“I believe you have, Humphrey.”
“And you only believe the truth, Mr. Gervoise. My mother has saved a little money, sir, and I know she’ll give it me and welcome; I shall make bold to bring it to you tomorrow.”
“No, Humphrey, no.”
“But, Mr. Gervoise—”
“I have sunk very low; do not insult me, Humphrey,” the young man said proudly. “I am a man, and I can work. I will never take a woman’s savings. Good-night!”
He walked away as he spoke; Humphrey hurried after him.
“You’ll let me see you again before you leave Avondale, Mr. Gervoise?”
“Yes, if you like. You’ll find me with an equestrian company in the fair — Cadgers’s company. You must ask for Mr. Jarvis; and remember, Humphrey, not a word to anyone in Avondale about my being in the town.”
“Not a word, sir.”
The two men parted. Gervoise went slowly back to the canvas booth, under whose shelter he was to sleep that night. Humphrey Melwood went to a favourite public-house to finish the evening with a couple of choice spirits, suspected of unholy dealings with wire traps for innocent young hares, and cruel nets for the snaring of winged fowl.
As Gervoise left the bridge a dark figure emerged from the sombre shadow of the castle towers, and followed him, always keeping at a respectful distance.
That dark figure was Herr von Volterchoker, the silent clown.
CHAPTER V. THE GENTLEMAN JOCKEY WHO BODE DEVILSHOOF.
THE Avondale racecourse described a circle round that very patch of common land on which Avondale fair was always held. Indeed, the fair was only a part of the races. Mr. Cadgers’s equestrian troupe were in the habit of remaining idle throughout the day, while serious business was being done upon the stunted turf of the magic circle; but at night, when the races were over, when the simple country-folk had stared wonderingly at the flying thoroughbreds, and had lost their half-crowns and sixpences in friendly sweepstakes; when the carriages of the county families had driven homewards in a cloud of dust; when the betting-men had deserted that cow-shed-like edifice which was dignified by the title of the grandstand; when the glory of the race was over — then the fair began in good earnest. The gongs sounded, the drums beat, and opposition pandean-pipes squeaked discordant clamour; flaring cressets of naphtha shone out upon the blackness of the night; performing dogs yelped in their professional ardour; learned pigs grunted hoarse impatience to distinguish themselves; eager horses neighed and curveted amidst the sawdust of the ring; and the members of Mr. Cadgers’s company appeared in all their splendour.
They were not quite idle in the daytime though; for during the intervals between the races, Herr von Volterchoker swallowed swords, spun washing-basins upon the tips of walking-sticks, and mystified the bovine spectators by marvellous juggling with pocket-handkerchiefs, white mice, raw eggs, and live pigeons. Mr. Samuel Bolter performed wonderful feats of strength with unnatural-looking wooden chairs, and flung himself into attitudes utterly opposed to the harmonious laws of nature, and made himself uncomfortable to look at, for the gratification of an enraptured audience. Mrs. Cadgers, better known as Mademoiselle L’Amour, exhibited herself on these occasions in a Highland costume, and took the money at the doors with the dignity of Mrs. Rob Roy Macgregor herself.
This lady was in the habit of appearing in short petticoats on these festive occasions, and always seemed to be upon the point of executing some Terpsichorean achievement; but never of late years had been seen by mortal eye to carry out this intention.
Mrs. Cadgers was very good at promenading arm-in-arm with a Spanish nobleman with corked eyebrows and impossible calves. She was good, too, at taking the money, and had a sharp eye for spurious copper coin; but beyond this her accomplishments were of a purely legendary character.
“When first I saw my girl Nance,” Mr. Cadgers would say, when the liver and bacon, or the sausages, or the pig’s fry had been done to a turn, and the Jupiter of the caravan was in a good humour with his Juno, “when first I set eyes upon Mrs. Cadgers, which it were at the Falcon Tavern, Whitechapel, she were a dancin’ the ‘ighland fling in such quick time as it would have made your ‘air a’most stand on hend to look at her. But what with the wear and tear of married life, and what with the price of purvisions, I don’t think as you could get that ‘ighland fling out of Mrs. Cadgers now, not if you was to lay down golden sovereigns for her to dance upon.”
