This seemed to be as new an idea to Eleanor as it had been to Simon.
"Vain, is he? Yes, I suppose he is. I expect I'd be conceited if I were a horse and I had been clever enough to kill a man. Did he try any tricks to-day?"
"He swerved at the entrance to the ride, but that was all." He did not say: He took advantage of the first good stout piece of timber to mash my leg against. That was something between the horse and himself. He and Timber had a long acquaintanceship in front of them, and a lot to say to each other.
"He behaves like an angel most of the time," Eleanor said. "That is what is so lethal about him. We have all ridden him; Simon and Gregg and Arthur and me, and he has only twice played up. Once with Simon and once with Arthur. But of course," she added with a grin, "we have always given trees a wide berth."
"He'd be a great success in the desert. Not a rail or a limb in a day's journey."
Eleanor looked sadly at the black horse as Brat drew up to let her precede him into the yard. "He'd think up something else, I expect."
And Brat, thinking it over, agreed with her. Timber was that rare thing in horses: a deliberate and intelligent rogue. Balked of his normal fun, he would think up something new. There was nothing small-time about Timber.
Nor was Simon exactly small-time. Simon had sent him out on a notorious rogue, with a light remark about the horse "having its tricks." As neat a piece of vicarious manslaughter as anyone ever thought up.
16
Beatrice Ashby looked down the dining-table at her nephew Patrick and thought how well he was doing it. The occasion must be an extraordinarily difficult one for him, but he was carrying it off beautifully. He was neither awkward nor exuberant. He brought to the situation the same quiet detachment that he had shown on their first meeting in that Pimlico room. It was a very adult quality, and a little surprising in a boy not yet twenty-one. He had great dignity this Patrick Ashby, she thought, watching him dealing with the Rector. Surely never before can anyone have been so silent by habit without appearing either stiff or stupid.