CHAPTER IV

WHICH SMELLS VERY VILELY OF THE STABLE

April softened into May, and the hawthorns were in blossom before

Richard passed any other very note-worthy milestone on the road of

personal development. Then, greatly tempted, he committed a venial sin;

received prompt and coarse chastisement; and, by means of the said

chastisement, as is the merciful way of the Eternal Justice, found

unhoped of emancipation.

It happened thus. As the spring days grew warm Mademoiselle de

Mirancourt failed somewhat. The darkness and penetrating chill of the

English winter tried her, and this year her recuperative powers seemed

sadly deficient. A fuller tide of life had pulsed through Brockhurst

since Colonel Ormiston's arrival. The old stillness was departing, the

old order changing. With that change Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had no

quarrel, since, to her serene faith, all that came must, of necessity,

come through a divine ordering and in conformity to a divine plan. Yet

this more of activity and of movement strained her. The weekly drive

over to Westchurch, to hear mass at the humble Catholic chapel tucked

away in a side street, sorely taxed her strength. She returned

fortified, her soul ravished by that heavenly love, which, in pure and

innocent natures, bears such gracious kinship to earthly love. Yet in

body she was outworn and weary. On such occasions she would rally

Julius March, not without a touch of malice, saying:--

"Ah! _tres cher ami_, had you only followed the ever blessed footsteps

of those dear Oxford friends of yours and entered the fold of the true

Church, what fatigue might you not now spare me--let alone the

incalculable advantages to your own poor, charming, fatally darkened

soul!"

While Julius--who, though no less devout than of yore, was happily less

fastidiously sensitive--would reply:--

"But, dearest lady, had I followed the footsteps of my Oxford friends,

remember I should not be at Brockhurst at all."

"Clearly, then, everything is well ordered," she would say, folding her

fragile hands upon her embroidery frame, "since it is altogether

impossible we could do without you. Yet I regret for your soul. It is

so capable of receiving illumination. You English--even the most

finished among you--remain really deplorably stubborn, and nevertheless

it is my fate perpetually to set my affections upon one or other of

you."

It followed that Katherine devoted much of her time to Mademoiselle de

Mirancourt, walked slowly beside her up and down the sunny, garden

paths sheltered by the high, red walls whereon the clematis and jasmine

began to show for flower; or took her for quiet, little drives within

the precincts of the park. They spoke much of Lucia St. Quentin, of

Katherine's girlhood, and of those pleasant days in Paris long ago. And

this brought soothing and comfort, not only to the old lady, but to the

young lady also--and of soothing and comfort the latter stood in need

just now.

For it is harsh discipline even to a noble woman, whose life is still

strong in her, to stand by and see another woman but a few years her

junior entering on those joys which she has lost,--marriage, probably

motherhood as well. Roger Ormiston's and Mary Cathcart's love-making

was restrained and dignified. But the very calm of their attitude

implied a security of happiness passing all need of advertisement. And

Katherine was very far from grudging them this. She was not envious,

still less jealous. She did not want to take anything of theirs; but

she wanted, she sorely wanted, her own again. A word, a look, a certain

quickness of quiet laughter, would pierce her with recollection. Once

for her too, below the commonplaces of daily detail, flowed that same

magic river of delight. But the springs of it had gone dry. Therefore

it was a relief to be alone with Mademoiselle de Mirancourt--virgin and

saint--and to speak with her of the days before she had sounded the

lovely depths of that same magic flood--days when she had known of its

existence only by the mirage, born of the dazzle of its waters, which

plays over the innocent vacant spaces of a young girl's mind.

It was a relief even, though of sterner quality, to go into the red

drawing-room on the ground floor and pace there, her hands clasped

behind her, her proud head bowed, by the half hour together. If

personal joy is dead past resurrection, there is bitter satisfaction in

realising to the full personal pain. The room was duly swept, dusted,

casements set open to welcome breeze and sunshine, fires lighted in the

grate. But no one ever sat there. It knew no cheerfulness of social

intercourse. The crimson curtains and covers had become faded. They

were not renewed. The furniture, save for the absence of the narrow

bed, stood in precisely the same order as on the night when Sir Richard

Calmady died. It was pushed back against the walls. And in the wide

empty way between the two doors, Katherine paced, saturating all her

being with thoughts of that which was, and must remain, wholly and

inalienably her own--namely, her immense distress.

And in this she took the more comfort, because something else, until

now appearing wholly her own, was slipping a little away from her.

