MOSTYN MAKES A PURCHASE.
At an unreasonably early hour the next morning Mostyn, who had slept
peacefully enough in his new quarters, was aroused by the advent of
Willis, the gardener. The latter, as on the day before, seemed
concerned as to the reception which might be offered him. He rubbed
his lantern jaws nervously with a work-hardened forefinger while he
informed Mostyn that it was a fine day, and that he had brought up
the hot water for shaving.
"How's the boy?" asked Mostyn, stretching himself and yawning, but
half awake.
"Nicely, thank you, sir." Willis drew a breath of relief. No doubt
he had expected to be taken severely to task for not having revealed
to his master the fact of Rada Armitage's frequent occupation of the
Grange, a trespass which he had palpably condoned. "Miss Rada's been
very good to him, pore lad, and is goin' to send him some books to
read. Reads a treat, does our Jim." Willis spoke Miss Armitage's
name as though to give the necessary opening for explanations. And
these were immediately demanded by Mostyn, who woke up completely at
the mention of the girl's name.
The explanation was as Rada had hinted. Her appearance had not been
looked for since she had slept at the Grange the night before, and
had never yet spent two consecutive nights there. Willis meant to
have taken the earliest opportunity of warning her that the Grange
was no longer unoccupied; he had thought it would not be necessary to
mention the matter to Mr. Clithero at all. As for the clothes in the
cupboard, he had quite forgotten all about them, and he had thought
that the roses in the vases had been left from overnight. He was
very penitent, as was his wife, and they both hoped the matter would
be overlooked.
Mostyn took it all as a joke, much to the gardener's relief. It was
a perfect June morning: the sun shone in at the latticed window,
bearing the scent of roses and jasmine, and he felt that he had
awakened to a new day, a new life. How different this was to his
dingy London lodgings! How different, even, to the pretentious gloom
of his father's house! Yet everything about him was his own,
absolutely his own! The blood coursed quickly through his veins.
How could he be angry with Willis?
Mostyn proceeded to put some questions as to Rada. The girl's name
came glibly to his lips. A desire had come upon him, born, no doubt,
partly of that strange fascination which she exerted and partly of
the revelation of his own masculine power which had followed her fear
of an indefinite danger, to master the little vixen, as he mentally
described her, to curb and break her in as an untrained filly--he was
already beginning to use sporting metaphor, even to himself.
But Willis, who appeared very ready to discuss Rada, almost took
Mostyn's breath away by his first statement.
"She's a hangel!" he said emphatically.
"A what?" Mostyn had regarded Rada in anything but an angelic light.
"A hangel," repeated the gardener, laying great stress on the
aspirate. He proceeded to sing Rada's praises with evident
enjoyment, and palpably from a sense of conviction. She was, it
appeared, although as poor as a church mouse, the Lady Bountiful to
all the cottage folk in the neighbourhood, by whom she was simply
adored. She would minister comforts to the sick and needy, often
little more than a cheerful word and the sunlight of her presence,
but no less welcome for all that. She would take charge of unruly
children and attend to the house-keeping in the unavoidable absence
of the mother; she would cook little dainties with her own hands; she
had an extraordinary capacity for lulling restless babies to sleep.
Willis declared stoutly that she had pulled his own little daughter
through a fever when the doctor had been despondent, and she was not
afraid of infection either, he added proudly.
Here, indeed, was Rada in a new light! What a queer and complex
little creature she must be! She had treated him with such shocking
rudeness: he had thought her the very contrary to the "hangel"
described by Willis, but now it was evident that there were depths in
the girl's nature which had not yet been revealed to him.
Having praised Rada to the full, Willis proceeded to abuse her
father, and that in no measured terms. He was a shiftless, idle
ne'er-do-well, who had lost all pretensions to being considered a
gentleman, though up in London, Willis had heard, he did play the
"high and mighty." He went about to race meetings when he could, and
had sometimes been away for days without leaving provision for his
daughter. He kept one or two race-horses at Treves's stables, but
had not brought off a win for some time past. When at home he
lounged about in his shirt-sleeves, read the sporting papers, and
drank himself silly. Rada, very naturally, found her own
distractions, and her chief joy was to career about the country upon
her black mare, Bess, a creature as wild as herself.
"The captain don't take no stock of his girl," said Willis
emphatically, "an' he'll be sorry for it one of these days. I see
her about with young Jack Treves more'n enough, an' Jack ain't the
right sort for her, not by a long way."
This was a revelation at which Mostyn felt vaguely annoyed. He took
an immediate dislike to Jack Treves. Yet why should he worry himself
over Rada's flirtations?
Later that morning, while he ate a comfortable breakfast served up by
Mrs. Willis, he heard all the gardener's ideas recapitulated by the
good woman. She was just as emphatic on the subject of the captain
as her husband had been, nor did she swerve from her opinion when she
learnt that Mostyn was already acquainted with the Armitages, though
the knowledge of this fact reduced Willis to awkward silence and to
much rubbing of his jaw.
