Part 14

At the door of his house, with the ‘catch’ in a straw bag, the blind man stood a minute listening to his partner’s footsteps, then felt his way in to his horsehair sofa under the pampas grass. Putting his cold feet up under the rug, he heaved a sigh of satisfaction, and fell asleep.

Between the bare acacias and lilac-bushes of the little villas Late--299 passed on. Entering his house, he sought his study, and stretched his feet towards the fire, and the cat, smelling him fishy, sprang on to his knee.

“Philip, may I come in?”

“You may.”

“The servants have given notice. I wanted to say, wouldn’t you like to give this up and go abroad with me?”

“Why this sudden sacrifice?”

“Oh, Philip! You make it so hard for me. What do you really want me to do?”

“Take half my income, and go away.”

“What will you do, here, alone?”

“Get me a char. The cat and I love chars.”

“Philip!”

“Yes?”

“Won’t you tell me what’s in your heart? Do you want always to be lonely like this?”

Late--299 looked up.

“Reality means nothing to those who haven’t lived with it. I do.”

“But why?”

“My dear Bertha--that is your name, I think?”

“Oh, God! You _are_ terrible!”

“What would you have me--a whining worm? Crawling to people I despise--squirming from false position to false position? Do you want humility; what is it you want?”

“I want you to be human.”

“Then you want what you have got. I _am_ so human that I’ll see the world damned before I take its pity, or eat its salt. Leave me alone. I am content.”

“Is there nothing I can do?”

“Yes; stand out of my firelight....”

6 §

Two figures, in the dark outside, before the uncurtained window.

“Look, Mabel!”

“Be careful! He may see. Whisper!”

“The window’s shut.”

“Oh, why doesn’t he draw the blinds--if he must sit like that?”

“‘_A desert dark without a sound...._ _And not a drop to eat or drink_ _And a dark desert all around!_’

Jack, I pity him.”

“He doesn’t suffer. It’s being fond of people makes you suffer. He’s got all he wants. Look at him.”

The firelight on the face--its points and hollows, its shining eyes, its stillness and intensity, its smile; and on the cat, hunched and settled in the curve of the warm body. And the two young people, shrinking back, pass on between small houses, clutching each other’s hands.

1923.

HAD A HORSE

I

Some quarter of a century ago, there abode in Oxford a small bookmaker called James Shrewin--or more usually ‘Jimmy’--a run-about and damped-down little man, who made a precarious living out of the effect of horses on undergraduates. He had a so-called office just off the ‘Corn,’ where he was always open to the patronage of the young bloods of Bullingdon, and other horse-loving coteries, who bestowed on him sufficient money to enable him to live. It was through the conspicuous smash of one of them--young Gardon Colquhoun--that he became the owner of a horse. He had been far from wanting what was in the nature of a white elephant to one of his underground habits, but had taken it in discharge of betting debts, to which, of course, in the event of bankruptcy, he would have no legal claim. She was a three-year old chestnut filly, by Lopez out of Calendar, bore the name of Calliope, and was trained out on the Downs near Wantage. On a Sunday afternoon, then, in late July, ‘Jimmy’ got his friend, George Pulcher, the publican, to drive him out there in his sort of dog-cart.

“Must ’ave a look at the bilkin’ mare,” he had said; “that young ‘Cocoon’ told me she was a corker; but what’s third to Referee at Sandown, and never ran as a two-year-old? All I know is, she’s eatin’ ’er ’ead off!”

Beside the plethoric bulk of Pulcher, clad in a light-coloured box-cloth coat with enormous whitish buttons and a full-blown rose in the lapel, ‘Jimmy’s’ little, thin, dark-clothed form, withered by anxiety and gin, was, as it were, invisible; and compared with Pulcher’s setting sun, his face, with shaven cheeks sucked in, and smudged-in eyes, was like a ghost’s under a grey bowler. He spoke offhandedly about his animal, but he was impressed, in a sense abashed, by his ownership. ‘What the ’ell?’ was his constant thought. Was he going to race her, sell her--what? How, indeed, to get back out of her the sum he had been fool enough to let young ‘Cocoon’ owe him, to say nothing of her trainer’s bill? The notion, too, of having to confront that trainer with his ownership was oppressive to one whose whole life was passed in keeping out of the foreground of the picture. Owner! He had never owned even a white mouse, let alone a white elephant. And an ’orse would ruin him in no time if he didn’t look alive about it!

