And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape:
* * * * *
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength.
_The Flight of the Duchess._
"Colonel Wynch-Frere? Glad to see you, sir! Fine day for the wind-up,
isn't it? Never seen Ascot so full on a Friday in my life! Everybody's
here. Seen my wife, by chance?"
"Yes, a minute ago: in Mrs. Learmorth's box. I've got a little bet on
with her about this event," answered the gentleman addressed, tapping
his little book with a gold pencil-case, and smiling.
It was the lawn at Ascot: and it was brilliantly thronged, for the rain,
which had emptied itself in bucketfuls on Cup day, had at last relented,
and allowed the sun to burst forth with warmth and brightness for the
running of the Hardwicke Stakes.
"Ah! I don't know when I have been so excited over a race in my life,"
said the first speaker. "I'm of the opinion that Invincible is going to
the wall at last. Carter's on Castilian, you know, and he's going to
ride to win."
"Can't do it," said the colonel, shortly.
"_Can't he?_"
"No. He'll try all he knows, but Invincible is--Invincible, you know."
"I know he has been hitherto; but he's never met Castilian in a short
distance; I say all that bone will tell. I'll give you two to one on
it."
The bet was accepted, and Frederick Orton nodded to himself in a
confident way, which also made his companion anxious, for he knew his
was an opinion not to be despised.
"Haven't seen my young nephew, have you?" asked Orton, as he made a
memorandum in his book.
"Not that I know of. What nephew?"
"My young limb of Satan--confound him!" said Orton, with a laugh. "He's
made his book as carefully as if he had been fifty years old. I've
fetched him twice out of the ring by the scruff of his neck to-day; but
Letherby, my old groom, is with him, so I suppose he's all right."
"He's beginning early," observed Colonel the Honorable Edward
Wynch-Frere, in his slow way.
"He is. What do you think? He wants to ride Welsh Rabbit for the
Canfield Cup. What do you think, eh? Should you let him do it?"
The colonel meditated for some moments.
"Is he strong enough in the wrists? That's where I should doubt him," he
said, reflectively. "He rode splendidly at those private races of yours
at Fallowmead; but then he knew his ground as well as his horse; he'd
have to carry weight at Canfield."
"Of course. But Letherby says he could do it. The only thing is the risk
of a bad throw. These things are done in a minute, you know; and he's
heir to a big property. It's been well nursed, and, if anything happened
to the poor little beggar, plenty of people would be kind enough to
say----"
"I rode in a steeple-chase when I was sixteen," observed Colonel
Wynch-Frere.
In fact, he looked more like a stud-groom than anything else you could
fancy. No wonder; he had but two ideas in the world: one was
horse-racing, the other was his wife. It seemed, on the whole, rather a
pity that Lady Mabel's very wide range of sympathies should include
neither horse-racing nor her husband. It was purgatory for her to go and
stay at the house of Lord Folinsby, his father, the great Yorkshire
earl, where the riding-school was the centre of attraction to all her
brothers and sisters-in-law, and where the young men seemed always in
training for some race or another, cut their whiskers like grooms,
walked bandy-legged, and talked of the stables. Thus, the colonel
indulged in his horse-racing and his wife separately; and endeavored,
with all the force of his kind heart and limited intellect, not to talk
of the first when in the presence of the second.
But to-day every faculty he had was centred on the question as to
whether or not the duke's marvellous chestnut, Invincible, would have to
lay down his laurels; and he moved along by Mr. Orton's side talking
quite volubly, for him, on the all-engrossing theme, and the reports as
to who was likely to drop money over the race.
Be it stated that he was eminently a racing, not a betting man; he was
no gambler, though always ready to back his own opinion.
The grand stand was packed, and the ladies' dresses as brilliant as the
June sky.
The two men, moving slowly on, at last caught the eyes of two ladies who
were beckoning them, and accordingly went up and joined them.
"You are only just in time--they have cleared the course," said Mrs.
Learmorth, a lady sparkling in diamonds but deficient in grammar.
"My dear Fred, where's Godfrey?" asked Mrs. Orton, a handsome, very dark
young woman, with a high color and flashing eyes.
"Oh, he's somewhere about: Letherby's looking after him," was the
nonchalant reply, as he lifted a pair of field glasses to his eye, and
presently announced, in a tone of keen excitement; "They'll be out
directly. Wait till they canter past the stand. Mrs. Learmorth, you've
never seen Invincible, have you?"
"Never!" cried the lady, eagerly. "Mind you point him out to me."
"Here they come," said the colonel. "Look--that's Lord Chislehurst's
Falcon--I've backed him for a place--lathy beast: but a good deal of
pace. This one and this are both outsiders. There's the duke's daffodil
livery, but that is only a second horse put on to make the running. Here
comes the Castilian, Orton."
Mr. Orton was watching with an absorbed fascination.
"Ay, there's Carter," said he, studying the well-known jockey's face.
"He means business, I tell you."
