Hepplestall's

by Harold Brighouse

She smiled, bravely, aware from her glass that what he saw was good, aware that he could not see how big a thing her horse appeared to her, how far above the ground the saddle was, how shrunken small she felt. But it was consoling to know that if she was going to break her neck, she was to do it in the finest clothes she had ever worn. His look of candid admiration was a tonic.

“This is your horse,” he said. “We called him Hector.” She made Hector’s acquaintance prettily, but, plainly, she missed his point, and he made it more definitely. “Of course, you may rename him now that he is your own.”

“Mine? My horse? But, Mr. Hepplestall—”

“Have you your salts?” he asked, cutting short her cry of surprise. A horse more or less, he would have her think, was triviality when Reuben Hepplestall was in the mood to give.

“Salts?” she repeated, puzzled.

“In case you swoon,” he said gravely, and not ironically either. It was the swooning age.

But not for Phoebe. Did ladies swoon at a first riding-lesson? She doubted it: they took that lesson young, as children, in the years before they were modish and swooning, and, in any case, it wasn’t her ladyhood that was in question now; it was her courage. “I shall not swoon,” she said, and he relished the bravado of it.

Spirit? Aye, she had spirit to be wife of his, and it behoved him not to break it. If he had had thoughts, brutally, of making this test of her as harsh as he could, that was all altered now by the sight of her adorning the habit instead of overwhelmed by it, caressing Hector instead of shrinking from him, and he saw tenderness as the prime virtue of a riding-master. She wasn’t going to take a fall if he could prevent it.

Between them, between Reuben and Hector, a sober animal who had carried Reuben’s mother and hadn’t forgotten his manners in the years since her death, and between these two and Phoebe’s pluck, they managed a lesson which gave her confidence for later lessons when the instructor’s mood was less indulgent. Reuben hadn’t tenderness as a habit. Neither had she very staunchly the habit of courage, but all the courage she had was wrought up for these occasions and, thanks to the sobriety of the good Hector, it served. She took a toss one day, but fell softly into heather and rose smiling before he had leaped to the ground. His last doubts that he loved her fled when she smiled that day. “’Fore Gad,” he cried, “you’re thoroughbred.” It was the sweetest praise.

That was a moment of supreme exaltation, but, all the time, Phoebe was living now in upper air. For her, manifestly and openly for her, he was neglecting what had seemed the only thing he lived for; he spent long days riding with Phoebe instead of laboring to learn in the factory. Once or twice when he had the opportunity of inspecting some steam-driven works not too remote, he took her with him, leaving her in state obsequiously served in an inn while he studied the engine-house and the driving bands and the power-looms of the factory, refusing the manufacturer’s invitation to dinner and offending a host to come back where she waited for him at the inn. Peter might croak, and Peter did croak like any raven and shake his head, and Peter was told he was old-fashioned, and was put in his place as parents have always been put in their place when young love takes the bit between its teeth. Hepplestall, and his lass? It was a piece of luck too rare to be true. He prophesied sad fate for her, he wished she had a mother—men are handicapped—he spoke of sending for her aunt: all the time, too overawed by Hepplestall’s significance to be more effective as an obstacle than a cork bobbing on the surface of a flood. Protest to Reuben himself, or even appeal, was sheer impossibility for Bradshaw, who was almost feudal in his subservience to gentry. He saw danger, warned Phoebe, was laughed at for his pains and turned fatalist. Phoebe cared for neither his spoken forebodings nor his morose resignation. Phoebe was happy, she tasted victory, she was sure of Reuben now and so sure that she began to look beyond the fact that she had got him and was holding him, she began to concede herself the luxury of loving him.