Rada, it appeared, had left the cottage early that morning, probably,
Mrs. Willis opined, to return home, though it was quite possible she
might have gone to other friends. Captain Armitage had been on the
drink, and was best left alone.
After an hour or so spent in surveying his new domain, and in
discussing plans for the future with the Willis's, Mostyn set out to
pay a visit at Barton Mill House. Captain Armitage might be in an
objectionably bibulous condition, but Mostyn was not afraid of
meeting him.
Of course, he told himself that he wanted to discuss the matter of
Castor, and that there was really no time for delay; also that
Captain Armitage might very well introduce him to the trainer,
William Treves; all of which was good and plausible, but it was
neither of the horse Castor nor of the trainer that Mostyn thought,
as with some difficulty he found his way through the narrow lanes to
Mill House: his reflections were concentrated upon Rada.
He found Captain Armitage at home, but to his great disappointment
Rada was not at the Mill House, nor had Captain Armitage the smallest
idea where she had gone to. He didn't seem to mind. He laughed
immoderately when he heard the story of the rencontre at the Grange
the night before, and conjectured that Rada must have gone off to
stay with some friends of hers, some folk who were accustomed to her
erratic ways, and who lived in the neighbourhood of Newmarket. She
had turned up at the Mill House, it appeared, quite early in the
morning, had selected some books from her little library, had had
Bess saddled, and had then ridden off. Captain Armitage had not seen
her because he was in bed.
"We don't always hit it off together," he explained jerkily, "and
Rada's quite capable of taking care of herself. She is a little
devil, but I like her spirit."
Mostyn found it difficult to reconcile the divergent views of his
gardener and of Captain Armitage as to Rada's character, but he did
not feel called upon to make any comment upon the subject.
Personally he was inclined to agree with the captain.
Of course Captain Armitage was very surprised to receive a visit from
Mostyn, and he broke off into a volley of oaths when he learned that
the latter had profited under the will of Anthony Royce; this, though
Mostyn did not give the full particulars as to his strange bequest,
seeing no reason why he should do so, but merely mentioned that he
had inherited the Grange and a certain sum of money as well.
"He never left me a penny, not a brass farthing," said Captain
Armitage solemnly, "yet I was one of his oldest friends, a
school-fellow and all the rest of it." This was a lie, and Mostyn
knew it to be a lie, but the matter was not worth discussing.
The captain did not present an imposing figure that morning. Mostyn
found him lounging in a disreputably worn arm-chair, clad in a soiled
but brilliantly-flowered dressing-gown, smoking an old meerschaum
pipe, and perusing a sporting paper. His white hair was untidy, his
beard unkempt, and his slippers down at the heel. The little
sitting-room was dingy and uncared for; Rada had evidently abandoned
the hopeless task of tidying it.
"I told you that I was a poor man, Mr. Clithero," Captain Armitage
said, waving a deprecating hand round the room, "and now you can see
for yourself." Suddenly his dull eyes brightened. "You say Royce
has left you some brass," he insinuated. "Have you thought better of
that offer I made you the other day?"
"That's what I'm here for," explained Mostyn. "Are you still willing
to sell Castor, Captain Armitage?"
"I should say I was, my boy." The old man sprang from his chair with
something of the nervous energy that Mostyn remembered he had
displayed when on the coach. "Fifteen hundred pounds! Why, it would
be the making of me just now." He spoke eagerly. "I know how I
could turn it into five, into ten thousand. There's Cardigan, a sure
thing for the Liverpool Cup, and Boscowen, a perfect snip at Sandown.
Give me fifteen hundred down, and I'll make a fortune. You shall
have the tips, too; I'll throw them into the bargain."
So it came about that, without loss of time, Captain Armitage,
muttering and mumbling to himself, had shuffled out of the room,
leaving Mostyn to gaze out of the uncleaned window over a strip of
garden where the grass grew rank, and where weeds choked the few
hardy flowers that had endured. Whatever she might be elsewhere,
Rada evidently took no pride in her own home; Mostyn told himself
that the Mill House, practically little more than a tumble-down
cottage, was one of the most dreary spots he had ever visited.
It was not long before the captain reappeared, a little more spruce
in his attire and ready to go out. It was, it appeared, not more
than half an hour's walk to the training stables, and there was no
reason why the bargain should not be clinched at once.
This was all very well, but Mostyn did not feel capable of relying
upon his own judgment, nor did he trust Captain Armitage's word.
Fifteen hundred pounds was a large sum, and not to be merely thrown
away to put cash into the pocket of a drunkard. Would he do well to
purchase Castor? Certainly Sir Roderick had admitted the value of
the colt. That went for a good deal, but at the bottom of his heart
Mostyn knew that his desire to own the horse had something to do with
the struggle which he felt, in an indefinite sort of way, had
commenced between himself and Rada. "I'm a girl, but I'll back
myself to win a Derby before you!" she had cried contemptuously, and
the words had galled and stung him. She had great faith in Castor,
he knew that; well, it would be a fitting punishment upon her if, by
extraordinary luck, he contrived to carry off the race with that
particular horse. Mostyn was not spiteful by nature, but he was very
human.
