_ CHAPTER VIII. A LOST SHOE
It was now late in the autumn. Several houses in the neighbourhood were full of visitors, and parties on horseback frequently passed the door of the smithy--well known to not a few of the horses.
One evening, as the sun was going down red and large, with a gorgeous attendance of clouds, for the day had been wet but cleared in the afternoon, a small mounted company came pretty fast along the lane, which was deep in mud. They were no sooner upon the hard road by the smithy, than one of the ladies discovered her mare had lost a hind shoe.
"She couldn't have pulled it off in a more convenient spot!" said a handsome young fellow, as he dismounted and gave his horse to a groom. "I'll take you down, Bab! Old Simon will have a shoe on Miss Brown in no time!"
Richard followed his grandfather to the door. A little girl, as she seemed to him, was sliding, with her hand on the young man's shoulder, from the back of the huge mare. She was the daintiest little thing, as lovely as she was tiny, with clear, pale, regular features, under a quantity of dark-brown hair. But that she was not a child, he saw the moment she was down; and he soon discovered that, not her beauty, but her heavenly vivacity, was the more captivating thing in her. At once her very soul seemed to go out to meet whatever object claimed her attention. She must know all about everything, and come into relations with every live thing! As she stood by the side of the great brown creature from which she had dismounted--huge indeed, but carrying its bulk with a grand grace--her head reaching but half-way up the slope of its shoulder, she laid her cheek against it caressingly. So small and so bright, the little lady looked a very diamond of life.
A new shoe had to be forged; those already half-made were for work-horses. Partly from pride in his skill, Simon left the task to his grandson, and stood talking to the young man. Little thought Richard, as he turned the shoe on the anvil's beak, that he was his half-brother! He was a handsome youth, not so tall as Richard, and with more delicate features. His face was pale, and wore a rather serious, but self-satisfied look. He talked to the old blacksmith, however, without the slightest assumption: like others in the neighbourhood, he regarded him as odd and privileged. There were more ladies and gentlemen, but Richard, absorbed in his shoe, heeded none of the company.
He was not more absorbed, however, than the girl who stood beside him: she watched every point in the making of it. Heedless of the flying sparks, she gazed as if she meant to make the next shoe herself. Had Richard not been too busy even to glance at her, he might have noticed, now and then, an involuntary sympathetic motion, imitatively responsive to one of his, invariably recurrent when he changed the position of the glowing iron. Her mind seemed working in company with his hands; she was all the time doing the thing herself; Richard's activity was not merely reflected, but lived in her. When he carried the half-forged iron, to apply it for one tentative instant to the mare's hoof, Barbara followed him. The mare fidgeted. But her little mistress, who, noiseless and swift as a moth, was already at her head, spoke to her, breathed in her nostril, and in a moment made her forget what was happening in such a far-off province of her being as a hind foot. When Richard, back at the forge, was placing the shoe again in the fire, to his surprise her little gloved hand alighted beside his own on the lever of the bellows, powerfully helping him to blow. When once again the shoe was on the anvil, there again she stood watching--and watched until he had shaped the shoe to his intent.
Old Simon did not move to interfere: the hoof required no special attention. Almost every horse-hoof in a large circuit of miles was known to him--as well, he would remark, as the nail of his own thumb.
When Richard took up the foot, in order to prepare it for the reception of its new armour, again the mare was fidgety; and again the lady distracted her attention, comforting and soothing her while Richard trimmed the hoof a little.
"I say, my man," cried Mr. Lestrange, "mind what you're about there with your paring! I don't want that mare lamed.--She's much too good for 'prentice hands to learn upon, Simon!"
"Keep your mind easy, sir," answered the blacksmith. "That lad's ain't 'prentice hands. He knows what he's about as well as I do myself!"
"He's young!"
"Younger, perhaps, than you think, sir!--but he knows his work."
It was a pretty picture--the girl peeping round under the neck of the great creature she was caressing, to see how the smith was getting on, whose back, alas! hid his hands from her. Just as he finished driving his second nail, the nervous animal gave her foot a jerk, and the point of the nail, through the hoof and projecting a little, tore his hand, so that the blood ran to the ground in a sudden rivulet.
"Hey! that don't look much like proper shoeing!" cried the young man. "I hope to goodness that's not the mare!"
"She's all right," answered Richard, rearranging the animal's foot.
But Simon saw the blood, and sprang to his side.
"What the devil are you about, making a fool of me, Dick!" he cried. "Get out of the way."
"It was my fault," said the sweetest voice from under the neck of the mare, to the top of which a tiny hand was trying to reach. "My feather must have tickled her nose!"
