Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple
of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee.
It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his
presence the same evening that Crane was there.
Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of
Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a
crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed
this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing
Allis's escape to Providence.
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!” Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his
fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment,
and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were
rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting
phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps
John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the
Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably
narrow in his conclusions.
Dolman broke the temporary silence. “But we shouldn't tempt
Providence by worshiping false images. Love of animals is
commendable--commendable”--he emphasized this slight concession--“but
race horses always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One.”
“It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman,” Allis interposed, “but
just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault.”
“I wasn't thinking of one horse,” continued the minister, airily; “I
meant race horses in general.”
“I think Mr. Dolman is right,” ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; “it's
flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race
horses.”
“Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother,” Allis said; “and I believe
that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was
any.”
The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult
to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race
horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. “It's quite wrong to
abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is
contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect
it has on morals.”
“Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?” John Porter asked.
His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked
things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman
found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way
of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to
first principles.
The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. “I should hardly care to
go so far as that--to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might
escape contamination, perhaps.”
Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably,
giving her husband a loophole to escape.
“I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,”
interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He
received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
“I've never seen any good come of it,” retorted Dolman. “A Christian man
must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for
they contend that without betting racing is impossible.”
“Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble,” Porter drawled, lazily;
“there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's
crop--everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes
straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what
he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry.”
“A great many very honorable men are racing today,” added Crane; “men
who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be
racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable.”
“They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling,” asserted the
minister, doggedly.
It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines,
Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the
moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. “It is
certainly unchristian,” commented Mrs. Porter, severely. “I haven't seen
much Christian spirit in any business,” said Porter, quietly; “they all
seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done
on honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's
crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run.”
Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. “For my
part,” continued Porter, “I've never found it necessary to do anything
I'm ashamed of in racing.”
His wife saw an opening. “But, John dear, you were treated most
shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse--”
“Pulled, mother,” interposed Allis; “pulled father's horse, you mean.”
“Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse
ran the other way and your father lost.”
Porter smiled indulgently. “The boy was punished, Helen,” he said.
“Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course.”
“Yes, but something is always happening,” she continued in lament. “It's
contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation
of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John;
last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his
leg--”
“Threw a splint, mother,” prompted Allis.
“I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with
it,” argued Mrs. Porter.
“The splint was on his leg, mother dear.”
“Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should
be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!”
she turned to Mr. Dolman; “they burned the poor beast's leg with hot
irons--”
The minister held up his hands in horror.
“It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting
his arm,” declared Allis.
“But it was racing injured the horse's leg,” interposed Dolman.
“But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman,” said Allis, “and a
spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too
fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing.
It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race
horses are much better taken care of.”
Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the
defensive with great celerity.
“I confess I know very little about horses,” he was forced to apologize;
then, with something of asperity, “the spiritual welfare of my
congregation takes up my entire time.”
This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer,
said, “I hope you don't approve of racing, sir.”
Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused
him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
“I know nothing about the race course,” he said, “but from what I see of
the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order
if their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and
honesty, and gentleness--they all seem to have it--must always have a
good influence. Why, sir,” he continued, with a touch of excitement, “I
think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower
than the horses he had to do with.”
Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair,
and gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had
substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
The reverend gentleman frowned. “It's not the horses at all,” he said,
“it's the men who are disreputable.”
Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman
might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
“The men are like the horses,” commented Porter, “some bad and some
good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly
good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and
everybody sees him.”
“And sometimes horses--and men, too, I suppose--get a bad name when they
don't deserve it,” added Allis. “Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I
know he's not.”
“That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty,” said Mrs. Porter,
speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. “You know,
Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse.
Now, John, what are you laughing at?” for her husband was shaking in his
chair.
“I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like,” he answered, and
there were sobs in his voice.
“Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked.”
As usual, Allis straightened matters out: “It was the man who was
crooked. Mother means Lauzanne,” she continued.
“Yes,” proceeded the good woman, “a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated
my husband most shamefully over this horse.”
Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. “John is
honest himself,” went on Mrs. Porter, “and he believes other men, and
this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my
husband would buy him.”
“Shameful,” protested Dolman. “Are men allowed to give horses drugs?” he
appealed to Mr. Porter.
“No; the racing law is very strict on that point.”
“But evidently it is done,” contended Dolman.
“I think there's very little of it,” said Porter.
This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. “Do you
think, Mr. Porter,” he asked, “that there was anything of that sort over
Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would--” He hesitated.
“Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think,” answered Porter.
“I shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning
enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a
horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily.”
“I know very little about him,” protested Crane; “and, as you say, he
will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least.”
“Yes,” continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the
distasteful discussion; “there are black sheep in racing as there are
in everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear
about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are
honestly run--the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand
than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled
Lucretia.”
“I never heard of that, John,” cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
“No, you didn't,” dryly answered her husband.
Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the
time.
“If you'll excuse me,” began Crane, rising, “I think Mr. Wortimer is
getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield.”
Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the
atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation--that he had made
little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him
about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he
could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they
stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: “The
ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of
gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect--”
he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly--“but in reality it is not
quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and--and--what
shall I say--personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't
appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you
will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of
character.”
Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. “What I was
going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted
so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your
son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and--” he turned with a grave
bow in Crane's direction--“and in good hands, too.”
“His mother wished it,” Porter said, simply.
“Yes, John was very good about Alan's future,” the mother concurred.
“But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be
in the bank than possibly drifting into association with--well, such
dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much
better off,” she continued, “with young men such as Mr. Crane would have
about him.”
The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called
attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming
words.
Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather
admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a
little laugh as he said: “I should not have succeeded very well in a
bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I
expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the
same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the men
honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They seem
to have more chances to steal than men on the race course.”
As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without
malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to
Dolman's charge.
Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell.
That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves
were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that,
like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
“Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,”
said Crane, as he was taking his leave, “you'll have to be mighty
careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a
vindictive brute.”
“Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to
death while he's about the place.”
“I shall never be a bit afraid of him,” remonstrated Allis; “Shandy, who
made all the mischief, has been discharged.”
“Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth,” said Porter. “I
thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has
taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him
as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater.”
“I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter,” exclaimed Crane,
somewhat eagerly. “I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In
the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him.”
Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about
Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined
Porter's proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly--having but one good
hand--preparing to retire in Alan's room.
His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems
had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon.
That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life
had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it
swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come
to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses
were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also
Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that
rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively
over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that
was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, “What
of wrong, if we are not wrong?” That was the atmosphere so thoroughly
straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the
man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was
distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer
rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress
his mind over the matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he
held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture,
brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command
tribute.
The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came
to him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had
lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads
of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the
stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled
discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression
as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.