It was on the following evening—the evening on which he was expecting his son and Mr. Paramor that the Squire leaned forward over the dining-table and asked:
“What do you say, Barter? I'm speaking to you as a man of the world.”
The Rector bent over his glass of port and moistened his lower lip.
“There's no excuse for that woman,” he answered. “I always thought she was a bad lot.”
Mr. Pendyce went on:
“We've never had a scandal in my family. I find the thought of it hard to bear, Barter— I find it hard to bear——”
The Rector emitted a low sound. He had come from long usage to have a feeling like affection for his Squire.
Mr. Pendyce pursued his thoughts.
“We've gone on,” he said, “father and son for hundreds of years. It's a blow to me, Barter.”
Again the Rector emitted that low sound.
“What will the village think?” said Mr. Pendyce; “and the farmers— I mind that more than anything. Most of them knew my dear old father—not that he was popular. It's a bitter thing.”
The Rector said:
“Well, well, Pendyce, perhaps it won't come to that.”
He looked a little shamefaced, and his light eyes were full of something like contrition.
“How does Mrs. Pendyce take it?”
The Squire looked at him for the first time.
“Ah!” he said; “you never know anything about women. I'd as soon trust a woman to be just as I'd— I'd finish that magnum; it'd give me gout in no time.”
The Rector emptied his glass.
“I've sent for George and my solicitor,” pursued the Squire; “they'll be here directly.”
Mr. Barter pushed his chair back, and raising his right ankle on to his left leg, clasped his hands round his right knee; then, leaning forward, he stared up under his jutting brows at Mr. Pendyce. It was the attitude in which he thought best.
Mr. Pendyce ran on:
“I've nursed the estate ever since it came to me; I've carried on the tradition as best I could; I've not been as good a man, perhaps, as I should have wished, but I've always tried to remember my old father's words: 'I'm done for, Horry; the estate's in your hands now.'.rdquo; He cleared his throat.
For a full minute there was no sound save the ticking of the clock. Then the spaniel John, coming silently from under the sideboard, fell heavily down against his master's leg with a lengthy snore of satisfaction. Mr. Pendyce looked down.
“This fellow of mine,” he muttered, “is getting fat.”
It was evident from the tone of his voice that he desired his emotion to be forgotten. Something very deep in Mr. Barter respected that desire.
“It's a first-rate magnum,” he said.
Mr. Pendyce filled his Rector's glass.
“I forget if you knew Paramor. He was before your time. He was at Harrow with me.”
The Rector took a prolonged sip.
“I shall be in the way,” he said. “I'll take myself off'.”
The Squire put out his hand affectionately.
“No, no, Barter, don't you go. It's all safe with you. I mean to act. I can't stand this uncertainty. My wife's cousin Vigil is coming too—he's her guardian. I wired for him. You know Vigil? He was about your time.”
The Rector turned crimson, and set his underlip. Having scented his enemy, nothing would now persuade him to withdraw; and the conviction that he had only done his duty, a little shaken by the Squire's confidence, returned as though by magic.
“Yes, I know him.”
“We'll have it all out here,” muttered Mr. Pendyce, “over this port. There's the carriage. Get up, John.”
The spaniel John rose heavily, looked sardonically at Mr. Barter, and again flopped down against his master's leg.
“Get up, John,” said Mr. Pendyce again. The spaniel John snored.
'If I move, you'll move too, and uncertainty will begin for me again,' he seemed to say.
Mr. Pendyce disengaged his leg, rose, and went to the door. Before reaching it he turned and came back to the table.
“Barter,” he said, “I'm not thinking of myself— I'm not thinking of myself—we've been here for generations—it's the principle.” His face had the least twist to one side, as though conforming to a kink in his philosophy; his eyes looked sad and restless.
And the Rector, watching the door for the sight of his enemy, also thought:
'I'm not thinking of myself— I'm satisfied that I did right— I'm Rector of this parish it's the principle.'
The spaniel John gave three short barks, one for each of the persons who entered the room. They were Mrs. Pendyce, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil.
“Where's George?” asked the Squire, but no one answered him.
The Rector, who had resumed his seat, stared at a little gold cross which he had taken out of his waistcoat pocket. Mr. Paramor lifted a vase and sniffed at the rose it contained; Gregory walked to the window.