The Castilian was a large dark-brown horse, and the crimson and
pale-blue colors of his rider set him off to advantage; but, like many
good race-horses, he was not singularly beautiful to the eye of the
unlearned. He cantered by with some dignity, amid a good deal of
cheering, when suddenly there was a rush, something like a flash of
light, a bright chestnut horse, with a jockey in daffodil satin, darted
like a fairy thing past the stand, followed by a spontaneous shout from
the crowded onlookers. The magic hoofs seemed scarcely to touch the turf
over which they swept; and Mrs. Orton, watching with a somewhat sardonic
smile, observed,
"You'll lose your money, Fred."
"You wait and see," said her husband, oracularly.
"I'm sure I hope he has been careful," she went on, with a laugh, to
Mrs. Learmorth, "for he has promised to take me to Homburg if he wins."
"Don't talk, Ottilie," cried Frederick Orton, irritably; "don't you see
they are just going to start!"
The race began--the memorable race which crowned Invincible with the
chief of his triumphs. Not even with "Carter up" was the Castilian able
to make so much as a hard fight for it. The lovely chestnut was like a
creature of elfin birth--it seemed as if he went without effort; the
field toiling after him looked like animals of a lower breed.
The wild yells of applause rang and echoed in the blue firmament--the
mad excitement of racing for the moment mastered everyone, from the
youth whose last sovereign hung on the event to the pretty, ignorant
girl upon the drag, who had laid her pair of gloves with blind devotion
on the daffodil satin as it flashed past.
One small boy, held up on the shoulders of an elderly groom, added his
shrill screams with delight to the tumult around.
"Well done, Invincible! Well rode, Bartlett! Bravo! bravo! Didn't I tell
my uncle he'd do it! Pulled it off easy! Knew he would! Look at poor old
Carter! What a fool he looks! Ain't used to coming in a bad second! Let
me down, Letherby, I want to find my uncle! I say, though, this is
proper! I've made five pounds over this."
"You just wait one minute, Master Godfrey, till the crowd is cleared off
a trifle--you'll be jammed to death in this 'ere mob if you don't look
out, and the master said I was to see to you. You stop where you are."
"You old broken-winded idiot," shouted the child, a boy of fourteen,
very small for his age, but handsome in a dark, picturesque style. "Do
move on a bit, you are no good in a crowd. I can't stay here all
day--elbow on!"
Letherby accordingly "elbowed on" through the yelling, shouting mass of
betting-men, followed by the excited, dancing boy, who kept on talking
at the top of his voice.
"Isn't it a sell for aunt, by Jove! She said she wouldn't give me five
shillings to spend at Homburg next month, and now I've got five pounds!
Why, Letherby, I knew a fellow who went to the table with five pounds,
and came back with five hundred. I warrant you I have rare sport at
Homburg!"
"That I can answer for it, you won't," said his uncle's voice suddenly
in his ear, and the urchin felt himself abruptly seized by his
coat-collar with no gentle hand. "Thanks to the upshot of this
confounded race," said Mr. Orton, angrily, "you won't go to Homburg at
all, for I can't afford to take you; and what the deuce do you mean by
hiding away here when you're wanted? Your aunt's going home, and you'll
go with her. I'll have you out of harm's way."
Godfrey Brabourne made no reply. He skulked at his uncle's heels with a
look of sulky fury on his face which was not good to see. The spoilt boy
knew that, on the occasions when his uncle was out of temper like this,
silence was his sole refuge; but, if he did not speak, he thought, and
his thoughts were not lovely, to judge from the expression of his eyes.
Letherby hurried away to put-to the horses, knowing that in this mood
his master would not brook waiting; and, in half-an-hour from
Invincible's winning of the Hardwicke Stakes, Mr. Orton and his party
were spinning along towards the Oaklands Park hotel, where they were
spending Ascot week.
A very subdued party they were. Spite of his winnings, Godfrey was
silent and sullen. Mrs. Orton's temper was not proof against the
shattering of all her plans for next month; she knew that, if she spoke
at all, it would be to upbraid her husband, so she held her tongue; and
he was in a state of mute fury, less at the loss of his money than at
his own error of judgment in such a matter.
The very impression of his silent wife's face irritated him. "I told you
so," seemed written on every feature.
When they arrived at the hotel, he petulantly flung his reins to the
groom, and went indoors by himself, "as sulky as a bear with a sore
head," mentally observed the wife of his bosom.
At dinner there was Colonel Wynch-Frere, who had come in a couple of
hours later, having been invited by some other friends.
He was sitting at a table some distance from the Ortons, but afterwards
joined them in the drawing-room. The dinner had been good, and
Frederick's temper was improving; he was not an ill-tempered man, as a
rule, and he was now half-ashamed of his late annoyance. Mrs. Orton was
less placable; she sat aloof, and secretly longed to be able to say her
say.
The colonel strolled up.
"Where's the boy?" he asked.
"In the stables, I suppose--where he always is," said the boy's aunt,
snappishly.
How she had wanted to go to Homburg! The Davidsons were going, and the
Lequesnes, and Charley Canova; what parties they would have got up! And
now----
"Godfrey's not always in the stables, Ottilie," said Fred, seating
himself on a sofa at her side. "He has only gone now with a message from
me. He'll be back directly."