As they walked together, passing through the little town and then
emerging upon open country, Captain Armitage exerted his powers of
persuasion to the full, and he had a plausible tongue. Mostyn had an
eye for a horse, so the old man asserted, and he had recognised that
fact upon Derby day, or he would not have dreamed of making his
offer. He had taken a fancy to Mostyn from the first, especially
because the latter had taken his joking in good part. What he was
doing was purely out of personal consideration.
"Look here, Clithero,"--he halted in that sudden and abrupt manner
peculiar to him, and seized the young man by the arm--"we don't want
a lot of palaver over this business. Treves will tell you that the
colt's all right, and his word's as good as gospel. Settle on the
nail and we'll cry quits at a thousand."
They reached the training stables at last, a low narrow building,
lying a little back from the road, a building that formed three sides
of a square and was approached by a large gate. Beyond it, and
indeed, on either side of the road, was open level country. "A
capital pitch for exercising," as Captain Armitage put it, pointing
to a row of horses that were following one another in steady line
over the down.
Castor had just returned from exercise, and they found him in his
stable where he had been groomed by one of the boys. William Treves
himself, an important personality, a man who had accumulated a
considerable fortune, but who had no pride about him, and who was not
ashamed of his humble origin, nor of the fact that he had never
acquired a mastery of the king's English, discoursed volubly on the
perfections of the colt. Apparently he already knew of Captain
Armitage's desire to find a purchaser. The man gave Mostyn the
impression of honesty.
As for Castor, little as Mostyn knew of horses he was impressed by
the animal's appearance. Stripped of his clothes, he appeared a
black colt of such magnificent proportions as to give one the idea
that he was a three-year-old, instead of a nursery youngster.
After much talking, in which Mostyn took small part, the bargain was
struck. In return for his cheque for a thousand pounds, Mostyn
became the proprietor of "as fine an 'oss as the eye of man could
look upon;" so William Treves put it.
"'E 'as a terrific turn of speed," the trainer continued, "and there
isn't a three-year-old in this country that can 'old 'im at a mile at
weight for age. I borrowed a couple of Colonel Turner's youngsters
the other day to try 'im with, an' 'e left 'em fairly standing still,
and the Colonel's 'ed man went 'ome with a wonderful tale about 'em,
although 'e didn't know I'd put an extra five pound on Castor. Take
my advice, if you're set on winnin' next year's Derby, don't pull 'im
out too often this year. 'E's entered for the Eclipse at Sandown and
the National Produce Breeders' Stakes, and you might let 'im run
about four times just to give 'im a breather and get 'im used to
racecourse crowds. No man livin' can say to-day wot will win the
Derby next year, but if 'e trains on and puts on more bone, as I
expect 'e will, 'e must stand a grand chance."
"You hear that? He'll win the Derby for you." Armitage smote his
young friend heartily on the back as he spoke. "Take my word for it."
Mostyn was content with his purchase, proud of himself. There was
but one hitch, and that occurred later in the morning when Armitage
and Treves had moved away to inspect a new arrival at the stables,
leaving Mostyn standing alone, a little awkwardly, in the great
square yard.
A young man approached him, a tall, broad-shouldered youth,
good-looking after a coarse and vulgar style. He was aggressively
horsey in his attire, and wore a cap set at the back of his head,
displaying sleek hair plastered down over his forehead. This, as
Mostyn was subsequently to learn, was Jack Treves, the son of the
trainer. He had a familiar way of speaking, and made use of slang
which jarred at once upon Mostyn's ears.
He began by making a few casual remarks, then he jerked his head in
the direction of his father and of Captain Armitage. "I hear you've
bought Castor," he said. "A fine horse, sir."
"Yes," replied Mostyn, "I've bought the colt."
"Well, it may be all right." Jack Treves shook his head doubtfully.
"And of course the captain can do what he likes with his own--that
is, if it is his own--but I'll bet there'll be ructions, for Castor's
entered for the Derby in the name of Miss Armitage, and she's always
looked upon him as her particular property." He stooped and picked
up a wisp of straw, passing it between his fingers.
"Her property?" faltered Mostyn. "I don't understand."
Jack Treves nibbled at his straw. "The captain didn't tell you then?
I thought not. You see, when he went broke three years ago and
appeared in the forfeit list at Weatherby's, she sold all her
mother's jewels and paid his debts, and it was then that she
registered her colours--
"_Her_ colours!" gasped Mostyn. "Do you mean to tell me that
Rada--er, Miss Armitage--has registered racing colours?"
"Lor lummy, yes!" was the reply, spoken with a certain malice. "A
bit young, of course, but she's not like other girls. She's not had
the best of luck, though, up to date, and that's why she's so keen on
seeing the lemon and lavender carried to victory at Epsom next year.
She simply dotes on Castor, and considers that the colt is hers in
return for that jewellery."
Jack Treves threw his whittled straw away. "I guess," he said,
"there'll be the devil of a row."