Chapter 8
“No, no,” he answered, “they're just coming back; here, sit down again, I'll see,” and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
“What's the matter, girl?” he began.
“The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,” Mike broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, “nothin' bad,” was added for Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
“Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,” he continued. “We'll help the young gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.”
Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then he was on a bed, and--and--sleep at last.
When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck, and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
“God be thanked, God be thanked!” gasped the troubled woman, and one hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity. Then she interrupted herself. “What am I saying--it's wicked, and Mr. Mortimer like that. But I can't help it--I can't help it. Oh, Allis! my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like this.”
At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and called, as he drove off: “I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young man's all right!” He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud, almost blotting him from the landscape.
“Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.”
“Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,” and Allis put a cool hand on her mother's hot forehead.
But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary. At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the horses. “It's the anger of God,” Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. “This gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis, that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin of racing. No good can come of it--no good has ever come of it--nothing but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted. There never can be prosperity living in sin.”
“Hush, mother,” crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
“I must speak, girl,” she said again; “this sinful life is crushing me. Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My people were all church people,” she continued, almost apologetically, “tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope for eternal life.”
“I know, mother,” soothed the girl; “I know just how you feel, but we can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses to race horses all his life.”
“Ah, sweetheart!” John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came out to them, “looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?” and he nestled his wife's head against his side. “How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into Diablo's box, or--”
“It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer risked his life to save mine.”
“He was plucky; eh, girl?”
“He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have been too late.”
“It's dreadful, dreadful,” moaned the mother.
Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and commenced talking about Alan--wondering where he was, and other irrelevant matters.
Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an hour.
“I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,” he added, “but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course. He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,--ha! ha!” and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
“Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,” was Mike's comment. “Ye'd a thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.”
“Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?” asked Porter.
“Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.”
“One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?” spoke Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
“Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted weed av a two-year-old--I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in soight--spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him, an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he was.”
“And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?”
“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”
Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it not.
Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must remain at Ringwood for a few days.
It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery, was marvelous.
XII
Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee. It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his presence the same evening that Crane was there.
Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing Allis's escape to Providence.
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!” Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment, and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably narrow in his conclusions.
Dolman broke the temporary silence. “But we shouldn't tempt Providence by worshiping false images. Love of animals is commendable--commendable”--he emphasized this slight concession--“but race horses always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One.”
“It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman,” Allis interposed, “but just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault.”
“I wasn't thinking of one horse,” continued the minister, airily; “I meant race horses in general.”
“I think Mr. Dolman is right,” ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; “it's flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race horses.”
“Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother,” Allis said; “and I believe that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was any.”
The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. “It's quite wrong to abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect it has on morals.”
“Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?” John Porter asked.
His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to first principles.
The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. “I should hardly care to go so far as that--to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might escape contamination, perhaps.”
Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably, giving her husband a loophole to escape.
“I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,” interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
“I've never seen any good come of it,” retorted Dolman. “A Christian man must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for they contend that without betting racing is impossible.”
“Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble,” Porter drawled, lazily; “there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's crop--everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry.”
“A great many very honorable men are racing today,” added Crane; “men who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable.”
“They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling,” asserted the minister, doggedly.
It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines, Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. “It is certainly unchristian,” commented Mrs. Porter, severely. “I haven't seen much Christian spirit in any business,” said Porter, quietly; “they all seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done on honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run.”
Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. “For my part,” continued Porter, “I've never found it necessary to do anything I'm ashamed of in racing.”
His wife saw an opening. “But, John dear, you were treated most shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse--”
“Pulled, mother,” interposed Allis; “pulled father's horse, you mean.”
“Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse ran the other way and your father lost.”
Porter smiled indulgently. “The boy was punished, Helen,” he said. “Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course.”
“Yes, but something is always happening,” she continued in lament. “It's contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John; last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his leg--”
“Threw a splint, mother,” prompted Allis.
“I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with it,” argued Mrs. Porter.
“The splint was on his leg, mother dear.”
“Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!” she turned to Mr. Dolman; “they burned the poor beast's leg with hot irons--”
The minister held up his hands in horror.
“It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting his arm,” declared Allis.
“But it was racing injured the horse's leg,” interposed Dolman.
“But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman,” said Allis, “and a spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing. It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race horses are much better taken care of.”
Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the defensive with great celerity.
“I confess I know very little about horses,” he was forced to apologize; then, with something of asperity, “the spiritual welfare of my congregation takes up my entire time.”
This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer, said, “I hope you don't approve of racing, sir.”
Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
“I know nothing about the race course,” he said, “but from what I see of the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order if their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and honesty, and gentleness--they all seem to have it--must always have a good influence. Why, sir,” he continued, with a touch of excitement, “I think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower than the horses he had to do with.”
Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair, and gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
The reverend gentleman frowned. “It's not the horses at all,” he said, “it's the men who are disreputable.”
Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
“The men are like the horses,” commented Porter, “some bad and some good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and everybody sees him.”
“And sometimes horses--and men, too, I suppose--get a bad name when they don't deserve it,” added Allis. “Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I know he's not.”
“That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty,” said Mrs. Porter, speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. “You know, Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse. Now, John, what are you laughing at?” for her husband was shaking in his chair.
“I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like,” he answered, and there were sobs in his voice.
“Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked.”
As usual, Allis straightened matters out: “It was the man who was crooked. Mother means Lauzanne,” she continued.
“Yes,” proceeded the good woman, “a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated my husband most shamefully over this horse.”
Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. “John is honest himself,” went on Mrs. Porter, “and he believes other men, and this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my husband would buy him.”
“Shameful,” protested Dolman. “Are men allowed to give horses drugs?” he appealed to Mr. Porter.
“No; the racing law is very strict on that point.”
“But evidently it is done,” contended Dolman.
“I think there's very little of it,” said Porter.
This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. “Do you think, Mr. Porter,” he asked, “that there was anything of that sort over Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would--” He hesitated.
“Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think,” answered Porter. “I shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily.”
“I know very little about him,” protested Crane; “and, as you say, he will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least.”
“Yes,” continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the distasteful discussion; “there are black sheep in racing as there are in everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are honestly run--the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled Lucretia.”
“I never heard of that, John,” cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
“No, you didn't,” dryly answered her husband.
Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the time.
“If you'll excuse me,” began Crane, rising, “I think Mr. Wortimer is getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield.”
Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation--that he had made little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: “The ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect--” he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly--“but in reality it is not quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and--and--what shall I say--personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of character.”
Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. “What I was going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and--” he turned with a grave bow in Crane's direction--“and in good hands, too.”
“His mother wished it,” Porter said, simply.
“Yes, John was very good about Alan's future,” the mother concurred. “But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be in the bank than possibly drifting into association with--well, such dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much better off,” she continued, “with young men such as Mr. Crane would have about him.”
The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming words.
Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a little laugh as he said: “I should not have succeeded very well in a bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the men honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They seem to have more chances to steal than men on the race course.”
As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to Dolman's charge.
Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell. That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that, like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
“Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,” said Crane, as he was taking his leave, “you'll have to be mighty careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a vindictive brute.”
“Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to death while he's about the place.”
“I shall never be a bit afraid of him,” remonstrated Allis; “Shandy, who made all the mischief, has been discharged.”
“Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth,” said Porter. “I thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater.”
“I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter,” exclaimed Crane, somewhat eagerly. “I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him.”
Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined Porter's proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly--having but one good hand--preparing to retire in Alan's room.