When Mr. Pendyce realised that his son had not come, he went to the door and held it open.
“Be good enough to take John out, Margery,” he said. “John!”
The spaniel John, seeing what lay before him, rolled over on his back.
Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her husband, and in those eyes she put all the words which the nature of a lady did not suffer her to speak.
'I claim to be here. Let me stay; it is my right. Don't send me away.' So her eyes spoke, and so those of the spaniel John, lying on his back, in which attitude he knew that he was hard to move.
Mr. Pendyce turned him over with his foot.
“Get up, John! Be good enough to take John out, Margery.”
Mrs. Pendyce flushed, but did not move.
“John,” said Mr. Pendyce, “go with your mistress.” The spaniel John fluttered a drooping tail. Mr. Pendyce pressed his foot to it.
“This is not a subject for women.”
Mrs. Pendyce bent down.
“Come, John,” she said. The spaniel John, showing the whites of his eyes, and trying to back through his collar, was assisted from the room. Mr. Pendyce closed the door behind them.
“Have a glass of port, Vigil; it's the '47. My father laid it down in '56, the year before he died. Can't drink it myself— I've had to put down two hogsheads of the Jubilee wine. Paramor, fill your glass. Take that chair next to Paramor, Vigil. You know Barter?”
Both Gregory's face and the Rector's were very red.
“We're all Harrow men here,” went on Mr. Pendyce. And suddenly turning to Mr. Paramor, he said: “Well?”
Just as round the hereditary principle are grouped the State, the Church, Law, and Philanthropy, so round the dining-table at Worsted Skeynes sat the Squire, the Rector, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil, and none of them wished to be the first to speak. At last Mr. Paramor, taking from his pocket Bellew's note and George's answer, which were pinned in strange alliance, returned them to the Squire.
“I understand the position to be that George refuses to give her up; at the same time he is prepared to defend the suit and deny everything. Those are his instructions to me.” Taking up the vase again, he sniffed long and deep at the rose.
Mr. Pendyce broke the silence.
“As a gentleman,” he said in a voice sharpened by the bitterness of his feelings, “I suppose he's obliged——”
Gregory, smiling painfully, added:
“To tell lies.”
Mr. Pendyce turned on him at once.
“I've nothing to say about that, Vigil. George has behaved abominably. I don't uphold him; but if the woman wishes the suit defended he can't play the cur—that's what I was brought up to believe.”
Gregory leaned his forehead on his hand.
“The whole system is odious——” he was beginning.
Mr. Paramor chimed in.
“Let us keep to the facts; without the system.”
The Rector spoke for the first time.
“I don't know what you mean about the system; both this man and this woman are guilty——”
Gregory said in a voice that quivered with rage:
“Be so kind as not to use the expression, 'this woman.'.rdquo;
The Rector glowered.
“What expression then——”
Mr. Pendyce's voice, to which the intimate trouble of his thoughts lent a certain dignity, broke in:
“Gentlemen, this is a question concerning the honour of my house.”
There was another and a longer silence, during which Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted from face to face, while beyond the rose a smile writhed on his lips.
“I suppose you have brought me down here, Pendyce, to give you my opinion,” he said at last. “Well; don't let these matters come into court. If there is anything you can do to prevent it, do it. If your pride stands in the way, put it in your pocket. If your sense of truth stands in the way, forget it. Between personal delicacy and our law of divorce there is no relation; between absolute truth and our law of divorce there is no relation. I repeat, don't let these matters come into court. Innocent and guilty, you will all suffer; the innocent will suffer more than the guilty, and nobody will benefit. I have come to this conclusion deliberately. There are cases in which I should give the opposite opinion. But in this case, I repeat, there's nothing to be gained by it. Once more, then, don't let these matters come into court. Don't give people's tongues a chance. Take my advice, appeal to George again to give you that promise. If he refuses, well, we must try and bluff Bellew out of it.”
Mr. Pendyce had listened, as he had formed the habit of listening to Edmund Paramor, in silence. He now looked up and said:
“It's all that red-haired ruffian's spite. I don't know what you were about to stir things up, Vigil. You must have put him on the scent.” He looked moodily at Gregory. Mr. Barter, too, looked at Gregory with a sort of half-ashamed defiance.
