"Did ever a man see a thing like that!" criedFrench. "After winning the race and all to have a disgrace like this fall on me!"
"Come on," said Dashwood. "You can go to the police-station after you have seen the horse. The bounder is all right now. And serve him jolly well right! It's some mistake. He'd never have the brains to try to welsh people. Come on."
Two hours later Mr. French, Major Lawson, and Mr. Dashwood, having celebrated the victory in champagne cup, drove up to the Epsom police-station. The Major made himself known, and obtained permission for Mr. French to interview his relative.
Mr. Giveen was seated in a police cell with a police blanket over his shoulders.
"Well, there you are!" said French. "And a nice disgrace to me and the family! What brought you down here at all? Do you know what you'll get for this? Six months, if you get an hour."
"Oh, glory be to God!" said Giveen. "Sure, I don't know what's been happening to me at all, at all. What have I done that you should all be going on at me like this?"
"What have you done?" cried French. "You've betrayed me to Lewis, you scoundrel! That's what you've done, sorrow mend you! You came sneaking down to Crowsnest to get my address. You're a bad, black-hearted beast, that's what you are, and it's glad I am to think you'll spend the next six months, or maybe the next year, picking oakum or dancing on the treadmill. Come now and tell the whole truth. What have you been doing?"
Urged to the tale, Mr. Giveen told all about Paddy Welsh and Mr. Lazarus, French listening and scarcely able to contain his merriment.
"Paddy Welsh!" said he. "Oh, faith, that makes it worse and worse! Oh, faith, you've done for yourself now, and it's maybe two years you'll get. Now, listen to me, and I'll give you a chance. If you'll promise me to go back to Ireland by the next train, I'll talk to the magistrates to-morrow morning, and I'll tell them you're my relation and that you're a fool. You can tell them what you've told me, and maybe, backed by my word, they'll believe you. Do you understand me?"
"I do."
"Will you go back to Ireland?"
"I will."
"And never interfere in my affairs again?"
"I'll take me oath to that."
"Well, you'll have to stay here all night, for they won't let you out till you've been before the magistrates. There's no use in going on like that; here you'll have to stay, and when you come before the magistrates in the morning——"
"Sure, and I'll pretend to be soft," said Mr. Giveen.
"You needn't pretend at all," said Mr. French.
He left the cell and heard with a deep satisfaction the cell door close upon the prisoner; then he drove back to Badminton House with his companions.
Half an hour later, Mr. Dashwood drew him into the smoking-room, which was deserted.
"I sent that wire to Miss Grimshaw," said Mr. Dashwood, "telling her that Garryowen has won."
"That's right," said French.
"Look here," said Mr. Dashwood, "I'm just going to write to her. We won't be able to get back to The Martens till the day after to-morrow, with this Giveen business on hand, so I'm going to write to her and tell her straight out that—that, well, as a matter of fact, that I want her to marry me. I'm going to tell her that she knows me now as well as ever she'll know me, and that if she doesn't like the business, I'm game, and can take her answer and still be friends. We'll all be friends, whatever happens, she and I and you; but I think it's best to make the position clear as soon as possible, for we can't go on like this. And a letter is the best way to do it."
"You're right," said French. "Faith, the horse has nearly driven everything else out of my mind. It's a queer business the way that girl come to my house and saved my fortune. I tell you straight, she put the come'ither on me so that I'd follow her through the black bog itself, if she beckoned me, with both eyes shut. She's a jewel, begad, she's a jewel! Look, now, at what she's done for me—saved and scraped, put me on an allowance of pocket-money—she did that—kept the house together; and it was she put the idea of taking the horse away from Drumgool into my head. Then, again, only for her you would never have come about the place, and what have you done? Why, you've saved me twice and three times over. My dear boy," burst out French, seizing Mr. Dashwood's hand, "it's you that's been the making of me, for if you hadn't nobbled that black beast of a Giveen, I'd have been done for entirely, and I hope she'll have you and make you happy."
"It's all a toss up," said Mr. Dashwood, as he wrung French's hand. "You never know what a woman will do, and, I tell you this, if she chucks me, and if you—if you—well, as a matter of fact, if you marry her, I'll forget I ever cared for her, and we'll all be friends just as we've always been."
"You say you are going to write to her?"
"Yes. I'm going to write now."
"Well, then," said French, "I'll do the same and write to her myself."
* * * * *
On the morning of the 13th, when the men had departed, Mr. French for Epsom, with the horse, and Mr. Dashwood to Hollborough to bail out the bailiff, Miss Grimshaw found herself alone and, for the first time in many months, lonely. The society of women can never make up to a woman for the society of men, and the society of men can never make up to a man for the society of women. French and Dashwood had taken away a genial something with them; the place seemed deserted.
She had grown fond of them both, extremely fond of them, and if she had cross-questioned herself on the subject, she could not have discovered, I think, which man she cared for most as a companion. Bobby Dashwood had youth on his side, and youth appeals to youth; but then French had experience—though it had never done him much good—and personality. There was a lot of sunlight about Michael French; one felt better for his presence, and, though he would knock a man down for two pins, though he made sport out of debt and debts over sport, and drank whisky enough to shock the modern tea-and-toast and barley-water man, he was a Christian when it came to practice, and a friend whom no disaster could alienate.