The son of a small London baker, devoted to errandry at the age of fourteen, ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin owed his profession to a certain smartness at sums, a dislike of baking, and an early habit of hanging about street corners with other boys, who had their daily pennies on an ’orse. He had a narrow, calculating head, which pushed him towards street corner books before he was eighteen. From that time on he had been a surreptitious nomad, till he had silted up at Oxford, where, owing to Vice-Chancellors, an expert in underground life had greater scope than elsewhere. When he sat solitary at his narrow table in the back room near the ‘Corn’--for he had no clerk or associate--eyeing the door, with his lists in a drawer before him, and his black shiny betting-book ready for young ‘bloods,’ he had a sharp, cold, furtive air, and but for a certain imitated tightness of trouser, and a collar standing up all round, gave no impression of ever having heard of the quadruped called horse. Indeed, for ‘Jimmy’ ‘horse’ was a newspaper quantity with figures against its various names. Even when, for a short spell, hanger-on to a firm of Cheap Ring bookmakers, he had seen almost nothing of horse; his racecourse hours were spent ferreting among a bawling, perspiring crowd, or hanging round within earshot of tight-lipped nobs, trainers, jockeys, anyone who looked like having ‘information.’ Nowadays he never went near a race-meeting--his business, of betting on races, giving him no chance--yet his conversation seldom deviated for more than a minute at a time from that physically unknown animal, the horse. The ways of making money out of it, infinite, intricate, variegated, occupied the mind in all his haunts, to the accompaniment of liquid and tobacco. Gin and bitters was ‘Jimmy’s’ drink; for choice he smoked cheroots; and he would cherish in his mouth the cold stump of one long after it had gone out, for the homely feeling it gave him, while he talked, or listened to talk on horses. He was of that vast number, town bred, who, like crows round a carcase, feed on that which to them is not alive. And now he had a horse!

The dog-cart travelled at a clinking pace behind Pulcher’s bobtail. ‘Jimmy’s’ cheroot burned well in the warm July air; the dust powdered his dark clothes and pinched, sallow face. He thought with malicious pleasure of that young spark ‘Cocoon’s’ collapse--high-’anded lot of young fools, thinking themselves so knowing; many were the grins, and not few the grittings of his blackened teeth he had to smother at their swagger. ‘Jimmy, you robber!’ ‘Jimmy, you little blackguard!’ Young sparks--gay and languid--well, one of ’em had gone out!

He looked round with his screwed-up eyes at his friend George Pulcher, who, man and licensed victualler, had his bally independence; lived remote from ‘the Quality’ in his paradise, the Green Dragon; had not to kowtow to anyone; went to Newbury, Gatwick, Stockbridge, here and there, at will. Ah! George Pulcher had the ideal life--and looked it: crimson, square, full-bodied. Judge of a horse, too, in his own estimation; a leery bird--for whose judgment ‘Jimmy’ had respect--who got ‘the office’ of any clever work as quick as most men! And he said:

“What am I going to do with this blinkin’ ’orse, George?”

Without moving its head the oracle spoke in a voice rich and raw: “Let’s ’ave a look at her first, Jimmy! Don’t like her name--Calliope; but you can’t change what’s in the Stud-book. This Jenning that trains ’er is a crusty chap.”

‘Jimmy’ nervously sucked-in his lips. The cart was mounting through the hedgeless fields which fringed the Downs; larks were singing, the wheat was very green, the patches of charlock brightened everything; it was lonely, few trees, few houses, no people, extreme peace, just a few rooks crossing under a blue sky.

“Wonder if he’ll offer us a drink?” said ‘Jimmy.’

“Not he; but help yourself, my son.”

‘Jimmy’ helped himself from a large wicker-covered flask.

“Good for you, George--here’s how!”

The large man shifted the reins and drank, in turn, tilting up a face whose jaw still struggled to assert itself against chins and neck.

“Well, here’s to your bloomin’ horse,” he said. “She can’t win the Derby now, but she may do us a bit of good yet.”

II

The trainer, Jenning, coming from his Sunday afternoon round of the boxes, heard the sound of wheels. He was a thin man, neat in clothes and boots, medium in height, with a slight limp, narrow grey whiskers, thin shaven lips, eyes sharp and grey.

A dog-cart stopping at his yard-gate; and a rum-looking couple of customers!

“Well, gentlemen?”

