"What a ghastly line!" said Edwin. "And they have the cheek to pay five per cent! I remember Ingpen telling me there was one fairish train into Knype in the morning, and one out in the afternoon. And there wouldn"t be that if the Locomotive Superintendent didn"t happen to live at Axe."
"It"s a pity you haven"t got a dog-cart, isn"t it?" said Hilda, lightly smiling. "Because then we could use the works horse now and then, and it wouldn"t really cost anything extra, would it?"
Her heart was beating perceptibly.
Edwin shook his head, agreeably, but with firmness.
"Can"t mix up two different things like that!" he said.
She knew it. She was aware of the whole theory of horse-owning among the upper trading-cla.s.s in the Five Towns. A butcher might use his cob for pleasure on Sundays--he never used it for pleasure on any other day--but traders on a higher plane than butchers drew between the works and the house a line which a works horse was not permitted to cross.
One or two, perhaps,--but not the most solid--would put a carter into a livery overcoat and a shabby top-hat and describe him as a coachman while on rare afternoons he drove a landau or a victoria picked up cheap at Axe or Market Drayton. But the majority had no pretensions to the owning of private carriages. The community was not in fact a carriage community. Even the Orgreaves had never dreamed of a carriage. Old Darius Clayhanger would have been staggered into profanity by the suggestion of such a thing. Indeed, until some time after old Clayhanger"s death the printing business had been content to deliver all its orders in a boy-pushed handcart. Only when Edwin discovered that, for instance, two thousand catalogues on faced clay paper could not be respectably delivered in a handcart, had he steeled himself to the prodigious move of setting up a stable. He had found an entirely trustworthy ostler-carter with the comfortable name of Unchpin, and, an animal and a tradesman"s covered cart having been bought, he had left the affair to Unchpin. Naturally he had never essayed to drive the tradesman"s cart. And Edwin Clayhanger could not be seen on the insecure box of a tradesman"s cart. He had learnt nothing about horses except that a horse should be watered before, and not after, being fed, that shoeing cost a shilling a week and fodder a shilling a day, and that a horse driven over a hundred and fifty miles a week was likely to get "a bit over" at the knees. At home the horse and cart had always been regarded as being just as exclusively a works item as the printing-machines or the steam-engine.
"I suppose," said Hilda carefully, "you"ve got all the work one horse can do?"
"And more."
"Well, then, why don"t you buy another one?" She tried to speak carelessly, without genuine interest.
"Yes, no doubt!" Edwin answered drily. "And build fresh stables, too."
"Haven"t you got room for two?"
"Come along and look, and then perhaps you"ll be satisfied."
Buzzers, syrens, and whistles began to sound in the neighbourhood. It was one o"clock.
"Shall I? ... Your overcoat collar"s turned up behind. Let me do it."
She straightened the collar.
They went out, through the clerk"s office. Edwin gave a sideways nod to Simpson. In the pa.s.sage some girls and a few men were already hurrying forth. None of them took notice of Edwin and Hilda. They all plunged for the street as though the works had been on fire.
"They are in a hurry, my word!" Hilda murmured, with irony.
"And why shouldn"t they be?" the employer protested almost angrily.
In the small yard stood the horseless cart, with "Edwin Clayhanger, Lithographer and Steam Printer, Bursley," on both its sides. The stable and cart-shed were in one penthouse, and to get to the stable it was necessary to pa.s.s through the cart-shed. Unchpin, a fat man of forty with a face marked by black seams, was bending over a chaff-cutter in the cart-shed. He ignored the intruders. The stable consisted of one large loose-box, in which a grey animal was restlessly moving.
"You see!" Edwin muttered curtly.
"Oh! What a beautiful horse! I"ve never seen him before."
"Her," Edwin corrected.
"Is it a mare?"
"So they say!"
"I never knew you"d got a fresh one."
"I haven"t--yet. I"ve taken this one for a fortnight"s trial, from Chawner.... How"s she doing, Unchpin?" he called to the cart-shed.
Unchpin looked round and stared.
"Bit light," he growled and turned back to the chaff-cutter, which he seemed to be repairing.
"I thought so," said Edwin.
"But her"s a good "un," he added.
"But where"s the old horse?" asked Hilda.
"With G.o.d," Edwin replied. "Dropped down dead last week."
"What of?"
Edwin shook his head.
"It"s a privilege of horses to do that sort of thing," he said.
"They"re always doing it."
"You never told me."
"Well, you weren"t here, for one thing."
The mare inquisitively but cautiously put her muzzle over the door of the box. Hilda stroked her. The animal"s mysterious eyes, her beautiful coat, her broad back, her general bigness relatively to Hilda, the sound of her feet among the litter on the paving stones, the smell of the stable,--these things enchanted Hilda.
"I should adore horses!" she breathed, half to herself, ecstatically; and wondered whether she would ever be able to work her will on Edwin in the matter of a dog-cart. She pictured herself driving the grey mare, who had learnt to love her, in a flashing dog-cart, Edwin by her side on the front-seat. Her mind went back enviously to Tavy Mansion and Dartmoor. But she felt that Edwin had not enough elasticity to comprehend the rapture of her dream. She foresaw nearly endless trouble and altercation and chicane before she could achieve her end. She was ready to despair, but she remembered her resolutions and took heart.
"I say, Unchpin," said Edwin. "I suppose this box couldn"t be made into two stalls?"
Unchpin on his gaitered legs clumped towards the stable, and gazed gloomily into the box. When he had gazed for some time, he touched his cap to Hilda.
"It could," he announced.
"Could you get a trap into the shed as well as the cart?"
"Ay! If ye dropped th" shafts o" th" trap under th" cart. What of it, mester?"
"Nothing. Only missis is going to have this mare."
After a pause, Unchpin muttered:
"Missis, eh!"
Hilda had moved a little away into the yard. Edwin approached her, flushing slightly, and with a self-consciousness which he tried to dissipate with one wink. Hilda"s face was set hard.
"I must just go back to the office," she said, in a queer voice.