"Yes," she said. "My little cousin rides him in the Under Fourteen Hands."
"How amusing! How are you getting him there? I shall box Bitter Aloes, of course, or I'd lend you mine."
"I always stay at my aunt's at Finchingtree and hack the three miles over." For all her sophistication Susan could have wept.
"How amusing!" said Geraldine again and Susan was saved from making a bitter and revealing reply by the beaming nurse who came to summon her to the torture chamber.
For practically the first time in her life she found the ghoulish leer of old Mr Fortnum almost welcome, but as she leant back in the chair she caught a glimpse of the Partington-Drew Rolls-Royce parked in the High Street outside and there was rage in her heart. Things had come to a pretty pass if a girl couldn't go to the dentist's in peace.
On the morning of the Minstree Show Tony March sat on the end of his wife's bed, his round, ingenuous face wearing an expression of secret guile. He was both happy and excited, but, being a comparatively practical man, was carefully going over his tactics for the day with his second-in-command.
"It all depends on you, old dear," he said, regarding his wife fondly. "You must put up a good show or he'll smell a rat, and that would be absolutely fatal. I rather thought he was getting wind of something fishy last night."
"Last night?" protested Jean. "But he couldn't! He simply couldn't. I mean, we haven't done anything yet."
Tony shook his round head. "Phil's a funny chap," he announced. "As brave as a lion, knows all there is to know about horses, but one disadvantage; he doesn't talk. It's very hard to get out of him what's on his mind."
"If he hasn't said anything I don't see how you can possibly suppose he's noticed something fishy," declared Jean cheerfully.
"Oh, but he has," Tony persisted. "He has spoken. It was just before we came up to bed last night. We were having a drink when he suddenly put down his glass and made a very extraordinary remark. He said, 'That's a funny horse you've got, old boy."
"Yes, and then what?"
"Oh, he didn't say any more, naturally." Tony seemed surprised that she should have expected it. I said "Really?" or "Do you think so?" or "Not at all," something vague like that, and we left it and went to bed. Still, I thought it off he should have said so much. I wouldn't have things go wrong for anything.
Jean sniffed and stretched her long arms over her head. "I shouldn't worry about Phil," she said. "When I saw he'd brought Branch over yesterday I felt a bit nervous. Branch is an entirely different proposition. Still, he hasn't seen the brute at work and after all Sweet and Low can jump."
"Oh, yes," said Tony earnestly, "he can jump. Jump! Oh, lord, yes! He can jump. Gosh! Yes Jump?" He went on murmuring to himself on the same theme for some time. Jean giggled.
"Phil was right," she said. "He is a funny horse." There was a moment of silence between the two conspirators before Tony left the initial danger-point and went on to the next.
"I'll just run through it once more," he began cheerfully. "Keep your mind on it, sweetheart. First we get old Branch off with the horse. Then we fool about and manage to be very late starting. Finally, when we're actually on the road, you fall ill and we stop near a pub. You make a frightful fuss and we both have to stay with you, or rush off to get a doctor or something." Then Phil says, "What about the show?" and I say, "Forget the show! Think of my wife." Jean frowned. "Don't overdo that bit," she murmured. "I mean, don't declaim it, or anything."
Tony was hurt. "You leave it to me," he said. "I'll sound convincing. After a bit I'll have an idea. I'll phone the ground, get hold of Branch and tell him to ask Miss Partington-Drew if she'll take Sweet and Low round as a special favor to Sir Philip. She'll leap at the invitation. Meanwhile, you'll start recovering and we'll go on, arriving at Minstree just after Geraldine has been round on Sweet and Low. Phil will trot up, smiling, and ask her how she got on and that will be definitely that."
"Why?" Jean's question was not very innocent but Tony was gulled by it.
"Don't be silly, sweetheart," he protested wearily. "We've gone over this again and again. Geraldine will give Phil one long eloquent glance and never speak to him again. He will be furious at her injustice and the rebound will send him scuttling off to young Susan. This is the whole point of the scheme. Hang it, you thought of quite half of it yourself."
