Another feature of the local landscape was Joey, who worked on the roads, mostly at flint-breaking. I never knew his real name, though I’d known him by sight ever since I could remember. He was a lizard-faced man and the skin of his throat hung loose and shrivelled. I had named him Joey—in my mind—after a tortoise which I had owned when I was a child. Sitting on a heap of stones on the main road, alone with the humming telegraph poles and the clack of his hammer, he always saluted me as I passed, but I never conversed with him and he never seemed to get any older. He might have been any age between forty and seventy. …
But I must hurry myself along a bit, for it is high time that I was on the back of my new hunter.
On New Year’s Day I was half-pedestrian and half-bicyclist, with no idea of being anything else. Within a week I found myself a full-blown horse-owner, and was watching Dixon exert himself with a hammer and chisel as he opened the neat wooden case which contained a new saddle from that old-established West End firm, Campion & Webble. The responsibility for these stimulating occurrences rested with Dixon.
One morning after breakfast Miriam announced that Dixon had something he particularly wished to speak to me about and was waiting in the servants’ hall. Wondering what on earth it would be, I asked her to send him up to the book-room. I was there before him; a minute or two later the sound of his deliberate tread was audible in the passage; he knocked portentously and entered respectfully, introducing a faint odour of the stables. He had an air of discreetly subdued excitement and there was a slight flush about the cheekbones of his keen face. Without delay he produced a copy of Horse and Hound from his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and handed it to me, merely saying, “I want you to have a look at that, sir.” That, as indicated by his thumb, was the following item in Tattersall’s weekly sale list.
“The Property of Cosmo Gaffikin, Esq., Harkaway III. Chestnut gelding; aged; sixteen hands; a good hunter; an exceptionally brilliant performer; well known with the Dumborough Hounds, with whom he has been regularly hunted to date. Can be seen and ridden by appointment with Stud Groom, Mistley House, Wellbrook.”
I read the advertisement in a stupefied way, but Dixon allowed me no time for hesitation or demur.
“It struck me, sir, that you might do worse than go over and have a look at him,” he remarked, adding, “I saw him run in the Hunt Cup two years ago; he’s a very fine stamp of hunter.”
“Did he win?” I asked.
“No, sir. But he ran well, and I think Mr. Gaffikin made too much use of him in the first mile or two.” For lack of anything to say I reread the advertisement.
“Well, sir, if you’ll excuse my saying so, you don’t get a chance like that every day.”
An hour later Dixon had got me into the dogcart and was driving me over to Wellbrook—a distance of ten miles. It was a mild, grey morning, and as I felt that I had lost control over what was happening, there was no need to feel nervous about the impending interview. In response to my tentative inquiries Dixon displayed a surprisingly intimate knowledge of everything connected with Harkaway and his present owner, and when I suggested that the price expected would be too high for me, he went so far as to say that he had very good reason to believe that he could be bought for fifty pounds.
When we arrived at Mistley House it soon became clear even to my unsuspicious mind that the stud groom had been expecting us. When Harkaway was led out of his stable my first impression was of a noticeably narrow animal with a white blaze on his well-bred and intelligent face. But I felt more impelled to admire than to criticize, and a few minutes later Mr. Gaffikin himself came clattering into the stable-yard on a jaunty black mare with a plaited mane. The stud groom explained me as “Mr. Sherston, sir; come over from Butley to have a look at Harkaway, sir.” Mr. Gaffikin was about thirty-five and had a rather puffy face and a full-sized brown moustache. He was good-humoured and voluble and slangy and easygoing, and very much the sportsman. He had nothing but praise for Harkaway, and seemed to feel the keenest regret at parting with him.
“But the fact is,” he explained confidentially, “the old horse isn’t quite up to my weight and I want to make room for a young ’chaser. But you’re a stone lighter than I am, and he’d carry you like a bird—like a bird, wouldn’t you, old chap?”—and he pulled Harkaway’s neat little ears affectionately. “Yes,” he went on, “I don’t mind telling you he’s the boldest performer I’ve ever been on. Nailing good hunter. I’ve never known him turn his head. Absolute patent-safety; I can guarantee you that much, Mr. Sherston.”
Whereupon he urged me to jump on the old horse’s back and see how I liked the feel
