Chapter 52

The Sefton Arms

Old Mat never stopped in Liverpool for the big race.

That was partly because everybody else did, and partly because he always preferred The Sefton Arms upon the course. When his little daughter first took to accompanying her dad to the National she used to stay the night with a Methodist cousin of her mother's and join her father on the course next morning.

This time she refused point-blank to favour Cousin Agatha, and further refused to argue the matter. She was going with her father to The Sefton Arms. Mrs. Woodburn was genuinely distressed, so much so indeed that Silver heard her hold forth for the first time in his knowledge of her on the modern mother's favourite theme--the daughter of to-day.

Old Mat gave her little sympathy.

"She's said she's goin', so goin' she is," he grunted matter-of-factly. "No argifyin's no good when she's said that. You might know that by now, Mar."

He added, to assuage his wife, that Mr. Silver was going to stop with them at The Sefton Arms.

"He's better than some," said the old lady almost vengefully.

"Now then, Mar-r-r!" cried the old man, "You're gettin' a reg'lar old woman, you are."

When his wife had left the room in dudgeon:

"It's silly," grunted the trainer. "'Course she wants to be on the course. It's only in Natur. It's her hoss, and her race. She ain't goin' to run no risks. And I don't blame her neether. There's only one way o' seein' a thing through as I've ever know'd, and that's seein' it through yourself."

* * * * *

Mrs. Woodburn's good-bye to her daughter was cold as it was wistful.

At the garden-gate Boy turned and waved.

"Cheer, mum!" she cried.

Her mother, standing austerely on the steps of the house, did not respond.

"I shall be back on Saturday," called the girl as she climbed into the buggy.

* * * * *

That was on the Monday.

On that day Boy and Albert and Billy Bluff took the young horse north, travelling all the way in his box.

At Euston it was evident something out of the way was forward. There was hardly a crowd at the station, but expectant folk were gathered here and there in knots and there were more police than usual about.

The secret was soon out.

Jaggers, with the air of the Grand Inquisitor, appeared on the platform with his head-lad, Rushton. The trainer entered into talk with a man whom Albert informed his mistress was a cop in plain clothes.

"Place swarms with 'em," the youth whispered. "And Ikey's Own. They're takin' no chances."

In fact, Mocassin and her two stable-companions were travelling on the same train as the Putnam horse.

As Albert remarked, not without complacency:

"One thing. If there's a smash we're all in it."

At Aintree the crowd, which somehow always knows, had gathered to see the crack. They didn't see much but four chestnut legs and a long tail; but what they saw was enough to satisfy them. You could swaddle her like a corpse from muzzle to hocks, and from withers to fetlock, but the Queen of Kentucky's walk was not to be mistaken. And as she came out of her box on to the platform, treading daintily, the little gathering raised the familiar slogan that told she was betrayed.

Boy let the favourite get well away before she unboxed her horse. There was nobody about by then but a small urchin who jeered:

"Say, lydy! is yon what they call a camel-leopard?"

The little party had the road to themselves, and passed unheeded.

The Billjim Guard were escorting the favourite to the yard, and the crowd were escorting the Billjims.

When Four-Pound-the-Second reached the yard with his three satellites twenty minutes later, the backwash of the crowd still eddied and swirled about the entrance.

The policeman on the gate made a fuss about admitting Billy Bluff. But the head yard-man, who knew Mat Woodburn's daughter almost as well as he knew his own, interfered on her behalf.

"He'll sleep in my horse's box," Boy explained.

"Won't your horse sleep without him, Miss?" grinned the yard-man.

"Not so well," answered the girl.

"Oh, let him in," said the other. "Pity to spoil that horse's beauty sleep. Might lose his looks."

Boy could never bring herself to titter at the jokes of those whom it was expedient to placate. Happily Albert was at hand to make amends, and he, to be sure, had no qualms of conscience.

The little procession entered, Billy Bluff at the heels of the great horse, striking fire in the dusk from the cobbled yard.

"He's to look after Chukkers, I suppose," said the yard-man grimly, pleased at his own generosity, well satisfied with his wit, and fairly so with Albert's tribute to it.

"He's to look after my horse," said Boy resolutely.

"He looks he could look after himself, Miss," replied the witty yard-man.

"So he can, sir, with you to help him," said the swift and tactful Albert.

