In the Riding-School; Chats with Esmeralda Part 6

"And it is no way to teach! Three men ordering a cla.s.s at once!"

"Ah, it is 'no way to teach'! Now, it is I who am taking a lesson from you. I am greatly obliged, but I must keep to my own old way. It may be wrong--for you, my young lady--but it has made soldiers to ride, and little girls, and other young ladies, and I am content. And these others? Are they not coming any more?"

And every one of those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold a little hard."

"That," says the master, "is my bog voice to make the horses mind, and to make sure that you hear it. And I told you the other day that I spoke for your good, not for my own. If I should say every time I want trotting, 'My dear and much respected beautiful young ladies, please to trot,' how much would you learn in a morning?"

"We are ladies," says the society young lady, "and we should be treated as ladies."

"And you--or these others, since you retire--are my pupils, and shall be treated as my pupils," he says with a courtly bow and a "Good morning," and you go away trying to persuade the society young lady to reconsider.

"Not that I care much whether she does or not," Nell says confidentially to you. "She's too overbearing for me," and just at that minute the voice of the society young lady is heard to call the master "overbearing," and you and Nell exchange delighted, mischievous smiles.

Now for that stiffness of yours, Esmeralda, there is a remedy, as there is for everything but death, and you should use it immediately, before the rigidity becomes habitual. Continue your other exercises, but devote only about a third as much time to them, and use the other two thirds for Delsarte movements.

First: Let your hands swing loosely from the wrist, and swing them lifelessly to and fro. Execute the movement first with the right hand then with the left, then with both.

Second: Let the fingers hang from the knuckles, and shake them in the same way and in the same order.

Third: Let the forearm hang from the elbow, and proceed in like manner.

Fourth: Let the whole arm hang from the shoulder, and swing the arms by twisting the torso.

Execute the finger and hand movements with the arms hanging at the side, extended sidewise, stretched above the head, thrust straight forward, with the arms bent at right angles to them and with the arms flung backward as far as possible. Execute the forearm movements with the arms falling at the side, and also with the elbow as high as the shoulder.

After you have performed these exercises for a few days, you will begin to find it possible to make yourself limp and lifeless when necessary, and the knowledge will be almost as valuable as the ability to hold yourself firm and steady. You will find the exercises in Mrs. Thompson's "Society Gymnastics," but these are all that you will need for at least one week, especially if you have to devote many hours to the task of persuading the society young lady not to leave your cla.s.s unto you desolate.

IX.

"Left wheel into line!" and they wheel and obey.

_Tennyson_.

When you arrive at the school for your second cla.s.s lesson, Esmeralda, you find the dressing-room pervaded by a silence as clearly indicative of a recent tempest as the path cloven through a forest by a tornado. From the shelter of screens and from retired nooks, come sounds indicative of garments doffed and donned with abnormal celerity and severity, but never a word of joking, and never a cry for deft-fingered Kitty's a.s.sistance, and then, little by little, even these noises die away, and the palace of the Sleeping Beauty could not be more quiet. No girl stirs from her lurking-place, until our yourself issue from your pet corner, and then Nell, a warning finger on her lip, noiselessly emerges from hers, and you go into the reception room together, and she explains to you that, despite her announcement that she would never come again, the society young lady has appeared, and has announced her intention to defend what she grandly terms her position as a lady.

"And the master will think us, her a.s.sociates, as unruly as she is!" Nell almost sobs. "If I were he, I would send the whole cla.s.s home, there!" But the other girls now enter, each magnificently polite to the others, and the file of nine begins its journey along the wall, attended as before, the society young lady taking great pains about distance, and really doing very well, but the beauty sitting with calm negligence which soon brings a volley of remonstrance from both teachers, who address her much after the fas.h.i.+on of Sydney Smith's saying, "You are on the high road to ruin the moment you think yourself rich enough to be careless."

"You must not keep your whip in contact with your horse's shoulder all the time," lectured one of the teachers, "if you do, you have no means of urging him to go forward a little faster.

