Andy Meehan was a jockey who had already won Mr. French three races. He
was a product of the estate, and a prodigy, though by no means an
infant.
Nobody knew his age exactly. Under five feet, composed mostly of bone
with a little skin stretched tightly over it, with a face that his cap
nearly obliterated, Andy presented a problem in physiology very
difficult of solution. That is to say, in Mr. French's words, the more
he ate the lighter he grew. In the old days, before Mr. French took him
into his stable as helper, when food was scarce and Andy half-starved,
he was comparatively fat. Housed and fed well, he waxed thin, and
kicked. Kicked for a better job, and got it. He was a Heaven-born
jockey. He possessed hands, knees, and head. He was made to go on a
horse just as a limpet is made to go on a rock. Nothing on the ground,
he was everything when mounted. He was insight, dexterity, coolness,
courage, and judgment.
Several owners had tried to lure Andy away from his master. Prospects of
good pay and advancement, however, had no charm for Andy. French was his
master, and to all alien offers Andy had only one reply. "To h----l wid
them." I doubt if Andy's vocabulary had more than two hundred words.
Except to Mr. French or Moriarty he was very speechless. "Yes" and "No"
for ordinary purposes, and when he was vexed, "To h----l wid you,"
served his almost everyday needs.
Last night he had single-handed taken Nip and Tuck to the station, and
entrained them, returning on foot, and this morning he was mending an
old saddle in the sunshine of the stableyard when Mr. French appeared at
the gate. Mr. French had come out of the house without his hat. He had a
cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. He gave some
directions to Andy to be handed on to Moriarty when that personage
arrived, and then with his own hand opened the upper door of a
loose-box.
A lovely head was thrust out. It was Garryowen's. The eye so full of
kindliness and fire, the mobile nostrils telling of delicate
sensibilities and fine feeling, the nobility and intelligence that spoke
in every line of that delicately-cut head--these had to be seen to be
understood.
Garryowen was more than a horse to Mr. French. He was a friend, and more
even than that. Garryowen was to pull the family fortunes out of the
mire, to raise the family name, to crown his master with laurels.
Garryowen was French's last card on which he was about to speculate his
last penny. In simpler language, he was to run in the City and Suburban
in the ensuing year and to win it. I dare say you have already gathered
the fact that Mr. French's financial affairs were rather involved. The
Nip and Tuck incident, however, was only a straw showing the direction
of the wind, which threatened in a few months to strengthen into a gale.
Only an incident--for the debt to Harrison was not considerable, and it
would not require more than a week or so to collect the money to satisfy
it.
The bother to Mr. French was that in the spring of next year he would
have to find fifteen hundred pounds to satisfy the claims of a gentleman
named Lewis, and how he was to do this and at the same time bear the
expense of getting the horse to England and running him was a question
quite beyond solution at present.
Not only had the horse to be run, but he had to be backed.
French had decided to win the City and Suburban. He wished sometimes now
that he had made Punchestown the limit of his desires; but having come
to a decision, this gentleman never went back on it. Besides, he would
never have so good a chance again of winning a big English race and a
fortune at the same time, for Garryowen was a dark horse, if ever a
horse was dark, and a flyer, if ever a creature without wings deserved
the title.
"Oh, bother the money! We'll get it somehow," French would say, closing
his bank-book and tearing up the sheet of note-paper on which he had
been making figures. He calculated that, gathering together all his
resources, he would have enough to run the horse and back him for a
thousand. To do this he would have to perform the most intricate
evolutions in the borrowing line. It could be done, however, if Lewis
were left out of the calculation.
The fifteen hundred owing to Lewis was a debt which would have to be
paid by the third of March, and the City and Suburban is run in April.
If it were not paid then Lewis would seize Garryowen with the rest of
Mr. French's goods, and that unfortunate gentleman would be stranded so
high and dry that he would never swim again.
The one bright spot in his affairs was the fact that Effie had two
hundred and fifty a year, settled on her so tightly by a prescient
grandfather that no art or artifice could unsettle it or fling it into
the melting-pot.
This was French's pet grievance, and by a man's pet grievance you may
generally know him.
Garryowen blew into his master's waistcoat, allowed his ears to be
stroked, nibbled a lump of sugar, and replied to some confidential
remarks of his owner by a subdued, flickering whinny. Then Mr. French
barred the door, and, leaving the stableyard, came out into the
kitchen-garden, whence a good view could be had of the road.
The adventure of the governess on the preceding night had greatly
tickled his fancy. The idea of a sedate, elderly lady assisting, even
unwillingly, in the marooning of the bailiff, had amused him, but that
was nothing to the fact that Moriarty had used her for bait.
