CHAPTER IX.—SIR SYKES’S WARD.

There may be pleasanter positions in life than that of a dependant, especially when the claim to make one of the household rests on conditions which it is impossible to define. The governess, who is so often held up by moralists as an object for our conventional pity, needs not, surely, to forfeit her self-respect, inasmuch as she earns her salary and its contingent benefits by honest labour. The companion too gives valuable consideration in the shape of a perpetual offering up of her own time, tastes, and wishes, for her pay and maintenance. There are others sometimes however, kindred strangers within the rich man’s gates, who have no ostensible tasks to perform, who cannot give monthly or quarterly notice and go away, and yet whose bread is sometimes made very bitter to them—white slaves who get no compassion from the world at large.

Miss Willis at Carbery Chase was oddly situated. An orphan, she found herself domiciled amongst those who were allied to her neither by blood nor by the still more tenacious tie of common and early associations. She was exempt of course under that roof from many of the annoyances which fall to the lot of the motherless elsewhere. There was no domineering mistress of the house to resent every attention shewn to the interloper as something deducted from the rightful due of her own matchless girls; no niggard to grudge her every meal of which she partook at the stinted family table; or tyrant to pile upon her submissive shoulders the never-ending load of petty cares, which some genteel drudges perform unthanked.

At Carbery there was plenty and to spare. Sir Sykes was a gentleman bland and courteous; the girls as kind good girls as could easily be met with; and the servants sufficiently well trained to take their cue from their employers, and to be civil to one who was smiled on by the higher powers. Yet a sensitive young lady in the position which Sir Sykes’s ward now occupied, might well have been excused if her heart at times was somewhat heavy. All her old habits of life had been in a moment uprooted. She had been suddenly transferred from familiar scenes and people whose ways she understood, to a country every feature of which must have been strange and new to her. Under the circumstances and in spite of the good-nature of those around her, it is not surprising if Ruth Willis at times looked sad and pensive.

‘You cannot think how wonderful it seemed to me at first,’ she said one day to the younger Miss Denzil, ‘not to hear the drums beat tattoo at sundown, or how often I have started from my pillow in the early morning, fancying that I heard again the bugles sounding for the parade. Then the trumpeting of the elephants beside the tank, and the shrill voices of the dusky children at play beneath the peepul trees, and all the sights and sounds about my old home in India—I can’t forget them yet.’

Blanche was sympathetic; but she felt rather than reasoned that the grief for a father’s loss, the regrets for friends abruptly quitted and a mode of life abandoned, could not be assuaged merely by a kiss and a kind word. Yet it was evident that Ruth was by no means disposed to play the part of a kill-joy in the house beneath whose roof she was now established, or to enact the martyr. Her manner was very soft and gentle, not obtrusively sad or unduly deferential, but that of one who sincerely wishes to please. She had a way of bending her will as it were to that of those with whom she now associated, which was really very pretty and graceful, and harmonised well with the modest drooping of her eyelids when she spoke. There were times (so her ill-wishers said, the latter being some of those vigilant critics who take our wage and wear our livery, or it may be caps and aprons and cotton prints such as we sanction, but who are not always too lenient censors of our conduct) when her whole face seemed to change its expression by the mere opening of the fine dark eyes fraught with a singular look, which the same critics averred to be that of ill-temper. But if Miss Willis had not, as Lucy and Blanche Denzil believed her to have, the temper of a lamb, it must be admitted that she was capable of very great self-restraint, since in general conversation she was only too ready to acquiesce with the opinions of others. Jasper had observed the singular brightening of Ruth’s eyes sometimes, when she turned them on Sir Sykes, but never towards himself; while his unsuspecting sisters saw no peculiarity in the bearing of the stranger whom they had learned to like.