Gregory, who had been staring at his untouched wineglass, turned his face, very flushed, and began speaking in a voice that emotion and anger caused to tremble. He avoided looking at the Rector, and addressed himself to Mr. Paramor.
“George can't give up the woman who has trusted herself to him; that would be playing the cur, if you like. Let them go and live together honestly until they can be married. Why do you all speak as if it were the man who mattered? It is the woman that we should protect!”
The Rector first recovered speech.
“You're talking rank immorality,” he said almost good-humouredly.
Mr. Pendyce rose.
“Marry her!” he cried. “What on earth—that's worse than all—the very thing we're trying to prevent! We've been here, father and son—father and son—for generations!”
“All the more shame,” burst out Gregory, “if you can't stand by a woman at the end of them——!”
Mr. Paramor made a gesture of reproof.
“There's moderation in all things,” he said. “Are you sure that Mrs. Bellew requires protection? If you are right, I agree; but are you right?”
“I will answer for it,” said Gregory.
Mr. Paramor paused a full minute with his head resting on his hand.
“I am sorry,” he said at last, “I must trust to my own judgment.”
The Squire looked up.
“If the worst comes to the worst, can I cut the entail, Paramor?”
“No.”
“What? But that's all wrong—that's——”
“You can't have it both ways,” said Mr. Paramor.
The Squire looked at him dubiously, then blurted out:
“If I choose to leave him nothing but the estate, he'll soon find himself a beggar. I beg your pardon, gentlemen; fill your glasses! I'm forgetting everything!”
The Rector filled his glass.
“I've said nothing so far,” he began; “I don't feel that it's my business. My conviction is that there's far too much divorce nowadays. Let this woman go back to her husband, and let him show her where she's to blame”—his voice and his eyes hardened—“then let them forgive each other like Christians. You talk,” he said to Gregory, “about standing up for the woman. I've no patience with that; it's the way immorality's fostered in these days. I raise my voice against this sentimentalism. I always have, and I always shall!”
Gregory jumped to his feet.
“I've told you once before,” he said, “that you were indelicate; I tell you so again.”
Mr. Barter got up, and stood bending over the table, crimson in the face, staring at Gregory, and unable to speak.
“Either you or I,” he said at last, stammering with passion, “must leave this room!”
Gregory tried to speak; then turning abruptly, he stepped out on to the terrace, and passed from the view of those within.
The Rector said:
“Good-night, Pendyce; I'm going, too!”
The Squire shook the hand held out to him with a face perplexed to sadness. There was silence when Mr. Barter had left the room.
The Squire broke it with a sigh.
“I wish we were back at Oxenham's, Paramor. This serves me right for deserting the old house. What on earth made me send George to Eton?”
Mr. Paramor buried his nose in the vase. In this saying of his old schoolfellow was the whole of the Squire's creed:
'I believe in my father, and his father, and his father's father, the makers and keepers of my estate; and I believe in myself and my son and my son's son. And I believe that we have made the country, and shall keep the country what it is. And I believe in the Public Schools, and especially the Public School that I was at. And I believe in my social equals and the country house, and in things as they are, for ever and ever. Amen.'
Mr. Pendyce went on:
“I'm not a Puritan, Paramor; I dare say there are allowances to be made for George. I don't even object to the woman herself; she may be too good for Bellew; she must be too good for a fellow like that! But for George to marry her would be ruination. Look at Lady Rose's case! Anyone but a star-gazing fellow like Vigil must see that! It's taboo! It's sheer taboo! And think—think of my—my grandson! No, no, Paramor; no, no, by God!”
The Squire covered his eyes with his hand.
Mr. Paramor, who had no son himself, answered with feeling:
“Now, now, old fellow; it won't come to that!”
“God knows what it will come to, Paramor! My nerve's shaken! You know yourself that if there's a divorce he'll be bound to marry her!”
To this Mr. Paramor made no reply, but pressed his lips together.
“There's your poor dog whining,” he said.
