THE SPRING MEETING.
The early spring brought Lucy Floyd on a visit to her cousin, a
wondering witness of the happiness that reigned at Mellish Park.
Poor Lucy had expected to find Aurora held as something better than the
dogs, and a little higher than the horses, in that Yorkshire household;
and was considerably surprised to find her dark-eyed cousin a despotic
and capricious sovereign, reigning with undisputed sway over every
creature, biped or quadruped, upon the estate. She was surprised to see
the bright glow in her cheeks, the merry sparkle in her eyes; surprised
to hear the light tread of her footstep, the gushing music of her
laugh; surprised, in fact, to discover that, instead of weeping over
the dry bones of her dead love for Talbot Bulstrode, Aurora had learned
to love her husband.
Have I any need to be ashamed of my heroine in that she had forgotten
her straight-nosed, gray-eyed Cornish lover, who had set his pride and
his pedigree between himself and his affection, and had loved her at
best with a reservation, although Heaven only knows how dearly he had
loved her? Have I any cause to blush for this poor, impetuous girl, if,
turning in the sickness of her sorrowful heart with a sense of relief
and gratitude to the honest shelter of John's love, she had quickly
learnt to feel for him an affection which repaid him a thousandfold for
his long-suffering devotion? Surely it would have been impossible for
any true-hearted woman to withhold some such repayment for such a love
as that which, in every word, and look, and thought, and deed, John
Mellish bestowed upon his wife. How could she be for ever his creditor
for such a boundless debt? Are hearts like his common amongst our clay?
Is it a small thing to be beloved with this loyal and pure affection?
Is it laid so often at the feet of any mortal woman that she should
spurn and trample upon the holy offering?
He had loved; and more, he had trusted her. He had trusted her, when
the man who passionately loved her had left her in an agony of doubt
and despair. The cause of this lay in the difference between the two
men. John Mellish had as high and stern a sense of honour as Talbot
Bulstrode; but while the proud Cornishman's strength of brain lay
in the reflective faculties, the Yorkshireman's acute intellect was
strongest in its power of perception. Talbot drove himself half mad
with imagining what _might be;_ John saw what _was;_ and he saw, or
fancied he saw, that the woman he loved was worthy of all love; and he
gave his peace and honour freely into her keeping.
He had his reward. He had his reward in her frank womanly affection,
and in the delight of seeing that she was happy; no cloud upon her
face, no shadow on her life, but ever-beaming joy in her eyes,
ever-changing smiles upon her lips. She was happy in the calm security
of her home, happy in that pleasant stronghold in which she was so
fenced about and guarded by love and devotion. I do not know that she
ever felt any romantic or enthusiastic love for this big Yorkshireman;
but I do know that from the first hour in which she laid her head upon
his broad breast she was true to him--true as a wife should be; true
in every thought; true in the merest shadow of a thought. A wide gulf
yawned around the altar of her home, separating her from every other
man in the universe, and leaving her alone with that one man whom she
had accepted as her husband. She had accepted him in the truest and
purest sense of the word. She had accepted him from the hand of God, as
the protector and shelterer of her life; and morning and night, upon
her knees, she thanked the gracious Creator who had made this man for
her help-meet.
But after duly setting down all this, I have to confess that poor
John Mellish was cruelly hen-pecked. Such big, blustering fellows are
created to be the much-enduring subjects of petticoat government; and
they carry the rosy garlands until their dying hour with a sublime
unconsciousness that those floral chains are not very easy to be
broken. Your little man is self-assertive, and for ever on his guard
against womanly domination. All tyrannical husbands on record have
been little men, from Mr. Daniel Quilp upwards; but who could ever
convince a fellow of six foot two in his stockings that he was afraid
of his wife? He submits to the pretty tyrant with a quiet smile of
resignation. What does it matter? She is so little, so fragile; he
could break that tiny wrist with one twist of his big thumb and finger;
and in the mean time, till affairs get desperate, and such measures
become necessary, it's as well to let her have her own way.