‘I could really believe,’ said Jasper to himself more than once, ‘that my father is afraid of that girl—and no wonder after all!’ he added, after a moment’s reflection. Certainly Sir Sykes did appear somewhat over-anxious that his ward should be happy and comfortable at Carbery, that her tastes should be studied, and her inclinations consulted. Yet he never seemed at ease in her company, and always escaped from her presence as early as politeness permitted; so that his own daughters set down his behaviour as merely prompted by an over-strained sense of hospitality.

There was a fascination in the guest’s bearing and conversation, to which even Jasper, with all his predisposition to dislike her, could not but succumb. No great talker, Miss Willis had the power, somehow, of making what she did say more effective than what fell from other lips than hers. What this art or this gift might be, Jasper Denzil, who was no stranger to women and their ways, could not divine. The girl’s voice was rich though low, and admirably modulated, although of music, as she frankly confessed, she knew nothing whatever. And her eyes—the one redeeming feature of a plain pale face—could flash and glitter with wondrously changing play of light; eyes and voice and words all blending together to convey the expression which their owner desired that they should impart.

There was one person to whom the baronet’s ward appeared in the light of an enigma, and this was Lord Harrogate, himself a frequent visitor at the home of the Denzils, between whose family and his own there was indeed some kind of connection. He had given up as preposterous the idea that he had ever seen Miss Willis before. That was of course erroneous, and he must have been the dupe of a fancied resemblance. But he was sufficiently quick-sighted to perceive, what was apparent neither to his sisters nor to Jasper, nor to the Earl or Countess, that a strong sharply marked character was concealed behind the gentle half-bashful demeanour which it pleased Miss Willis to assume.

‘I never saw the iron hand,’ he thought to himself, ‘so well hidden before by the velvet glove; but it’s there for all that. Yonder girl looks capable of turning the whole family round her finger.’

Meanwhile Jasper at anyrate had other subjects for contemplation than were presented by a psychological study of the orphaned daughter of the late Major Willis, of the Honourable East India Company’s Service. Gentlemen who own and gentlemen who are going to ride horses intended to win a race which had so suddenly swelled into importance as the forthcoming one at Pebworth, have need of frequent communication with one another. Jasper during the next ten days was often in his principal’s company, sometimes at Pebworth, now and then at Exeter, when the routine of military duty held the other captain to his post.

In the interim, Captain Denzil could tell by the language of the newspapers which were the accredited organs of the turf, how considerable was the excitement evoked by the selection of Pebworth as a place where might be matched against one another some of the finest weight-carriers chronicled in the Stud Book. The wildest rumours were afloat, and an April sky was not more changeable than were the odds, as reported from the headquarters of gambling, London and Liverpool. Sometimes the bookmakers were reported to be assured of triumph; sometimes it was hinted that the great betting firms would be severely hit, so unexpected would be the finish of the race.

‘Why,’ indignantly demanded one influential paper, ‘should Pebworth be dragged into the daylight?’ Nor were the other organs of the sporting press slow to swell the chorus of complaint that a cramped and hitherto unheard-of course, situated in an obscure nook of the far west, should be the arena for a struggle such as was anticipated. And then followed dark innuendos and vague suggestions as to the motives of the noble lord who owned The Smasher, and the scarcely less illustrious commoner to whom Brother to Highflyer appertained. During the period preceding the race, the most contradictory rumours were incessantly published with reference to the rival favourites. They were ill; they were well; they had met with all the accidents slight or serious to which the equine genus is liable. One of these important animals had a cough. The other was not quite sound of limb. Both had been overtrained. No. Their training was insufficient, and any nameless outsider could reach the winning-post before them. Once again both horses were in the very perfection of bloom and beauty, and would compete fairly for the prize.

Strange faces, some of which were not calculated to inspire confidence in those who had silver spoons in the pantry or linen drying on garden-hedge, began to appear at Pebworth and the parts adjacent. Lodgings were in such request that the meanest rooms were eagerly disputed at fancy prices, while inn and beershop drove a brisker trade than had been known since Pebworth had been disfranchised.

