by George Moore
“I think he will,” said Mr. Leopold. “The rain has done us a lot of good; he was beginning to go a bit short a week ago. We shall want some more rain. I should like to see it come down for the next week or more.”
Mr. Leopold’s desires looked as if they were going to be fulfilled. The heavens seemed to have taken the fortunes of the stable in hand. Rain fell generally in the afternoon and night, leaving the mornings fine, and Silver Braid went the mile gaily, becoming harder and stronger. And in the intermittent swish of showers blown up from the sea Woodview grew joyous, and a conviction of ultimate triumph gathered and settled on every face except Mrs. Barfield’s and Mrs. Latch’s. And askance they looked at the triumphant little butler. He became more and more the topic of conversation. He seemed to hold the thread of their destiny in his press. Peggy was especially afraid of him.
And, continuing her confidences to the under-housemaid, the young lady said, “I like to know things for the pleasure of talking about them, but he for the pleasure of holding his tongue.” Peggy was Miss Margaret Barfield, a cousin, the daughter of a rich brewer. “If he brings in your letters in the morning he hands them to you just as if he knew whom they are from. Ugly little beast; it irritates me when he comes into the room.”
“He hates women, Miss; he never lets us near his pantry, and he keeps William there talking racing.”
“Ah, William is very different. He ought never to have been a servant. His family was once quite as good as the Barfields.”
“So I have heard, Miss. But the world is that full of ups and downs you never can tell who is who. But we all likes William and ‘ates that little man and his pantry. Mrs. Latch calls him the ‘evil genius.’”
A furtive and clandestine little man, ashamed of his women-folk and keeping them out of sight as much as possible. His wife a pale, dim woman, tall as he was short, preserving still some of the graces of the lady’s-maid, shy either by nature or by the severe rule of her lord, always anxious to obliterate herself against the hedges when you met her in the lane or against the pantry door when any of the family knocked to ask for hot water, or came with a letter for the post. By nature a bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, would ask what was wanted.
If it were Ginger, Mr. Leopold would say, “Can I do anything for you, Mr. Arthur?”
“Oh, nothing, thank you; I only thought that — —” and Ginger would invent some paltry excuse and slink away to smoke elsewhere.
Every day, a little before twelve, Mr. Leopold went out for his morning walk; every day if it were fine you would meet him at that hour in the lane either coming from or going to Shoreham. For thirty years he had done his little constitutional, always taking the same road, always starting within a few minutes of twelve, always returning in time to lay the cloth for lunch at half-past one. The hour between twelve and one he spent in the little cottage which he rented from the squire for his wife and children, or in the “Red Lion,” where he had a glass of beer and talked with Watkins, the bookmaker.
“There he goes, off to the ‘Red Lion,’” said Mrs. Latch. “They try to get some information out of him, but he’s too sharp for them, and he knows it; that’s what he goes there for — just for the pleasure of seeing them swallow the lies he tells them…. He has been telling them lies about the horses for the last twenty years, and still he get them to believe what he says. It is a cruel shame! It was the lies he told poor Jackson about Blue Beard that made the poor man back the horse for all he was worth.”
“And the horse didn’t win?”
“Win! The master didn’t even intend to run him, and Jackson lost all he had, and more. He went down to the river and drowned himself. John Randal has that man’s death on his conscience. But his conscience don’t trouble him much; if it did he’d be in his grave long ago. Lies, lies, nothing but lies! But I daresay I’m too ‘ard on him; isn’t lies our natural lot? What is servants for but to lie when it is in their master’s interest, and to be a confidential servant is to be the Prince of liars!”
“Perhaps he didn’t know the ‘orse was scratched.”
“I see you are falling in nicely with the lingo of the trade.”
“Oh,” replied Esther, laughing; “one never hears anything else; one picks it up without knowing. Mr. Leopold is very rich, so they say. The boys tell me that he won a pile over the City and Suburban, and has thousands in the bank.”
“So some says; but who knows what he has? One hears of the winnings, but they say very little about the losings.”
VI
THE BOYS WERE playing ball in the stables, but she did not feel as if she wanted to romp with them. There was a stillness and a sweetness abroad which penetrated and absorbed her. She moved towards the paddock gate; the pony and the donkey came towards her, and she rubbed their muzzles in turn. It was a pleasure to touch anything, especially anything alive. She even noticed that the elm trees were strangely tall and still against the calm sky, and the rich odour of some carnations which came through the bushes from the pleasure-ground excited her; the scent of earth and leaves tingled in her, and the cawing of the rooks coming home took her soul away skyward in an exquisite longing; she was, at the same time, full of romantic love for the earth, and of a desire to mix herself with the innermost essence of things. The beauty of the evening and the sea breeze instilled a sensation of immortal health, and she wondered if a young man came to her as young men came to the great ladies in Sarah’s books, how it would be to talk in the dusk, seeing the bats flitting and the moon rising through the branches.