Gervoise Dudley Palgrave, alias Gervoise Gilbert, alias Mr. Jarvis, lay upon a truss of hay in a corner of the canvas booth, which was curtained off from the circus, and which served as a living room for Mr. Cadgers and his company. They were all busy except the painter, and he was alone. He had allowed little Georgey to be dressed in some fantastic costume, and to show himself upon the platform and in the ring with Mr. Cadgers’s two olive branches, much to the boy’s delight. Gervoise felt that he had worked well enough to earn the right to be idle for once in a way, brooding over his dismal fate in the dusky shelter of the curtained booth, while innocent country-folks were laughing loud at hackneyed old jests upon the other side of the curtain.
He lay stretched at full length upon the truss of hay, with a short pipe in his mouth, thinking over his strange fortunes, while Herr von Volterchoker, in a voice which would have scared mirthful thoughts away from the mind of a sensitive person, demanded of his audience when it was that a door was not a door, and entertained them with other conundrums of equal freshness and originality. Gervoise Dudley Palgrave lay and brooded over his lot in life.
He was the nephew of the late Lord Haughton; he was the cousin of the present earl; and he was dependent upon the patronage of Mr. Cadgers for a meal for himself and his only child. His father had been a thoughtless, reckless spendthrift, who had quarrelled with the late earl, and had, in vulgar parlance, gone to the dogs, leaving his son penniless to fight the hard battle of life, with nothing but contumely to expect from his grand relations.
The earl and his brother, George Augustus Davenant Palgrave, had hated each other, as brothers do sometimes hate each other, even in this enlightened age. George had married a farmer’s daughter secretly, and had been turned out of doors by his indignant father. Only one child was born from this marriage, and that child was Gervoise Dudley Palgrave. The mother died within a month of the boy’s birth, and the reckless, dissipated young father intrusted the infant to the care of Margery Melwood, the wife of one of the gamekeepers at Palgrave Chase.
All this was done secretly, and when the old earl, Gervoise Palgrave’s grandfather, saw two babies in Margery Melwood’s arms, as she stood in the sunshine at the lodge-door, he did not know but that the gamekeeper’s wife was the mother of twins. He certainly never guessed that the dark-eyed baby was the possible heir to Palgrave Chase.
The dissipated young father left his son in Margery Melwood’s care until the child was nearly ten years old. During all that time the two boys, Humphrey Melwood and Gervoise Dudley Palgrave, had lived together as brothers, sharing the same rustic pleasures, rifling birds’ nests in the bright spring weather, blackberry-gathering in the sheltered country lanes, hunting for hazel-nuts in the woods round the Chase, while my lord the young Viscount Castleford, the earl’s only son, played cricket with his aristocratic companions in the meadows at Eton.
This boy, Viscount Castleford, only stood between Humphrey Melwood’s foster-brother and a fortune.
By and by George Augustus Palgrave took his son to London, and the boy grew up in the West-end lodging-house, where his father lived a gay, bachelor life. The lad picked up his education how he might; and that education was by no means a good or a wise one, for George Augustus Davenant Palgrave’s friends were worthless, dissipated men, who had wasted their fortunes and taken to living by their wits; and it was from these men that Gervoise picked up his notions of right and wrong.
It may be imagined, therefore, that those notions of good and evil were by no means the clearest or the best. Gervoise was clever, brave
, proud, sometimes generous; but he had the selfishness of the Palgrave race — that one dark stain which had sullied the character of every Palgrave since Aldroband, Baron of Haughton, had deserted the cause of Lancaster, and attached himself to the usurping house of York for his own advancement. Gervoise was selfish. His own happiness, his own ease, were always most dear to him. He married an ignorant, superficial girl for the love of her pretty face; and was angry with her when he found her a dull companion, a fretful, complaining fellow-traveller upon the dreary road of life.