‘Sad business, Denzil, this!’ exclaimed Jack Podgers as he dashed into the private parlour of the De Vere Arms. ‘Here’s a private telegram, and here a special edition of a sporting paper. Both agree as to the facts.’

Jasper glanced at the telegram and at the paragraph. Yes. A most unfortunate accident, due to the carelessness of a porter, had occurred to Brother to Highflyer, just as that noble horse was being led from his box to the platform. Mr Splint, the eminent veterinary surgeon, summoned in hot haste, had examined the off fore-leg, and had expressed a positive opinion; in deference to which Mr John Knavesmire the trainer and Mr Wylie the owner had reluctantly decided to withdraw the name of Brother to Highflyer from the list.

‘The race naturally must be won by the other favourite, The Smasher,’ said Captain Prodgers with a grim smile.

CHAPTER X.—WHAT HAPPENED AT PEBWORTH.

From early morning the usually sleepy streets of quiet Pebworth had been disturbed by the shouts of bawling hoarse-voiced vendors of so-called ‘correct’ cards, purporting to furnish accurate information as to the names, weights, and colours of the riders, the nomenclature and ownership of the horses, and other particulars relating to the forthcoming race. Some of these itinerants were in faded red jackets that had felt the dust and the rain on every race-course in Great Britain; others were in tattered fustian, stained by the wet grass of the moorside, where the foot-sore wretches had been sleeping for a few hours after their weary tramp across country. It might have been opined that gold had been discovered in Dartmoor, and that diggers were hurrying up like so many eagles to the prey, so many were the uncouth groups that flocked in. Some of the pilgrims were the veriest human vermin that cumber the earth. There was the thimble-rigger, whose stock-in-trade consisted of the tiny board or slender table, which his unacknowledged associate is carrying now, with the peas and the thimble in his pocket. There were the proprietors of the roulette boards, and the manipulators of the ‘three card trick,’ so dangerous to unwary youth. There were gipsy fortune-tellers, dark-eyed, yellow-kerchiefed, and long-haired gipsy men, laden with sticks to be pelted at cocoa-nuts propped on an ash-wand, or at Aunt Sally with her time-honoured pipe.

All the beggars, street-singers, and sellers of toys or gingerbread in the west of England seemed to have been drawn to Pebworth as steel filings are attracted to a magnet; and with them arrived many a scowling ruffian in baggy slop-suit, or slinking fellow in greasy garments of threadbare black, whose object could hardly have been the wish to witness a contest of strength and speed between two or more gallant horses. Probably the man in black was one of those miserable beings who bet with chance customers, and if they lose, pay in person if not in purse, braving kicks, ducking, and ill-usage, in hopes of five or ten ill-got sovereigns. As for the sturdier brute in nailed boots and velveteen, with the knotted bludgeon beneath his arm, it will go hard with him if some half-tipsy owner of a watch be not lightened of it before bedtime.

In poured gigs and carts and carriages of every size and kind, some full of honest holiday-makers, others of thoughtful devotees of the Mammon that presides over the great green gaming-table that we know by the name of a race-course. Among the last-mentioned, who in turf phraseology are termed ‘bookmakers,’ were many, often of gentle birth and nurture, whose feverish life for ten months of the year was one of incessant locomotion, calculation, care, and toil. Some men, sufficiently well educated to see themselves as others see them, yet work harder at the dubious profession they have selected, than does a prosperous doctor or barrister of many briefs—ever on the railroad or in telegraph office, scrambling for make-shift lodgings, suing at the doors of crowded hotels—chilled by the rain of Newmarket, broiled by the sun of Chantilly—and incessantly on the wing to some new race-meeting, goaded on by the ignis-fatuus of Hope.

