XV.—IN THE STABLES
Coming up to London on the Monday morning Mr Callander found his inclination to enlighten his daughter on the manners and morals of ‘horse-racing’ folk so strong, that it quite overpowered his anxiety to allow the brutal truth to come upon her with a rush.
“Gladys does not know,” he said, adopting his favourite method of address—the third person singular; “and Gladys would probably never realize how much her father knows of these worldly matters.”
Gladys was much too happy even to speculate upon the amount of original sin in her father’s composition.
She murmured a polite expression of surprise and admiration.
“Yes,” continued Mr Callander. “I have had to meet and frequently to combat some extraordinary people—I had hoped that you would be spared the experience.”
“Perhaps they aren’t so bad, father,” she protested mildly.
“You may probably be a little shocked by the crudeness of the men we meet to-day, but unless they are outrageous you must endure them. They will discuss matters which will probably make you uncomfortable, but here again you will be wise to direct your thoughts to some other channel, and ignore them as far as possible.”
“I’m sure I shall, father,” she agreed absently.
“Coarseness,” began her parent, when they ran into London Bridge Station, and the discussion was postponed.
Mr Callander was obsessed with the idea that he knew London much better than any other man. He took credit for London, as one who had invented it. So with many voluble explanations as to which was the nearest way from the South Eastern to the London and Brighton station he led the way.
Horace had been engrossed on the journey up, burying his face in the paper, and taking little or no interest in the conversation. He followed his father submissively and waited whilst the tickets were purchased.
There was a quarter of an hour to wait before the train left, and seizing the moment when his relatives were engaged in buying papers for the journey—Mr Callander always made large literary purchases when he was travelling on any but his own line—he strolled off and made his way to the refreshment-room. Pinlow was waiting with the package.
“Don’t touch the box until you are ready to empty it,” he said. “You’ve got a dust-coat on your arm; let me slip it into your pocket.”
Horace opened the wide pocket of his Burberry, and Pinlow carefully inserted his ‘luck’.
“Don’t crush it,” he warned. “Lay your coat lightly on the hat-rack and take it down when you get to Burnham Junction.”
“What about the money?” asked Horace. “I’ve had another letter from the brokers this morning, the beggars are getting cheeky.”
“That will be all right,” said Pinlow, “Now run off and join your people—I don’t want them to see me.”
His father was looking round helplessly when Horace came up.
“Oh, here you are!” said Mr Callander. “I wondered where on earth you had got to. Come along, come along.”
He hurried them up the platform, hastily found a carriage and bundled them in.
“It is better to be too early than too late,” he said with that sententiousness which parents employ towards their children, under the impression that they can do so with impunity.
The remark was called forth by the discovery that there was still ten minutes to wait.
The journey down was all too long for Gladys, all too short for her father.
She had not met Brian since that wonderful day. She had had surreptitious messages from him. Little unexpected telephone calls, little notes which arrived in her father’s absence. Once there had come a magnificent basket of roses, the presence of which would have required some explaining away but for the fact that she pressed every available vase into her service and made her room a veritable bower—as Brian had hoped she would. She wanted to see him badly—and yet she was nervous of meeting him. Their friendship—if you called it no more—was founded on such shifting ground.
She would be a little cold to him, she thought, a little distant, wilfully inattentive. But that would hurt him, and of all things in the world she desired least to give him pain.
But if she were too friendly and met him half-way or more than half-way, he might misunderstand. There was no explaining away the kiss in the garden—to do her justice she never tried to—and perhaps he might think she had been too complaisant. In fact, she by turns tortured and delighted herself with hopes half formed, fears half rejected, and speculations which went round in a circle, as girls have hoped and feared and speculated, since life was life.
“… the thing to do, of course,” Mr Callander was saying, “is to take a firm step at once. If you put a man in his place at the very outset, he remains there. I feel I ought to tell Gladys this, because she may think I am a little brusque with this Bolter”
“Colter,” she came out of her dreams to correct him.
“Ah, yes, Colter!” Mr Callander accepted the correction with a gracious smile. “Gladys will see as she gets older how necessary it is to check the familiarities of one’s inferiors—at the beginning. That is essential. I once knew a man, very well respected in the City, who allowed himself—and he was really greatly to blame—to get on terms of friendship with a sporting person. And one day Clark—it was Clark of Clark, Hansun and Timms, a very good firm—was going into the Royal Exchange when this person came up to him and smacked him on the back! In the very centre of the City!”