Dickie's health had improved notably in the last few weeks. His

listlessness had vanished, while his cheeks showed a wholesome warmth

of colour. But his cry was ever. "Mother, Uncle Roger's going to such a

place. He says he'll take me. I can go, can't I?" Or, "Mother, Mary's

going to do such a thing. She says she'll show me how. She may, mayn't

she?" And Katherine's answer was always "Yes." She grudged the boy none

of his new-found pleasures, rejoiced indeed to see him interested and

gay. Yet to watch the new broom, which sweeps so clean, is rarely

exhilarating to those that have swept diligently with the old one. The

nest had held her precious fledgling so safely till now; and this

fluttering of wings, eager for flight, troubled her somewhat. Not only

was Dickie's readiness to be away from her a trifle hard to bear; but

she knew that disappointment, of a certainty, lay in wait for him, and

that each effort towards wider action would but reveal to him how

circumscribed his powers actually were.

Meanwhile, however, Richard enjoyed himself recklessly, almost

feverishly, in the attempt to disprove the teaching of that ugly dream,

and keep truth at bay. There had been further drives, and the

excitement of witnessing a forest fire--only too frequent in the

Brockhurst country when the sap is up, and the easterly wind and May

sun have scorched all moisture from the surface of the moorland. He and

Mary had bumped over fir roots and scuttled down bridle-paths in the

pony-carriage, to avoid the rush of flame and smoke; had skirmished

round at a hand gallop, in search of recruits to reinforce Ormiston,

and Iles, and a small army of beaters, battling against the blazing

line that threatened destruction to the fir avenue. Now and again, with

a mighty roar, which sent Dickie's heart into his mouth, great tongues

of flame, clear as topaz and ruby in the steady sunshine, would leap

upwards, converting a whole tall fir into a tree of fire, while the

beaters running back, grimed with smoke and sweat, took a moment's

breathing-space in the open.

There had been more peaceful pastimes as well--several days' fishing,

enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear

trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of

cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and

switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild

creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle

sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His

donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath the grove

of silvery-leaved, ever-rustling, balsam poplars. And thence, while

Ormiston and Mary sauntered slowly on ahead, the men--Winter in mufti,

oblivious of plate-cleaning and cellarage, and the onerous duties of

his high estate, Stamp, the water-bailiff, and Moorcock, one of the

under-keepers--had carried him across the great green levels. Winter

was an old and tried friend, and it was somewhat diverting to behold

him in this novel aspect, affable and chatty with inferiors,

displaying, moreover, unexpected knowledge in the mysteries of the

angler's craft. The other two men--sharp-featured, their faces ruddy as

summer apples, merry-eyed, clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about

the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the

thigh--charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were

eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and

sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently

jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not

Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and

grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men

pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled,

snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets

above the load of silver-and-red spotted trout?

Mary had protested Dickie could throw a fly, if he had a light enough

rod. And not only did he throw a fly, but at the fourth or fifth cast a

fish rose, and he played it--with skirling reel and much advice and

most complimentary excitement on the part of the whole good

company--and brought it skilfully within range of Stamp's landing-net.

Never surely was trout spawned that begot such bliss in the heart of an

angler! As, with panting sides and open gills, this three-quarter-pound

treasure of treasures flopped about on the sunny stream bank all the

hereditary instinct of sport spoke up clearly in Dickie. The boy--such

is youthful masculine human nature--believed he understood at last why

the world was made! At dressing-time he had his sacred fish carried on

a plate up to his room to show Clara; and, but for strong remonstrance

on the part of that devoted handmaiden, would have kept it by his

bedside all night, so as to assure himself at intervals, by sense of

touch--let alone that of smell--of the adorable fact of its veritable

existence.

But all this, inspiring though it was, served but as prelude to a more

profoundly coveted acquaintance--that with the racing-stable. For it

was after this last that Dickie still supremely longed--the more so, it

is to be feared, because it was, if not explicitly, yet implicitly

forbidden. A spirit of defiance had entered into him. Being granted the

inch, he was disposed to take the ell. And this, not in conscious

opposition to his mother's will; but in protest, not uncourageous,

against the limitations imposed on him by physical misfortune. The

boy's blood was up, and consequently, with greater pluck than

discretion, he struggled against the intimate, inalienable enemy that

so marred his fate. And it was this not ignoble effort which culminated

in disobedience.

