Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels
as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes
leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick
cry of “John!” she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself,
rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something
was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis.
Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all
times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the
horses.
“Did you call, wife?” Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he
sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face,
and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down
the drive. “It's Allis, John; oh, my God!”
“No, no,” he answered, “they're just coming back; here, sit down again,
I'll see,” and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
“What's the matter, girl?” he began.
“The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,” Mike
broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, “nothin' bad,” was added for
Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
“Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,” he continued. “We'll help the young
gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.”
Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had
not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that
was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little
beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he
could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would
presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was
so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard
face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some
recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then
he was on a bed, and--and--sleep at last.
When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed
struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck,
and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
“God be thanked, God be thanked!” gasped the troubled woman, and one
hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity.
Then she interrupted herself. “What am I saying--it's wicked, and Mr.
Mortimer like that. But I can't help it--I can't help it. Oh, Allis!
my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like
this.”
At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and
called, as he drove off: “I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young
man's all right!” He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing
wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud,
almost blotting him from the landscape.
“Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.”
“Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,” and Allis put a cool
hand on her mother's hot forehead.
But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary.
At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the
horses. “It's the anger of God,” Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. “This
gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis,
that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin
of racing. No good can come of it--no good has ever come of it--nothing
but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted.
There never can be prosperity living in sin.”
“Hush, mother,” crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter
startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had
talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved
a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
“I must speak, girl,” she said again; “this sinful life is crushing me.
Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good
minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I
cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My
people were all church people,” she continued, almost apologetically,
“tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope
for eternal life.”
“I know, mother,” soothed the girl; “I know just how you feel, but we
can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any
dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful
if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody
may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses
to race horses all his life.”
“Ah, sweetheart!” John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came
out to them, “looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped
me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with
Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying
on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?” and he nestled his wife's
head against his side. “How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into
Diablo's box, or--”
“It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him
back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer
risked his life to save mine.”
“He was plucky; eh, girl?”
“He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never
think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have
been too late.”
“It's dreadful, dreadful,” moaned the mother.
Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and
commenced talking about Alan--wondering where he was, and other
irrelevant matters.
Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor
Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage
inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an
hour.
“I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,” he added,
“but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this
unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as
a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course.
He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,--ha! ha!”
and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
“Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,” was Mike's comment. “Ye'd a
thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other
gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been
in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.”
“Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?” asked Porter.
“Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big
stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I
see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av
thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's
knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if
ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was
single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.”
“One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?” spoke
Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to
Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
“Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted
weed av a two-year-old--I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It
was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in
soight--spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him,
an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he
was.”
“And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?”
“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the
strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”
Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would
have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a
horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be
pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with
the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character
analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some
such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with
romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the
stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been
unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with
explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the
girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo
of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a
foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it
not.
Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must
remain at Ringwood for a few days.
It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety,
had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed
forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique
had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant
fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery,
was marvelous.