Trent had done many brave things in his life, but he had never been
conscious of such a distinct thrill of nervousness as he experienced
during those few minutes' silence. Ernestine, for her part, was
curiously exercised in her mind. He had shaken her faith in his
guilt--he had admitted her to his point of view. She judged herself from
his standpoint, and the result was unpleasant. She had a sudden impulse
to tell him the truth, to reveal her identity, tell him her reasons for
concealment. Perhaps her suspicions had been hasty. Then the personal
note in his last speech had produced a serious effect on her, and all
the time she felt that her silence was emboldening him, as indeed it
was.
“The first time I saw you,” he went on, “the likeness struck me. I felt
as though I were meeting some one whom I had known all my life.”
She laughed a little uneasily. “And you found yourself instead the
victim of an interviewer! What a drop from the romantic to the prosaic!”
“There has never been any drop at all,” he answered firmly, “and you
have always seemed to me the same as that picture--something quite
precious and apart from my life. It's been a poor sort of thing perhaps.
I came from the people, I never had any education, I was as rough as
most men of my sort, and I have done many things which I would sooner
cut off my right hand than do again. But that was when I lived in the
darkness. It was before you came.”
“Mr. Trent, will you take me back to Lady Tresham, please?”
“In a moment,” he answered gravely. “Don't think that I am going to be
too rash. I know the time hasn't come yet. I am not going to say any
more. Only I want you to know this. The whole success of my life is as
nothing compared with the hope of one day--”
“I will not hear another word,” she interrupted hastily, and underneath
her white veil he could see a scarlet spot of colour in her cheeks; in
her speech, too, there was a certain tremulousness. “If you will not
come with me I must find Lady Tresham alone.”
They turned round, but as they neared the middle of the paddock progress
became almost impossible. The bell had rung for the principal race of
the day and the numbers were going up. The paddock was crowded with
others beside loiterers, looking the horses over and stolidly pushing
their way through the little groups to the front rank. From Tattersall's
came the roar of clamorous voices. All around were evidences of that
excitement which always precedes a great race.
“I think,” he said, “that we had better watch the race from these
railings. Your gown will be spoilt in the crowd if we try to get out of
the paddock, and you probably wouldn't get anywhere in time to see it.”
She acquiesced silently, recognising that, although he had not alluded
to it in words, he had no intention of saying anything further at
present. Trent, who had been looking forward to the next few minutes
with all the eagerness of a man who, for the first time in his life,
runs the favourite in a great race, smiled as he realised how very
content he was to stay where nothing could be seen until the final
struggle was over. They took up their places side by side and leaned
over the railing.
“Have you much money on Iris?” she asked.
“A thousand both ways,” he answered. “I don't plunge, but as I backed
her very early I got 10 to 1 and 7 to 2. Listen! They're off!”
There was a roar from across the course, followed by a moment's
breathless silence. The clamour of voices from Tattersall's subsided,
and in its place rose the buzz of excitement from the stands, the murmur
of many voices gradually growing in volume. Far away down the straight
Ernestine and Trent, leaning over the rail, could see the little
coloured specks come dancing into sight. The roar of voices once more
beat upon the air.
“Nero the Second wins!”
“The favourite's done!”
“Nero the Second for a monkey!”
“Nero the Second romps in!”
“Iris! Iris! Iris wins!”
It was evident from the last shout and the gathering storm of excitement
that, after all, it was to be a race. They were well in sight now; Nero
the Second and Iris, racing neck-and-neck, drawing rapidly away from
the others. The air shook with the sound of hoarse and fiercely excited
voices.
“Nero the Second wins!”
“Iris wins!”
Neck-and-neck they passed the post. So it seemed at least to Ernestine
and many others, but Trent shook his head and looked at her with a
smile.
“Iris was beaten by a short neck,” he said. “Good thing you didn't back
her. That's a fine horse of the Prince's, though!”
“I'm so sorry,” she cried. “Are you sure?”
He nodded and pointed to the numbers which were going up. She flashed a
sudden look upon him which more than compensated him for his defeat.
At least he had earned her respect that day, as a man who knew how to
accept defeat gracefully. They walked slowly up the paddock and stood on
the edge of the crowd, whilst a great person went out to meet his horse
amidst a storm of cheering. It chanced that he caught sight of Trent on
the way, and, pausing for a moment, he held out his hand.
“Your horse made a magnificent fight for it, Mr. Trent,” he said. “I'm
afraid I only got the verdict by a fluke. Another time may you be the
fortunate one!”
Trent answered him simply, but without awkwardness. Then his horse came
in and he held out his hand to the crestfallen jockey, whilst with his
left he patted Iris's head.
“Never mind, Dick,” he said cheerfully, “you rode a fine race and the
best horse won. Better luck next time.”
Several people approached Trent, but he turned away at once to
Ernestine.
“You will let me take you to Lady Tresham now,” he said.
“If you please,” she answered quietly.
They left the paddock by the underground way. When they emerged upon
the lawn the band was playing and crowds of people were strolling about
under the trees.
