Essential Stories Read Online Free Page B

ripping noise, a heavy groping breathing as though some huge man were leaning and groaning against the house, and straining to push it over. There was an eerie snorting and hissing under the window. Some creature fantastic, malevolent and supernatural, was in the garden. And now he knew that stumbling, that snorting, puffing, tearing, crunching. The white gate, wide open and startling, seemed to whistle like a ghostly wind down the garden into his conscience; horses had got into the garden. Herds of horses trampling through the flower beds, kicking up his lawn.
    “It’s horses,” he said, in consternation, for he was afraid of their jaws and legs, being a man for wheels, a bicycling man himself.
    “In the garden,” exclaimed his wife. There was a scuffle of clothes, and a thump like the fall of one of those apples as she jumped out of bed. She met him at the door in her night-dress, her hair was bushy and her eyes were wide open and eager to get to the battle.
    “The naughty boys!” she cried, as he pulled the door open. “Look at them.”
    And with her behind him he picked up a twig and advanced upon them. He did not mind, he was indeed glad that she had called them boys.
    In the cold air they stood, not a herd but three great farm horses, two roans and a grey, standing still and staring at him in his pyjamas. The creatures stopped like gawky louts who had been caught robbing an orchard. Sardonic in their nakedness, swishing their tails, and the smell of hide, manure and bruised grass steaming on them. While he had been sleeping they had been out all night, mysteriously arched, and munching through the darkness. The stars had shone upon them, the darkness coated them. Three grotesque gods, he thought they were, naked between wild mane and bearded fetlock, with fine feathery hair on their bellies; three gods sniffing raw morning at their nostrils, the rime of the morning on their backs, and amazed grins gone askew on their slobbering mouths.
    Harkaway squared his shoulders and delivered them a final notice in his professional way.
    “Go on. Get out of this. Gee up,” he shouted. They lowered and stretched their long necks, so weirdly long, to the grass, and casually, prosaically ate their way through the clover to the gate, turning to eye him as they went. He watched their great casual gait with awe as they swaggered through his Michaelmas daisies, snapped his sunflowers, slithered against the flints in his rows of potatoes, and shot up their shining hooves as they sprang, amid a shower of dew, through the bushes. He advanced upon them at a discreet distance, with dignity.
    “Go along, you naughty boys. I will tell your master. They know they’ve done wrong,” cried Mrs. Harkaway. Harkaway emboldened, shouted louder:
    “Get out of my garden. Gee up. Go on now!” And two of them trotted out with a ringing clatter. But the third, the grey, took fright and plunged at the wire in panic, wheeling round at every gap and throwing himself against it, broke into a brief clumsy gallop to the end of the garden, almost as far as the house, and then up again. Harkaway kept clear.
    “Don’t frighten him,” commanded Mrs. Harkaway. How great Harkaway felt at the idea of his frightening anything. Down went the grey again and, at last, with an unearthly neigh as though he were laughing at Harkaway, he broke through the sunflowers, slithered on the gravel and went blindly at the gate, not stopping until he was on the road with the others, who were taking bites at the hedge in impudent farewell. At the grey’s arrival they swung their heads, neighed, and broke into a jog trot down the road with a confused gobbling of hooves.
    “Well I’ll be danged!” said Harkaway and turned to look at his wife, grateful for the excitement. The air was like a cold pond put in a swirl. It reeked of the animals, the smell of leaves and of grass from which the dew had been dashed. His ankles and shoes were soaked and his pyjamas’ legs were