This morning, however, the amusement had worn off, and he was reckoning
uncomfortably on an interview with an outraged elderly female, who would
possibly carry her resentment to the point of renouncing her situation
and returning home.
He looked at his watch. It pointed to half-past ten. He looked at the
road winding away, a white streak utterly destitute of life or sign of
Moriarty, the car, or the dreaded governess. The fine weather still
held, and the distant hills stood out grand in the brave morning light.
The gossoon sent by Moriarty the previous day had announced that
Moriarty was going to drive the bailiff to the "ould castle" and drop
him there, at the same time giving full details of the plan. The arrival
of the outraged bailiff had to be counted on later in the day, and
would, no doubt, form a counterpart to the arrival of the outraged
governess.
To a man of French's philosophical nature, however, these things were,
to quote Sophocles, "in the future," non-existent at present and not
worth bothering about till they materialised themselves.
As he stood, casting a leisurely glance over the great sweep of country
that lay before him, a black, moving speck far away on the road caught
his eye. He watched it as it drew nearer and developed. It was the car.
He shaded his eyes as it approached. Three people were on it--Moriarty
and two others, a woman and a man.
The idea that the bailiff and the governess were arriving together,
allied forces prepared to attack him, crossed his brain for one wild
instant. Then he dismissed it. Moriarty was much too clever a diplomat
to allow such a thing as that.
Then as the car came up the drive he saw that the woman was a young and
pretty girl, and the man youthful and well dressed, and, concluding that
the governess had vanished into thin air, and that these were visitors
of some sort, he hurried back to the house and shouted for Norah, the
parlour-maid.
"Open the drawing-room and pull up the blinds," cried Mr. French.
"There's visitors coming. Let them in, and tell them I'll be down in a
minute."
He ran upstairs to make himself tidy, being at the moment attired in a
shocking old shooting-coat gone at the elbows, and as to his feet, in a
pair of carpet slippers.
As he changed he heard the visitors being admitted, and then Norah came
tumbling up the stairs and thumped at his door.
"They're in the draaing-room, sir!"
"All right," said Mr. French. "I'll be down in a minute."
Mr. Dashwood and his companion had breakfasted together at the inn. The
double Freemasonry of youth and health had made the meal a happy affair,
despite the teapot with a broken spout, the bad, sad, salt bacon, and
the tea that tasted like a decoction of mahogany shavings.
It was Miss Grimshaw who proposed that, as Mr. Dashwood was going to see
his friend, and as she was bound on the same errand, they might use the
same car.
Moriarty, who was consulted, consented with alacrity.
"He's not turned up yet, miss," said Moriarty, as he held the horse
while Miss Grimshaw got on the car.
"I wonder what's become of him?" said the girl, settling the rug on her
knees.
"Faith, and I expect he's wonderin' that himself," said Moriarty, taking
the reins; "unless he's tuck a short cut across the country and landed
in a bog-hole." All of which was Greek to Mr. Dashwood.
In the drawing-room of Drumgool House they were now awaiting the arrival
of Mr. French.
"I say," said Mr. Dashwood. "I hope he is the man I met in London."
"I hope so, too," said the girl, looking round the quaint old room, with
its potpourri vases, its antimacassars, its furniture of a distant day.
The place smelt like an old valentine with a tinge of musk clinging to
it. Pretty women had once sat here, had played on that rosewood piano
whose voice was like the voice of a harp in the bass, like a banjo in
the treble; had woven antimacassars, had read the romances of Mr.
Richardson, had waited for the gentlemen after dinner, the
claret-flushed gentlemen whose cheery voices would be heard no more.
"I hope so, too," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'm all right, for I'm the
governess, you know. If he isn't, it will look very strange us arriving
together, so you must explain, please. Are you good at explaining
things?"
"Rather! I say, is he a family man? I mean, are there a lot of
children?"
"No. Mr. French has only one little daughter, an invalid. I'm not a real
governess. I don't take a salary, and all that. I've just come over
to---- Well, I want a home for a while, and I want to see Ireland."
"Strikes me you'll see a lot of it here," said Mr. Dashwood, looking out
at the vast solitudes to the east, where the hills stood ranged like
armed men guarding a country where the bird shadow and the cloud shadow
were the only moving things.
"Yes," said Miss Grimshaw, and yawned. She liked Mr. Dashwood, but his
light-hearted conversation just now rather palled upon her.
"And won't you catch it in the winter here?" said he, as he watched
Croag Mahon, a giant monolith, sunlit a moment ago, and now wreathing
itself with mist just as a lady wreathes herself with a filmy scarf.
"What on earth will you do with yourself when it rains?"
"I don't know," replied Miss Grimshaw. "Don't be gloomy. Ah!"
The door opened, and Mr. French entered the room--a gentleman that Bobby
Dashwood had never seen in his life before.