And without waiting for permission he opened the door. Mrs. Pendyce and the spaniel John came in. The Squire looked up and frowned. The spaniel John, panting with delight, rubbed against him. 'I have been through torment, master,' he seemed to say. 'A second separation at present is not possible for me!'
Mrs. Pendyce stood waiting silently, and Mr. Paramor addressed himself to her.
“You can do more than any of us, Mrs. Pendyce, both with George and with this man Bellew—and, if I am not mistaken, with his wife.”
The Squire broke in:
“Don't think that I'll have any humble pie eaten to that fellow Bellew!”
The look Mr. Paramor gave him at those words, was like that of a doctor diagnosing a disease. Yet there was nothing in the expression of the Squire's face with its thin grey whiskers and moustache, its twist to the left, its swan-like eyes, decided jaw, and sloping brow, different from what this idea might bring on the face of any country gentleman.
Mrs. Pendyce said eagerly
“Oh, Mr. Paramor, if I could only see George!”
She longed so for a sight of her son that her thoughts carried her no further.
“See him!” cried the Squire. “You'll go on spoiling him till he's disgraced us all!”
Mrs. Pendyce turned from her husband to his solicitor. Excitement had fixed an unwonted colour in her cheeks; her lips twitched as if she wished to speak.
Mr. Paramor answered for her:
“No, Pendyce; if George is spoilt, the system is to blame.”
“System!” said the Squire. “I've never had a system for him. I'm no believer in systems! I don't know what you're talking of. I have another son, thank God!”
Mrs. Pendyce took a step forward.
“Horace,” she said, “you would never——”
Mr. Pendyce turned from his wife, and said sharply:
“Paramor, are you sure I can't cut the entail?”
“As sure,” said Mr. Paramor, “as I sit here!”
Gregory walked long in the Scotch garden with his eyes on the stars. One, larger than all the rest, over the larches, shone on him ironically, for it was the star of love. And on his beat between the yew-trees that, living before Pendyces came to Worsted Skeynes, would live when they were gone, he cooled his heart in the silver light of that big star. The irises restrained their perfume lest it should whip his senses; only the young larch-trees and the far fields sent him their fugitive sweetness through the dark. And the same brown owl that had hooted when Helen Bellew kissed George Pendyce in the conservatory hooted again now that Gregory walked grieving over the fruits of that kiss.
His thoughts were of Mr. Barter, and with the injustice natural to a man who took a warm and personal view of things, he painted the Rector in colours darker than his cloth.
'Indelicate, meddlesome,' he thought. 'How dare he speak of her like that!'
Mr. Paramor's voice broke in on his meditations.
“Still cooling your heels? Why did you play the deuce with us in there?”
“I hate a sham,” said Gregory. “This marriage of my ward's is a sham. She had better live honestly with the man she really loves!”
“So you said just now,” returned Mr. Paramor. “Would you apply that to everyone?”
“I would.”
“Well,” said Mr. Paramor with a laugh, “there is nothing like an idealist for making hay! You once told me, if I remember, that marriage was sacred to you!”
“Those are my own private feelings, Paramor. But here the mischief's done already. It is a sham, a hateful sham, and it ought to come to an end!”
“That's all very well,” replied Mr. Paramor, “but when you come to put it into practice in that wholesale way it leads to goodness knows what. It means reconstructing marriage on a basis entirely different from the present. It's marriage on the basis of the heart, and not on the basis of property. Are you prepared to go to that length?”
“I am.”
“You're as much of an extremist one way as Barter is the other. It's you extremists who do all the harm. There's a golden mean, my friend. I agree that something ought to be done. But what you don't see is that laws must suit those they are intended to govern. You're too much in the stars, Vigil. Medicine must be graduated to the patient. Come, man, where's your sense of humour? Imagine your conception of marriage applied to Pendyce and his sons, or his Rector, or his tenants, and the labourers on his estate.”
“No, no,” said Gregory; “I refuse to believe——”
“The country classes,” said Mr. Paramor quietly, “are especially backward in such matters. They have strong, meat-fed instincts, and what with the county Members, the Bishops, the Peers, all the hereditary force of the country, they still rule the roast. And there's a certain disease—to make a very poor joke, call it 'Pendycitis' with which most of these people are infected. They're 'crass.' They do things, but they do them the wrong way! They muddle through with the greatest possible amount of unnecessary labour and suffering! It's part of the hereditary principle. I haven't had to do with them thirty five years for nothing!”
