No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [50]
So, at half-past one Tietjens sat on Schomburg, the coffin-headed, bright chestnut from the Prussian horse-raising establishment near Celle. Almost a pure thoroughbred, this animal had usually the paces of a dining-room table, its legs being fully as stiff. But to-day its legs might have been made of cotton-wool, it lumbered over frosty ground breathing stertorously and, at the jumping ground of the Deccan Horse, a mile above and behind Rouen, it did not so much refuse a very moderate jump as come together in a lugubrious crumple. It was, in the light of a red, jocular sun, like being mounted on a broken-hearted camel. In addition, the fatigues of the morning beginning to tell, Tietjens was troubled by an obsession of 0 Nine Morgan which he found tiresome to have to stall off.
'What the hell,' he asked of the orderly, a very silent private on a roan beside him, 'what the hell is the matter with this horse?...Have you been keeping him warm?' He imagined that the clumsy paces of the animal beneath him added to his gloomy obsessions.
The orderly looked straight in front of him over a valley full of hutments. He said:
'No, sir.' The 'oss 'ad been put in the 'oss-standings of G depot. By the orders of Lieutenant 'Itchcock. 'Osses, Lieutenant 'Itchcock said, 'ad to be 'ardened.
Tietjens said:
'Did you tell him that it was my orders that Schomburg was to be kept warm? In the stables of the farm behind No. XVI I.B.D.'
'The lieutenant,' the orderly explained woodenly, 'said as 'ow henny departure f'm 'is orders would be visited by the extreme displeasure of Lord Breech'em, K.C.V.O., K.C.B., etcetera.' The orderly was quivering with rage.
'You Tietjens said very carefully, 'when you fall out with the horses at the Hotel de la Poste, take Schomburg and the roan to the stables of La Volonté Farm, behind No. XVI I.B.D.' The orderly was to close all the windows of the stable, stopping up any chinks with wadding. He would procure, if possible, a sawdust stove, new pattern, from Colonel Gillum's store and light it in the stables. He was also to give Schomburg and the roan oatmeal and water warmed as hot as the horses would take it...And Tietjens finished sharply, 'If Lieutenant Hotchkiss makes any comments, you will refer him to me. As his CO.'
The orderly seeking information as to horse-ailments, Tietjens said:
'The school of horse-copers, to which Lord Beichan belongs, believes in the hardening of all horse-flesh other than racing cattle.' They bred racing-cattle. Under six blankets apiece! Personally Tietjens did not believe in the hardening process and would not permit any animal over which he had control to be submitted to it.--It had been observed that if any animal was kept at a lower temperature than that of its normal climatic condition it would contract diseases to which ordinarily it was not susceptible...If you keep a chicken for two days in a pail of water it will contract human scarlet-fever or mumps if injected with either bacillus. If you remove the chicken from the water, dry it, and restore it to its normal conditions, the scarlet-fever or the mumps will die out of the animal...He said to the orderly: 'You arc an intelligent man. What deduction do you draw?'
The orderly looked away over the valley of the Seine.
'I suppose, sir,' he said, 'that our 'osses, being kept alwise cold in their standings, 'as hillnesses they wouldn't otherwise 'ave.'
'Well, then,' Tietjens said, 'keep the poor animals warm.'
He considered that here was the makings of a very nasty row for himself if, by any means, his sayings came round to the ears of Lord Beichan. But that he had to chance. He coud not let a horse for which he was responsible be martyred...There