The carriages were drawn up three deep around the judge’s chair and the stand. Small as the race-course of Pebworth was, it presented a gay and animated appearance. There were the well-appointed drags of every regiment within reach of the little Devonshire town, while the equipages of the county aristocracy were there in unusual numbers. There were the Fulfords, the Carews, the Trelawneys, and the Tresyllians, the Courtenays, and the Penruddocks, all the rural dignitaries of the district. The Earl of Wolverhampton was there with two of his daughters, accompanied by Blanche Denzil, who was confident of her brother’s success. Lord Harrogate too was there on horseback.

No carriage from Carbery was on the Pebworth course that day. Sir Sykes had heard with displeasure that his son was about to take a part in a steeplechase. Jasper’s promise, however, had been given. His name was in print as the rider of Norah Creina, and the baronet saw no help for it. He refused, however, to attend the race with the ladies of his family, and gave but a reluctant consent to his younger daughter’s petition to be allowed to accompany Lady Maud and Lady Gladys to the festive scene. The course itself presented a lively and not uncomely scene, the brilliant beauty of the day adding a witchery to the homeliest objects. The dancing sunbeams gilded the tinker’s squalid tent and the rags of the beggar-boys who ran, clamorous for halfpence, after the horsemen cantering by. It was possible to forget the gathering of bookmakers and betting-men, now hoarsely shouting out their offers of a wager, possible to ignore the sordid greed that had prompted the attendance of so many, and to imagine what the scene may have been two hundred years ago, when races were a novelty, a mere trial of merit between swift and strong horses, minus the thousand and one degrading ingredients which now compose the saturnalia.

Jasper, his gay silken jacket concealed by the loose white overcoat which he wore, elbowed his way through the crowd towards the place where, hard by the weighing-stand, the nineteen horses which were the practical residuum of the sixty-seven entries were being led to and fro.

‘Have a care there! Do mind his heels!’ exclaimed the reedy voice of an attenuated being in drab gaiters and striped waistcoat, one of the three body-servants in attendance on the magnificent Smasher, as that superb animal began to lash out furiously amongst the mob.

‘Grand horse that!’ said Captain Prodgers, as with impartial admiration he surveyed the formidable favourite. ‘See! what muscles those are that swell beneath a skin as bright and supple as a lady’s satin! Does “My Lord” credit.’

‘My Lord,’ a vacuous young gentleman in a suit of black and white checks and a soft hat, stood a little way off, sucking the gold head of a short whipstock, and contemplating society in general, through his eyeglass, with a serene stare. Nobody could ever be quite certain whether this aristocratic patron of the turf was unfathomably deep or absurdly shallow. His Lordship was a man of few words, and never committed himself in public to an opinion wise or foolish.

That ‘My Lord’s’ stud had a knack of winning was notorious. But then the laurels, such as they were, may have been due to the florid, well-shaven, middle-aged trainer, with a flower in his buttonhole, who stood at his Lordship’s elbow.

The Smasher was a splendid black horse, over sixteen hands high, and very powerful. His glossy coat shone like a looking-glass; but that his temper was none of the best was evident, not only by the frequent scattering of the crowd, to avoid his iron-shod heels, but by the sidelong glance of his wicked eye and the irritable lashing of his silken tail.

‘Shews the whites of them eyes of his, he do, this morning,’ remarked one appreciative groom.

‘Bless ye! the captain won’t care,’ was the phlegmatic reply.

‘Rather the captain had the riding of him then nor me,’ returned the other.

The captain in question was not Jasper Denzil. It was Captain Hanger, pale and unimpassioned as ever, who now pressed up to speak for a moment with the owner and trainer of the horse he was to ride. As he stood, tapping his bright boots with his heavy whip, his gaudy silk jacket peeping from beneath the loose overcoat, he was the object of an inquisitive admiration that might well have been spent upon a worthier object. In certain circles, now, your gentleman steeplechase rider receives an amount of adulation singularly disproportioned to his utility to the commonweal. Of the well-known Captain Hanger, once in the army, then beggared, and now living by the deliberate risk of neck and bones, it was popularly believed that he would die in the exercise of his profession.

