” Gretta, the housekeeper, spoke up. “I remember buying a fern from a gipsy woman. For dad’s surgery it was; for his birthday. And it hadn’t a single bit of root--just fern leaves stuck into a pot. It cost a shilling, too.” Gretta sighed again at the remembrance of her feelings at the time. It was almost a relief when Margot’s clear-cut tones broke in.

“Gretta, not always, though. Gipsies don’t always tell lies.”

There was a queer tone in Margot’s voice; half-shy and half-eager, and the Dormitory turned to look at her. “I mean, they _do_ know true things, just because they live out-of-doors; things that other people don’t know. Long Jake said so. Not only gipsies, of course; but anyone who’s lived in the open. Long Jake learned horse language from the men in the Bush.”

“Horse language!” repeated Stella, in a superior tone. “Why, there’s not such a thing!”

“Isn’t there, indeed? There _is_!” Margot suddenly dropped her brush and her shy tone of voice at the same time, and flared up like a rocket. “Didn’t I tell you that Long Jake said so. And he could speak it, too--talk to horses and understand them.” Margot turned her back to the company and pressed her lips together.

“Oh, Margot, _do_ go on!” begged Josy, almost weeping in eagerness. “Gretta and I believe everything Long Jake says. And Stella, you must, too!”

“Oh, well, come to that, I do; without all that fuss, though,” said Stella, flushing.

“Well, that’s all right, then.” Margot, evidently realizing that here was as much of an apology as anyone had ever extracted from Stella, and being quite incapable of bearing any grudge, turned. “Only, if you’re going to say that it’s gipsy lies, you needn’t listen; because it’s not. Mother was there, and she saw it.” Margot swallowed before she went on.

“It was in the Bush once,” she said. “We were driving along one of those ‘corduroy roads,’ you know; that’s what they call them, because they’re made of logs laid side by side. Awfully jolty; we were in one of dad’s buggies. And we came upon”--Margot brushed her hair vigorously--“a horse, you know. It had got its master with it, of course; but it had fallen down. It was done-up and down-and-out; and oh!... I can’t tell you.” Margot’s voice shook.

“Go on,” begged Josy.

“Well, then, even dad and Long Jake couldn’t do anything. And its master said it had been lying there for hours. They were a long way from a water-hole, so he couldn’t get it a drink; but it wasn’t a drink it wanted, really, for we’d got water, and we gave it some. Its master was just a ‘sundowner’ man--travelling on to the next farm for work; it was shearing-time. And he’d picked up the horse cheap at a sale. Its previous owner had died, you see. And this man said there was nothing to do but just to leave it there, and mother said, ‘Oh, no!’ And I....” Margot stopped. “Well, it simply couldn’t be left; and it wouldn’t get up. And dad and Long Jake did everything they could, and then....”

“Oh, hurry, do! Did it recover, after all?” begged Josy, half in tears herself.

“Listen! It simply couldn’t move; I don’t really think it _could_, until.... Suddenly, what do you think Long Jake did? The horse was lying, you know, right across the road, and Long Jake knelt down beside it. And he put both his arms round its neck.” Margot’s voice was shaky. “And ... just held it. The sort of way mother might have held _me_, you know, if I were to cry--only, of course, I never do. And then he put his lips to its ears and just whispered. And, after a few minutes, the horse--_Oh!_” Margot gave a little, gaspy laugh. “It was like a fairy tale, only better. The horse twitched its ears and opened its shut eyes, and it gave a little whinnying sound. It understood. Long Jake went on whispering and stroking its head; yes, and _kissing_ it. And then, suddenly”--a tear rolled down Margot’s cheek, though she did not know it--“it gave a kind of shake and tried to get up. They all helped it, and it struggled up and stood there, and--it sort of smiled!--mother said she saw that, too--and it threw up its darling head and started again.”

No one in the dormitory said a word for a few minutes, and Margot began to brush her hair steadily.

“I’d have ... bought that horse,” said Josy. “I bet its owner had been unkind to it.”

“He hadn’t. No, he hadn’t. He was quite kind, but he didn’t understand--that’s what Long Jake said afterwards--that the horse was missing its old master who had died, and that it was feeling unhappy because of that,” said Margot. “I dare say the horse has grown fond of him by now.”

“But however did Long Jake find it out?” burst in Stella doubtfully.

“The horse told him, I suppose.” Margot spoke quietly. “You see, it’s all very well to say that gipsies tell lies. Perhaps they do. But it was one of the old Bush people--the ‘blacks,’ they call them out there--who taught Long Jake how to whisper to the horses. Long Jake said that, compared to _them_, he knew nothing about it, really. It was ... because they loved horses that they could do it, Long Jake said; and it was only, I suppose, because he felt so horribly sorry for the horse that he simply had to try to see what he could do. The ‘blacks’ know much more than that, too. They know all sorts of woodcraft secrets about tracking and trailing, things you wouldn’t understand here in schools.” Margot broke off.

“Well, did Long Jake learn about them?” inquired Stella.

“Yes, the ‘blacks’ taught him a lot. He beat out a fire once, that had got started in the scrub in the hot weather and might have meant awful damage--you see, the Bush was so near. He had some method that the ‘blacks’ had taught him. And he knew a way of _making_ fires, too, that he’d learned from them. A big cane, pointed at one end, and with its point placed inside a hole made in another cane. Then he twirled the point round and round inside the hole; and smoke came, and then fire. He did that while we were camping, and it quite dazzled me--his quickness, I mean. But he said the ‘blacks’ could do it ten times quicker. Oh, and that time I was lost in the Bush. I’d have been fifty times more frightened if I hadn’t remembered something he’d told me. ‘Always bear to the left; and think of that and nothing else,’ he’d said. Well, I did; and I found my way back to the water-hole where we’d been camping. Only, of course, they’d left it to look for me. It was lovely to see them coming back!”

“What was it like--being lost?” inquired Josy.

“Oh, it was only for two hours, you know; but it seemed far, far longer. There wasn’t anything, exactly, to be afraid of. What made you feel so dreadfully queer was the ‘great hush’ in the Bush; that’s what they call it. The feeling of the bigness, you know, and the dreadful quietness all round you. But you can grow to love it, too; the ‘hush’ of the Bush, I mean--not being lost, of course. People like that old hermit just can’t go away. ‘The Bush takes them’--that’s what Long Jake said.”