For driving back one afternoon, later than usual,--Ormiston had met

them, and Mary and he had taken a by-path home through the woods,--the

pony-carriage, turned along the high level road beside the lake, going

eastward, just as the string of race-horses, coming home from exercise,

passed along it coming west. Richard was driving, Chaplin, the second

coachman, sitting in the dickey at the back of the low carriage. He

checked the pony, and his eyes took in the whole scene--the blue-brown

expanse of the lake dotted with water-fowl, on the one hand, the

immense blue-brown landscape on the other, ranging away to the faint

line of the chalk downs in the south; the downward slope of the park,

to the great square of red stable buildings in the hollow; the horses

coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back

from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds

carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet

song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir

plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in

the beech grove near the house.

Richard stared at that oncoming procession. Half-way between him and

the foremost of the horses the tan ride branched off, and wound down

the hillside to the stables. The boy set his teeth. He arrived at a

desperate decision,--touched up the pony, drove on.

Chaplin leaned forward, addressing him, over the back of the seat.

"Better wait here, hadn't we, Sir Richard? They'll turn off in a

minute."

Richard did not look round. He tried to answer coldly, but his voice

shook.

"I know. That's why I am going on."

There was a silence save for the cawing of the rooks, ring of the axe,

and grinding of wheels on the gravel. Chaplin, responsible, correct,

over five-and-thirty, and fully intending to succeed old Mr. Wenham,

the head coachman, on the latter's impending retirement from active

service, went very red in the face.

"Excuse me, but I have my orders, Sir Richard," he said.

Dickie still looked straight ahead.

"Very well," he answered, "then perhaps you'd better get out and walk

on home."

"You know I'm bound not to leave you, sir," the man said.

Dickie laughed a little in uncontrollable excitement. He was close to

them now. The leading horse was just moving off the main road, its

shadow lying long across the turf. How was it possible to give way with

the prize within reach?--"You can go or stay Chaplin, as you please. I

mean to speak to Chifney. I--I mean to see the stables."

"It's as much as my place is worth, sir."

"Oh! bother your place!" the boy cried impetuously.--Dear heart alive,

how fine they were as they filed by! That chestnut filly, clean made as

a deer, her ears laid back as she reached at the bit; and the brown,

just behind her--"I mean, I mean you needn't be afraid, Chaplin--I'll

speak to her ladyship. I'll arrange all that. Go to the pony's head."

At the end of the long string of horses came the trainer--a

square-built, short-necked man, sanguine complexioned and clean shaven.

Of hair, indeed, Mr. Chifney could only boast a rim of carroty-gray

stubble under the rim of the back of his hard hat. His right eye had

suffered damage, and the pupil of it was white and viscous. His lips

were straight and purplish in colour. He raised his hat and would have

followed on down the slope, but Dickie called to him.

As he rode up an unwonted expression came over Mr. Chifney's shrewd,

hard-favoured face. He took off his hat and sat there, bare-headed in

the sunshine, looking down at the boy, his hand on his hip.

"Good-day, Sir Richard," he said. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, yes," Dickie stammered, all his soul in his eyes, his cheeks

aflame, "you can do just what I want most. Take me down, Chifney, and

show me the horses."

Here Chaplin coughed discreetly behind his hand. But that proved of

small avail, save possibly in the way of provocation. For socially

between the racing and house stables was a great gulf fixed; and Mr.

Chifney could hardly be expected to recognise the existence of a man in

livery standing at a pony's head, still less to accept direction from

such a person. Servants must be kept in their place--impudent, lazy

enough lot anyhow, bless you! On his feet the trainer had been known to

decline to moments of weakness. But in the saddle, a good horse under

him, he possessed unlimited belief in his own judgment, fearing neither

man, devil, nor even his own meek-faced wife with pink ribbons in her

cap. Moreover, he felt such heart as he had go out strangely to the

beautiful, eager boy gazing up at him.

"Nothing 'ud give me greater pleasure in life, Sir Richard," he said,

"if you're free to come. We've waited a long time, a precious long

time, sir, for you to come down and take a look at your horses."

"I'd have been to see them sooner. I'd have given anything to see them.

I've never had the chance, somehow."

Chifney pursed up his lips, and surveyed the distant landscape with a

very meaning glance. "I dare say not, Sir Richard. But better late than

never, you know; and so, if you are free to come----"

Again Chaplin coughed.

"Free to come? Of course I am free to come," Dickie asserted, his pride

touched to arrogance. And Mr. Chifney looked at him, an approving

twinkle in his sound eye.

"I agree, Sir Richard. Quite right, sir, you're free, of course."

Stolen waters are sweet, says the proverb. And to Richard Calmady, his

not wholly legitimate experience of the next hour was sweet indeed. For

there remains rich harvest of poetry in all sport worth the name, let

squeamish and sentimental persons declaim against it as they may.