“Mr. Jenning? My name’s Pulcher--George Pulcher. Brought a client of yours over to see his new mare. Mr. James Shrewin, Oxford city.”

‘Jimmy’ got down and stood before his trainer’s uncompromising stare.

“What mare’s that?” said Jenning.

“Callĭōpe.”

“Callīŏpĕ--Mr. Colquhoun’s?”

‘Jimmy’ held out a letter.

“DEAR JENNING,

“I have sold Calliope to Jimmy Shrewin, the Oxford bookie. He takes her with all engagements and liabilities, including your training bill. I’m frightfully sick at having to part with her, but needs must when the devil drives.

“GARDON COLQUHOUN.”

The trainer folded the letter.

“Got proof of registration?”

‘Jimmy’ drew out another paper.

The trainer inspected it, and called out: “Ben, bring out Calliope. Excuse me a minute,” and he walked into his house.

‘Jimmy’ stood, shifting from leg to leg. Mortification had set in; the dry abruptness of the trainer had injured even a self-esteem starved from youth.

The voice of Pulcher boomed. “Told you he was a crusty devil. ’And ’im a bit of his own.”

The trainer was coming back.

“My bill,” he said. “When you’ve paid it you can have the mare. I train for gentlemen.”

“The hell you do!” said Pulcher.

‘Jimmy’ said nothing, staring at the bill. Seventy-eight pounds three shillings! A buzzing fly settled in the hollow of his cheek, and he did not even brush it off. Seventy-eight pound!

The sound of hoofs roused him. Here came his horse, throwing up her head as if enquiring why she was being disturbed a second time on Sunday! In the movement of that small head and satin neck was something free and beyond present company.

“There she is,” said the trainer. “That’ll do, Ben. Stand, girl!”

Answering to a jerk or two of the halter, the mare stood kicking slightly with a white hind foot and whisking her tail. Her bright coat shone in the sunlight, and little shivers and wrinklings passed up and down its satin because of the flies. Then, for a moment, she stood still, ears pricked, eyes on the distance.

‘Jimmy’ approached her. She had resumed her twitchings, swishings, and slight kicking, and at a respectful distance he circled, bending as if looking at crucial points. He knew what her sire and dam had done, and all the horses that had beaten or been beaten by them; could have retailed by the half-hour the peculiar hearsay of their careers; and here was their offspring in flesh and blood, and he was dumb! He didn’t know a thing about what she ought to look like, and he knew it; but he felt obscurely moved. She seemed to him ‘a picture.’

Completing his circle, he approached her head, white-blazed, thrown up again in listening, or scenting, and gingerly he laid his hand on her neck, warm and smooth as a woman’s shoulder. She paid no attention to his touch, and he took his hand away. Ought he to look at her teeth or feel her legs? No, he was not buying her, she was his already; but he must say something. He looked round. The trainer was watching him with a little smile. For almost the first time in his life the worm turned in ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin; he spoke no word and walked back to the cart.

“Take her in,” said Jenning.

From his seat beside Pulcher, ‘Jimmy’ watched the mare returning to her box.

“When I’ve cashed your cheque,” said the trainer, “you can send for her;” and, turning on his heel, he went towards his house. The voice of Pulcher followed him.

“Blast your impudence! Git on, bobtail, we’ll shake the dust off ’ere.”

Among the fringing fields the dog-cart hurried away. The sun slanted, the heat grew less, the colour of young wheat and of the charlock brightened.

“The tyke! By Gawd, Jimmy, I’d ’ave hit him on the mug! But you’ve got one there. She’s a bit o’ blood, my boy; and I know the trainer for her, Polman--no blasted airs about ’im.”

‘Jimmy’ sucked at his cheroot.

“I ain’t had your advantages, George, and that’s a fact. I got into it too young, and I’m a little chap. But I’ll send the ---- my cheque to-morrow. I got my pride, I ’ope.” It was the first time that thought had ever come to him.