John Mellish did not even debate the point. He loved her, and he laid
himself down to be trampled upon by her gracious feet. Whatever she
did or said was charming, bewitching, and wonderful to him. If she
ridiculed and laughed at him, her laughter was the sweetest harmony in
creation; and it pleased him to think that his absurdities could give
birth to such music. If she lectured him, she arose to the sublimity
of a priestess, and he listened to her and worshipped her as the most
noble of living creatures. And with all this, his innate manliness of
character preserved him from any taint of that quality our _argot_
has christened _spooneyism_. It was only those who knew him well and
watched him closely who could fathom the full depths of his tender
weakness. The noblest sentiments approach most nearly to the universal,
and this love of John's was in a manner universal. It was the love
of husband, father, mother, brother, melted into one comprehensive
affection. He had a mother's weak pride in Aurora, a mother's foolish
vanity in the wonderful creature, the _rara avis_ he had won from her
nest to be his wife. If Mrs. Mellish was complimented while John stood
by, he simpered like a school-girl who blushes at a handsome man's
first flatteries. I'm afraid he bored his male acquaintance about "my
wife:" her marvellous leap over the bullfinch; the plan she drew for
the new stables, "which the architect said was a better plan than he
could have drawn himself, sir, by Gad" (a clever man, that Doncaster
architect); the surprising way in which she had discovered the fault
in the chestnut colt's off fore-leg; the pencil sketch she had made
of her dog Bow-wow ("Sir Edwin Landseer might have been proud of such
spirit and dash, sir"). All these things did the county gentlemen hear,
until, perhaps, they grew a shade weary of John's talk of "my wife."
But they were never weary of Aurora herself. She took her place at once
among them; and they bowed down to her and worshipped her, envying John
Mellish the ownership of such a high-bred filly, as I fear they were
but likely, unconsciously, to designate my black-eyed heroine.
The domain over which Aurora found herself empress was no
inconsiderable one. John Mellish had inherited an estate which brought
him an income of something between sixteen and seventeen thousand a
year. Far-away farms, upon wide Yorkshire wolds and fenny Lincolnshire
flats, owned him master; and the intricate secrets of his possessions
were scarcely known to himself,--known, perhaps, to none but his
land-steward and solicitor, a grave gentleman who lived in Doncaster,
and drove about once a fortnight down to Mellish Park, much to the
horror of its light-hearted master, to whom "business" was a terrible
bugbear. Not that I would have the reader for a moment imagine John
Mellish an empty-headed blockhead, with no comprehension save for his
own daily pleasures. He was not a reading man, nor a business man,
nor a politician, nor a student of the natural sciences. There was an
observatory in the Park; but John had fitted it up as a smoking-room,
the revolving openings in the roof being very convenient for letting
out the effluvia of his guests' cheroots and Havanas; Mr. Mellish
caring for the stars very much after the fashion of that Assyrian
monarch who was content to see them shine, and thank their Maker for
their beauty. He was not a spiritualist; and unless one of the tables
at Mellish could have given him "a tip" for the "Sellinger," or Great
Ebor, he would have cared very little if every inch of walnut and
rosewood in his house had grown oracular. But for all this he was no
fool; he had that brightly clear intellect which very often accompanies
perfect honesty of purpose, and which is the very intellect of all
others most successful in the discomfiture of all knavery. He was not
a creature to despise, for his very weaknesses were manly. Perhaps
Aurora felt this, and that it was something to rule over such a man.
Sometimes, in an outburst of loving gratitude, she would nestle her
handsome head upon his breast,--tall as she was, she was only tall
enough to take shelter under his wing,--and tell him that he was the
dearest and the best of men, and that, although she might love him to
her dying day, she could never, _never_, NEVER love him half as much as
he deserved. After which, half ashamed of herself for the sentimental
declaration, she would alternately ridicule, lecture, and tyrannize
over him for the rest of the day.
Lucy beheld this state of things with silent bewilderment. Could the
woman who had once been loved by Talbot Bulstrode sink to _this?_ The
happy wife of a fair-haired Yorkshireman; with her fondest wishes
concentred in her namesake the bay filly, which was to run in a
weight-for-age race at the York Spring, and was entered for the ensuing
Derby; interested in a tan gallop, a new stable; talking of mysterious
but evidently all-important creatures, called by such names as Scott
and Fobert and Chiffney and Challoner; and to all appearance utterly
forgetful of the fact that there existed upon the earth a divinity with
fathomless gray eyes, known to mortals as the heir of Bulstrode. Poor
Lucy was like to have been driven well-nigh demented by the talk about
this bay filly, Aurora, as the Spring Meeting drew near. She was taken
to see her every morning by Aurora and John, who, in their anxiety for
the improvement of their favourite, looked at the animal upon each
visit as if they expected some wonderful physical transformation to
have occurred in the stillness of the night. The loose box in which
the filly was lodged was watched night and day by an amateur detective
force of stable-boys and hangers-on; and John Mellish once went so far
as to dip a tumbler into the pail of water provided for the bay filly,
Aurora, to ascertain, of his own experience, that the crystal fluid
was innocuous; for he grew nervous as the eventful day drew nigh, and
was afraid of lurking danger to the filly from dark-minded touts who
might have heard of her in London. I fear the touts troubled their
heads very little about this graceful two-year old, though she had
the blood of Old Melbourne and West Australian in her veins, to say
nothing of other aristocracy upon the maternal side. The suspicious
gentlemen hanging about York and Doncaster in those early April days
were a great deal too much occupied with Lord Glasgow's lot, and John
Scott's lot, and Lord Zetland's and Mr. Merry's lot, and other lots of
equal distinction, to have much time to prowl about Mellish Park, or
peer into that meadow which the young man had caused to be surrounded
by an eight-foot fence for the privacy of the Derby winner _in futuro._
Lucy declared the filly to be the loveliest of creatures, and safe to
win any number of cups and plates that might be offered for equine
competition; but she was always glad, when the daily visit was over,
to find herself safely out of reach of those high-bred hind-legs,
which seemed to possess a faculty for being in all four corners of the
loose-box at one and the same moment.