‘I don’t see the mare!’ said Jasper, looking around.

‘We’re keeping her quiet till the last minute,’ whispered his friend. ‘No use in letting her chafe here, teased by sun and flies. There, though, is the bell for saddling; and here she comes.’

And as Captain Prodgers spoke, a Homeric burst of laughter from the mob, peal upon peal, announced that something had tickled the fancy of the populace. That something was soon seen to be no other than Norah Creina, looking even uglier, as she was led into the inclosure, than she had done in the stable; a lengthy, clumsy, ungainly creature to look upon, and wearing a bridle of a peculiar and cumbrous construction, fitted with a muzzle and blinkers, and somewhat similar to that employed in horse-taming by the late Professor Rarey.

‘There’s a beauty for you!’ cried out, in the midst of ironical cheers and merriment, a scoffer in drab gaiters.

‘Take care of her, gentlemen—she bites!’ bawled another voice; and there was tittering among the spectators in carriages and unrestrained guffaws amidst the populace.

‘Do you mean, seriously, that the mare is to run in that hideous-looking contrivance?’ demanded Jasper sharply and with displeasure in his face, of his ally. ‘I’m not a mountebank, I suppose, that I should be made publicly ridiculous on the back of such a horse. A man might as well stand in the pillory as’——

‘How many hundreds will be in your pocket, Denzil, and thousands in mine, what with bets and stakes, if Norah Creina comes in first?’ interrupted Prodgers earnestly. ‘Let those laugh that win. They are waiting for us yonder in the weighing-stand.’

Of all the candidates for success who, seated in their saddles, took one by one their turn at the scales, the only two who attracted much attention were Jasper Denzil and Captain Hanger; the latter because he was to ride the favourite, the former because he had consented to exhibit himself on so very extraordinary an animal as Norah Creina.

‘I’ve known a dark horse to win a race,’ remarked one veteran, as he booked a trifling wager on the Irish mare.

‘Not with a muzzle though, George!’ replied a contemporary, with twinkling eyes.

The riders were all mounted now, and taking, some of them, the preliminary canter that is supposed to dissipate stiffness, and then the glistening line of gaily attired horsemen marshalled itself for the start. To the last moment Captain Prodgers, on foot, kept close to Jasper’s stirrup. ‘There’s the bell!’ cried Norah Creina’s owner at last. ‘Now bend your ear down, dear boy, and mark what I say.’

And as Jasper stooped his head to listen, the other captain whispered to him cautiously but with emphasis. ‘Only if you’re hard pressed—but she may win without that,’ added Prodgers more loudly.

Jasper’s suddenly compressed lips, arching brows, and dilated eyes told that the communication had taken even him by surprise.

‘The curb-rein, eh?’ he said hoarsely.

‘Yes; but only as a last expedient. Leave it slack as long as you can, and use the snaffle only; it’s as strong as a cable,’ called out Prodgers; and Jasper nodded, and cantered up to take his place among the rest.

A waving to and fro of the many-coloured line, the dropping of a flag, a roar from the rabble, and they were off. It was like the effect produced by some gigantic rocket bursting into a galaxy of variously tinted spangles, pink, green, blue, and orange. Then most of these colours seemed to gather themselves together in a group, while Jasper’s yellow jacket and black cap, and Captain Hanger’s cherry colour and white, crept clear of the crowd.

‘The Smasher’s third!’

‘He’s second now. Green’s in front.’

‘Ah! the captain’s a deal too wise to be first, so long as Green will make running for him.’

‘Yes, but look at the ugly long-backed Irish mare! The Smasher can’t shake her off, straight as he goes.’

The leading horses had got by this time over two-thirds of the course—the first round only—and already the competitors were reduced to seven. Gallant Green was yet in front, riding hard, but his horse was much distressed; and as the second circuit of the course began, The Smasher, skilfully handled by Captain Hanger, shot past him with no apparent effort, and was for the moment first.

