Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/219

 the straps frayed them; in some places it was even frayed off altogether, especially about the neck where the collar sat. At times these frayed and shabby objects tempted the fancy to divers comparisons. They looked like the seedy old sofa of some aged country parson, and only wanted a little horsehair or whatever the sofa was stuffed with to peep out from their rent hides, to make the comparison perfect. Or, again, they looked like an old sleeve of a past generation, which no longer gave any warmth to the wearer, because all the nap was rubbed off.

These horses, then, were far removed from their prototype Pegasus—as far, indeed as the hodman is from the architect, or the drummer in the orchestra from the composer of the overture.

Had Apollo clapped wings on to these creatures of Poldik—had he clapped on to them the original pair of poet’s wings, they would never, for all the world, have flown along Myslikoff Street—much less have taken flight above it. When they stood still and Poldik’s “Cl! cl!” and his whip gave them to understand that they were to bestir themselves, you could count up a fair number of seconds before their volition imparted itself to all the harness, before the traces stretched tight, before the fore-wheel got an inkling of what was toward, before the cart creaked and incited even the hind wheels to rotate, and before the whole system was in motion: horses, cart, and Poldik.

And when they were at last on the go their pace was above measure deliberate. Perhaps not even clockwork is so completely uniform, for we see clocks gain or lose. But Poldik’s horses never gained a minute in a whole year, though to their praise be it added that they never lost a minute either. A sluggish, even, deliberate pace was so strong a portion of their characters that neither Poldik’s whip nor his oaths caused the least variation therefrom. Poldik’s whip seemed to them a necessary concomitant to their own deliberate pace; if they had missed it in certain conjunctures, and in the same conjunctures had not heard the well-known oaths, they would certainly have cried out—had they been gifted with human speech—“Why don’t you crack your whip again now? why don’t you swear at us again?”

An anatomist, gazing at their even and ever sluggish pace, might have verified what muscles it was by which they extended their feet; he would have had plenty of time for this.

For their regularity of movement they were not themselves wholly to blame. They got just enough fodder to keep them in leather, and this leather held them together just enough for Poldik