Gladys wanted to laugh, but she preserved her gravity with an effort.
“Did anything happen?” she asked innocently.
“Nothing,” said Mr Callander impressively; “except that Clark, Hansun and Timms lay under some suspicion for a long time.”
He gave some other instances of the disastrous effects of undesirable acquaintanceship, but Gladys was not listening.
She woke from her reverie, as the train slowed for Burnham. She followed her father to the platform and went very red. For there was Brian, buoyant and smiling, waiting to receive her.
“This is Mr Colter,” he introduced.
It came as a little shock to Mr Callander to discover that the trainer was a neat gentleman, straight of back, grave of eye, infinitely self-possessed.
Mr Callander, however, made it a rule of life never to judge people by their looks. In plain English, this meant that he never gave people credit for their favourable appearances.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve come,” Brian was saying. He walked ahead with the girl, down the steps that led to the tunnel under the line. In the darkness she felt her arm gently squeezed and pretended not to notice.
“Father was most anxious to come,” she said primly and untruthfully.
“I knew he would be,” Brian said.
“You must not shock him,” she warned.
“You must help me,” he said cryptically.
Mr Callander, walking behind with the trainer, was engaged in putting that calm individual in his place.
“You have not seen a racing stable before?” asked Mr Colter politely.
“No,” answered Mr Callander shortly.
“Do you know this county at all?” asked the other.
“No,” said Mr Callander.
“It’s rather a fine county—I’m particularly fond of it: my father and my grandfather lived here in the same house I now occupy.”
“Indeed?” said Mr Callander.
A motor-car waited outside the station, and Brian climbed into the driver’s seat and helped the girl to the seat by his side. Mr Callander, his son, and Ebenezer Colter took their seats behind.
“Do you hunt?” persevered the trainer.
“No,” said Mr Callander.
Mr Colter sighed, but made one more effort.
“You are not related to the Callanders of Warwick, I suppose?” he asked.
Now the Callanders of Warwick were the most illustrious branch of the Callander family, being related through a female branch to a real duke.
“Yes,” admitted the other reluctantly; “do you know them?”
“Yes,” said Mr Colter unconcernedly. “They were tenants of my father’s for many years.”
“Really?” said Mr Callander, impressed. “I trust,” he added, moved to humour in spite of himself, “that they were good tenants.”
“Fairly,” said Mr Colter cautiously.
Mr Callander was on his mettle.
“Did you ever meet the Duke of Glazebury?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; I’ve met him,” said Mr Colter. “We were at Eton together, and a fairly useless sort of ass he was.”
Mr Callander was on the point of informing his companion that the Duke—as he was always referred to by the family—was a relative of his, but changed his mind.
He began to revise his views about trainers.
“Do you not think my nephew is rather reckless?” he asked.
“A little,” said the other. “But he will grow out of that— Oh, you probably mean as a bettor?”
Mr Callander nodded.
“No, he’s anything but careless—thought you were referring to his driving. We skimmed that corner rather sharply.”
Mr Callander tried again.
In the shortest space of time he had discovered himself so far from dominating the situation as to be making conversation with the trainer. The road passed through a little village, and mounted steeply to the Downs. Across a clear stretch of open heath-land, the car sped until the high red walls of Mr Colter’s home came in sight. They ran into the park through the opened gates of wrought-iron, and pulled up before the quaint porch of the house.
It was a beautiful old dwelling. The house was a smother of climbing roses, and as the visitors descended they caught a glimpse of an old-world garden.
“You must see my gardens,” said Colter, after his guests had been relieved of their dust-coats, and a servant had brushed away the dust of travel.
“Let the man take your coat, Mr Callander.”
“Thank you,” said Horace hastily, “I will carry it on my arm. I—I am not staying long. I have a friend living in the neighbourhood”
Mr Callander stared at his son in surprise.
“What I mean,” said Horace desperately—he had no proper gift for lying—“is that I think I know a man about here; anyway, I’ll carry my coat.”
Mr Colter led the way to the stables.
They lay behind the house, two quadrangles shaped like an—sign—the open ends being marked by a semi-circular wall pierced by a large iron gate.
“It looks rather like a fortress,” said the girl smilingly. “Are you ever attacked?”
“Often,” said Brian; “it is a hard life owning horses.”
“Seriously?” she said with a pretty air of seriousness. “Are all these stories true one reads about—of horses being injured in order that they should not win?”
He laughed.