The yard-man, who could tell you stories of Boomerang's National, and Cannibal's victory, that not even Monkey Brand could surpass, knew of old the feeling between Putnam's and the Dewhurst stable, and had placed the boxes of the two horses far apart.

* * * * *

All through the week the excitement grew.

The Sefton Arms was seething; the bar a slowly heaving mass of racing-men, jockeys, touts, habitués.

Once or twice there were rows between Ikey's Own--the Yankee doodlers, as the local wits called them--and the English silver-ring bookies; and the cause of the quarrels was invariably the same--the treatment of the mare at last year's National.

Throughout the week Boy went her quiet, strenuous way, unconscious of the commotion about her, or careless of it.

Jim Silver escorted her to and from the yard. Most people knew Old Mat's daughter and respected her; and those who did not, respected the grave-faced young giant who was her constant attendant.

When the pair passed swiftly through the bar, an observer would have noticed that a hush fell on the drinkers, accompanied by surreptitious elbow-nudgings and significant winks.

It was clear that the young couple were of secret interest to the dingy crowd. And in fact there were rumours afloat about them--sensational stories not a few about what they stood to win in love upon the race.

Monkey Brand and Joses were always drinking together in the bar as Silver walked through. Once he passed quite close to them. The little jockey's glassy eye rested meaninglessly on the young man's face and wandered away. When the other had moved on, he dropped his eyelid and muttered to his pal:

"Wants the ---- kybosh puttin' on him. Good as called me a copper's nark."

"Hundred thousand in the pot," grinned the fat man. "And a dainty bit o' white meat. I don't blame him." He licked his lips.

* * * * *

There were few more familiar figures at the bar of The Sefton Arms at National time than that of Monkey Brand, and this year few more pathetic ones.

It was soon bruited abroad that Old Mat and his head-lad had parted after more years of association than many cared to recall. And it was clear that the little man felt the rupture. He wandered morosely through the crowd in the train of his fat familiar like a lost soul outside the gates of Paradise. Usually a merry sprite, the life and soul of every group he joined, he was under the weather, as the saying went, and what was still more remarkable he showed it.

Everybody was aware of the facts, though nobody knew the story.

The Duke, who was genuinely fond of the little jockey, and full of vulgar curiosity, coming upon him two nights before the race, stopped him.

"I'm sorry to hear you and Mr. Woodburn have parted after all these years, Brand," he said in his gruff way.

"Thank you, your Grace," said the little jockey, pinching his lips.

The Duke waited. Nothing happened, but Monkey poked his chin in the air, and swallowed.

"I thought you were set for life," continued the Duke slowly.

"I thought so, too, your Grace," answered the jockey. "But the human 'eart's a funny affair--very funny, as the sayin' is."

Long ago he had acquired the trick of moralizing from his old master.

"What's the trouble, then?" grunted the Duke.

He was greatly curious and honestly concerned.

"Thought I were sellin' him," muttered Monkey.

The Duke bent shaggy brows upon the little man.

"Were you?" he asked.

For a moment the old merry Monkey rose from the dead and twinkled. Then he stiffened like a dead man, touched his hat, and turned away.

The Duke clung to him.

He, too, had heard a story, and wished to know the rights and wrongs of it.

"Well, well," he said. "We must all hope the Putnam horse wins--for Mr. Silver's sake. Eh, what?"

"Yes, your Grace," replied the uncommunicative Monkey.

The night before the race the Duke, still hunting the trail tenaciously, stumbled, according to his own account, on Old Mat, and reported the substance of his interview with Monkey in that ingenuous way of his, half simple, half brutal, and all with an astonishing _savoir-faire_ you would never have given him credit for.

"One thing," he ended, "he ain't blackguardin' you."

Mat seemed lost in memories.

"I wep' a tear. I did reely," he said at last. Then he shook a sorrowful head. "I ain't one o' yer whitewings meself," he said. "Not by no means. But he shock me, Monkey do. He does reely." He dabbed his eye. "Rogues and rasqueals, yer Grace," he said. "All very well. But there is a limit, as the Psalmist very proply remarked."

The Duke turned to go, his curiosity still unsatisfied.

"Where's Boy?" he asked gruffly. "I've seen nothing of her this time."

"She's kep' busy, your Grace--nursin' the baby."

"How is he?"

"Keeps a-crowin'," said the old man, "from all I hears of it."