Gregory turned his face away.
“Your joke is very poor,” he said. “I don't believe they are like that! I won't admit it. If there is such a disease, it's our business to find a remedy.”
“Nothing but an operation will cure it,” said Mr. Paramor; “and before operating there's a preliminary process to be gone through. It was discovered by Lister.”
Gregory answered
“Paramor, I hate your pessimism!”
Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted Gregory's back.
“But I am not a pessimist,” he said. “Far from it.
”'.ife is mostly froth and bubble;Two things stand like stone—KINDNESS in another's trouble,COURAGE in your own.'.br />
”'.ife is mostly froth and bubble;Two things stand like stone—KINDNESS in another's trouble,COURAGE in your own.'.br />
”'.ife is mostly froth and bubble;Two things stand like stone—KINDNESS in another's trouble,COURAGE in your own.'.br />
Gregory turned on him.
“How can you quote poetry, and hold the views you do? We ought to construct——”
“You want to build before you've laid your foundations,” said Mr. Paramor. “You let your feelings carry you away, Vigil. The state of the marriage laws is only a symptom. It's this disease, this grudging narrow spirit in men, that makes such laws necessary. Unlovely men, unlovely laws—what can you expect?”
“I will never believe that we shall be content to go on living in a slough of—of——”
“Provincialism!” said Mr. Paramor. “You should take to gardening; it makes one recognise what you idealists seem to pass over—that men, my dear friend, are, like plants, creatures of heredity and environment; their growth is slow. You can't get grapes from thorns, Vigil, or figs from thistles—at least, not in one generation—however busy and hungry you may be!”
“Your theory degrades us all to the level of thistles.”
“Social laws depend for their strength on the harm they have it in their power to inflict, and that harm depends for its strength on the ideals held by the man on whom the harm falls. If you dispense with the marriage tie, or give up your property and take to Brotherhood, you'll have a very thistley time, but you won't mind that if you're a fig. And so on ad lib. It's odd, though, how soon the thistles that thought themselves figs get found out. There are many things I hate, Vigil. One is extravagance, and another humbug!”
But Gregory stood looking at the sky.
“We seem to have wandered from the point,” said Mr. Paramor, “and I think we had better go in. It's nearly eleven.”
Throughout the length of the low white house there were but three windows lighted, three eyes looking at the moon, a fairy shallop sailing the night sky. The cedar-trees stood black as pitch. The old brown owl had ceased his hooting. Mr. Paramor gripped Gregory by the arm.
“A nightingale! Did you hear him down in that spinney? It's a sweet place, this! I don't wonder Pendyce is fond of it. You're not a fisherman, I think? Did you ever watch a school of fishes coasting along a bank? How blind they are, and how they follow their leader! In our element we men know just about as much as the fishes do. A blind lot, Vigil! We take a mean view of things; we're damnably provincial!”
Gregory pressed his hands to his forehead.
“I'm trying to think,” he said, “what will be the consequences to my ward of this divorce.”
“My friend, listen to some plain speaking. Your ward and her husband and George Pendyce are just the sort of people for whom our law of divorce is framed. They've all three got courage, they're all reckless and obstinate, and—forgive me—thick-skinned. Their case, if fought, will take a week of hard swearing, a week of the public's money and time. It will give admirable opportunities to eminent counsel, excellent reading to the general public, first-rate sport all round.
“The papers will have a regular carnival. I repeat, they are the very people for whom our law of divorce is framed. There's a great deal to be said for publicity, but all the same it puts a premium on insensibility, and causes a vast amount of suffering to innocent people. I told you once before, to get a divorce, even if you deserve it, you mustn't be a sensitive person. Those three will go through it all splendidly, but every scrap of skin will be torn off you and our poor friends down here, and the result will be a drawn battle at the end! That's if it's fought, and if it comes on I don't see how we can let it go unfought; it's contrary to my instincts. If we let it go undefended, mark my words, your ward and George Pendyce will be sick of each other before the law allows them to marry, and George, as his father says, for the sake of 'morality,' will have to marry a woman who is tired of him, or of whom he is tired. Now you've got it straight from the shoulder, and I'm going up to bed. It's a heavy dew. Lock this door after you.”