The family was absent from Woodview, and she was free to enjoy the beauty of every twilight and every rising moon for still another week. But she wearied for a companion. Sarah and Grover were far too grand to walk out with her; and Margaret had a young man who came to fetch her, and in their room at night she related all he had said. But for Esther there was nothing to do all the long summer evenings but to sit at the kitchen window sewing. Her hands fell on her lap, and her heart heaved a sigh of weariness. In all this world there was nothing for her to do but to continue her sewing or to go for a walk on the hill. She was tired of that weary hill! But she could not sit in the kitchen till bedtime. She might meet the old shepherd coming home with his sheep, and she put a piece of bread in her pocket for his dogs and strolled up the hill-side. Margaret had gone down to the Gardens. One of these days a young man would come to take her out. What would he be like? She laughed the thought away. She did not think that any young man would bother much about her. Happening at that moment to look round, she saw a man coming through the hunting gate. His height and shoulders told her that he was William. “Trying to find Sarah,” she thought. “I must not let him think I am waiting for him.” She continued her walk, wondering if he were following, afraid to look round. At last she fancied she could hear footsteps; her heart beat faster. He called to her.
“I think Sarah has gone to the Gardens,” she said, turning round.
“You always keep reminding me of Sarah. There’s nothing between us; anything there ever was is all off long ago…. Are you going for a walk?”
She was glad of the chance to get a mouthful of fresh air, and they went towards the hunting gate. William held it open and she passed through.
The plantations were enclosed by a wooden fence, and beyond them the bare downs rose hill after hill. On the left the land sloped into a shallow valley sown with various crops; and the shaws about Elliot’s farm were the last trees. Beyond the farmhouse the downs ascended higher and higher, treeless, irreclaimable, scooped into long patriarchal solitudes, thrown into wild crests.
There was a smell of sheep in the air, and the flock trotted past them in good order, followed by the shepherd, a huge hat and a crook in his hand, and two shaggy dogs at his heels. A brace of partridges
rose out of the sainfoin, and flew down the hills; and watching their curving flight Esther and William saw the sea under the sun-setting, and the string of coast towns.
“A lovely evening, isn’t it?”
Esther acquiesced; and tempted by the warmth of the grass they sat down, and the mystery of the twilight found way into their consciousness.
“We shan’t have any rain yet awhile.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll tell you,” William answered, eager to show his superior knowledge. “Look due south-west, straight through that last dip in that line of hills. Do you see anything?”
“No, I can see nothing,” said Esther, after straining her eyes for a few moments.
“I thought not…. Well, if it was going to rain you would see the Isle of Wight.”
For something to say, and hoping to please, Esther asked him where the race-course was.
“There, over yonder. I can’t show you the start, a long way behind that hill, Portslade way; then they come right along by that gorse and finish up by Truly barn — you can’t see Truly barn from here, that’s Thunder’s barrow barn; they go quite half a mile farther.”
“And does all that land belong to the Gaffer?”
“Yes, and a great deal more, too; but this down land isn’t worth much — not more than about ten shillings an acre.”
“And how many acres are there?”
“Do you mean all that we can see?”
“Yes.”
“The Gaffer’s property reaches to Southwick Hill, and it goes north a long way. I suppose you don’t know that all this piece, all that lies between us and that barn yonder, once belonged to my family.”
“To your family?”
“Yes, the Latches were once big swells; in the time of my great-grandfather the Barfields could not hold their heads as high as the Latches. My great-grandfather had a pot of money, but it all went.”
“Racing?”
“A good bit, I’ve no doubt. A rare ‘ard liver, cock-fighting, ‘unting, ‘orse-racing from one year’s end to the other. Then after ’im came my grandfather; he went to the law, and a sad mess he made of it — went stony-broke and left my father without a sixpence; that is why mother didn’t want me to go into livery. The family ‘ad been coming down for generations, and mother thought that I was born to restore it; and so I was, but not as she thought, by carrying parcels up and down the King’s Road.”
Esther looked at William in silent admiration, and, feeling that he had secured an appreciative listener, he continued his monologue regarding the wealth and rank his family had formerly held, till a heavy dew forced them to their feet. In front of them was the moon, and out of the forlorn sky looked down the misted valleys; the crests of the hills were still touched with light, and lights flew from coast town to coast town, weaving a luminous garland.
The sheep had been folded, and seeing them lying in the greyness of this hill-side, and beyond them the massive moonlit landscape and the vague sea, Esther suddenly became aware, as she had never done before, of the exceeding beauty of the world. Looking up in William’s face, she said —
“Oh, how beautiful!”
As they descended the drove-way their feet raised the chalk, and William said —
“This is bad for Silver Braid; we shall want some more rain in a day or two…. Let’s come for a walk round the farm,” he said suddenly. “The farm belongs to the Gaffer, but he’s let the Lodge to a young fellow called Johnson. He’s the chap that Peggy used to go after — there was awful rows about that, and worse when he forestalled the Gaffer about Egmont.”
The conversation wandered agreeably, and they became more conscious of each other. He told her all he knew about the chap who had jilted Miss Mary, and the various burlesque actresses at the Shoreham Gardens who had captivated Ginger’s susceptible heart. While listening she suddenly became aware that she had never been so happy before. Now all she had endured seemed accidental; she felt that she had entered into the permanent; and in the midst of vague but intense sensations William showed her the pigeon-house with all the blue birds dozing on the tiles, a white one here and there. They visited the workshop, the forge, and the old cottages where the bailiff and the shepherd lived; and all this inanimate nature — the most insignificant objects — seemed inspired, seemed like symbols of her emotion.
