I
Some quarter of a century ago, there abode in Oxford a small bookmaker
called James Shrewin--or more usually ‘Jimmy’--a run-about and
damped-down little man, who made a precarious living out of the effect
of horses on undergraduates. He had a so-called office just off the
‘Corn,’ where he was always open to the patronage of the young bloods
of Bullingdon, and other horse-loving coteries, who bestowed on him
sufficient money to enable him to live. It was through the conspicuous
smash of one of them--young Gardon Colquhoun--that he became the owner
of a horse. He had been far from wanting what was in the nature of
a white elephant to one of his underground habits, but had taken it
in discharge of betting debts, to which, of course, in the event of
bankruptcy, he would have no legal claim. She was a three-year old
chestnut filly, by Lopez out of Calendar, bore the name of Calliope,
and was trained out on the Downs near Wantage. On a Sunday afternoon,
then, in late July, ‘Jimmy’ got his friend, George Pulcher, the
publican, to drive him out there in his sort of dog-cart.
“Must ’ave a look at the bilkin’ mare,” he had said; “that young
‘Cocoon’ told me she was a corker; but what’s third to Referee at
Sandown, and never ran as a two-year-old? All I know is, she’s eatin’
’er ’ead off!”
Beside the plethoric bulk of Pulcher, clad in a light-coloured
box-cloth coat with enormous whitish buttons and a full-blown rose
in the lapel, ‘Jimmy’s’ little, thin, dark-clothed form, withered
by anxiety and gin, was, as it were, invisible; and compared with
Pulcher’s setting sun, his face, with shaven cheeks sucked in, and
smudged-in eyes, was like a ghost’s under a grey bowler. He spoke
offhandedly about his animal, but he was impressed, in a sense abashed,
by his ownership. ‘What the ’ell?’ was his constant thought. Was he
going to race her, sell her--what? How, indeed, to get back out of her
the sum he had been fool enough to let young ‘Cocoon’ owe him, to say
nothing of her trainer’s bill? The notion, too, of having to confront
that trainer with his ownership was oppressive to one whose whole life
was passed in keeping out of the foreground of the picture. Owner! He
had never owned even a white mouse, let alone a white elephant. And an
’orse would ruin him in no time if he didn’t look alive about it!
The son of a small London baker, devoted to errandry at the age of
fourteen, ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin owed his profession to a certain smartness
at sums, a dislike of baking, and an early habit of hanging about
street corners with other boys, who had their daily pennies on an
’orse. He had a narrow, calculating head, which pushed him towards
street corner books before he was eighteen. From that time on he had
been a surreptitious nomad, till he had silted up at Oxford, where,
owing to Vice-Chancellors, an expert in underground life had greater
scope than elsewhere. When he sat solitary at his narrow table in the
back room near the ‘Corn’--for he had no clerk or associate--eyeing
the door, with his lists in a drawer before him, and his black shiny
betting-book ready for young ‘bloods,’ he had a sharp, cold, furtive
air, and but for a certain imitated tightness of trouser, and a collar
standing up all round, gave no impression of ever having heard of the
quadruped called horse. Indeed, for ‘Jimmy’ ‘horse’ was a newspaper
quantity with figures against its various names. Even when, for a
short spell, hanger-on to a firm of Cheap Ring bookmakers, he had seen
almost nothing of horse; his racecourse hours were spent ferreting
among a bawling, perspiring crowd, or hanging round within earshot
of tight-lipped nobs, trainers, jockeys, anyone who looked like
having ‘information.’ Nowadays he never went near a race-meeting--his
business, of betting on races, giving him no chance--yet his
conversation seldom deviated for more than a minute at a time from that
physically unknown animal, the horse. The ways of making money out
of it, infinite, intricate, variegated, occupied the mind in all his
haunts, to the accompaniment of liquid and tobacco. Gin and bitters was
‘Jimmy’s’ drink; for choice he smoked cheroots; and he would cherish
in his mouth the cold stump of one long after it had gone out, for the
homely feeling it gave him, while he talked, or listened to talk on
horses. He was of that vast number, town bred, who, like crows round
a carcase, feed on that which to them is not alive. And now he had a
horse!
The dog-cart travelled at a clinking pace behind Pulcher’s bobtail.
‘Jimmy’s’ cheroot burned well in the warm July air; the dust powdered
his dark clothes and pinched, sallow face. He thought with malicious
pleasure of that young spark ‘Cocoon’s’ collapse--high-’anded lot of
young fools, thinking themselves so knowing; many were the grins, and
not few the grittings of his blackened teeth he had to smother at
their swagger. ‘Jimmy, you robber!’ ‘Jimmy, you little blackguard!’
Young sparks--gay and languid--well, one of ’em had gone out!
He looked round with his screwed-up eyes at his friend George Pulcher,
who, man and licensed victualler, had his bally independence; lived
remote from ‘the Quality’ in his paradise, the Green Dragon; had not
to kowtow to anyone; went to Newbury, Gatwick, Stockbridge, here and
there, at will. Ah! George Pulcher had the ideal life--and looked
it: crimson, square, full-bodied. Judge of a horse, too, in his own
estimation; a leery bird--for whose judgment ‘Jimmy’ had respect--who
got ‘the office’ of any clever work as quick as most men! And he said:
“What am I going to do with this blinkin’ ’orse, George?”
Without moving its head the oracle spoke in a voice rich and raw:
“Let’s ’ave a look at her first, Jimmy! Don’t like her name--Calliope;
but you can’t change what’s in the Stud-book. This Jenning that trains
’er is a crusty chap.”
‘Jimmy’ nervously sucked-in his lips. The cart was mounting through the
hedgeless fields which fringed the Downs; larks were singing, the wheat
was very green, the patches of charlock brightened everything; it was
lonely, few trees, few houses, no people, extreme peace, just a few
rooks crossing under a blue sky.
“Wonder if he’ll offer us a drink?” said ‘Jimmy.’
“Not he; but help yourself, my son.”
‘Jimmy’ helped himself from a large wicker-covered flask.
“Good for you, George--here’s how!”
The large man shifted the reins and drank, in turn, tilting up a face
whose jaw still struggled to assert itself against chins and neck.
“Well, here’s to your bloomin’ horse,” he said. “She can’t win the
Derby now, but she may do us a bit of good yet.”