Description
The Talking Horse And Other Stories
THE TALKING HORSE
It was on the way to Sandown Park that I met him first, on that horribly
wet July afternoon when Bendigo won the Eclipse Stakes. He sat opposite
to me in the train going down, and my attention was first attracted to
him by the marked contrast between his appearance and his attire: he had
not thought fit to adopt the regulation costume for such occasions, and
I think I never saw a man who had made himself more aggressively horsey.
The mark of the beast was sprinkled over his linen: he wore snaffle
sleeve-links, a hard hunting-hat, a Newmarket coat, and extremely tight
trousers. And with all this, he fell as far short of the genuine
sportsman as any stage super who ever wore his spurs upside down in a
hunting-chorus. His expression was mild and inoffensive, and his watery
pale eyes and receding chin gave one the idea that he was hardly to be
trusted astride anything more spirited than a gold-headed cane. And yet,
somehow, he aroused compassion rather than any sense of the ludicrous:
he had that look of shrinking self-effacement which comes of a recent
humiliation, and, in spite of all extravagances, he was obviously a
gentleman; while something in his manner indicated that his natural
tendency would, once at all events, have been to avoid any kind of
extremes.
He puzzled and interested me so much that I did my best to enter into
conversation with him, only to be baffled by the jerky embarrassment
with which he met all advances, and when we got out at Esher, curiosity
led me to keep him still in view.
Evidently he had not come with any intention of making money. He avoided
the grand stand, with the bookmakers huddling in couples, like hoarse
lovebirds; he kept away from the members’ inclosure, where the Guards’