III

Though not quite the centre of the Turf, the Green Dragon had nursed a _coup_ in its day, nor was it without a sense of veneration. The ownership of Calliope invested ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin with the importance of those out of whom something can be had. It took time for one so long accustomed to beck and call, to mole-like procedure, and the demeanour of young bloods, to realise that he had it. But slowly, with the marked increase of his unpaid-for cheroots, with the way in which glasses hung suspended when he came in, with the edgings up to him, and a certain tendency to accompany him along the street, it dawned on him that he was not only an out-of-bounds bookie, but a man. So long as he had remained unconscious of his double nature he had been content with laying the odds, as best he might, and getting what he could out of every situation, straight or crooked. Now that he was also a man, his complacency was ruffled. He suffered from a growing headiness connected with his horse. She was trained, now, by Polman, further along the Downs, too far for Pulcher’s bobtail; and though her public life was carried on at the Green Dragon, her private life required a train journey over night. ‘Jimmy’ took it twice a week--touting his own horse in the August mornings up on the Downs, without drink or talk, or even cheroots. Early morning, larks singing, and the sound of galloping hoofs! In a moment of expansion he confided to Pulcher that it was ‘bally ’olesome.’

There had been the slight difficulty of being mistaken for a tout by his new trainer, Polman, a stoutish man with the look of one of those large sandy Cornish cats, not precisely furtive because reticence and craft are their nature. But, that once over, his personality swelled slowly. This month of August was one of those interludes, in fact, when nothing happens, but which shape the future by secret ripening.

An error to suppose that men conduct finance, high or low, from greed, or love of gambling; they do it out of self-esteem, out of an itch to prove their judgment superior to their neighbours’, out of a longing for importance. George Pulcher did not despise the turning of a penny, but he valued much more the consciousness that men were saying: “Old George, what ’e says goes--knows a thing or two--George Pulcher!”

To pull the strings of ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin’s horse was a rich and subtle opportunity absorbingly improvable. But first one had to study the animal’s engagements, and, secondly, to gauge that unknown quantity, her ‘form.’ To make anything of her this year they must ‘get about it.’ That young ‘toff,’ her previous owner, had, of course, flown high, entering her for classic races, high-class handicaps, neglecting the rich chances of lesser occasions.

Third to Referee in the three-year-old race at Sandown Spring--two heads--was all that was known of her, and now they had given her seven two in the Cambridgeshire. She might have a chance, and again she might not. He sat two long evenings with ‘Jimmy’ in the little private room off the bar, deliberating this grave question.

‘Jimmy’ inclined to the bold course. He kept saying: “The mare’s a flyer, George--she’s the ’ell of a flyer!”

“Wait till she’s been tried,” said the oracle.

Had Polman anything that would give them a line?

Yes, he had The Shirker (named with that irony which appeals to the English), one of the most honest four-year-olds that ever looked through bridle, who had run up against almost every animal of mark--the one horse that Polman never interfered with, or interrupted in his training lest he should run all the better; who seldom won, but was almost always placed--the sort of horse that handicappers pivot on.

“But,” said Pulcher, “try her with The Shirker, and the first stable money will send her up to tens. That ’orse is so darned regular. We’ve got to throw a bit of dust first, ‘Jimmy.’ I’ll go over and see Polman.”

In ‘Jimmy’s’ withered chest a faint resentment rose--it wasn’t George’s horse; but it sank again beneath his friend’s bulk and reputation.

The ‘bit of dust’ was thrown at the ordinary hour of exercise over the Long Mile on the last day of August--the five-year-old Hangman carrying eight stone seven, the three-year-old Parrot seven stone five; what Calliope was carrying nobody but Polman knew. The forethought of George Pulcher had secured the unofficial presence of the Press. The instructions to the boy on Calliope were to be there at the finish if he could, but on no account to win. ‘Jimmy’ and George Pulcher had come out over night. They sat together in the dog-cart by the clump of bushes which marked the winning-post, with Polman on his cob on the far side.

By a fine, warm light the three horses were visible to the naked eye in the slight dip down by the start. And, through the glasses, invested in now that he had a horse, ‘Jimmy’ could see every movement of his mare with her blazed face--rather on her toes, like the bright chestnut and ‘bit o’ blood’ she was. He had a pit-patting in his heart, and his lips were tight-pressed. Suppose she was no good after all, and that young ‘Cocoon’ had palmed him off a pup! But mixed in with his financial fear was an anxiety more intimate, as if his own value were at stake.

From George Pulcher came an almost excited gurgle.

“See the tout! See ’im behind that bush. Thinks we don’t know ’e’s there, wot oh!”

‘Jimmy’ bit into his cheroot. “They’re running,” he said.

Rather wide, the black Hangman on the far side, Calliope in the middle, they came sweeping up the Long Mile. ‘Jimmy’ held his tobaccoed breath. The mare was going freely--a length or two behind--making up her ground! Now for it!