“The boxes,” Trent suggested, “must be very hot now!”
He turned down a side-walk away from the stand towards an empty
seat under an elm-tree, and, after a moment's scarcely perceptible
hesitation, she followed his lead. He laughed softly to himself. If this
was defeat, what in the world was better?
“This is your first Ascot, is it not?” she asked.
“My first!”
“And your first defeat?”
“I suppose it is,” he admitted cheerfully. “I rather expected to win,
too.”
“You must be very disappointed, I am afraid.”
“I have lost,” he said thoughtfully, “a gold cup. I have gained--”
She half rose and shook out her skirts as though about to leave him. He
stopped short and found another conclusion to his sentence.
“Experience!”
A faint smile parted her lips. She resumed her seat.
“I am glad to find you,” she said, “so much of a philosopher. Now talk
to me for a few minutes about what you have been doing in Africa.”
He obeyed her, and very soon she forgot the well dressed crowd of
men and women by whom they were surrounded, the light hum of gay
conversation, the band which was playing the fashionable air of the
moment. She saw instead the long line of men of many races, stripped to
the waist and toiling as though for their lives under a tropical sun,
she saw the great brown water-jars passed down the line, men fainting
beneath the burning sun and their places taken by others. She heard the
shrill whistle of alarm, the beaten drum; she saw the spade exchanged
for the rifle, and the long line of toilers disappear behind the natural
earthwork which their labours had created. She saw black forms rise
stealthily from the long, rank grass, a flight of quivering spears, the
horrid battle-cry of the natives rang in her ears. The whole drama of
the man's great past rose up before her eyes, made a living and real
thing by his simple but vigorous language. That he effaced himself
from it went for nothing; she saw him there perhaps more clearly than
anything else, the central and domineering figure, a man of brains and
nerve who, with his life in his hands, faced with equal immovability
a herculean task and the chances of death. Certain phrases in Fred's
letter had sunk deep into her mind, they were recalled very vividly by
the presence of the man himself, telling his own story. She sat in the
sunlight with the music in her ears, listening to his abrupt, vivid
speech, and a fear came to her which blanched her cheeks and caught at
her throat. The hand which held her dainty parasol of lace shook, and an
indescribable thrill ran through her veins. She could no more think
of this man as a clodhopper, a coarse upstart without manners or
imagination. In many ways he fell short of all the usual standards by
which the men of her class were judged, yet she suddenly realised that
he possessed a touch of that quality which lifted him at once far over
their heads. The man had genius. Without education or culture he had yet
achieved greatness. By his side the men who were passing about on the
lawn became suddenly puppets. Form and style, manners and easy speech
became suddenly stripped of their significance to her. The man at her
side had none of these things, yet he was of a greater world. She felt
her enmity towards him suddenly weakened. Only her pride now could
help her. She called upon it fiercely. He was the man whom she had
deliberately believed to be guilty of her father's death, the man whom
she had set herself to entrap. She brushed all those other thoughts away
and banished firmly that dangerous kindness of manner into which she had
been drifting.
And he, on his part, felt a glow of keen pleasure when he realised how
the events of the day had gone in his favour. If not yet of her world,
he knew now that his becoming so would be hereafter purely a matter of
time. He looked up through the green leaves at the blue sky, bedappled
with white, fleecy clouds, and wondered whether she guessed that his
appearance here, his ownership of Iris, the studious care with which he
had placed himself in the hands of a Saville Row tailor were all for her
sake. It was true that she had condescended to Bohemianism, that he had
first met her as a journalist, working for her living in a plain serge
suit and a straw hat. But he felt sure that this had been to a certain
extent a whim with her. He stole a sidelong glance at her--she was
the personification of daintiness from the black patent shoes showing
beneath the flouncing of her skirt, to the white hat with its clusters
of roses. Her foulard gown was as simple as genius could make it, and
she wore no ornaments, save a fine clasp to her waistband of dull gold,
quaintly fashioned, and the fine gold chain around her neck, from which
hung her racing-glasses. She was to him the very type of everything
aristocratic. It might be, as she had told him, that she chose to work
for her living, but he knew as though by inspiration that her people and
connections were of that world to which he could never belong, save
on sufferance. He meant to belong to it, for her sake--to win her! He
admitted the presumption, but then it would be presumption of any man to
lift his eyes to her. He estimated his chances with common sense; he
was not a man disposed to undervalue himself. He knew the power of his
wealth and his advantage over the crowd of young men who were her equals
by birth. For he had met some of them, had inquired into their lives,
listened to their jargon, and had come in a faint sort of way to
understand them. It had been an encouragement to him. After all it was
only serious work, life lived out face to face with the great realities
of existence which could make a man. In a dim way he realised that there
were few in her own class likely to satisfy Ernestine. He even dared to
tell himself that those things which rendered him chiefly unfit for her,
the acquired vulgarities of his rougher life, were things which he
could put away; that a time would come when he would take his place
confidently in her world, and that the end would be success. And all the
while from out of the blue sky Fate was forging a thunderbolt to launch
against him!