Mr. Paramor made his way into the conservatory. He stopped and came back.
“Pendyce,” he said, “perfectly understands all I've been telling you. He'd give his eyes for the case not to come on, but you'll see he'll rub everything up the wrong way, and it'll be a miracle if we succeed. That's 'Pendycitis'. We've all got a touch of it. Good-night!”
Gregory was left alone outside the country house with his big star. And as his thoughts were seldom of an impersonal kind he did not reflect on “Pendycitis,” but on Helen Bellew. And the longer he thought the more he thought of her as he desired to think, for this was natural to him; and ever more ironical grew the twinkling of his star above the spinney where the nightingale was singing.
On the Thursday of the Epsom Summer Meeting, George Pendyce sat in the corner of a first-class railway-carriage trying to make two and two into five. On a sheet of Stoics' Club note-paper his racing-debts were stated to a penny—one thousand and forty five pounds overdue, and below, seven hundred and fifty lost at the current meeting. Below these again his private debts were indicated by the round figure of one thousand pounds. It was round by courtesy, for he had only calculated those bills which had been sent in, and Providence, which knows all things, preferred the rounder figure of fifteen hundred. In sum, therefore, he had against him a total of three thousand two hundred and ninety-five pounds. And since at Tattersalls and the Stock Exchange, where men are engaged in perpetual motion, an almost absurd punctiliousness is required in the payment of those sums which have for the moment inadvertently been lost, seventeen hundred and ninety-five of this must infallibly be raised by Monday next. Indeed, only a certain liking for George, a good loser and a good winner, and the fear of dropping a good customer, had induced the firm of bookmakers to let that debt of one thousand and forty-five stand over the Epsom Meeting.
To set against these sums (in which he had not counted his current trainer's bill, and the expenses, which he could not calculate, of the divorce suit), he had, first, a bank balance which he might still overdraw another twenty pounds; secondly, the Ambler and two bad selling platers; and thirdly (more considerable item), X, or that which he might, or indeed must, win over the Ambler's race this afternoon.
Whatever else, it was not pluck that was lacking in the character of George Pendyce. This quality was in his fibre, in the consistency of his blood, and confronted with a situation which, to some men, and especially to men not brought up on the hereditary plan, might have seemed desperate, he exhibited no sign of anxiety or distress. Into the consideration of his difficulties he imported certain principles: (1) He did not intend to be posted at Tattersalls. Sooner than that he would go to the Jews; the entail was all he could look to borrow on; the Hebrews would force him to pay through the nose. (2) He did not intend to show the white feather, and in backing his horse meant to “go for the gloves.” (3) He did not intend to think of the future; the thought of the present was quite bad enough.
The train bounded and swung as though rushing onwards to a tune, and George sat quietly in his corner.
Amongst his fellows in the carriage was the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow, who, though not a racing-man, took a kindly interest in our breed of horses, which by attendance at the principal meetings he hoped to improve.
“Your horse going to run, George?”
George nodded.
“I shall have a fiver on him for luck. I can't afford to bet. Saw your mother at the Foxholme garden-party last week. You seen them lately?”
George shook his head and felt an odd squeeze: at his heart.
“You know they had a fire at old Peacock's farm; I hear the Squire and Barter did wonders. He's as game as a pebble, the Squire.”
Again George nodded, and again felt that squeeze at his heart.
“Aren't they coming to town this season?”
“Haven't heard,” answered George. “Have a cigar?”
Winlow took the cigar, and cutting it with a small penknife, scrutinised George's square face with his leisurely eyes. It needed a physiognomist to penetrate its impassivity. Winlow thought to himself:
'I shouldn't be surprised if what they say about old George is true.'... “Had a good meeting so far?”
“So-so.”
They parted on the racecourse. George went at once to see his trainer and thence into Tattersalls' ring. He took with him that equation with X, and sought the society of two gentlemen quietly dressed, one of whom was making a note in a little book with a gold pencil. They greeted him respectfully, for it was to them that he owed the bulk of that seventeen hundred and ninety-five pounds.
