The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall Read Free Book Online

read from the Bible:
    ‘You know where,’ coaxed Stephen, ‘it’s the place they were reading in church last Sunday, about Saul and a witch with a name like Edna—the place where she makes some person come up, ‘cause the king had forgotten what he looked like.’
    But if prayer bad failed Stephen, her spells also failed her; indeed they behaved as spells do when said backwards, making her see, not the person she wished to, but a creature entirely different. For Collins now had a most serious rival, one who had lately appeared at the stables. He was not possessed of a real housemaid’s knee, but instead, of four deeply thrilling brown legs—he was two up on legs and one up on a tail, which was rather unfair on Collins! that Christmas, when Stephen was eight years old, Sir Philip had bought her a hefty bay pony; she was learning to ride him, could ride him already, being naturally skilful and fearless. There had been quite a heated discussion with Anna, because Stephen had insisted on riding astride. In this she had shown herself very refractory, falling off every time she tried the side-saddle—quite obvious, of course, this falling-off process, but enough to subjugate Anna.
    And now Stephen would spend long hours at the stables, swaggering largely in corduroy breeches, hobnobbing with Williams, the old stud groom, who had a soft place in his heart for the child.
    She would say: ‘Come up, horse!’ in the same tone as Williams; or, pretending to a knowledge she was far from possessing: ‘Is that fetlock a bit puffy? It looks to me puffy; supposing we put on a nice wet bandage.’
    Then Williams would rub his rough chin as though thinking: ‘Maybe yes—maybe no—’ he would temporize, wisely.
    She grew to adore the smell of the stables; it was far more enticing than Collins’ perfume—the Erasmic she had used on her afternoons out, and which had once smelt so delicious. And the pony! So strong, so entirely fulfilling, with his round, gentle eyes, and his heart big with courage—he was surely more worthy of worship than Collins, who had treated you badly because of the footman! And yet—and yet—you owed something to Collins, just because you had loved her, though you couldn’t any more. It was dreadfully worrying, all this hard thinking, when you wished to enjoy a new pony! Stephen would stand there rubbing her chin in an almost exact imitation of Williams. She could not produce the same scrabby sound, but in spite of this drawback, the movement would soothe her.
    Then one morning she had a bright inspiration: ‘Come up, horse!’ she commanded, slapping the pony. ‘Come up, horse, and let me get close to your ear, ‘cause I’m going to whisper something dreadfully important.’ Laying her cheek against his firm neck, she said softly: ‘You’re not you any more, you’re Collins!’
    So Collins was comfortably transmigrated. It was Stephen’s last effort to remember.
    2
    Came the day when Stephen rode out with her father to a meet, a glorious and memorable day. Side by side the two of them jogged through the gates, and the lodgekeeper’s wife must smile to see Stephen sitting her smart bay pony astride, and looking so comically like Sir Philip.
    ‘It do be a pity as her isn’t a boy, our young lady,’ she told her husband.
    It was one of those still, slightly frosty mornings when the landing is tricky on the north side of the hedges; when the smoke from farm chimneys rises straight as a ramrod; when the scent of log fires or of burning brushwood, though left far behind, still persists in the nostrils. A crystal clear morning, like a draught of spring water, and such mornings are good when one is young.
    The pony tugged hard and fought at his bridle; he was trembling with pleasure, for he was no novice; he knew all about signs and wonders in stables, such as large feeds of corn administered early, and extra long groomings, and pink coats, with brass buttons, like the hunt coat Sir Philip was