THE DERBY.
It was a bright, sunny day. The Clapham Road was thronged with every
make of vehicles known to London streets. There were open trucks, with
kitchen chairs for seats, omnibuses, covered with advertisements,
hansoms, with hampers on top; drays, vans and carryalls. In the moving
line were coaches, with ringing horns and jangling harnesses, while
costermongers’ carts could be seen everywhere. And every vehicle had its
load of passengers, from the four-horse coach to the costermonger’s
cart, the latter often carrying six men and being drawn by one poor
little donkey.
To watch this procession, thousands of people thronged the two sidewalks
and filled the windows of the houses.
It is a jolly, roistering crowd that goes to the Derby, as Frank was not
long in discovering. All along the line parties were singing popular
songs; some were playing cards on small tables placed in their vans;
some were beating time on their knees, and some were dancing up and down
the limited confines of their wagons.
By making an effort for it, Frank had succeeded in obtaining a splendid
seat upon one of the coaches. The professor was at his side, trying to
look glum and disconsolate, as if he did not approve of such things at
all.
“Hi, there, sir!” bawled a ragged urchin, who had been racing along
beside the coach, occasionally turning handsprings and cartwheels; “your
whiskers are sunstroked, sir.”
“The insolent young rascal!” growled the professor, whose fiery-red
beard was a continual source of mingled pride and chagrin to him.
“’Ope you’ll pick a winner, sir,” cried another bare-legged ragamuffin.
“You might throw us your moldy coppers, sir.”
“Nice boy,” smiled the professor, as he fished around in his pocket and
brought forth a nickel, which he tossed to the second boy.
In the procession the costermongers were the most prominent. They could
be readily distinguished by their dress. They all wore a white and blue
dotted handkerchief, and long-tailed coats covered with huge pearl
buttons. Some of them wore trousers slashed at the bottom on the outer
seam, Mexican style.
The costers all seemed in a decidedly jovial mood. Some of them were
accompanied by wives or sweethearts. Their sweethearts banged their hair
after a fashion that distinguished them, and nearly all wore a broad
silver chain and a most amazing bonnet slanting down in front over the
hair and eyes, and shooting up at the back to tower high in the air.
These bonnets were covered with ribbons, velvet and dyed feathers.
The costers seemed to feel that they owned the road, although they
remained quite jovial if not crowded, and they often stood up in their
carts to call to people on the coaches, addressing everybody in a most
familiar manner.
After nearly two hours of steady driving, the coach on which Frank and
the professor rode began to draw away from the suburbs of handsome
villas. Parks were seen, and villages were passed through.
In every village carts could be seen standing in front of the public
houses, in which the occupants of the carts were sometimes drinking.
Sometimes they were stretching their limbs by dancing on the village
green, men and girls together, shouting and laughing.
It was a decidedly noisy and good-natured crowd, and, above all, a
remarkably thirsty crowd. Some of the carts carried kegs of ale, and the
occupants of those carts seemed continually drinking from their pewter
mugs.
“Dreadful! dreadful!” muttered Professor Scotch. “I never beheld
anything like this before. It seems as if every one was bent on a
debauch.”
“It’s the way at the Derby, professor,” laughed Frank. “By Jove! it’s a
sight worth seeing. I am glad we did not miss the Derby.”
At last they came to fields; passed between the high stone walls of some
vast estate; passed hundreds of children in uniform ranged behind a
hedge and cheering wildly, just as if they were not orphans who lived in
the great dismal building in the background; passed from the level road
to the hills and the downs, where the white dust arose in clouds and
shut out the view like a fog, through which came the creaking of wheels,
the cracking of whips and the occasional blast of a horn.
Then they arrived at a place where it seemed that an army had encamped.
Every dust-covered hedge was lined with horses and donkeys, while others
were picketed at the end of ropes that allowed them to graze.
Through this mass of horses they seemed to pass for miles before the
racetrack was reached. On all sides were rows upon rows of carts, hansom
cabs and omnibuses, all abandoned for the time.
And then, at last, Frank beheld the highest grandstand in the world,
crowded with people, who had already obtained favorable positions to
watch the races.
The track was reached. From the top of the coach Frank beheld a
spectacle such as he had never before witnessed. Before him was a valley
which was thronging with human beings and covered with what seemed to be
unnumbered circuses. Everywhere were booths and tents, making long,
irregular avenues. Everywhere were flags and canvas pictures, crowds of
people moving in black blocks, swaying, pushing, shoving.
And there was no admission fee to the races, unless one sought a seat on
the grandstand!
The coaches faced the grandstand from the opposite side of the track,
packed closely together, and forming a barrier three rows deep,
seemingly locked and entangled beyond all possibility of ever getting
away again.
On the top of nearly every coach ladies and gentlemen were lunching,
chatting, laughing and making merry.
The sight made Frank hungry, and, as they had not brought a lunch, he
proposed to the professor that they should leave the coach and find
something to eat.
“Never!” cried the little man, in terror. “It would be impossible to
find our way back here again.”
“Then I shall go alone.”
In vain the professor forbade it. Frank leaped down, laughing, and
quickly disappeared in the throng.
It did not take him long to find a place where he could obtain
sandwiches and other things, and he satisfied his hunger, after which he
carried a lunch to the professor.
Scotch was hungry enough, and glad to get the lunch, but he begged Frank
not to go away again.
“I came here to see the sights, professor, and I am not going to tie
myself to the top of a coach. Will you come?”