“I have read about them; they are not very convincing,” he said lightly.
“But,” she persisted, “does it ever happen? Has it ever happened to you?”
“Has it ever happened to me?” he repeated thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think it has.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She drew a long sigh of relief. “I shouldn’t like to think anybody could be so wicked,” she said, “and especially about Grey Timothy—you have interested me awfully about your horse.”
“Come and see him run to-morrow,” he said, dropping his voice.
She shook her head.
“Father would not come,” she said regretfully.
“Look here,” said the sinful Brian eagerly, “I’ll send a car for you.”
“Mr Pallard”—she was very severe—“you are not asking, me to deceive my father, are you?”
“Yes,” said Brian shamelessly.
She stared at him coldly, and he did not drop his eyes. Indeed, you might have imagined that he was suggesting a meritorious plan, one that commanded respect and admiration, rather than reproof. Then her lips twitched, and she smiled against her will.
“I think you are very wicked,” she said, shaking her head slowly; “and father would be awfully cross if he knew.”
“Under those circumstances,” he said gravely, “you had better not tell him.”
Just then Mr Colter turned with an inviting smile, and she joined him.
The great trainer had one amiable trait. He never had a bad horse.
They might not be good race-horses, they might be wholly incapable of winning; but he found some redeeming feature.
“Horses,” he explained to the girl, as they approached the first box, “are like human beings, except that they cannot talk; and as they cannot talk, they are constantly being misunderstood.”
The first door was open, and the horse looked round as he heard the familiar footstep.
“This is Fixture,” said the trainer sorrowfully. “He’s a good horse, but has no pace: as gentle as a pet dog,” he patted the horse caressingly. “Poor old fellow, he would win if he could, but he can’t, and, after all, we can’t expect impossibilities. Wait until he’s a year older, and he’ll show some of these bad horses the way to gallop.”
To the next box they went.
“Don’t go too near; he’s a little nervous.”
“In fact,” said Brian, “he’s a savage little beast.”
“Oh, no,” protested Colter, “nervous—and a race-winner. You must remember that, Mr Pallard, he’s a winner. A horse of great spirit”
The horse of great spirit lashed out savagely with a hind leg, but the nimble trainer was out of reach.
“He’s not himself to-day,” explained Mr Colter. “You can’t expect horses to be tied up twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four and ridden for the other two, and retain their equanimity.”
Mr Callander, following his guide, began slowly to realize that he was in an atmosphere to which he had not been accustomed—an atmosphere of rare charity. It was a little humiliating because he had well-defined views on all things pertaining to horse-racing, and this experience was upsetting his preconceived notions.
An obstinate man, holding on to his theories with that tenacity which is part of the equipment of the egotist, he strove again and again to seek support for his convictions.
“Do you not think, Mr Colter,” he remarked irritably, “that it is a great pity that such beautiful creatures as these should only have value as a gambling medium—that these wonderful works of an all-wise Creator should be degraded to base uses?”
The steady, blue eyes of Colter met his.
“Look through the gates and across the park; there is a field of corn. Isn’t it beautiful to see? Can you associate it with a wheat-pit, with fortunes made or lost on the rise or fall of prices?”
“That is business,” said Mr Callander; “there is no sentiment in business.”
“That is where racing differs from business,” retorted Mr Colter dryly. “We are sentimental.”
“Gambling,” said Mr Callander sententiously, and with the pompousness of a man who was saying the final word on the subject, “is the one weakness in which the animal world holds no counterpart.”
“Ambition is another,” said the undaunted Mr Colter, “and ambition is at the bottom of every kind of gambling, whether it is on horses or stock. Even here the racing man differs from every other kind of gambler, for it is pride which is at the root of his disease. Pride—primarily and so far as the owner is concerned—in the excellence of his beast; pride—with the little punter—in the excellence of his judgment.”
“Oh!” said Mr Callander.
He said no more whilst the rest of the horses were being inspected. They came at length to the last box, and Mr Colter lingered a little over his eulogium. There was a look of blank disappointment on the girl’s face as they turned away.
“But Grey Timothy!” she said, “we have not seen him.”
Horace was anxious to see the champion too, and he waited eagerly for the trainer’s reply.
“You shall see Grey Timothy,” said the trainer; “he has a special little box under my eye, owing to”
Brian was attacked with a fit of violent coughing; and Mr Colter, a wise man, completed the sentence harmlessly.
