IV
Early in the afternoon of the following Thursday I journeyed homeward in the jolting annex of a horsebox. Although it was a sort of fifth-class compartment I felt serenely contented as I occasionally put my hand through the aperture to stroke Cockbird’s velvet nose. He appeared to be a docile and experienced railway traveller, and when he stepped out of the box at Dumbridge Station he had an air of knowing that he’d saved himself a twenty-mile walk. The porters eyed him with the respect due to such a well-bred animal. Having arranged for my kit-bag to be conveyed to Butley on the carrier’s van, I swung myself into the saddle which I had borrowed from the Colwoods. It was a mellow afternoon for midwinter, and our appearance, as reflected in the Dumbridge shopwindows, made me feel what, in those days, I should have called “a frightful nut.” Cockbird’s impeccable behaviour out hunting on the previous day had increased my complacency, and it was now an established fact that I had got hold of a top-hole performer with perfect manners.
Nobody at home was aware of what I’d been up to down in Sussex, and Dixon got the surprise of his life when we clattered into the stable-yard. So far as he was concerned it was the first really independent action of my career. When I arrived he was having his tea in his cottage above the coach-house; I could hear him clumping down the steep wooden stairs, and I sat like a statue until he emerged from the door by the harness-room with his mouth full of bread and butter. The afternoon was latening, but there was, I think, a quietly commemorative glow from the west. He stood with the sunset on his face and his final swallowing of the mouthful appeared to epitomize his astonishment. Taken aback he undoubtedly was, but his voice kept its ordinary composure. “Why, what’s this?” he asked. I told him.
Aunt Evelyn behaved like a brick about Cockbird. (How was it that bricks became identified with generous behaviour?) Of course she admired him immensely and considered it very clever of me to have bought him so cheap. But when it came to writing out the cheque for him I was obliged, for the first time in my life, to ask her to lend me some money. She promised to let me have it in a few days.
Next morning she went to London, “just to do a little Christmas shopping at the Army and Navy Stores.” I was in the drawing-room when she returned. I heard the dogcart drive up to the front door, and then Aunt Evelyn’s voice telling Miriam how tired she felt and asking her to make some tea. I didn’t bother to get up when she came into the room, and after replying to my perfunctory inquiry whether she’d had a good day she went to her bureau and fussed about with some papers. Somewhat irritably I wondered what she was in such a stew about as soon as she’d got home. Her quill-pen squeaked for a short time and then she came across to the armchair where I was sitting with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son on my knee.
“There, dear. There’s the money for your horse, and the Hunt subscription as well.” She placed a cheque on the arm of the chair. “It’s your Christmas present,” she explained. It was so unexpected that I almost forgot to thank her. But I had the grace to ask whether she could really afford it.
“Well, dear,” she said, “to tell the truth, I couldn’t. But I can now.” And she confessed that she’d sold one of her rings for seventy-five pounds up in London. “And why not?” she asked. “I’m so delighted at your having taken up hunting again; it’s such a healthy hobby for a young man, and Dixon’s almost beside himself—he’s so pleased with the new horse. And after all, dear, I’ve got no other interest in the whole world except you.”
Miriam then appeared with the tea-tray, and soon afterwards I went upstairs to gloat over my good fortune.