“What price will you lay against my horse?”
“Evens, Mr. Pendyce,” replied the gentleman with the gold pencil, “to a monkey.”
George booked the bet. It was not his usual way of doing business, but to-day everything seemed different, and something stronger than custom was at work.
'I am going for the gloves,' he thought; 'if it doesn't come off, I'm done anyhow.'
He went to another quietly dressed gentleman with a diamond pin and a Jewish face. And as he went from one quietly dressed gentleman to another there preceded him some subtle messenger, who breathed the words, 'Mr. Pendyce is going for the gloves,' so that at each visit he found they had greater confidence than ever in his horse. Soon he had promised to pay two thousand pounds if the Ambler lost, and received the assurance of eminent gentlemen, quietly dressed, that they would pay him fifteen hundred if the Ambler won. The odds now stood at two to one on, and he had found it impossible to back the Ambler for “a place,” in accordance with his custom.
'Made a fool of myself,' he thought; 'ought never to have gone into the ring at all; ought to have let Barney's work it quietly. It doesn't matter!'
He still required to win three hundred pounds to settle on the Monday, and laid a final bet of seven hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds upon his horse. Thus, without spending a penny, simply by making a few promises, he had solved the equation with X.
On leaving the ring, he entered the bar and drank some whisky. He then went to the paddock. The starting-bell for the second race had rung; there was hardly anyone there, but in a far corner the Ambler was being led up and down by a boy.
George glanced round to see that no acquaintances were near, and joined in this promenade. The Ambler turned his black, wild eye, crescented with white, threw up his head, and gazed far into the distance.
'If one could only make him understand!' thought George.
When his horse left the paddock for the starting-post George went back to the stand. At the bar he drank some more whisky, and heard someone say:
“I had to lay six to four. I want to find Pendyce; they say he's backed it heavily.”
George put down his glass, and instead of going to his usual place, mounted slowly to the top of the stand.
'I don't want them buzzing round me,' he thought.
At the top of the stand—that national monument, visible for twenty miles around—he knew himself to be safe. Only “the many” came here, and amongst the many he thrust himself till at the very top he could rest his glasses on a rail and watch the colours. Besides his own peacock blue there was a straw, a blue with white stripes, a red with white stars.
They say that through the minds of drowning men troop ghosts of past experience. It was not so with George; his soul was fastened on that little daub of peacock blue. Below the glasses his lips were colourless from hard compression; he moistened them continually. The four little Coloured daubs stole into line, the flag fell.
“They're off!” That roar, like the cry of a monster, sounded all around. George steadied his glasses on the rail. Blue with white stripes was leading, the Ambler lying last. Thus they came round the further bend. And Providence, as though determined that someone should benefit by his absorption, sent a hand sliding under George's elbows, to remove the pin from his tie and slide away. Round Tattenham Corner George saw his horse take the lead. So, with straw closing up, they came into the straight. The Ambler's jockey looked back and raised his whip; in that instant, as if by magic, straw drew level; down came the whip on the Ambler's flank; again as by magic straw was in front. The saying of his old jockey darted through George's mind: “Mark my words, sir, that 'orse knows what's what, and when they're like that they're best let alone.”
“Sit still, you fool!” he muttered.
The whip came down again; straw was two lengths in front.
Someone behind said:
“The favourite's beat! No, he's not, by Jove!” For as though George's groan had found its way to the jockey's ears, he dropped his whip. The Ambler sprang forward. George saw that he was gaining. All his soul went out to his horse's struggle. In each of those fifteen seconds he died and was born again; with each stride all that was loyal and brave in his nature leaped into flame, all that was base sank, for he himself was racing with his horse, and the sweat poured down his brow. And his lips babbled broken sounds that no one heard, for all around were babbling too.
Locked together, the Ambler and straw ran home. Then followed a hush, for no one knew which of the two had won. The numbers went up “Seven-Two-Five.”
“The favourite's second! Beaten by a nose!” said a voice.
George bowed his head, and his whole spirit felt numb. He closed his glasses and moved with the crowd to the stairs. A voice behind him said:
“He'd have won in another stride!”
Another answered:
“I hate that sort of horse. He curled up at the whip.”