‘My Lord’s usual luck! The race is safe!’

‘Cherry and white wins!’ shouted hundreds.

But then uprose another roar of, ‘Yellow, Yellow for ever!’ as the Irish mare, which had hitherto kept the third place, taking fence, wall, brook, and rail with lamb-like docility, suddenly quickened her pace, racing neck to neck, head to head, with the redoubtable Smasher.

‘A pretty race! A fine sight! A sheet would cover both of them!’ was the general cry. The ladies in the carriages and on the stand waved their handkerchiefs enthusiastically, and of the lookers-on there were scores who forgot that their money was at stake, in genuine enjoyment of the struggle. On the rivals went. Together they flew across the brook, together they crashed through the hedges and fences in their way. Then, thanks to his own skill or to the excellence of his horse, Captain Hanger gained ground, and was in front as he prepared to ride at a stiff line of rails, the last serious obstacle, save one, to be encountered in the circuit.

Then it was that Jasper tightened the curb-rein that he had hitherto left untouched, and the disfiguring blinkers dropped as if by magic from before Nora Creina’s eyes! The result was startling. With a snort and a scream, the fierce mare caught sight of her opponent in the act of gathering himself together for the leap; and with a bound such as a tigress might have given, she hurled herself upon him, striving—but owing to the muzzle, ineffectually—to tear the other horse with her teeth. There was a crashing of splintered timber, an outcry, a heavy fall, and both horses and both men were down amidst the wreck of the fence.

Jasper, bareheaded and dizzy, was the first to stagger to his feet and regain his saddle. A hundred yards in front was the stone wall with its double ditch, the so-called ‘sensation jump’ of the race, and which the Committee had taken it upon themselves to heighten for this exceptional contest. Beyond, there was the easy run home over smooth turf to the winning-post.

‘Yellow! yellow! Yellow wins!’ shouted the crowd, as Jasper approached the wall; but then there was a quick thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the green-sward, and Captain Hanger swept past at whirlwind speed, while cries of ‘Cherry and white! The Smasher’s first!’ rent the air. Till that instant, the Irish mare had been going steadily; but now, on seeing her rival outstrip her rapid pace, her fiendish temper again kindled into flame, and with a shrill scream she darted forward. But Captain Hanger knew his art too well to be surprised for the second time. He had his own horse, sobered by the late fall, well in hand; whereas he saw that the savage animal which Jasper rode was completely freed from the control of her rider. By a quick and masterly motion of the rein, he wheeled off, eluding the shock that threatened him, and with a rare courage and coolness put The Smasher’s head straight for the wall. The gallant horse rose like a bird, topped the obstacle on which his hind-feet clattered, and recovering himself with an effort, galloped in, the winner, amid the deafening applause of thousands.

Jasper was less fortunate. Panting, snorting with rage, in a lather of heat and foam, the furious mare he rode rose at the wall, struck it with her chest, breaking down the new masonry, and rolled over upon the turf beyond, bearing down beneath her weight the unfortunate rider. ‘A man killed!’ It needed but that cry to make the mob utterly ungovernable; and in spite of the efforts of the police, gentle and simple, and those who were neither the one nor the other, hurried pell-mell to the spot where lay, beneath the broken wall, the hapless form of Jasper Denzil. ‘He’s alive!’ cried fifty voices, with the oddest mingling of gratification and disappointment. ‘The rider’s living. It’s only the mare that’s dead,’ a verdict which turned out to be correct. Then a doctor, one out of the half-dozen of doctors on the course, jumped off the cob he rode and took possession of Jasper.

‘He’ll get over it!’ cried the surgeon, feeling first the heart and then the wrist of the sufferer. ‘If we had but a carriage now, to get him quietly to the inn.’

Sir Gruntley Pigbury, whose barouche stood near, willingly lent it for such a purpose; and in it Jasper Denzil, under the doctor’s escort, was duly removed to the shelter of the De Vere Arms.