Strength and endurance, disregard of suffering have a permanent appeal

and value, even in their coarsest manifestations. No doubt the noble

gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who "lay at Brockhurst two nights" on

the occasion of Sir Denzil's historic house-warming, to witness the

mighty bear-baiting, were sensible of something more in that somewhat

disgusting exhibition, than the mere gratification of brutal instincts,

the mere savage relish for wounds and pain and blood. And to Sir

Denzil's latest descendant the first sight of the training-stable--as

the pony-carriage came to a standstill alongside the grass plot in the

centre of the great, graveled square--offered very definite and

stirring poetry of a kind.

On three sides the quadrangle was shut in by one-storied, brick

buildings, the woodwork of doors and windows immaculate with white

paint. Behind, over the wide archway,--closed fortress-like by heavy

doors at night,--were the head-lad's and helpers' quarters. On either

side, forge and weighing-room, saddler's and doctor's shop. To right

and left a range of stable doors, with round swing-lights between each;

and, above these, the windows of hay and straw lofts and of the boys'

dormitories. In front were the dining-rooms and kitchens, and the

trainer's house--a square clock tower, carrying an ornate gilt vane,

rising from the cluster of red roofs. Twenty years had weathered the

raw of brick walls, and painted the tiling with all manner of orange

and rusty-coloured lichens; yet the whole place was admirably spick and

span, free of litter. Many cats, as Dickie noted, meditated in sunny

corners, or prowled in the open with truly official composure. Over all

stretched a square of bluest sky, crossed by a skein of

homeward-wending rooks. While above the roofs, on either side the

archway, the high-lying lands of the park showed up, broken, here and

there, by clumps of trees.

Mr. Chifney slipped out of the saddle.--"Here boy, take my horse," he

shouted to a little fellow hurrying across the yard. "I'm heartily glad

to see you, Sir Richard," he went on. "Now, if you care, as your

father's son can't very well be off caring, for horses----"

"If I care!" echoed Dickie, his eyes following the graceful chestnut

filly as she was led in over the threshold of her stable.

"I like that. That'll do. Chip of the old block after all," the trainer

said, with evident relish. "Well then, since you do care for horses as

you ought to, Sir Richard, we'll just make you free of this

establishment. About the most first-class private establishment in

England, sir, though I say it that have run the concern pretty well

single-handed for the best part of the last fifteen years--make you

free of it right away, sir. And, look you, when you've got hold, don't

you leave hold."

"No, I won't," Dickie said stoutly.

Mr. Chifney was in a condition of singular emotion, as he wrapped

Richard's rug about him and bore him away into the stables. He even

went so far as to swear a little under his breath; and Chifney was a

very fairly clean-mouthed man, unless members of his team of twenty and

odd naughty boys got up to some devilry with their charges. He carried

Richard as tenderly as could any woman, while he tramped from stall to

stall, loose-box to loose-box, praising his racers, calling attention

to their points, recounting past prowess, or prophesying future

victories.

And the record was a fine one; for good luck had clung to the

masterless stable, as Lady Calmady's bank-books and ledgers could

testify.

"Vinedresser by Red Burgundy out of Valeria--won two races at the

Newmarket Spring Meeting the year before last. Lamed himself somehow in

the horse-box coming back--did nothing for eighteen months--hope to

enter him for some of the autumn events."--Then later:--"Sahara, by

North African out of Sally-in-our-Alley. Beautiful mare? I believe you,

Sir Richard. Why she won the Oaks for you. Jack White was up. Pretty a

race as ever I witnessed, and cleverly ridden. Like to go up to her in

the stall? She's as quiet as a lamb. Catch hold of her head, boy."

And so Dick found himself seated on the edge of the manger, the

trainer's arm round him, and the historic Sahara snuffing at his jacket

pockets.

Then they crossed the quadrangle to inspect the colts and fillies,

where glories still lay ahead.

"Verdigris by Copper King out of Valeria again. And if he doesn't make

a name I'll never judge another horse, sir. Strain of the old

Touchstone blood there. Rather ugly? Yes, they're often a bit ugly that

lot, but devilish good uns to go. You ask Miss Cathcart about them.

Never met a lady who'd as much knowledge as she has of a horse. The

Baby, by Punch out of Lady Bountiful. Not much good, I'm afraid. No

grip, you see, too contracted in the hoofs. Chloroform by Sawbones out

of sister to Castinette."

