William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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known that he was going away; but instead there was an acquiescence amounting to airiness.
He wondered if anything about his affairs with Henry Bird and Hannah Morrison had leaked out. But he did not care. He only wished to shake the snow of Equity off his feet as soon as possible.
After dinner, when the boarders had gone out, and the loafers had not yet gathered in, he offered the landlord his colt and cutter. Bartley knew that the landlord wanted the colt; but now the latter said, "I don't know as I care to buy any horses, right in the winter, this way."
"All right," answered Bartley. "Just have the colt put into the cutter."
Andy Morrison brought it round. The boy looked at Bartley's set face with a sort of awe-stricken affection; his adoration for the young man survived all that he had heard said against him at home during the series of family quarrels that had ensued upon his father's interview with him; he longed to testify, somehow, his unabated loyalty, but he could not think of anything to do, much less to say.
Bartley pitched his valise into the cutter, and then, as Andy left the horse's head to give him a hand with his trunk, offered him a dollar. "I don't want anything," said the boy, shyly refusing the money out of pure affection.
But Bartley mistook his motive, and thought it sulky resentment. "Oh, very well," he said. "Take hold."
The landlord came out. "Hold on a minute," he said. "Where you goin' to take the cars?"
"At the Junction," answered Bartley. "I know a man there that will buy the colt. What is it you want?"
The landlord stepped back a few paces, and surveyed the establishment. "I should like to ride after that hoss," he said, "if you aint in any great of a hurry."
"Get in," said Bartley, and the landlord took the reins.
From time to time, as he drove, he rose up and looked over the dashboard to study the gait of the horse. "I've noticed he strikes some, when he first comes out in the spring."
"Yes," Bartley assented.
"Pulls consid'able."
"He pulls."
The landlord rose again and scrutinized the horse's legs. "I don't know as I ever noticed 't he'd capped his hock before."
"Didn't you?"
"Done it kickin' nights, I guess."
"I guess so."
The landlord drew the whip lightly across the colt's rear; he shrank together, and made a little spring forward, but behaved perfectly well.
"I don't know as I should always be sure he wouldn't kick in the daytime."
"No," said Bartley, "you never can be sure of anything."
They drove along in silence. At last the landlord said, "Well, he aint so fast as I supposed."
"He's not so fast a horse as some," answered Bartley.
The landlord leaned over sidewise for an inspection of the colt's action forward. "Haint never thought he had a splint on that forward off leg?"
"A splint? Perhaps he has a splint."
They returned to the hotel and both alighted.
"Skittish devil," remarked the landlord, as the colt quivered under the hand he laid upon him.
"He's skittish," said Bartley.
The landlord retired as far back as the door, and regarded the colt critically. "Well, I s'pose you've always used him too well ever to winded him, but dumn 'f he don't blow like it."
"Look here, Simpson," said Bartley, very quietly. "You know this horse as well as I do, and you know there isn't an out about him. You want to buy him because you always have. Now make me an offer."
"Well," groaned the landlord, "what'll you take for the whole rig, just as it stands,—colt, cutter, leathers, and robe?"
"Two hundred dollars," promptly replied Bartley.
"I'll give ye seventy-five," returned the landlord with equal promptness.
"Andy, take hold of the end of that trunk, will you?"
The landlord allowed them to put the trunk into the cutter. Bartley got in too, and, shifting the baggage to one side, folded the robe around him from his middle down and took his seat. "This colt can road you right along all day inside of five minutes, and he can trot inside of two-thirty every time; and you know it as well as I do."
"Well," said the landlord, "make it an even hundred."
Bartley leaned forward and gathered up the reins, "Let go his head, Andy," he quietly commanded.
"Make it one and a quarter," cried the landlord, not seeing that his chance was past. "What do you say?"
What Bartley said, as he touched the colt with the whip, the landlord never knew. He stood watching the cutter's swift disappearance up the road, in a sort of stupid expectation of its return. When he realized that Bartley's departure was final, he said under his breath, "Sold, ye dumned old fool, and serve ye right," and went in-doors with a feeling of admiration! for colt and man that bordered on reverence.
XII
This last drop of the local meanness filled Bartley's bitter cup. As he passed the house at the end of the street he seemed to drain it all. He knew that the old lawyer was there sitting by the office stove, drawing his hand across his chin, and Bartley hoped that he was still as miserable as he had looked when he last saw him; but he did not know that by the window in the house, which he would not even look at, Marcia sat self-prisoned in her room, with her eyes upon the road, famishing for the thousandth part of a chance to see him pass. She saw him now for the instant of his coming and going. With eyes trained to take in every point, she saw the preparation which seemed like final departure, and with a gasp of "Bartley!" as if she were trying to call after him, she sank back into her chair and shut her eyes.
He drove on, plunging into the deep hollow beyond the house, and keeping for several miles the road they had taken on that Sunday together; but he did not make the turn that brought them back to the village again. The pale sunset was slanting over the snow when he reached the Junction, for he had slackened his colt's pace after he had put ten miles behind him, not choosing to reach a prospective purchaser with his horse all blown and bathed with sweat. He wished to be able to say, "Look at him! He's come fifteen miles since three o'clock, and he's as keen as when he started."
This was true, when, having left his baggage at the Junction, he drove another mile into the country to see the farmer of the gentleman who had his summer-house here, and who had once bantered Bartley to sell him his colt. The farmer was away, and would not be at home till the up-train from Boston was in. Bartley looked at his watch, and saw that to wait would lose him the six o'clock down-train. There would be no other till eleven o'clock. But it was worth while: the gentleman had said, "When you want the money for that colt, bring him over any time; my farmer will have it ready for you." He waited for the up-train; but when the farmer arrived, he was full of all sorts of scruples and reluctances. He said he should not like to buy it till he had heard from Mr. Farnham; he ended by offering Bartley eighty dollars for the colt on his own account; he did not want the cutter.
"You write to Mr. Farnham," said Bartley, "that you tried that plan with me, and it wouldn't work, he's lost the colt."
He made this brave show of indifference, but he was disheartened, and, having carried the farmer home from the Junction for the convenience of talking over the trade with him, he drove back again through the early night-fall in sullen desperation.
The weather had softened and was threatening rain or snow; the dark was closing in spiritlessly; the colt, shortening from a trot into a short, springy jolt, dropped into