Keep it pressed against the saddle, not slanting outward or backward. When you use it, do it without relaxing your hold upon the reins, for if, by any mischance, your horse should start quickly, you will need it. Forward, ladies, forward! don't stop in the corners! Use your whips a very little, just as you begin to turn! Miss Esmeralda, keep to the wall! No, no! Don't keep to the wall by having your left rein shorter than your right! They should be precisely even."

"As you approach the corner," says the other teacher quietly, speaking to you alone, "carry your right hand a little nearer to your left without bending your wrist, so that your rein will just touch your horse's neck on the right side. That will keep his head straight."

"But he seems determined to go to the right," you object.

"That is because your right rein is too short now. While we are going down the long side of the school, make the reins precisely even. Now, lay the right rein on his neck, use your whip, and touch him with your heel to make him go on; bend your right wrist to turn him, use your whip once more, and go on again!"

"Forward, Miss Esmeralda, forward!" cries the other teacher.

"That is because Miss Lady did not go into the corner, and so is too far in advance," your teacher explains. "You must, in cla.s.s, keep your distance as carefully when the rifer immediately before you is wrong as when she is right. It is the necessity of doing that, of having to be ready for emergencies, to think of others as much as of your horse and of yourself, that give cla.s.s teaching much of its value."

"Forward, ladies, forward," cries the other teacher. "Remember that you are not to go to sleep! Now prepare to trot, and don't go too fast at first. Remember always to change from one gait to another gently, for your own sake, that you may not be thrown out of position; for your horse's, that he may not be startled, and made unruly and ungraceful. He has nerves as well as you. Now, prepare to trot! Trot! Shorten your reins, Miss Beauty! Shorten them!" and during the next minute or two, while the cla.s.s trots about a third of a mile, the poor beauty hears every command in the manual addressed to her, and smilingly tries, but tries in vain to obey them; but in an unhappy moment the teacher's glance falls on the society young lady and he bids her keep her right shoulder back. "You told me that before," she says, rather more crisply than is prescribed by any of he manuals of etiquette which const.i.tute her sole library.

"Then why don't you do it?" is his answer. "Keep your left shoulder forward," he says a moment later, whereupon the society young lady turns to the right, and plants herself in the centre of the ring with as much dignity as is possible, considering that her horse, not having been properly stopped, and feeling the nervous movements of her hands, moves now one leg and now another, now draws his head down pulling her forward on the pommel, and generally disturbs the beautiful repose of manner upon which she prides herself.

"You are tired? No? Frightened? Your stirrup is too short? You are not comfortable?" demands the teacher, riding up beside her.

"Is there anything which you would like to have me do?"

"I don't like to be told to do two things at once," she responds in a tone which should be felt by the thermometer at the other end of the ring.

"But you must do two things at once, and many more than two, on horseback," he says; "when you are rested, take your place in the line."

"I think I will dismount," she says.

"Very well," and before she has time to change her mind, a bell is rung, a groom guides her horse to the mounting-stand, the master himself takes her out of the saddle, courteously bids her be seated in the reception room and watch the others, and she finds her little demonstration completely and effectually crushed, and, what is worse, apparently without intention. n.o.body appears to be aware that she has intended a rebellion, although "whole Fourth of Julys seem to bile in her veins."

"Now," the teacher goes on, "we will turn to the right, singly.

Turn! Keep up, ladies! Keep up! Ride straight! To the right again! Turn!" and back on the track, on the other side of the school, the leader in the rear, the beginners in advance, you continue until two more turns to the right replace you.

"That was all wrong," the teacher says, cheerfully. "You did not ride straight, and you did not ride together. Your horses' heads should be in line with one another, and then when you arrive at the track and turn to the right again, your distance will be correct. Now we will have a little trot, and while you are resting afterward, you shall try the turn again."

The society young lady, watching the scene in sulkiness, notes various faults in each rider and feels that the truly promising pupil of the cla.s.s is sitting in her chair at that moment; but she says nothing of the kind, contenting herself by asking the master, with well-adjusted carelessness, if it would not be better for the teacher to speak softly.