And so forth, an endless repetition of genealogies, comments, anecdotes

to which Dickie lent most attentive ear. He was keen to learn, his

attention was on the stretch. He was in process of initiation, and

every moment of the sacred rites came to him with power and value. Yet

it must be owned that he found the lessening of the strain on his

memory and attention not wholly unwelcome when Mr. Chifney, sitting

beside him on the big, white-painted cornbin opposite Diplomacy's

loose-box, began to tell him of the old times when he--a little fellow

of eight to ten years of age--had been among the boys in his cousin,

Sam Chifney's famous stable at Newmarket. Of the long, weary traveling

before the days of railways, when the horses were walked by highroad

and country lane, ankle deep in mud, from Newmarket to Epsom; and after

victory or defeat, walked by slow stages all the way home again. Of

how, later, he had migrated to Doncaster; but, not liking the

"Yorkshire tykes," had got taken on in some well-known stables upon the

Berkshire downs.

"And it was there, Sir Richard," he said, "I met your father, and we

fancied each other from the first. And he asked me to come to him.

These stables were just building then. And here I've been ever since."

Mr. Chifney stared down at the clean red quarries of the stable floor,

and tapped his neat gaiters with the switch he held in his hand.

"Rum places, racing stables," he went on, meditatively; "and a lot of

rum things go on in 'em, one way and another, as you'll come to know.

And it ain't the easiest thing going, I tell you, to keep your hands

clean. Ungrateful business a trainer's, Sir Richard--wearing

business--shortens a man's temper and makes him old before his time.

Out by four o'clock on summer mornings, minding your cattle and keeping

your eye on those shirking blackguards of boys. No real rest, sir, day

or night. Wearing business--studying all the meetings and entering your

horses where you've reason to reckon they've most chance. And if your

horse wins, the jockey gets all the praise and the petting. And if it

fails the trainer gets all the blame. Yes, it's wearing work. But,

confound it all, sir," he broke out hotly, "there's nothing like it on

the face of God's earth. Horses--horses--horses--why the very smell of

the bedding's sweeter than a bunch of roses. Love 'em? I believe you.

And you'll love 'em too before you've done."

He turned and gripped Dickie hard by the shoulder.

"For we'll make a thorough-paced sportsman of you yet, Sir Richard," he

said, "God bless you--danged if we don't."

Which assertion Mr. Chifney repeated at frequent intervals over his

grog that evening, as he sat, not in the smart dining-room hung round

with portraits of Vinedresser and Sahara and other equine notabilities,

but in the snug, little, back parlour looking out on to the yard. Mrs.

Chifney was a gentle, pious woman, with whom her husband's profession

went somewhat against the grain. She would have preferred a nice

grocery, or other respectable, uneventful business in a country town,

and dissipation in the form of prayer rather than of race-meetings. But

as a slender, slightly self-righteous, young maiden she had fallen very

honestly and completely in love with Tom Chifney. So there was nothing

for it but to marry him and regard the horses as her appointed cross.

She nursed the boys when they were sick or injured, intervened fairly

successfully between their poor, little backs and her husband's

all-too-ready ash stick; and assisted Julius March in promoting their

spiritual welfare, even while deploring that the latter put his faith

in forms and ceremonies rather than in saving grace. Upon the trainer

himself she exercised a gently repressive influence.

"We won't swear, Mr. Chifney," she remarked mildly now.

"Swear! It's enough to make the whole bench of bishops swear to see

that lad."

"I did see him," Mrs. Chifney observed.

"Yes, out of window. But you didn't carry him round, and hear him

talk--knowledgeable talk as you could ask from one of his age. And

watch his face--as like as two peas to his father's."

"But her ladyship's eyes," put in Mrs. Chifney.

"I don't know whose eyes they are, but I know he can use 'em. It was as

pretty as a picture to see how he took it all."

Chifney tossed off the remainder of his tumbler of brandy and water at

a gulp.

"Swear," he repeated, "I could find it in my heart to swear like hell.

But I can find it in my heart to do more than that. I can forgive her

ladyship. By all that's----"

"Thomas, forgiveness and oaths don't go suitably together."

"Well, but I can though, and I tell you, I do," he said solemnly. "I

forgive her.--Shoot the Clown! by G--! I beg your pardon, Maria;--but

upon my soul, once or twice, when I had him in my arms to-day, I felt I

could have understood it if she'd had every horse shot that stood in

the stable."

He held the tumbler up against the lamp. But it was quite empty.

"Uncommon glad she didn't though, poor lady, all the same," he added,

parenthetically, as he set it down on the table again. "What do you

say, Maria--about time we toddled off to bed?"