It is possible that if Gervoise had been a better man, Agatha might never have fallen to the depth of degradation to which she had sunk when her husband lost patience with the miseries of his life, and deserted the woman who had become a horrible and loathsome burden to him. He lay now upon the truss of hay in Mr. Cadgers’s canvas habitation, thinking of the past, thinking of those early days in which he had wandered in Palgrave woods with Humphrey Melwood, unconscious of his aristocratic lineage, utterly ignorant that the young viscount, who rode past the windows of the lodge upon his well-groomed pony, was first cousin to the little ragamuffin who watched him admiringly from behind the lattice.
“The world has been a pleasant place for Sydney Palgrave, Earl of Haughton,” the strolling painter muttered to himself bitterly; “wealth and honour, a title, a noble estate, and a high-born bride. The child who is to be born at Palgrave Chase will have a different fate from my poor little one, whose best friend is Nancy Cadgers, the showman’s wife.”
He heard the bell ringing for the great event of the day, the steeplechase, in which Lord Haughton was to ride, and he went out, with his face half-hidden under his slouched felt hat.
The racecourse described an irregular circle upon the hilly, uneven ground of the heath. Gervoise Palgrave went down to a spot where there was a sharp curve in the course. A dangerous curve, people said, for many a horse, going at flying speed, had locked his pastern joints in the sudden turn.
At this spot, naturally dangerous, a double six-foot fence had been constructed, and beyond the second fence a ditch had been sunk. This was the worst bit of ground the gentlemen riders and their horses would have to encounter, and a group of the knowing ones had clustered down here, in preference to posting themselves upon the high ground near the stand, whence a bird’s-eye view of the course was to be had.
Here Gervoise stationed himself, with his folded arms resting upon the rough wooden barrier that bounded the race-course.
He had been standing there about five minutes, listening to the talk of the knowing ones gathered round him, but by no means interested in their discussion of the dangers of this particular spot, when he heard a pair of horses reined up suddenly upon the smooth turf behind him.
A woman’s voice said gently:
“This is the place, Bolton. This is the place which Lord Haughton says is the most dangerous. I will stop here, if you please.”
Gervoise Palgrave looked round. A close carriage, with a pair of splendid bays, had drawn up within a few paces of the wooden barrier. The Haughton arms were emblazoned upon the panels, the Haughton crest glistened upon the harness; and a woman, with a beautiful aristocratic face, was looking out of the open window.
This woman was Rosalind Countess of Haughton.
A girl, a few years younger than the countess, simply dressed, and looking like a humble companion, was seated opposite Lady Haughton.
The countess looked with sad anxious eyes at the double fence, the still water in the broad, yawning ditch.
“0 Mary,” she said in a low, tremulous voice, which was audible to Gervoise, who stood close to the carriage, “O Mary, what a dangerous place, what a horrible place! I am convinced that something will happen.”
The girl smiled reassuringly.
“Pray do not think that, my lady,” she said. “The earl declared, again and again, that there was no real danger with such a horse as Devilshoof. But, indeed, my lady, it was very, very wrong of you to come. I don’t know what my lord would say if he knew that you were here.”
“I could not stop away,” the countess answered; “I could not endure the suspense, Mary. Think what agonies I must have suffered had I stayed at the Chase hour after hour waiting for Sydney’s return.”
“But if his lordship should see you?” remonstrated the companion.
“He will not see me. He will not think of me in the excitement of the race.”
At this moment another bell rang, and a shout from the crowd upon the grand stand announced that the horses had started.
Gervoise Palgrave could not withdraw his eyes from the face of the countess. The look of agony in that pale, anxious countenance had a strange fascination for him.
“They suffer, then, these prosperous people,” he said to himself; “these favourites of fortune suffer, as well as the outcasts who envy them.”
He heard the dull thud of the rushing hoofs upon the turf. He turned, and the first two riders passed him almost abreast.
One of these foremost riders was Lord Haughton.
He was a handsome young man, not unlike Gervoise Palgrave. He sat his horse magnificently, and his white-satin jacket, scarlet sleeves and cap flashed brightly in the sunshine as he flew by.