They left the farm and wandered on the high road until a stile leading to a cornfield beguiled and then delayed their steps.
The silence of the moonlight was clear and immense; and they listened to the trilling of the nightingale in the copse hard by. First they sought to discover the brown bird in the branches of the poor hedge, and then the reason of the extraordinary emotion in their hearts. It seemed that all life was beating in that moment, and they were as it were inflamed to reach out their hands to life and to grasp it together. Even William noticed that. And the moon shone on the mist that had gathered on the long marsh lands of the foreshore. Beyond the trees the land wavered out into down land, the river gleamed and intensely.
This moment was all the poetry of their lives. The striking of a match to light his pipe, which had gone out, put the music to flight, and all along the white road he continued his monologue, interrupted only by the necessity of puffing at his pipe.
“Mother says that if I had twopence worth of pride in me I wouldn’t have consented to put on the livery; but what I says to mother is, ‘What’s the use of having pride if you haven’t money?’ I tells her that I am rotten with pride, but my pride is to make money. I can’t see that the man what is willing to remain poor all his life has any pride at all…. But, Lord! I have argued with mother till I’m sick; she can see nothing further than the livery; that’s what women are — they are that short-sighted…. A lot of good it would have done me to have carried parcels all my life, and when I could do four mile an hour no more, to be turned out to die in the ditch and be buried by the parish. ‘Not good enough,’ says I. ‘If that’s your pride, mother, you may put it in your pipe and smoke it, and as you ‘aven’t got a pipe, perhaps behind the oven will do as well,’ — that’s what I said to her. I saw well enough there was nothing for me but service, and I means to stop here until I can get on three or four good things and then retire into a nice comfortable public-house and do my own betting.”
“You would give up betting then?”
“I’d give up backing ‘orses, if you mean that…. What I should like would be to get on to a dozen good things at long prices — half-a-dozen like Silver Braid would do it. For a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds I could have the ‘Red Lion,’ and just inside my own bar I could do a hundred-pound book on all the big races.”
Esther listened, hearing interminable references to jockeys, publicans, weights, odds, and the certainty, if he had the “Red Lion,” of being able to get all Joe Walker’s betting business away from him. Allusions to the police, and the care that must be taken not to bet with anyone who had not been properly introduced, frightened her; but her fears died in the sensation of his arm about her waist, and the music that the striking of a match had put to flight had begun again in the next plantation, and it began again in their hearts. But if he were going to marry Sarah! The idea amused him; he laughed loudly, and they walked up the avenue, his face bent over hers.
VII
THE BARFIELD CALCULATION was that they had a stone in hand. Bayleaf, Mr. Leopold argued, would be backed to win a million of money if he were handicapped in the race at seven stone; and Silver Braid, who had been tried again with Bayleaf, and with the same result as before, had been let off with only six stone.
More rain had fallen, the hay-crop had been irretrievably ruined, the prospects of the wheat harvest were jeopardized, but what did a few bushels of wheat matter? Another pound of muscle in those superb hind-quarters was worth all the corn that could be grown between here and Henfield. Let the rain come down, let every ear of wheat be destroyed, so long as those delicate fore-legs remained sound. These wer
e the ethics that obtained at Woodview, and within the last few days showed signs of adoption by the little town and not a few of the farmers, grown tired of seeing their crops rotting on the hill-sides. The fever of the gamble was in eruption, breaking out in unexpected places — the station-master, the porters, the flymen, all had their bit on, and notwithstanding the enormous favouritism of two other horses in the race — Prisoner and Stoke Newington — Silver Braid had advanced considerably in the betting. Reports of trials won had reached Brighton, and not more than five-and-twenty to one could now be obtained.
The discovery that the Demon had gone up several pounds in weight had introduced the necessary alloy into the mintage of their happiness; the most real consternation prevailed, and the strictest investigation was made as to when and how he had obtained the quantities of food required to produce such a mass of adipose tissue. Then the Gaffer had the boy upstairs and administered to him a huge dose of salts, seeing him swallow every drop; and when the effects of the medicine had worn off he was sent for a walk to Portslade in two large overcoats, and was accompanied by William, whose long legs led the way so effectively. On his return a couple of nice feather beds were ready, and Mr. Leopold and Mr. Swindles themselves laid him between them, and when they noticed that he was beginning to cease to perspire Mr. Leopold made him a nice cup of hot tea.
“That’s the way the Gaffer used to get the flesh off in the old days when he rode the winner at Liverpool.”
“It’s the Demon’s own fault,” said Mr. Swindles; “if he hadn’t been so greedy he wouldn’t have had to sweat, and we should ‘ave been spared a deal of bother and anxiety.”
“Greedy!” murmured the little boy, in whom the warm tea had induced a new perspiration; “I haven’t had what you might call a dinner for the last three months. I think I’ll chuck the whole thing.”
