"You're right," said French. "Faith, the horse has nearly driven
everything else out of my mind. It's a queer business the way that girl
come to my house and saved my fortune. I tell you straight, she put the
come'ither on me so that I'd follow her through the black bog itself, if
she beckoned me, with both eyes shut. She's a jewel, begad, she's a
jewel! Look, now, at what she's done for me--saved and scraped, put me
on an allowance of pocket-money--she did that--kept the house together;
and it was she put the idea of taking the horse away from Drumgool into
my head. Then, again, only for her you would never have come about the
place, and what have you done? Why, you've saved me twice and three
times over. My dear boy," burst out French, seizing Mr. Dashwood's hand,
"it's you that's been the making of me, for if you hadn't nobbled that
black beast of a Giveen, I'd have been done for entirely, and I hope
she'll have you and make you happy."
"It's all a toss up," said Mr. Dashwood, as he wrung French's hand. "You
never know what a woman will do, and, I tell you this, if she chucks me,
and if you--if you--well, as a matter of fact, if you marry her, I'll
forget I ever cared for her, and we'll all be friends just as we've
always been."
"You say you are going to write to her?"
"Yes. I'm going to write now."
"Well, then," said French, "I'll do the same and write to her myself."
* * * * *
On the morning of the 13th, when the men had departed, Mr. French for
Epsom, with the horse, and Mr. Dashwood to Hollborough to bail out the
bailiff, Miss Grimshaw found herself alone and, for the first time in
many months, lonely. The society of women can never make up to a woman
for the society of men, and the society of men can never make up to a
man for the society of women. French and Dashwood had taken away a
genial something with them; the place seemed deserted.
She had grown fond of them both, extremely fond of them, and if she had
cross-questioned herself on the subject, she could not have discovered,
I think, which man she cared for most as a companion. Bobby Dashwood had
youth on his side, and youth appeals to youth; but then French had
experience--though it had never done him much good--and personality.
There was a lot of sunlight about Michael French; one felt better for
his presence, and, though he would knock a man down for two pins, though
he made sport out of debt and debts over sport, and drank whisky enough
to shock the modern tea-and-toast and barley-water man, he was a
Christian when it came to practice, and a friend whom no disaster could
alienate.
I cannot help lingering over him, for he belongs to a race of men who
are growing fewer in an age when coldness and correctness of character
veil, without in the least diminishing, the essential brutality and
savagery of man.
Miss Grimshaw, left to herself, made a tour of the rooms, set Effie some
sums to keep her quiet, and then retired into the sitting-room and shut
the door.
It was now that the really desperate condition of things that underlay
the comedy of Garryowen appeared before her unveiled.
"If the horse does not win?"
The ruin that those six words have so often postulated, rank, raw, cold,
and brutal, rose before her. Horses, cards, dice, wine, tobacco--one's
dislike of the Pipers who cry these down is accentuated by the truth
that underlies their piping.
They are the prophets of the awful telegram which heralds the misery,
the pinching, and the poverty that will grip you and your wife and your
children till you are in your coffins. They are the prophets of the
white dawn that shines into your rooms at Oxford when the men are gone,
shines on the card-strewn floor where, like a fallen house of cards,
lies the once fair future of a man. They are the physicians who prognose
inefficiency, failure, old-age at forty--mental death.
Effie would have two hundred a year. Nothing could touch that. But what
of the jovial French? She knew enough of his financial affairs to know
that he would be absolutely and utterly ruined.
Tears welled to her eyes for a moment; then she brushed them away, and
her colour heightened. Enthusiasm suddenly filled her; the desperate
nature of the adventure appealed to her adventurous soul. Never did a
doubter do any great work or carry any high adventure to a successful
close. Garryowen would win! She felt that to doubt it would be the act
of a traitor, and to believe it would help the event.
Shortly after three the dog-cart hired at the inn for the purpose of
bailing out Mr. Piper arrived with Mr. Dashwood and his charge.
Mr. Piper looked literally as though he had been bailed out. The
unfortunate man, besides receiving a severe rebuke from the magistrates,
had been fined two pounds, which Mr. Dashwood had paid.
In Mr. Piper's morning reflections, conducted in the police cell at
Crowsnest, he had recognised his false position, and the uselessness of
kicking against the pricks.
He knew full well the ridicule that attends the unfortunate who tries to
explain away the reason of his drunkenness; to say that he had been made
tipsy by force would, even if it obtained his discharge, be so
noticeable a statement that the London Press would be sure to seize upon
it. If the horses had been taken away, it would be far better to put the
fact down to the evasion having been effected whilst he was asleep, and
as he had some money about him, he felt sure of being able to pay any
fine that might be inflicted on him. He was unconscious of the fact that
he had kicked the constable.
Mr. Dashwood, having released him, paid his fine, and given him some
soda-water at the Hollborough inn, sketched for him the true position of
affairs, making him understand that the horse, once the race was over,
would be religiously brought back, and that the only course for him in
the midst of these circumstances was to return to The Martens, accept
its hospitality, and wait.
Having left him there, the young man, after a short interview with Miss
Grimshaw, returned to London.