The two riders flew triumphantly over the fences; the horse’s hoofs seemed scarcely to touch the ground in the space between the first and second fence. The third rider was not quite so fortunate; he cleared the two fences, but his horse plumped down in the water with a loud splash, and the gentleman jockey was very nearly out of the saddle. He recovered himself very cleverly, and flew after the foremost riders amid the cheers of the bystanders.
The Countess of Haughton gave a faint, gasping cry as her husband cleared the fences.
“Thank Heaven!” she murmured, “thank Heaven!”
But one of the lookers-on said to his companion, “They go round again, don’t they?”
“Yes, they’re to ride twice round the course.”
There was a pause. With straining eyes the eager watchers of the race looked for the return of the riders. The interval was brief enough, but it seemed long to many of those impatient witnesses who had staked their money upon the issue of the race.
The dare-devil earl’s horse, Devilshoof, was the general favourite.
“Lord Haughton’s safe to win,” muttered one of the men near Gervoise; “Devilshoof is a good name for his horse, for I think he’s got pluck enough to ride old Nick himself.”
Again the rush of hoofs sounded upon the turf, and the three riders came thundering down the hill.
This time Lord Haughton was half a quarter of a mile ahead of his antagonists.
A great shout arose from all the lookers-on; a hoarse, triumphant cry; the thunder of a thousand voices:
“Devilshoof — Devilshoof wins! Ten to one on Devilshoof Î Twenty to one on Devilshoof!”
The earl rode his horse at the fence. He cleared the first; his horse flew like a cat at the second, caught his hind hoofs in the light brushwood at the top of the fence, went plunging down head foremost into the water, and shot his rider off half-a-dozen yards ahead upon the turf.
The noble young rider in the white-satin jacket and scarlet sleeves fell like a log, and lay like a log.
A long hideous shriek rang through the summer air. There was a moment’s breathless pause; and then a sturdy farmer broke from the crowd, jumped across the barrier, and dragged the figure in the satin jacket off the course as the two horses came tearing over the fences.
Devilshoof made a feeble effort to scramble up out of the water, but fell again. The horse’s head flew up as if he had been stiffly reined-in — a sure symptom to the knowing ones that his back was broken.
The man who dragged the earl off the course laid him down on his back upon the grass; and the terrified crowd gathered round that prostrate figure.
A couple of medical men came hurrying down from the grand stand, whence they had seen the accident. One of them knelt down and laid his
hand upon the young man’s breast. He turned very pale as he did so. Then he hastily opened the satin jacket, put his hand under the earl’s shirt, and listened.
He listened with his head lowered almost to the level of the prostrate man’s breast. It seemed as if every creature in that dense crowd waited with suspended breath to know the issue of the doctor’s examination.
Presently the medical man looked up.
“Get the countess away,” he said to the other doctor. “I saw her carriage just now, on the other side of the course. Get her away by any means. She must not know what has happened.”
“What is it — what is it? Is he dead?” gasped the foremost people in the crowd simultaneously.
The medical man did not answer them. He was talking to his colleague in a low voice.
“Death must have been instantaneous,” he said. “Concussion of the brain, no doubt. Get the countess away, my dear Morgan, and directly. The news will spread like wildfire, and if you don’t take care you’ll be too late.”
He was too late. A frantic woman with a ghastly face broke through the crowd as the medical man spoke. That woman was Rosalind Countess of Haughton. People recognised her, and tried to stop her; they might as well have endeavoured to stop a whirlwind.
She rushed into the open space round the dead man, and flung herself upon her knees by his side.
She looked at the livid face, the wide-open eyes, with such anguish in her own gaze as must have moved the hardest heart to pity. Then she clasped her hands and looked up at the two medical men. One of them was the doctor who attended all minor ailments in the household at Palgrave Chase.
“Is he dead?” she cried; “is he dead? It seems like death to me; but it can’t be — it can’t be! Mr. Andrews, Mr. Morgan, why do you stand there like that? Why don’t you do something for my husband? Are you mad? Why do you let him lie here? It’s only a fainting-fit. O, for pity’s sake, do something for him! I tell you he has only fainted! Why don’t you help him? Why—”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1072