The first day of the Meeting came, and found half the Mellish
household established at York: John and his family at an hotel near
the betting-rooms; and the trainer, his satellites, and the filly,
at a little inn close to the Knavesmire. Archibald Floyd did his
best to be interested in the event which was so interesting to his
children; but he freely confessed to his grandniece, Lucy, that he
heartily wished the Meeting over, and the merits of the bay filly
decided. She had stood her trial nobly, John said; not winning with
a rush, it is true; in point of fact, being in a manner beaten; but
evincing a power to _stay_, which promised better for the future than
any two-year-old velocity. When the saddling-bell rang, Aurora, her
father, and Lucy were stationed in the balcony, a crowd of friends
about them; Mrs. Mellish, with a pencil in her hand, putting down
all manner of impossible bets in her excitement, and making such a
book as might have been preserved as a curiosity in sporting annals.
John was pushing in and out of the ring below; tumbling over small
book-men in his agitation; dashing from the ring to the weighing-house;
and hanging about the small pale-faced boy who was to ride the filly
as anxiously as if the jockey had been a prime minister, and John a
family-man with half a dozen sons in need of Government appointments.
I tremble to think how many bonuses, in the way of five-pound notes,
John promised this pale-faced lad, on condition that the stakes (some
small matter amounting to about sixty pounds) were pulled off--pulled
off where, I wonder?--by the bay filly Aurora. If the youth had
not been of that preternatural order of beings who seem born of an
emotionless character to wear silk for the good of their fellow-men,
his brain must certainly have been dazed by the variety of conflicting
directions which John Mellish gave him within the critical last quarter
of an hour; but having received his orders early that morning from
the trainer, accompanied with a warning not to suffer himself to be
_tewed_ (Yorkshire _patois_ for worried) by anything Mr. Mellish might
say, the sallow-complexioned lad walked about in the calm serenity of
innocence,--there are honest jockeys in the world,--and took his seat
in the saddle with as even a pulse as if he had been about to ride in
an omnibus.
There were some people upon the Stand that morning who thought the
face of Aurora Mellish as pleasant a sight as the smooth greensward
of the Knavesmire, or the best horse-flesh in the county of York. All
forgetful of herself in her excitement, with her natural vivacity
multiplied by the animation of the scene before her, she was more
than usually lovely; and Archibald Floyd looked at her with a fond
emotion, so intermingled with gratitude to Heaven for the happiness of
his daughter's destiny as to be almost akin to pain. She was happy;
she was thoroughly happy at last, this child of his dead Eliza, this
sacred charge left to him by the woman he had loved; she was happy, and
she was _safe;_ he could go to his grave resignedly to-morrow, if it
pleased God,--knowing this. Strange thoughts, perhaps, for a crowded
race-course; but our most solemn fancies do not come always in solemn
places. Nay, it is often in the midst of crowds and confusion that
our souls wing their loftiest flights, and the saddest memories return
to us. You see a man sitting at some theatrical entertainment, with a
grave, abstracted face, over which no change of those around him has
any influence. He may be thinking of his dead wife, dead ten years
ago; he may be acting over well-remembered scenes of joy and sorrow;
he may be recalling cruel words, never to be atoned for upon earth,
angry looks gone to be registered against him in the skies; while his
children are laughing at the clown on the stage below him. He may
be moodily meditating inevitable bankruptcy or coming ruin, holding
imaginary meetings with his creditors, and contemplating prussic
acid upon the refusal of his certificate, while his eldest daughter
is crying with Pauline Deschappelles. So Archibald Floyd, while the
numbers were going up, and the jockeys being weighed, and the book-men
clamouring below him, leaned over the broad ledge of the stone balcony,
and, looking far away across the grassy amphitheatre, thought of the
dead wife who had bequeathed to him this precious daughter.