The way led through an Italian garden. It was a place of slim, white pillars and shallow terraces; of trimmed yew and box. A high box hedge surrounded the garden; fantastic shapes of bird and beast clipped out of the century-old box stood sentinel at each corner.
On the highest of the terraces was a little white-domed summer-house, pillared with marble.
“One thing only I will ask you,” said Mr Callander: “can a man be a good Christian and a race-goer? Are the two things consistent—can you reconcile them?”
Again he was favoured with that kind smile.
“It is curious you should ask that,” said Mr Colter quietly. He walked quietly up to the summer-house. It was of stone, plastered and distempered within. In the centre, at the back of the little house, was a large circular window of stained glass.
The girl by her father’s side read the inscription, which encircled a monogram in the centre.
“Be ye followers of God, as dear children.”
“My father put that there for us when we were children,” said Colter reverently. “He was a trainer of race-horses. He saddled many mighty horses, and won the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewitch in the same year. His father was a trainer, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather trained for George IV. I never knew my father to do a dishonest thing, though he was born, so to speak, within an arm’s length of a race-horse, though his life was spent in the atmosphere of race-courses.”
Mr Callander was silent. It was all very disconcerting. He said no more as they passed through a wicket-gate and across the red-paved yard of the house. It was a peaceful little courtyard; big tubs of scarlet geraniums stood wherever they could conveniently stand; a dozen drowsy pigeons sat on the overhanging eaves of the stable, and a big black Persian cat sprawled contentedly in the sunlight. The trainer walked to the one stable-door which opened into the yard and opened it. There were two stable-lads on duty, and they stood up as the party crowded in.
“This is Grey Timothy.” said Mr Colter.
He was a gentleman, this Grey Timothy; a big upstanding horse, iron-grey from tail to muzzle, clean of coat, a trifle narrow in front, massive of quarter; he stood a well-balanced picture of a thoroughbred.
Even Mr Callander, who knew enough about horses to distinguish his head from his heels, was impressed by the big colt, impressed by the suggestion of power in the muscular frame, in his easiness of poise, his beautiful head, his splendid shoulders.
They stood in silence, the members of the little party. The son of Grey Leg turned his head, as horses will, to gaze in grave curiosity at them. He was used to strangers, to noisy strangers in great tightly packed masses. They were held back from him usually by long lines of white rails; he was not unused to strangers that came fearfully to his box and put forth gloved hands to stroke his glossy coat.
“What do you think of him?” asked Brian. The girl nodded, her eyes alight with admiration. “He is a beauty,” she said.
She walked into the box and stroked his soft muzzle, and Grey Timothy, with an air of wellbred boredom, closed his eyes and accepted her caress.
“Good luck, Grey Timothy,” she whispered, as she put her cool cheek against his.
“He’s a great horse,” said Mr Colter briefly. “I do not know how good a horse he is.”
“You have another horse here,” said Mr Callander.
In the corner of the stable was a box where a horse pawed impatiently as though protesting against the monopoly of attention which the grey received.
“That is Greenpol,” explained the trainer; “he is a runner in the same race. I am starting both because Timothy wants a race run at a terrific pace, and although the Stewards’ Cup is invariably fast, I want Tim to break records. Greenpol is an immensely fast horse for about five furlongs—that’s as far as he can stay; after that he’s done with.”
He went on to tell them of Greenpol’s virtues. He was a good horse over his course, but as he did not seem to have any particular course, the value of Greenpol was somewhat discounted.
Whilst he was talking, and the attention of the party alternated between the two horses, Horace found his opportunity.
He felt carefully in the pocket of his overcoat and found the box. As his fingers closed over it, it came to him as a shock that he was doing something he should not do; the story of Pinlow’s superstition seemed very thin at that moment. Horace knew at that moment that the act he was about to commit was a villainous one. He did not know why, only it came to him with a rush.
He hesitated, and for a second thrust the box deeper into his pocket.
Only for a second; then he remembered the money.
He must secure that two thousand pounds. Pinlow had promised it—he could not break faith. He stifled the incoherent urgings of conscience. The superstition story might be true. After all, what was he, that he should judge?—and the time was getting short. He pulled out the box under cover of his dust-coat.
They were still talking, his father, Gladys, and the trainer. With hands that trembled he opened the lid and shot a hasty glance at the contents. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed full of green leaves. So the story was true.
Stealthily he shook the box empty over a little heap of straw, slipped the packet back into his pocket, just as Mr Colter turned to see his party out.