"I know, but I'm getting nervous." Jean shivered happily. "Geraldine is very determined, darling. She may just stick her toes in and cling to him." Tony sighed. He hated any objections when he was making plans.
"My dearest child," he expostulated, "think of that show ring! Think of the crowd who will be there. There will be absolutely everyone Geraldine's ever met or hopes to meet. They've all heard her talk about herself. She won't cling to Phil. We shall have to get him away before she beats him up."
Jean lay back among the pillows. "She may win on Sweet and Low," she murmured.
Tony's bucolic face became bland and childlike. "If she rides as well as she thinks she does, she will," he said sweetly. "That's the beauty of the whole idea. It's so fair." The Machiavellian activities of young Mr and Mrs March met with singular success, at least in their earlier stages.
Jean's seizure in the car just outside the Farrow field Plough Inn was so realistic that even her husband, who was expecting it, was temporarily deceived and so far forgot his role as to pat her shoulder with an anxious if some what violent hand and to demand helplessly if she couldn't pull herself together until they reached the town.
Jean's natural indignation at this lack of support almost wrecked the project at the outset, but it was Phil himself who unwittingly saved the situation by exhibiting a wholly unsuspected solicitude for his sister.
It was Phil who saw her safely ensconced in the private room at the back of The Plough, Phil who conferred with the startled landlady, not unnaturally bewildered by the astonishing assortment of symptoms developed by the mendacious Jean, Phil who gallantly declared the show was of no importance, and Phil who sat chafing his sister's hand with doglike devotion and incompetence.
Since there was nothing left for the arch conspirator to do but to get on with his conspiracy, Tony rang up the show ground, got hold of Branch, and gave the message he had so carefully rehearsed.
Until this point, the disgraceful machinations of MR and Mrs March had met with more success than they deserved. Phil had played into their hands with a stupidity and a lack of penetration unworthy of him and no doctor had yet arrived to regard Jean with a cold professional eye.
It is hardly conceivable that their well-meaning but impractical efforts could have resulted in anything approaching the object they desired had they been allowed to take their course uninterrupted, but as it happened not Fate, but an equally unaccountable deity, stepped in to defeat them. The spoke in the wheel was the soft human heart of Henry Branch.
As the old groom came back from the Committee's office, whence he had been summoned to the telephone to receive Tony's message, he observed a trim little figure in spotless kit standing somewhat forlornly by a resplendent pony. Susan attended to her own tack and her own grooming and Taffy did her credit. The green rosette which he wore as third prizewinner in his class suited him admirably.
Branch admired them both and, as his eye lighted on Susan's yellow head and dejected expression, a rebellious and unfortunate thought entered his mind.
Miss Geraldine Partington-Drew could ride, but so could Miss Susan. Seemingly Sir Phil had lost sight of that. Branch considered the big roan waiting in his box. He had never seen Sweet and Low at his work but he had heard Mr Tony's glowing accounts of him and he had seen the high quarter-bone which meant the animal could jump. "You'll never get a bad goose backed horse," was Branch's favorite aphorism and he had taken to Sweet and Low from the first. He liked his full, intelligent eyes, his pricked ears and the friendly, almost confidential way he hummered at him. In Branch's opinion Sweet and Low was a kind horse. If he had not been so sure of that he would never ha
ve thought of using his proverbial deafness and notorious distrust of telephones as an excuse for what was, in reality, sheer disobedience.
A little further along the paddock behind the double row of cars round the ring he saw Miss Geraldine on Bitter Aloes. She was ready early and was sitting, proud and supremely confident, waiting for her own opportunity to shine.
Branch disliked her. He disliked the way she shouted at her grooms he disliked her father's Rolls-Royce, he thought her mare too good for her and he dreaded the day when she should bring back Sir Phil from church on a halter.
He glanced at Susan again and in his mind's eye saw her, flushed and triumphant, finishing a clean round on the goose backed roan.
"I'm growing remarkable deaf," he observed to a total stranger who was passing him and set out with a happy grin on his tight-skinned face to interview Susan.
