All that day the horses treated Strider respectfully, but Nester’s treatment of him was as rough as ever. The peasant’s little roan horse neighed again on coming up to the herd, and the chestnut filly again coquettishly replied to him.
Chapter VII
Third Night
The new moon had risen and its narrow crescent lit up Strider’s figure as he once again stood in the middle of the stable yard. The other horses crowded round him:
The gelding continued:
For me the most surprising consequence of my not being the count’s, nor God’s, but the head groom’s, was that the very thing that constitutes our chief merit-a fast pace-was the cause of my banishment. They were driving Swan round the track, and the head groom, returning from Chemenka, drove me up and stopped there. Swan went past. He went well, but all the same he was showing off and had not the exactitude I had developed in myself-so that directly one foot touched the ground another instantaneously lifted and not the lightest effort was lost but every atom of exertion carried me forward. Swan went by us. I pulled towards the ring and the head groom did not check me.
“Here, shall I try my piebald?” he shouted, and when next Swan came abreast of us he let me go. Swan was already going fast, and so I was left behind during the first round, but in the second I began to gain on him, drew near to his sulky, drew level-and passed him. They tried us again-it was the same thing. I was the faster. And this dismayed everybody. The general asked that I should be sold at once to some distant place, so that nothing more should be heard of me: “Or else the count will get to know of it and there will be trouble!” So they sold me to a horse-dealer as a shaft-horse. I did not remain with him long. An hussar who came to buy remounts bought me.
All this was so unfair, so cruel, that I was glad when they took me away from Khrenovo and Parted me for ever from all that had been familiar and dear to me. It was too painful for me among them. They had love, honour, freedom, before them! I had labour, humiliation; humiliation, labour, to the end of my life. And why? Because I was piebald, and because of that had to become somebody’s horse. . . .
Strider could not continue that evening. An event occurred in the enclosure that upset all the horses. Kupchikha, a mare big with foal, who had stood listening to the story, suddenly turned away and walked slowly into the shed, and there began to groan so that it drew the attention of all the horses. Then she lay down, then got up again, and again lay down. The old mares understood what was happening to her, but the young ones became excited and, leaving the gelding, surrounded the invalid. Towards morning there was a new foal standing unsteadily on its little legs. Nester shouted to the groom, and the mare and foal were taken into a stall and the other horses driven to the pasture without them.
Chapter VIII
Fourth Night
In the evening when the gate was closed and all had quieted down, the piebald continued:
I have had the opportunity to make many observations both of men and horses during the time I passed from hand to hand.
I stayed longest of all with two masters: a prince (an officer of hussars), and later with an old lady who lived near the church of St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker.
The happiest years of my life I spent with the officer of hussars.
Though he was the cause of my ruin, and though he never loved anything or anyone, I loved and still love him for that very reason.
What I liked about him was that he was handsome, happy, rich, and therefore never loved anybody.
You understand that lofty equine feeling of ours. His coldness and my dependence on him gave special strength to my love for him. “Kill me, drive me till my wind is broken!” I used to think in our good days, “and I shall be all the happier.”
He bought me from an agent to whom the head groom had sold me for eight hundred rubles, and he did so just because no one else had piebald horses. That was my best time. He had a mistress. I knew this because I took him to her every day and sometimes took them both out.
His mistress was a handsome woman, and he was handsome, and his coachman was handsome, and I loved them all because they were. Life was worth living then. This was how our time was spent: in the morning the groom came to rub me down-not the coachman himself but the groom. The groom was a lad from among the peasants. He would open the door, let out the steam from the horses, throw out the droppings, take off our rugs, and begin to fidget over our bodies with a brush, and lay whitish streaks of dandruff from a curry-comb on the boards of the floor that was dented by our rough horseshoes. I would playfully nip his sleeve and paw the ground.
Then we were led out one after another to the tough filled with cold water, and the lad would admire the smoothness of my spotted coat which he had polished, my foot with its broad hoof, my legs straight as an arrow, my glossy quarters, and my back wide enough to sleep on. Hay was piled onto the high racks, and the oak cribs were filled with oats. Then Feofan, the head coachman, would come in.
Master and coachman resembled one another. Neither of them was afraid of anything or cared for anyone but himself, and for that reason everybody liked them. Feofan wore a red shirt, black velveteen knickerbockers, and a sleeveless coat. I liked it on a holiday when he would come into the stable, his hair pomaded, and wearing his sleeveless coat, and would shout, “Now then, beastie, have you forgotten?” and push me with the handle of the stable fork, never so as to hurt me but just as a joke. I immediately knew that it was a joke and laid back an ear, making my teeth click.
We had a black stallion, who drove in a pair. At night they used to put me in harness with him. That Polkan, as he was called, did not understand a joke but was simply vicious as the devil. I was in the stall next to his and sometimes we bit one another seriously. Feofan was not afraid of him. He would come up and give a shout: it looked as if Polkan would kill him, but no, he’d miss, and Feofan would put the harness on him.
Once he and I bolted down Smiths Bridge Street. Neither my master nor the coachman was frightened; they laughed, shouted at the people, checked us, and turned so that no one was run over.
In their service I lost my best qualities and half my life. They ruined me by watering me wrongly, and they foundered me. . . . Still, for all that, it was the best time of my life. At twelve o’clock they would come to harness me, black my hoofs, moisten my forelock and mane, and put me in the shafts.
The sledge was of plaited cane upholstered with velvet; the reins were of silk, the harness had silver buckles, sometimes there was a cover of silken fly-net, and altogether it was such that when all the traces and straps were fastened it was difficult to say where the harness ended and the horse began. We were harnessed at ease in the stable. Feofan would come, broader at his hips than at the shoulders, his red belt up under his arms: he would examine the harness, take his seat, wrap his coat round him, put his foot into the sledge stirrup, let off some joke, and for appearance sake always hang a whip over his arm though he hardly ever hit me, and would say, “Let go!” and playfully stepping from foot to foot I would move out of the gate, and the cook who had come out to empty the slops would stop on the threshold and the peasant who had brought wood into the yard would open his eyes wide. We would come out, go a little way, and stop. Footmen would come out and other coachmen, and a chatter would begin. Everybody would wait: sometimes we had to stand for three hours at the entrance, moving a little way, turning back, and standing again.
At last there would be a stir in the hall: old Tikhon with his paunch would rush out in his dress coat and cry, “Drive up!” (In those days there was not that stupid way of saying, “Forward!” as if one did not know that we moved forward and not back.) Feofan would cluck, drive up, and the prince would hurry out carelessly, as though there were nothing remarkable about the sledge, or the horse, or Feofan-who bent his back and stretched out his arms so that it seemed it would be impossible for him to keep them long in that position.
The prince would have a shako on his head and wear a fur coat with a grey beaver collar hiding his rosy, black-browed, handsome face, that should never have been concealed. He would come out clattering his sabre,