She caught a glimpse of the blood, and turned white.
"I am so sorry!" she said, almost tearfully. "I hope you're not much hurt, Richard!"
Nothing seemed to escape her; she had already learned his name!
"It's not worth being sorry about, miss!" returned Richard, with a laugh. "The mare meant no harm!"
"That I'm sure she didn't--poor Miss Brown!" answered the girl, patting the mare's neck. "But I wish it had been _my_ hand instead!"
"God forbid!" cried Richard. "That _would_ have been a calamity!"
"It wouldn't have been half so great a one. My hand is--well, not of _much_ use. Yours can shoe a horse!"
"Yours would have been spoiled; mine will shoe as well as before!" said Richard.
It did not occur to the lady that the youth spoke better than might have been expected of a country smith. She was one of the elect few that meet every one on the common human ground, that never fear and never hurt. Her childish size and look harmonized with the childlike in her style, but she affected nothing. She would have spoken in the same way to prince or poet-laureate, and would have pleased either as much as the blacksmith. At the same time she did have pleasure in knowing that her frankness pleased. She could not help being aware that she was a favourite, and she wanted to be; but she wanted nothing more than to be a favourite. She desired it with old Betty, sir Wilton's dairymaid, just as much as with Mr. Lestrange, sir Wilton's heir; and everybody showed her favour, for she showed everybody grace.
The old smith was finishing the shoeing, and the mare, well used to him, and with more faith in him, stood perfectly quiet. Richard, a little annoyed, had withdrawn, and scarce thinking what he did, had taken a rod of iron, thrust it into the fire, and begun to blow. The little lady approached him softly.
"I'm _so_ sorry!" she said.
"I shall be sorry too, if you think of it any more, miss!" answered Richard. "Then there will be two sorry where there needn't be one!"
She looked up at him with a curious, interested, puzzled look, which seemed to say, "What a nice smith you are!"
The youth's manners had a certain--what shall I call it?--not polish, but rhythm, which came of, or at least was nourished by his love of the finer elements in literature. His friendly converse with books, and through them with certain of the dead who still speak, fell in with yet deeper influences, helping to set him in right atomic position toward other human atoms. His breed also contributed something. Happily for Richard, a man is not born only of his father or his grandfather; mothers have a share in the form of his being; ancestors innumerable, men and women, leave their traces in him. But what I have ventured to call the rhythm of his manner came of his love of verse, and of the true material of verse.
His hand kept on bleeding, and for a moment he was tempted, by bravado as well as kindness, to use the cautery so nigh, and prove to the girl how little he set by what troubled her; but he saw at once it would shock her, and took, instead, a handkerchief from his pocket to bind it with. Instantly the little lady was at his service, and he yielded to her ministration with a pleasure hitherto unknown to him. She took the handkerchief from his hand, but immediately gave it him again, saying, "It is too black!" and drawing her own from her pocket, deftly bound up his wound with it. Speech abandoned Richard. All present looked on in silence. Certain of the company had seen her the day before tie up the leg of a wounded dog, and had admired her for it; but this was different! She was handling the hand of a human being--man--a workman!--black and hard with labour! There was no necessity: the man was not in the least danger! It was nothing but a scratch! She was forgetting what was due to herself--and to them! Thus they thought, but thus they dared not speak. They knew her, and feared what she might say in reply. The mare was shod ere the handkerchief was tied to the lady's mind, and Simon stood, hammer in hand, looking on like the rest in silence, but with a curious smile.
As she took her hands from his, the young blacksmith looked thankfulness into her eyes--which sparkled and shone with the pleasure of human fellowship, and without the least shyness returned his gaze.
"There! Good-bye! I am so sorry! I hope your hand will be well soon!" she said, and at once followed her mare, which the smith's man was leading with caution through the door of the smithy, rather too low for Miss Brown.
Lestrange helped her to the saddle in silence, and before Richard realized that she was gone, he heard the merriment of the party mingling with the clang of their horses' hoofs, as they went swinging down the road. The fairy had set them all laughing already!
The instant they were gone, Simon showed a strange concern over the insignificant wound: he had been hasty with Richard, and unfair to him! Had he driven his nail one hair's-breadth too near the quick, Miss Brown would have made the smithy tight for them! He seemed anxious to show, without actual confession, that he knew he had spoken angrily, and was sorry for it. He could not have shod the mare better himself, he said--but why the deuce did he let her tear his hand! It was not likely to gather, though, seeing Richard drank water! He must do nothing for a day or two! To-morrow being Saturday, they would have a holiday together, and leave the work to George! _