It was about a year after Leonard’s discovery of the family manuscripts that Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad-mare in the squire’s stables, and set out on an equestrian excursion. He said that he was bound on business connected with his old parishioners of Lansmere; for, as it has been incidentally implied in a previous chapter, he had been connected with that borough town (and, I may here add, in the capacity of curate) before he had been inducted into the living of Hazeldean.
It was so rarely that the parson stirred from home, that this journey to a town more than twenty miles off was regarded as a most daring adventure, both at the Hall and at the Parsonage. Mrs. Dale could not sleep the whole previous night with thinking of it; and though she had naturally one of her worst nervous headaches on the eventful morn, she yet suffered no hands less thoughtful than her own to pack up the saddle-bags which the parson had borrowed along with the pad. Nay, so distrustful was she of the possibility of the good man’s exerting the slightest common-sense in her absence, that she kept him close at her side while she was engaged in that same operation of packing-up,—showing him the exact spot in which the clean shirt was put; and how nicely the old slippers were packed up in one of his own sermons. She implored him not to mistake the sandwiches for his shaving-soap, and made him observe how carefully she had provided against such confusion, by placing them as far apart from each other as the nature of saddle-bags will admit. The poor parson—who was really by no means an absent man, but as little likely to shave himself with sandwiches and lunch upon soap as the most commonplace mortal may be—listened with conjugal patience, and thought that man never had such a wife before; nor was it without tears in his own eyes that he tore himself from the farewell embrace of his weeping Carry.
I confess, however, that it was with some apprehension that he set his foot in the stirrup, and trusted his person to the mercies of an unfamiliar animal. For, whatever might be Mr. Dale’s minor accomplishments as man and parson, horsemanship was not his forte. Indeed, I doubt if he had taken the reins in his hand more than twice since he had been married.
The squire’s surly old groom, Mat, was in attendance with the pad; and, to the parson’s gentle inquiry whether Mat was quite sure that the pad was quite safe, replied laconically, “Oi, oi; give her her head.”
“Give her her head!” repeated Mr. Dale, rather amazed, for he had not the slightest intention of taking away that part of the beast’s frame, so essential to its vital economy,—“give her her head!”
“Oi, oi; and don’t jerk her up like that, or she’ll fall a doincing on her hind-legs.”
The parson instantly slackened the reins; and Mrs. Dale—who had tarried behind to control her tears—now running to the door for “more last words,” he waved his hand with courageous amenity, and ambled forth into the lane.
Our equestrian was absorbed at first in studying the idiosyncrasies of the pad-mare, and trying thereby to arrive at some notion of her general character: guessing, for instance, why she raised one ear and laid down the other; why she kept bearing so close to the left that she brushed his leg against the hedge; and why, when she arrived at a little side-gate in the fields, which led towards the home-farm, she came to a full stop, and fell to rubbing her nose against the rail,—an occupation from which the parson, finding all civil remonstrances in vain, at length diverted her by a timorous application of the whip.
This crisis on the road fairly passed, the pad seemed to comprehend that she had a journey before her, and giving a petulant whisk of her tail, quickened her amble into a short trot, which soon brought the parson into the high road, and nearly opposite the Casino.
Here, sitting on the gate which led to his abode, and shaded by his umbrella, he beheld Dr. Riccabocca.
The Italian lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, and stared hard at the parson; and he—not venturing to withdraw his whole attention from the pad (who, indeed, set up both her ears at the apparition of Riccabocca, and evinced symptoms of that surprise and superstitious repugnance at unknown objects which goes by the name of “shying”)—looked askance at Riccabocca.
“Don’t stir, please,” said the parson, “or I fear you’ll alarm the creature; it seems a nervous, timid thing;—soho, gently, gently.”
And he fell to patting the mare with great unction.
The pad, thus encouraged, overcame her first natural astonishment at the sight of Riccabocca and the red umbrella; and having before been at the Casino on sundry occasions, and sagaciously preferring places within the range of her experience to bourns neither cognate nor conjecturable, she moved gravely up towards the gate on which the Italian sat; and, after eying him a moment,—as much as to say, “I wish you would get off,”—came to a deadlock.
“Well,” said Riccabocca, “since your horse seems more disposed to be polite to me than yourself, Mr. Dale, I take the opportunity of your present involuntary pause to congratulate you on your elevation in life, and to breathe a friendly prayer that pride may not have a fall!”
“Tut,” said the parson, affecting an easy air, though still contemplating the pad, who appeared to have fallen into a quiet doze, “it is true that I have not ridden much of late years, and the squire’s horses are very high-fed and spirited; but there is no more harm in them than their master when one once knows their ways.”
“‘Chi va piano va sano,
E chi va sano va lontano,’”
said Riccabocca, pointing to the saddle-bags. “You go slowly, therefore safely; and he who goes safely may go far. You seem prepared for a journey?”
“I am,” said the parson; “and on a matter that concerns you a little.”
“Me!” exclaimed Riccabocca,—“concerns me!”
“Yes, so far as the chance of depriving you of a servant whom you like and esteem affects you.”
“Oh,” said Riccabocca, “I understand: you have hinted to me very often that I or Knowledge, or both together, have unfitted Leonard Fairfield for service.”
“I did not say that exactly; I said that you have fitted him for something higher than service. But do not repeat this to him. And I cannot yet say more to you, for I am very doubtful as to the success of my mission; and it will not do to unsettle poor Leonard until we are sure that we can improve his condition.”
“Of that you can never be sure,” quoth the wise man, shaking his head; “and I can’t say that I am unselfish enough not to bear you a grudge for seeking to decoy away from me an invaluable servant,—faithful, steady, intelligent, and” (added Riccabocca, warming as he approached the climacteric adjective) “exceedingly cheap! Nevertheless go, and Heaven speed you. I am not an Alexander, to stand between man and the sun.”
“You are a noble, great-hearted creature, Signor Riccabocca, in spite of your cold-blooded proverbs and villanous books.” The parson, as he said this, brought down the whiphand with so indiscreet an enthusiasm on the pad’s shoulder, that the poor beast, startled out of her innocent doze, made a bolt forward, which nearly precipitated Riccabocca from his seat on the stile, and then turning round—as the parson tugged desperately at the rein—caught the bit between her teeth, and set off at a canter. The parson lost both his stirrups; and when he regained them (as the pad slackened her pace), and had time to breathe and look about him, Riccabocca and the Casino were both out of sight.
“Certainly,” quoth Parson Dale, as he resettled himself with great complacency, and a conscious triumph that he was still on the pad’s back,—“certainly it is true ‘that the noblest conquest ever made by man was that of the horse:’ a fine creature it is,—a very fine creature,—and uncommonly difficult to sit on, especially without stirrups.” Firmly in his stirrups the parson planted his feet; and the heart within him was very proud.
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