But the little man could not be induced to abandon his place of safety
on the top of the coach, and so Frank wandered away alone.
He visited the merry-go-rounds, the chutes, the shooting-galleries, the
swings, the boxing-booths, and then he came to where the bookmakers were
standing in couples, dressed as nearly alike as possible, shouting
themselves hoarse and red in the face.
As Frank stood listening to the man who was bawling huskily from the
nearest stand, he felt a touch on the arm, and an insinuating voice said
in his ear:
“I ’opes as ’ow you’re not thinkin’ of putting your good money with that
gent, young sir. ’E’s not to be trusted. You might as well throw your
good money hinto the wide, wide sea, sir. Now, sir, hit’s myself, ’Arry
’Awkins, of Deptford, wot can tell you ’ow to lay your stuff as to pick
the winner. The gents wot patronize me get quids for hevery bob they put
hup. I don’t waste my toime ’anging ’round pubs, but I’m hup hevery
mornin’ on these downs a-watching the ’orses, hand I know what I tells
yer is straight. You can trust ’Arry ’Awkins, of Deptford, hevery time.”
A smooth-faced fellow, in Scotch plaid and a bright red necktie, smiled
into the boy’s face in a most enticing manner.
It was a tout, who was trying to sell tips on the races, and Frank
immediately remembered that the fellow had been a passenger in a little
coster’s cart that had hung close by him all the way from the Surrey
side.
“I have no intention of betting on the races,” declared the boy; “so you
are wasting your time with me.”
Mr. ’Awkins regarded him with a look of profound admiration.
“I see, sir,” he said, with a broad wink. “You knows too much to throw
away your good stuff, sir. Hi take hit you’re from Hamerica, sir?”
“Didn’t I tell you that you were wasting your time,” came rather sharply
from Frank. “You can’t work the riffle with me, my man.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir; beggin’ yer pardon! You ’ave made a mistake in
me, sir! I ham not that kind. You ’ave a bright face——”
Frank laughed.
“My dear fellow, you can’t catch a Yankee lad with taffy. I have no
money to throw away. Look for some other sucker.”
Then he wheeled about sharply and moved away.
A clown on stilts strode along and stepped over Frank’s shoulder. In a
little open space a man was allowing anybody to break stones on his
chest with a sledge hammer. There were minstrels of all nationalities,
who were singing songs. Yellow-haired girls on stilts found their way
about, and sang to the people on the coaches. Beggars were there, and
hungry men fought in the dirt for the chicken bones that fell from a
plate; exhausted boys and drunken men, who were sleeping under the very
feet of the crowd.
And then, in the midst of the crowd, Frank felt something thrust into
his hand. It was a slip of paper, and something was written on it. He
looked at the writing, and this is what he read:
“You are marked. You are followed. Return to your coach. You are in
deadly danger here. Beware of the man with the death-cold hand. It is
the grip of doom.”
Frank looked around swiftly, catching a glimpse of ’Arry ’Awkins in the
swaying crowd. The hot blood leaped to the boy’s face.
“So it is that fellow who is following me,” he thought. “I might have
known it.”
Quickly thrusting the warning note into his pocket, he started to force
his way through the crowd toward Mr. ’Awkins.
Then there was a sudden commotion, a swaying and shouting, and Frank
found himself crowded and hustled. In the midst of all this commotion
something cold and clammy, like the hand of a dead man, fastened on his
wrist. It gave him a shock. He tried to twist away, but the fingers were
like iron bands. Something told him that he was in truth in great
danger.
Then ’Arry ’Awkins came beating his way through the mob that hemmed the
boy in, caught the lad by the collar, struck out and smote somebody in
the face, and yanked Frank away.
Breathless, bewildered, at a loss to understand it, Frank allowed the
man from Deptford to force a road through the mob and pull him after.
The swaying mass dissolved in a moment, and it seemed that nothing
unusual had occurred; but a boy stood looking at his wrist, where there
were fingerprints that sunk deep into the flesh.
The grip of doom! What did it mean? Frank asked himself the question. He
had not seen the owner of that death-cold hand, but the icy touch had
sent a shudder to his heart.
“Hexcuse me, sir,” said Mr. ’Awkins; “but I saw as ’ow you was being
’ustled and I gave you a ’and. ’Ave you lost your purse?”
“I never carry a purse in such places.”
“Which is wise of you, young sir. I feared as ’ow you ’ad lost your
purse.”
And then, before the boy could say more, the man from Deptford slipped
away and was quickly lost in the crowd.
Frank moved toward the coaches, wondering over what had happened. He
understood that it could not be a joke, as it was not probable he would
be singled out as the victim for such a jest in that great gathering. If
not a joke, then there was surely some deep significance in it all.
And why had ’Arry ’Awkins rushed to his assistance? Had the tout struck
the owner of that dead-cold hand?
Frank felt in his pocket, and found the warning note. Marked and
followed! In deadly danger! Why was he marked and followed? and why was
he in deadly danger?
It was all darkly mysterious, and the boy’s curiosity was aroused, as
well as his anger.
Of a sudden, as he drew near the coaches, he started and uttered an
exclamation of great amazement.
“Am I dreaming?”
Passing close at hand was a young and beautiful girl, clinging to the
arm of a much over-dressed youth. Frank believed he recognized the girl
at a glance, but it did not seem possible. He stared at her, and then
became convinced that he had made no mistake. With a second exclamation,
he started forward, his hand outstretched, his hat lifted.
“Inza Burrage!”
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