Susan heard the message with astonishment and an unexpected thrill which she attributed quite erroneously to her interest in show jumping generally. She had put in many extra hours' evening work to get this time off to attend the Show and now was on the point of regretting coming. Everywhere she looked she seemed to see Geraldine. Now here was Branch with a wonderful request from Phil. He wanted her to ride the horse that he himself had been going to ride.
"Sir Phil's compliments, and would you do him the very great favor of taking Sweet and Low over the jumps. Those were his words, Miss."
Branch thought it best to omit Tony's presence on the telephone for the sake of clarity.
"He's held up himself on the road."
"He's not hurt?" Susan blushed at her own anxiety and felt annoyed. "No no, Miss. It's Mrs Jean. She's been took faint."
"Jean faint? How extraordinary!" Afterward Susan realized that she should have suspected the whole beastly business from that one illogical and unlikely circumstance, but at the time she was excited. She thought Phil was a supercilious and conceited oaf but she was glad to know that even he recognized her riding was good and she was amused to note that he still remembered her name even if he hadn't spoken to her for a couple of months. The chance of challenging Geraldine on her own ground was inviting, also.
"Come and see the horse, Miss," Branch persisted, anxious to get her in the saddle before his conscience got him down.
When Sweet and Low stepped daintily out of his box and he and Susan saw each other for the first time it is possible that they both laughed. Susan laughed openly because a strawberry roan with a white diamond over one eye is a comic spectacle, and Sweet and Low laughed secretly for deep and private reasons of his own.
Branch swept back the rug and displayed the jumping bone and for some minutes he and the lady who was so very specially his choice discussed points.
"He's got a mind of his own," said Branch at last when the air had ceased to buzz with technicalities. "Powerful lot of character in those ears."
Sweet and Low took Susan's hat off and stood holding it foolishly in his soft muzzle. Susan's heart was touched. "He's a darling, Branch," she said laughing. "A darling. Not a bit nappy either."
"Nappy?" Branch laid a hand on the sleek withers. "He don't know the meaning of the word. I'd let a baby crawl round his feet."
When Susan slid into the saddle and gathered up her reins she felt supremely happy.
Sweet and Low had the motion of an angel. His clownish face was more than offset by the magnificent dignity of his carriage and he seemed to like her hands for he did not fidget with her. When she turned him away from the crowds and down to the long meadow behind the boxes, where a last-minute practice jump had been erected by a thoughtful owner, he went without demur.
She set him at the jump and he took it as if he knew he was on trial, although there was only Branch to watch, and as Susan experienced the exquisite freedom of that smooth and lovely flight her last qualms deserted her. She put him at it again but he did not seem to need her guidance or encouragement. He jumped obligingly and lightheartedly. Branch was admiringly profane about him.
They spent so long playing with him that they almost missed their turn and came up to join the others at the gate just as the first rider muffed the wall and rode off to the exit on the opposite side of the ring, disqualified.
Geraldine was fourth on the list but she found time to sidle over to Susan. Her eyes were bright and suspicious.
"Whose horse is that?" she demanded brusquely, the briefness of the moment robbing her of even the semblance of courtesy.
Susan sighed. Her heart was warm. "Phil Birlingstone's," she said. "He asked me if I'd take him round as a special favor. Isn't he sweet? The horse, I mean."
"Naturally," said Geraldine sharply and her expression was dangerous. "The horse seems all right. Phil is a little trusting, isn't he?"
She turned and rode away, but Susan was not even momentarily annoyed. She was very, very happy.
Bitter Aloes entered the ring on her toes. She was proud and black and beautiful. On her back rode Geraldine, firm and capable, and looking in her intense irritation rather magnificent.
The first two brushwood fences were taken without a fault. Bitter Aloes danced up to them, paused, took off like a rocket and landed gracefully on the other side.
The gate, too, in all its frightening whiteness, was negotiated with style and distinction. So was the wall with the unpleasant loose bricks on top.