Ah! she ’ad The ’Angman beat, and ding-dong with this Parrot! It was all he could do to keep from calling out. With a rush and a cludding of hoofs they passed--the blazed nose just behind The Parrot’s bay nose--dead heat all but, with The Hangman beaten a good length!

“There ’e goes, Jimmy! See the blank scuttlin’ down the ’ill like a blinkin’ rabbit. That’ll be in to-morrow’s paper, that trial will. Ah! but ’ow to read it--that’s the point.”

The horses had been wheeled and were sidling back; Polman was going forward on his cob.

‘Jimmy’ jumped down. Whatever that fellow had to say, he meant to hear. It was his horse! Narrowly avoiding the hoofs of his hot, fidgeting mare, he said sharply:

“What about it?”

Polman never looked you in the face; his speech came as if not intended to be heard by anyone:

“Tell Mr. Shrewin how she went.”

“Had a bit up my sleeve. If I’d hit her a smart one, I could ha’ landed by a length or more.”

“That so?” said ‘Jimmy’ with a hiss. “Well, _don’t_ you hit her; she don’t want hittin’. You remember that.”

The boy said sulkily: “All right!”

“Take her home,” said Polman. Then, with that reflective averted air of his, he added: “She was carrying eight stone, Mr. Shrewin; you’ve got a good one there. She’s The Hangman at level weights.”

Something wild leaped up in ‘Jimmy’--The Hangman’s form unrolled itself before him in the air--he had a horse--he dam’ well had a horse!

IV

But how delicate is the process of backing your fancy! The planting of a commission--what tender and efficient work before it will flower! That sixth sense of the racing man, which, like the senses of savages in great forests, seizes telepathically on what is not there, must be dulled, duped, deluded.

George Pulcher had the thing in hand. One might have thought the gross man incapable of such a fairy touch, such power of sowing with one hand and reaping with the other. He intimated rather than asserted that Calliope and The Parrot were one and the same thing. “The Parrot,” he said, “couldn’t win with seven stone--no use thinkin’ of this Callĭōpe.”

Local opinion was the rock on which, like a great tactician, he built. So long as local opinion was adverse, he could dribble money on in London; the natural jump-up from every long shot taken was dragged back by the careful radiation of disparagement from the seat of knowledge.

‘Jimmy’ was the fly in his ointment of those balmy early weeks while snapping up every penny of long odds, before suspicion could begin to work from the persistence of enquiry. Half-a-dozen times he found the ‘little cuss within an ace of blowing the gaff on his own blinkin’ mare’; seemed unable to run his horse down; the little beggar’s head was swellin’! Once ‘Jimmy’ had even got up and gone out, leaving a gin and bitters untasted on the bar. Pulcher improved on his absence in the presence of a London tout.

“Saw the trial meself! Jimmy don’t like to think he’s got a stiff ’un.”

And next morning his London agent snapped up some thirty-threes again.

According to the trial the mare was The Hangman at seven stone two, and really hot stuff--a seven to one chance. It was none the less with a sense of outrage that, opening the _Sporting Life_ on the last day of September, he found her quoted at 100--8. Whose work was this?

He reviewed the altered situation in disgust. He had invested about half the stable commission of three hundred pounds at an average of thirty to one, but, now that she had ‘come’ in the betting, he would hardly average tens with the rest. What fool had put his oar in?

He learned the explanation two days later. The rash, the unknown backer, was ‘Jimmy’! He had acted, it appeared, from jealousy; a bookmaker--it took one’s breath away!

“Backed her on your own just because that young ‘Cocoon’ told you he fancied her!”

‘Jimmy’ looked up from the table in his ‘office,’ where he was sitting in wait for the scanty custom of the Long Vacation.

“She’s not _his_ horse,” he said sullenly. “I wasn’t going to have _him_ get the cream.”

“What did you put on?” growled Pulcher.

“Took five hundred to thirty and fifteen twenties.”

“An’ see what it’s done--knocked the bottom out of the commission. Am I to take that fifty as part of it?”

‘Jimmy’ nodded.

“That leaves an ’undred to invest,” said Pulcher, somewhat mollified. He stood, with his mind twisting in his thick, still body. “It’s no good waitin’ now,” he said; “I’ll work the rest of the money on to-day. If I can average tens on the balance, we’ll ’ave six thousand three hundred to play with and the stakes. They tell me Jenning fancies this Diamond Stud of his. _He_ ought to know the form with Callĭōpe, blast him! We got to watch that.”