George ground his teeth.
“Curse you!” he muttered, “you little Cockney; what do you know about a horse?”
The crowd surged; the speakers were lost to sight.
The long descent from the stand gave him time. No trace of emotion showed on his face when he appeared in the paddock. Blacksmith the trainer stood by the Ambler's stall.
“That idiot Tipping lost us the race, sir,” he began with quivering lips. “If he'd only left him alone, the horse would have won in a canter. What on earth made him use his whip? He deserves to lose his license. He——”
The gall and bitterness of defeat surged into George's brain.
“It's no good your talking, Blacksmith,” he said; “you put him up. What the devil made you quarrel with Swells?”
The little man's chin dropped in sheer surprise.
George turned away, and went up to the jockey, but at the sick look on the poor youth's face the angry words died off his tongue.
“All right, Tipping; I'm not going to rag you.” And with the ghost of a smile he passed into the Ambler's stall. The groom had just finished putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from the field of his defeat. The groom moved out, and George went to the Ambler's head. There is no place, no corner, on a racecourse where a man may show his heart. George did but lay his forehead against the velvet of his horse's muzzle, and for one short second hold it there. The Ambler awaited the end of that brief caress, then with a snort threw up his head, and with his wild, soft eyes seemed saying, 'You fools! what do you know of me?'
George stepped to one side.
“Take him away,” he said, and his eyes followed the Ambler's receding form.
A racing-man of a different race, whom he knew and did not like, came up to him as he left the paddock.
“I suppothe you won't thell your horse, Pendythe?” he said. “I'll give you five thou. for him. He ought never to have lotht; the beating won't help him with the handicappers a little bit.”
'You carrion crow!' thought George.
“Thanks; he's not for sale,” he answered.
He went back to the stand, but at every step and in each face, he seemed to see the equation which now he could only solve with X2. Thrice he went into the bar. It was on the last of these occasions that he said to himself: “The horse must go. I shall never have a horse like him again.”
Over that green down which a hundred thousand feet had trodden brown, which a hundred thousand hands had strewn with bits of paper, cigar-ends, and the fragments of discarded food, over the great approaches to the battlefield, where all was pathway leading to and from the fight, those who make livelihood in such a fashion, least and littlest followers, were bawling, hawking, whining to the warriors flushed with victory or wearied by defeat. Over that green down, between one-legged men and ragged acrobats, women with babies at the breast, thimble-riggers, touts, walked George Pendyce, his mouth hard set and his head bent down.
“Good luck, Captain, good luck to-morrow; good luck, good luck!... For the love of Gawd, your lordship!... Roll, bowl, or pitch!”
The sun, flaming out after long hiding, scorched the back of his neck; the free down wind, fouled by foetid odours, brought to his ears the monster's last cry, “They're off!”
A voice hailed him.
George turned and saw Winlow, and with a curse and a smile he answered:
“Hallo!”
The Hon. Geoffrey ranged alongside, examining George's face at leisure.
“Afraid you had a bad race, old chap! I hear you've sold the Ambler to that fellow Guilderstein.”
In George's heart something snapped.
'Already?' he thought. 'The brute's been crowing. And it's that little bounder that my horse—my horse....'
He answered calmly:
“Wanted the money.”
Winlow, who was not lacking in cool discretion, changed the subject.
Late that evening George sat in the Stoics' window overlooking Piccadilly. Before his eyes, shaded by his hand, the hansoms passed, flying East and West, each with the single pale disc of face, or the twin discs of faces close together; and the gentle roar of the town came in, and the cool air refreshed by night. In the light of the lamps the trees of the Green Park stood burnished out of deep shadow where nothing moved; and high over all, the stars and purple sky seemed veiled with golden gauze. Figures without end filed by. Some glanced at the lighted windows and the man in the white shirt-front sitting there. And many thought: 'Wish I were that swell, with nothing to do but step into his father's shoes;' and to many no thought came. But now and then some passer murmured to himself: “Looks lonely sitting there.”
And to those faces gazing up, George's lips were grim, and over them came and went a little bitter smile; but on his forehead he felt still the touch of his horse's muzzle, and his eyes, which none could see, were dark with pain.