The crowd at the grandstand murmured its approval. Only once, at the penultimate jump, did the wand fall. The flying hooves passed a fraction too near the pole and the wand, lying loose upon it, fluttered to the ground behind them. Geraldine looked round, saw it, and said something short and spiteful. Bitter Aloes seemed to feel her failure and made a special effort at the final jump. She took off like a bird, cleared the water and the sand, and landed sweetly on the turf, to trot off to the exit with only a single point against her.
Susan was still marveling at the grace of that performance when she heard her own number called. Branch led her to the gates.
"Good luck, Miss. A clean round and you'll do it," he murmured.
The steward motioned her forward and they came out alone into the great ring with the formidable array of obstacles around it. She touched the roan gently with her heels.
"Now, darling," she whispered.
And then, of course, it happened. Sweet and Low became aware of the crowds and the shining motorcars midway between the entrance and the first jump. He stopped dead, throwing Susan up his neck, and surveyed them, not with fear but with tremendous satisfaction.
After chivalrously waiting for her to wriggle back into the saddle he gave a little squeal and a buck of sheer pleasure and set off for the first jump like an express train.
He took it so high that Susan felt they must never come down and steeled herself to steady him. But he did not need or notice her ministrations.
Having accomplished what he had set out to do, he looked back at the fence with so natural a movement that a spontaneous burst of laughter ran round the ring. Unfortunately the sound was music in his ears.
He began to dance a little, not nervously or angrily but with a deliberate and wicked attempt to show off.
With her cheeks burning with shame and embarrassment, Susan tried to control him, but that soft responsive mouth which had seemed so sympathetic in the meadow was now made of solidified rubber. He was utterly unaware of her. His eyes were on the delighted and partially derisive crowd and his ears were strained towards them.
He took the next hedge sideways. It was a miraculous performance because he did not break it. He actually cleared it, landing broadside on with a neigh that startled every other horse on the ground.
This time the laughter became a little hysterical and Sweet and Low lost his head. He stood in the fairway, neighing, until the judge's megaphone bellowed to Susan to complete her round: She was almost in tears. Her crop made no impression on the roan. He was drunk with the sense of his own cleverness and had no mind for anything else in the world.
She was ju
st wondering if she ought to get down and try to lead him out when he seemed to sense that he was losing his audience. He put down his head, saw the gate, disliked it, and bolted round it flipping it neatly over with his heels as he passed.
The wall he charged. Susan was terrified. In the split second before the crash she saw the horse lying in the heap of debris with herself beneath him. But she had reckoned without his peculiar dramatic sense. He came to rest with his forelegs on the top of the wall and, after he had heard the laughter, he beat it down systematically and picked his way over the remaining board or two as daintily as if he were coming down the gangway of his box.
The next jump he cleared as gracefully and stylishly as Bitter Aloes had done, but without displacing the wand. Susan was deaf and blind with misery. The crowd was a swimming mass of spitefulness and the creature beneath her a fiend in equine shape.
She set him at the water-jump and he played his last card. He unseated her. He did it quite deliberately in a neat calculating fashion that was positively insulting.
He stopped to pitch her up his neck just before the takeoff and then soared into the air, putting in a diabolical wriggle under the saddle which shot her squarely into the water. He landed gracefully, shook himself, and had the effrontery to come back and watch her clambering out. Susan grasped his bridle amid general laughter, hand clapping and hysterical badinage.
Sweet and Low walked placidly beside her wet and bedraggled little figure. Just before they reached the exit he threw up his head and omitted one last paralyzing neigh.
They were all waiting for her as she came through the gates, a smiling Geraldine, a Phil who was not smiling, a Grey-faced Branch, Tony and Jean, Jean in tears, and little Bill, Susan's small cousin, clutching Taffy.
Susan only saw Phil. She led Sweet and Low up to him. She was shaken, humiliated, and as angry as it is possible for a young woman to be.
"Here's your horse," she said. "I won't tell you what I think of either of you. You're both clowns, filthy, cruel, not at all funny clowns, and I hope you both laugh yourselves to death."
The Return of Mr Campion Page 13