The bay filly, Aurora, was beaten ignominiously. Mrs. Mellish turned
white with despair as she saw the amber jacket, black belt, and
blue cap crawling in at the heels of the ruck, the jockey looking
pale defiance at the bystanders: as who should say that the filly
had never been meant to win, and that the defeat of to-day was but
an artfully-concocted _ruse_ whereby fortunes were to be made in the
future? John Mellish, something used to such disappointments, crept
away to hide his discomfiture outside the ring; but Aurora dropped her
card and pencil, and, stamping her foot upon the stone flooring of the
balcony, told Lucy and the banker that it was a shame, and that the boy
must have sold the race, as it was _impossible_ the filly could have
been fairly beaten. As she turned to say this, her cheeks flushed with
passion, and her eyes flashing bright indignation on any one who might
stand in the way to receive the angry electric light, she became aware
of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes earnestly regarding her from
the threshold of an open window two or three paces off; and in another
moment both she and her father had recognized Talbot Bulstrode.
The young man saw that he was recognized, and approached them, hat in
hand,--very, very pale, as Lucy always remembered,--and, with a voice
that trembled as he spoke, wished the banker and the two ladies "Good
day."
And it was thus that they met, these two who had "parted in silence and
tears," more than "half broken-hearted," to sever, as they thought,
for eternity; it was thus--upon this commonplace, prosaic, half-guinea
Grand Stand--that Destiny brought them once more face to face.
A year ago, and how often in the spring twilight Aurora Floyd had
pictured her possible meeting with Talbot Bulstrode! He would come upon
her suddenly, perhaps, in the still moonlight, and she would swoon away
and die at his feet of the unendurable emotion. Or they would meet in
some crowded assembly; she dancing, laughing with hollow, simulated
mirth; and the shock of one glance of those eyes would slay her in
her painted glory of jewels and grandeur. How often, ah, how often
she had acted the scene and felt the anguish!--only a year ago, less
than a year ago, ay, even so lately as on that balmy September day
when she had lain on the rustic couch at the Château d'Arques, looking
down at the fair Normandy landscape, with faithful John at watch by
her side, the tame goats browsing upon the grassy platform behind
her, and preternaturally ancient French children teasing the mild,
long-suffering animals. And to-day she met him with her thoughts so
full of the horse which had just been beaten, that she scarcely knew
what she said to her sometime lover. Aurora Floyd was dead and buried,
and Aurora Mellish, looking critically at Talbot Bulstrode, wondered
how any one could have ever gone near to the gates of death for the
love of him.
It was Talbot who grew pale at this unlooked-for encounter; it was
Talbot whose voice was shaken in the utterance of those few every-day
syllables which common courtesy demanded of him. The captain had not
so easily learned to forget. He was older than Aurora, and he had
reached the age of two-and-thirty without having ever loved woman,
only to be the more desperately attacked by the fatal disease when
his time came. He suffered acutely at that sudden meeting. Wounded in
his pride by her serene indifference, dazzled afresh by her beauty,
mad with jealous fury at the thought that he had lost her, Captain
Bulstrode's feelings were of no very enviable nature; and if Aurora had
ever wished to avenge that cruel scene at Felden Woods, her hour of
vengeance had most certainly come. But she was too generous a creature
to have harboured such a thought. She had submitted in all humility to
Talbot's decree; she had accepted his decision, and had believed in
its justice; and seeing his agitation to-day, she was sorry for him.
She pitied him, with a tender, matronly compassion; such as she, in
the safe harbour of a happy home, might be privileged to feel for this
poor wanderer, still at sea on life's troubled ocean. Love, and the
memory of love, must indeed have died before we can feel like this. The
terrible passion must have died that slow and certain death, from the
grave of which no haunting ghost ever returns to torment the survivors.
It was, and it is not. Aurora might have been shipwrecked and cast on
a desert island with Talbot Bulstrode, and might have lived ten years
in his company, without ever feeling for ten seconds as she had felt
for him once. With these impetuous and impressionable people, who live
quickly, a year is sometimes as twenty years; so Aurora looked back at
Talbot Bulstrode across a gulf which stretched for weary miles between
them, and wondered if they had really ever stood side by side, allied
by Hope and Love, in the days that were gone.
