The fence behind the garage was fringed with horses securely tied, and the top of the fence was fringed with a row of small boys, waiting. Geoffrey approached the line of horses, and glanced judicially down the row. Books on “Reading Character at Sight” make a great point of the distinctions between blond and brunette, the concave and the convex profile, the glance of the eye, and the manner of shaking hands. Geoffrey could tell at a glance that the handshake of these horses would be firm and full of decision. As one man they turned and looked at him, and their eyes were level and inscrutable.
“Which of these horses,” said he to the gang on the fence-top, “would you take?”
“This one!” said an eager spokesman. “He didn't move a muscle since they hitched 'im.”
This recommendation decided the matter instantly. Repose of manner is an estimable trait in the horse.
Geoffrey looked his animal over with an artist's eye. It was a slender creature, with that spare type of beauty that we associate with the Airedale dog. The horse was not a blond. The stirrups hung invitingly at the sides. Geoffrey closed the inspection with satisfaction, and prepared to mount.
In mounting, does one first untie one's horse and then get on, or may one, as in a steam-launch, get seated first and then cast off the painter? Geoffrey could not help recalling a page from “Pickwick Papers,” where Mr. Winkle is climbing up the side of a tall horse at the Inn, and the 'ostler's boy whispers, “Blowed if the gen'l'man wasn't for getting up the wrong side.” Well, what governs the right and wrong side of a horse? Douglas Fairbanks habitually avoids the dilemma by mounting from above—from the roof of a Mexican monastery, for instance, or the fire-escape of an apartment house. From these points he lands, perpendicularly. With this ideal in mind, Geoffrey stepped on from the fence, clamped his legs against the sides of the horse, and walked him out into the street.
When I say that he walked him out into the street, I use the English language as I have seen it used in books, but I think that it was an experienced rider who first used the idiom. Geoffrey says that he did not feel, at any time that afternoon, any sensation of walking his horse, or of doing anything else decisive with him. He walked, to be sure, dipping his head and rearing it, like a mechanical swan. But on a horse you miss the sensation of direct control that you have with a machine. With a machine, you press something, and if a positive reaction does not follow, you get out and fix something else. Not so with the horse. When you get upon him you cut yourself off from all accurately calculable connection with the world. He is, in the last analysis, an independent personality. His feet are on the ground, and yours are not.
We bow to literary convention, therefore, when we say that Geoffrey walked his horse.
Far ahead of him, he saw the khaki backs of two of his friends who were also walking their horses. One by one they ambled up to the green and took places in the ranks. Geoffrey discovered that his horse would stand well if allowed to droop his long neck and close his eyes. Judged as a military figure, however, he was a disgrace to the army. If you drew up the reins to brace his head, he thought it a signal to start, and you had to take it all back, hastily. With the relaxed rein he collapsed again, his square head bent in silent prayer.
With the approach of the band, however, all this changed. He reared tentatively. Geoffrey discouraged that. Then he curled his body in an unlovely manner—an indescribable gesture, a sort of sidelong squirm in semi-circular formation. His rider straightened him out with a fatherly slap on the flank.