I cannot help lingering over him, for he belongs to a race of men who are growing fewer in an age when coldness and correctness of character veil, without inthe least diminishing, the essential brutality and savagery of man.
Miss Grimshaw, left to herself, made a tour of the rooms, set Effie some sums to keep her quiet, and then retired into the sitting-room and shut the door.
It was now that the really desperate condition of things that underlay the comedy of Garryowen appeared before her unveiled.
"If the horse does not win?"
The ruin that those six words have so often postulated, rank, raw, cold, and brutal, rose before her. Horses, cards, dice, wine, tobacco—one's dislike of the Pipers who cry these down is accentuated by the truth that underlies their piping.
They are the prophets of the awful telegram which heralds the misery, the pinching, and the poverty that will grip you and your wife and your children till you are in your coffins. They are the prophets of the white dawn that shines into your rooms at Oxford when the men are gone, shines on the card-strewn floor where, like a fallen house of cards, lies the once fair future of a man. They are the physicians who prognose inefficiency, failure, old-age at forty—mental death.
Effie would have two hundred a year. Nothing could touch that. But what of the jovial French? She knew enough of his financial affairs to know that he would be absolutely and utterly ruined.
Tears welled to her eyes for a moment; then she brushed them away, and her colour heightened. Enthusiasm suddenly filled her; the desperate nature of the adventure appealed to her adventurous soul. Neverdid a doubter do any great work or carry any high adventure to a successful close. Garryowen would win! She felt that to doubt it would be the act of a traitor, and to believe it would help the event.
Shortly after three the dog-cart hired at the inn for the purpose of bailing out Mr. Piper arrived with Mr. Dashwood and his charge.
Mr. Piper looked literally as though he had been bailed out. The unfortunate man, besides receiving a severe rebuke from the magistrates, had been fined two pounds, which Mr. Dashwood had paid.
In Mr. Piper's morning reflections, conducted in the police cell at Crowsnest, he had recognised his false position, and the uselessness of kicking against the pricks.
He knew full well the ridicule that attends the unfortunate who tries to explain away the reason of his drunkenness; to say that he had been made tipsy by force would, even if it obtained his discharge, be so noticeable a statement that the London Press would be sure to seize upon it. If the horses had been taken away, it would be far better to put the fact down to the evasion having been effected whilst he was asleep, and as he had some money about him, he felt sure of being able to pay any fine that might be inflicted on him. He was unconscious of the fact that he had kicked the constable.
Mr. Dashwood, having released him, paid his fine, and given him some soda-water at the Hollborough inn, sketched for him the true position of affairs, making him understand that the horse, once the race was over, would be religiously brought back, and that the onlycourse for him in the midst of these circumstances was to return to The Martens, accept its hospitality, and wait.
Having left him there, the young man, after a short interview with Miss Grimshaw, returned to London.
The spring was early that year. The swallows must have known it, for they had returned several days before their time, and to-day, the 16th of April, the silence of the Roman road was broken by their twittering and crossed by their shadows. The trees in the woods were green again, the little river beneath the bridge was foaming in spate, and from far away in the wood depths came the moist, sweet sound of the cuckoo, singing just as he sang in Chaucer's time, just as he will sing in times a thousand years unborn.
The girl had freed herself from Effie and had wandered down to the bridge, where she stood now watching the wimpling water and the brown weeds, listening to the cuckoo and the chatter of the blue-tits in the branches of the trees.
A telegram had brought her, yesterday, the grand news of Garryowen's victory, and this morning's post had brought her two letters—one from Mr. French and one from Mr. Dashwood.
From what she could gather in the perusal of these letters, each man was in love with her, yet each was proposing that she should not look coldly on the other.
They would return that evening. She would have to make up her mind on the question, and she had come here, apparently, to argue the question out.
Now that she was brought face to face with thematter, the chivalry of these two gentlemen one towards the other was the thing that perplexed her most.
She had come here, apparently, to argue the matter out, but, in reality, her subliminal mind had already made the decision as to which of these two gentlemen she would choose as her natural protector for life.
She had no one to confide in, no one to make a confidant of her choice; she had taken her seat on a little ledge of the parapet, and, with that charming impulse which prompts a woman to put her name on paper coupled with the name of the man she loves, the girl, with the point of her parasol, dreamily and like a mesmerist under the dictation of a spirit, wrote upon the dust of the old road's face—
Violet
Violet
Then, with a half-blush, she was preparing to add the fateful other name, and the blue-tits in the branches above were craning their necks to see, when from beyond the hilltop the sound of a motor-car rapidly approaching broke the spell.
As it passed she was standing looking at the river, and name on the dust of the road there was none, nor anything to hint of love but the graceful figure of the girl and the beauty of the morning.
Transcriber's Note:A Table of Contents has been added.
Transcriber's Note:A Table of Contents has been added.