While Aurora was thinking of these things, as well as a little of
the bay filly, and while Talbot, half choked by a thousand confused
emotions, tried to appear preternaturally at his ease, John Mellish,
having refreshed his spirits with bottled beer, came suddenly upon the
party, and slapped the captain on the back.
_He_ was not jealous, this happy John. Secure in his wife's love and
truth, he was ready to face a regiment of her old admirers; indeed,
he rather delighted in the idea of avenging Aurora upon this cowardly
lover. Talbot glanced involuntarily at the members of the York
constabulary on the course below; wondering how they would act if he
were to fling John Mellish over the stone balcony, and do a murder then
and there. He was thinking this while John was nearly wringing off his
hand in cordial salutation, and asking what the deuce had brought him
to the York Spring.
Talbot explained rather lamely that, being knocked up by his
Parliamentary work, he had come down to spend a few days with an old
brother-officer, Captain Hunter, who had a place between York and Leeds.
Mr. Mellish declared that nothing could be more lucky than this. He
knew Hunter well; the two men must join them at dinner that day; and
Talbot must give them a week at the Park after he left the captain's
place.
Talbot murmured some vague protestation of the impossibility of this,
to which John paid no attention whatever, hustling his sometime rival
away from the ladies in his eagerness to get back to the ring, where he
had to complete his book for the next race.
So Captain Bulstrode was gone once more, and throughout the brief
interview no one had cared to notice Lucy Floyd, who had been pale and
red by turns half a dozen times within the last ten minutes.
John and Talbot returned after the start, with Captain Hunter, who was
brought on to the stand to be presented to Aurora, and who immediately
entered into a very animated discussion upon the day's racing. How
Captain Bulstrode abhorred this idle babble of horse-flesh; this
perpetual jargon, alike in every mouth--from Aurora's rosy Cupid's bow
to the tobacco-tainted lips of the book-men in the ring! Thank Heaven,
this was not _his_ wife who knew all the slang of the course, and, with
_lorgnette_ in hand, was craning her swan-like throat to catch sight of
a bend in the Knavesmire and the horse that had a lead of half a mile.
Why had he ever consented to come into this accursed horse-racing
county? Why had he deserted the Cornish miners, even for a week? Better
to be wearing out his brains over Dryasdust pamphlets and Parliamentary
minutes than to be here; desolate amongst this shallow-minded,
clamorous multitude, who have nothing to do but to throw up caps and
cry huzza for any winner of any race. Talbot, as a bystander, could
not but remark this, and draw from this something of a philosophical
lesson on life. He saw that there was always the same clamour and the
same rejoicing in the crowd, whether the winning jockey wore blue and
black belt, yellow and black cap, white with scarlet spots, or any
other variety of colour, even to dismal sable; and he could but wonder
how this was. Did the unlucky speculators run away and hide themselves
while the uplifted voices were rejoicing? When the welkin was rent with
the name of Caractacus or Tim Whiffler, where were the men who had
backed Buckstone or the Marquis unflinchingly up to the dropping of the
flag and the ringing of the bell? When Thormanby came in with a rush,
where were the wretched creatures whose fortunes hung on "the Yankee"
or Wizard? They were voiceless, these poor unlucky ones, crawling
away with sick white faces to gather in groups, and explain to each
other, with stable jargon intermingled with oaths, how the victory
just over ought not to have been, and never could have been, but for
some un-looked-for and preposterous combination of events never before
witnessed upon any mortal course. How little is ever seen of the losers
in any of the great races run upon this earth! For years and years the
name of Louis Napoleon is an empty sound, signifying nothing; when,
lo, a few master strokes of policy and _finesse_, a little juggling
with those pieces of pasteboard out of which are built the shaky
card-palaces men call empires, and creation rings with the same name;
the outsider emerges from the ruck, and the purple jacket spotted with
golden bees is foremost in the mighty race.
Talbot Bulstrode leaned with folded arms upon the stone balustrade,
looking down at the busy life below him, and thinking of these things.
Pardon him for his indulgence in dreary platitudes and worn-out
sentimentalities. He was a desolate, purposeless man; entered for
no race himself; scratched for the matrimonial stakes; embittered
by disappointment; soured by doubt and suspicion. He had spent the
dull winter months upon the Continent, having no mind to go down to
Bulstrode to encounter his mother's sympathy and his cousin Constance
Trevyllian's chatter. He was unjust enough to nourish a secret dislike
to that young lady for the good service she had done him by revealing
Aurora's flight.