"It gives a positive shock to the nerves to be so vehemently addressed," she says, with the air of a Hammond advising an ignorant nurse.

"That is what he has the intention to do," replies the other. "It is necessary to arouse the rider's will and not let her sleep, but if it were not, the teacher of riding, or anybody who has to give orders, orders, orders all day long, must speak from an expanded chest, with his lungs full of air, or at night he will be dumb. The young man behind the counter who has to entreat, persuade, to beg, to be gentle, he may make his voice soft, but to speak with energy in a low tone is to strain the vocal cords and to injure the lungs permanently. The opera singer finds to sing piano, pianissimo more wearisome than to make herself heard above a Wagner orchestra. The orator, with everybody still and listening with countenance intent, dares not speak softly, except now and then for contrast. In the army we have three months'

rest, and then we go to the surgeon, and he examines our throats and lungs, and sees whether or not they need any treatment. If you go to the camp of the military this summer, you will find the young officers whom you know in the ball-room so soft and so gentle, not whispering to their men, but shouting, and the best officer will have the loudest shout."

The society young lady remembers the stories which she has heard her father and uncles tell of that "officer's sore throat," which in 1861 and 1862, caused so many ludicrous incidents among the volunteer soldiery, the energetic rill master of one day being transformed into a voiceless pantomimist by the next, but, like Juliet when she spoke, she says nothing, and now the teacher once more cries, "Turn!" and then, suddenly, "Prepare to stop! Stop!

Now look at your line! Now two of you have your horses' heads even! And how many of you were riding straight?"

A dead silence gives a precisely correct answer, and again he cries, "Forward!" A repet.i.tion of the movement is demanded, and is received with cries of "This is not good, ladies! This is not good! We will try again by and by. Now, prepare to change hands in file."

The leader, turning at one corner of the school, makes a line almost like a reversed "s" to the corner diagonally opposite, and comes back to the track on the left hand, the others straggling after with about as much precision and grace as Jill followed Jack down the hill; but, before they are fairly aware how very ill they have performed the manoeuvre, they perceive that their teacher not only aimed at having them learn how to turn to the left at each corner, but also at giving himself an opportunity to make remarks about their feet and the position thereof, and at the end of five minutes each girl feels as if she were a centipede, and you, Esmeralda, secretly wonder whether something in the way of mucilage of thumb-tacks might not be used to keep your own riding boots close to the saddle. "And don't let your left foot swing," says the teacher in closing his exhortations; "hold it perfectly steady! Now change hands in file, and come back to the track on the right again, and we will have a little trot."

"And before you begin," lectures the master, "I will tell you something. The faster you go, after once you know how to stay in the saddle, the better for you, the better for your horse. You see the great steamer crossing the ocean when under full headway, and she can turn how this way and now that, with the least little touch of the rudder, but when she is creeping, creeping through the narrow channel, she must have a strong, sure hand at the helm, and when she is coming up to her wharf, easy, easy, she must swing in a wide circle. That is why my word to you is always 'Forward! Forward!' and again, 'Forward!' There is a scientific reason underlying this, if you care to know it. When you go fast, neither you nor the horse has time to feel the pressure of the atmosphere from above, and that is why it seems as if you were flying, and he is happy and exhilarated as well as you. You will see the tame horse in the paddock gallop about for his pleasure, and the wild horse on the prairie will start and run for miles in mere sportiveness. So, if you want to have pleasure on horseback, 'Forward!'"

While the little trot is going on, the society young lady improves the s.h.i.+ning hour by asking the master "if he does not think it cruel to make a poor horse go just as fast as it can,"

to which he replies that the horse will desire to go quite as long as she can or will, whereupon she withdraws into the cave of sulkiness again, but brightens perceptibly as you dismount and join her.

"You do look so funny, Esmeralda," she begins. "Your feet do seem positively immense, as the teacher said."

"Pardon me; I said not that," gently interposes the teacher; "only that they looked too big, bigger than they are, when she turns them outward."

"And you do sit very much on one side," she continues to Versatilia: "and your crimps are quite flat, my dear," to the beauty.