Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/221

 Such pauses and delays did not occur frequently. Poldik had no great need of them.

Not only was his step measured, vacillating, and swaying-his whole character was equally measured, vacillating, and swaying, all his thoughts and conceptions were so in their inception and concludings. It must be something of extreme importance, in fact, of absolute necessity which should cause Poldik to halt and wait for his follower and cart to catch him up and enter into conversation. In general he managed to learn what he wished to know by looks alone, and seldom had recourse to words. A whole dialogue was thus disposed of as they passed one another or trailed after one another, merely by means of glances. Thus one of his mates had a white horse that limped on Saturday. Poldik saw them again on Monday, and the white horse no longer limped. He glanced at the happy possessor of the beast, and this glance meant, “The white horse has soon recovered.” The other glanced at Poldik, infused a certain smug satisfaction into his look, and this look meant, “No; he does not limp to-day.” Or he saw the white horse in the forenoon with one of its shoes off, and when he met it in the afternoon the shoe was still missing. Here Poldik looked at the carter, and this look meant, “It is still with one of its shoes off!” The owner of the white horse similarly replied by a look, and in it Poldik heard or saw the words, “We have been very busy to-day, and really have not had time.”

Poldik’s regularity was shown moreover in the way he spoke to his horses. Just as if he had been laying out a road, he counted twenty Poldikian steps-and only after this precise measurement, pulled the rein, cracked the whip, and shouted “hee!” You might wager your head, it would not come one step before or after the twenty paces. Only I must except certain special occasions. On Monday when he put to the horses after their Sabbath rest he shouted “hee!” twenty times during the first twenty steps. That was to compensate for all that had been omitted on the Sunday. And this single circumstance proves to me that he did not usually shout out in his sleep or in moments of rest and abstraction. Moreover, this exclamation occurred more frequently early in the morning during the first few steps, and again in the afternoon after the midday meal.

In this Poldikian “hee!” rested a whole dictionary. Generally it was only a commonplace incitement to activity, pronounced clearly and pithily. But when something touched, angered, or vexed Poldik, the horses certainly became aware of the fact, for