Are we ever really grateful to the people who tell us of the iniquity
of those we love? Are we ever really just to the kindly creatures who
give us friendly warning of our danger? No, never! We hate them; always
involuntarily reverting to them as the first causes of our anguish;
always repeating to ourselves that, had they been silent, that anguish
need never have been; always ready to burst forth in our wild rage with
the mad cry, that "it is better to be much abused than but to know't a
little." When the friendly Ancient drops his poisoned hints into poor
Othello's ear, it is not Mistress Desdemona, but Iago himself, whom
the noble Moor first has a mind to strangle. If poor innocent Constance
Trevyllian had been born the veriest cur in the county of Cornwall, she
would have had a better chance of winning Talbot's regard than she had
now.
Why had he come into Yorkshire? I left that question unanswered just
now, for I am ashamed to tell the reasons which actuated this unhappy
man. He came, in a paroxysm of curiosity, to learn what kind of life
Aurora led with her husband, John Mellish. He had suffered horrible
distractions of mind upon this subject; one moment imagining her the
most despicable of coquettes, ready to marry any man who had a fair
estate and a good position to offer her, and by-and-by depicting her
as some white-robed Iphigenia, led a passive victim to the sacrificial
shrine. So, when happening to meet his goodnatured brother-officer
at the United Service Club, he had consented to run down to Captain
Hunter's country place, for a brief respite from Parliamentary minutes
and red-tape, the artful hypocrite had never owned to himself that he
was burning to hear tidings of his false and fickle love, and that it
was some lingering fumes of the old intoxication that carried him down
to Yorkshire. But now, now that he met her--met her, the heartless,
abominable creature, radiant and happy--mere simulated happiness and
feverish mock radiance, no doubt, but too well put on to be quite
pleasing to him,--_now he knew her._ He knew her at last, the wicked
enchantress, the soulless siren. He knew that she had never loved
him; that she was of course powerless to love; good for nothing but
to wreath her white arms and flash the dark splendour of her eyes for
weak man's destruction; fit for nothing but to float in her beauty
above the waves that concealed the bleached bones of her victims. Poor
John Mellish! Talbot reproached himself for his hardness of heart in
nourishing one spiteful feeling towards a man who was so deeply to be
pitied.
When the race was done, Captain Bulstrode turned, and beheld the
black-eyed sorceress in the midst of a group gathered about a grave
Patriarch with gray hair and the look of one accustomed to command.
This grave Patriarch was John Pastern.
I write his name with respect, even as it was reverentially whispered
there, till, travelling from lip to lip, every one present knew that
a great man was amongst them. A very quiet, unassuming veteran,
sitting with his womankind about him,--his wife and daughter, as I
think,--self-possessed and grave, while men were busy with his name in
the crowd below, and while tens of thousands were staked in trusting
dependence on his acumen. What golden syllables might have fallen from
those oracular lips, had the veteran been so pleased! What hundreds
would have been freely bidden for a word, a look, a nod, a wink, a mere
significant pursing-up of the lips from that great man! What is the
fable of the young lady who discoursed pearls and diamonds to a truth
such as this? Pearls and diamonds must be of large size which would
be worth the secrets of those Richmond stables, the secrets which Mr.
Pastern might tell if he chose. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this
which gives him a calm, almost clerical, gravity of manner. People
come to him and fawn upon him, and tell him that such and such a horse
from his stable has won, or looks safe to win; and he nods pleasantly,
thanking them for the kind information; while perhaps his thoughts are
far away on Epsom Downs or Newmarket Heath, winning future Derbys and
Two Thousands with colts that are as yet unfoaled.
John Mellish is on intimate terms with the great man, to whom he
presents Aurora, and of whom he asks advice upon a matter that has been
troubling him for some time. His trainer's health is failing him, and
he wants assistance in the stables; a younger man, honest and clever.
Does Mr. Pastern know such a one?
The veteran tells him, after due consideration, that he does know of
a young man; honest, he believes, as times go, who was once employed
in the Richmond stables, and who had written to him only a few days
before, asking for his influence in getting him a situation. "But the
lad's name has slipped my memory," added Mr. Pastern; "he was but a lad
when he was with me; but, bless my soul, that's ten years ago! I'll
look up his letter, when I go home, and write to you about him. I know
he's clever, and I believe he's honest; and I shall be only too happy,"
concluded the old gentleman, gallantly, "to do anything to oblige Mrs.
Mellish."
END OF VOL. I.