Frederick Orton was a rather picturesque young man of about
five-and-thirty. He was dark, with brown eyes, and a short, pointed,
Vandyck beard and moustache. The moustache hid his weak mouth. He was
slight and pale, and looked delicate, which was probably the result of
late hours and pick-me-ups.
His wife was handsome, and rather large, a year or two younger than he,
and showing an inclination to stoutness. Her eyes and complexion were
striking, her voice deep and rather loud--a fine contralto--and her
disposition energetic.
She was very handsomely dressed for the evening in a dark-green dress
covered with green beetle's wings, which flashed as she turned. The
colonel rather liked her, though he never dared say so to Lady Mabel.
"How is your Lady Mabel?" she asked of him, just as this thought was
crossing his mind.
"Lady Mabel is, as usual, having a good many adventures," he said,
taking a chair near. "She has been on a driving-tour with her brother--"
"Mr. Cranmer? I know him slightly," said Frederick.
"Yes; they are in Devonshire, at a little place called Edge Combe, near
Stanton."
"Dear me! Isn't that where all those old maids live--the Miss
Willoughbys?" said Ottilie, turning to her husband.
He made one of the many English inarticulate sounds representing "Yes."
"I wonder if Lady Mabel has come across Godfrey's step-sister, Elaine
Brabourne?" she went on, in her deep contralto accents.
"Oh, yes, certainly; she mentions a Miss--is your nephew's name
Brabourne? I never knew it. Then his father used to be colonel of my
regiment."
"That's it," said Frederick, calmly. "Yes, he has a step-sister, I'm
sorry to say, who has been brought up by a set of puritanical old
maids--old hags, my poor sister used to call them."
"Lady Mabel is staying with the Miss Willoughbys," said the colonel,
rather red in the face.
There was an uncomfortable pause; then Mr. Orton laughed lazily.
"Put my foot into it," he said. "I usually do. Very sorry, I'm sure. I
don't know the good ladies myself, and I expect my poor sister made them
all sit up; she was as wild a girl as ever I saw, and they used to take
her and set her down for hours in a rotting old church which smelt of
vaults, and where the damp used to roll down the walls in great drops.
She said it gave her the horrors. But that's a good many years back now,
and I daresay they have changed all that."
"My wife says they are--well--very primitive," said the colonel. "But
she speaks of Miss Brabourne as a most lovely girl, who only needs a
little bringing out."
"Ottilie, you must have that girl up to town," remarked Frederick.
"Why?" said his wife, stifling a yawn.
"Because I think Godfrey ought to know her."
"Godfrey hates girls."
"Yes, because he is always alone, and gets spoilt--he ought to know his
sister."
"She is coming to stay in town with Lady Mabel in the autumn, when we
are settled," said the colonel; and at that moment some one came up and
claimed his attention, so he bowed to Mrs. Orton and withdrew.
Later that night, Frederick, coming up to bed, tapped at his wife's
door, and, on receiving a muffled "Come in," entered with a face full of
news.
"I say, what do you think Wynch-Frere has been telling me? Poor old
Allonby has got smashed up in this very place--I mean Edge Combe--and
Elaine Brabourne found him lying by the roadside! So now we shall be
able to hear whether she really is as good-looking as Lady Mabel wants
to make out."
A ray of interest warmed Ottilie's face, and encouraged him to proceed.
He acquainted her with all the details of the accident which he had been
able to glean from the colonel; while she sat brushing out her long
thick dark hair, and listening. When he had apparently chatted her into
a better humor, he sat down on the dressing-table, and, leaning forward,
looked at her wistfully.
"I say, old girl, were you fearfully set on Homburg?"
Her face hardened.
"You know I was," she said, shortly.
"Well, look here--can you think of anything we could do with that
blessed child? I can't bear to disappoint you. I think it would run to
it if we could get rid of him. He means an extra room and some one to
look after him, and even then he's eternally in the way. Could we get
rid of him for a little while? If so, I'll take you."
"You're very good, Fred," she said, with alacrity. "I--I'm sorry I was
so cross. I'll think that over about Godfrey. It would be a hundred
times nicer without him."
"My word, though, won't there be a shindy?" said Frederick, laughing. "I
wonder what the young cub will say! He isn't used to being left behind;
you've spoilt him, Ottilie."
"I indeed? I like that! Why, from the moment he was born you allowed him
to do just whatever he chose, and taught him such language----"
"All right--of course it was all my fault, as usual; but now, am I a
good boy?"
"Yes, you are."
"Well, then, kiss me."
So a peace was sealed for the time.
On their return to London, on the Monday following, two letters awaited
them. One was from Wynifred Allonby, explaining that her brother was
ill, and that she had gone to nurse him, and asking that he might have
time allowed him to finish his commission pictures; the other was from
Miss Ellen Willoughby, begging that Godfrey might spend his holidays at
Edge.
"Just the very thing! I'll pack him off there the first minute I can!"
cried Mrs. Orton, joyful and exultant.
Frederick smiled prophetically.
"He will probably try his sister's temper," he remarked, placidly, "and
that in no common degree; but then, on the other hand, he will doubtless
enlarge her vocabulary considerably, so he cannot be looked upon in the
light of an unmixed evil."