by Ellen Wood
“Not since we were last staying at Crabb Cot. We went to Timberdale Church one day and heard your brother Charles preach; and we dined once with Robert at the Court, and he and his wife came once to dine with us. But — have you not seen your brother James here?”
“No — and I would rather not see him. He would be sure to ask me painful questions.”
“But he is always about the streets here, seeing after his patients, Lucy. I wonder you have not met him.”
“We only came down last Saturday: and I go out as little as I can,” she said; a hesitation in her tone and manner that struck me. “I did think I saw James’s carriage before me just now as I came up the Tything. It turned into Britannia Square.”
“I dare say. We met it yesterday in Sidbury as we drove in.”
“His practice grows large, I suppose. You say Charles was preaching at Timberdale?” she added: “was Herbert Tanerton ill?”
“Yes. Ailing, that is. Your brother came over to take the duty for the day. Will you call at the Star to see the Squire, Lucy? You know how pleased he would be.”
“N — o,” she answered, her manner still more hesitating; and she seemed to be debating some matter mentally. “I — I would have come after dark, had Mrs. Todhetley been there. At least I think I would — I don’t know.”
“You can come all the same, Lucy.”
“But no — that would not have done,” she went on to herself, in a half-whisper. “I might have been seen. It would never have done to risk it. The truth is, Johnny, I ought to see Mrs. Todhetley on a matter of business. Though even if she were here, I do not know that I might dare to see her. It is — not exactly my own business — and — and mischief might come of it.”
“Is it anything I can say to her for you?”
“I — think — you might,” she returned slowly, pausing, as before, between her words. “I know you are to be trusted, Johnny.”
“That I am. I wouldn’t forget a single item of the message.”
“I did not mean in that way. I shall have to entrust to you a private matter — a disagreeable secret. It is a long time that I have wanted to tell some of you; ever since last winter: and yet, now that the opportunity has come that I may do it, I scarcely dare. The Squire is hasty and impulsive, his son is proud; but I think I may confide in you, Johnny.”
“Only try me, Lucy.”
“Well, I will. I will. I know you are true as steel. Not this morning, for I cannot stop — and I am not prepared. Let me see: where shall we meet again? No, no, Johnny, I cannot venture to the hotel: it is of no use to suggest that.”
“Shall I come to your lodgings?”
She just shook her head by way of dissent, and remained in silent thought. I could not imagine what it was she had to tell me that required all this preparation; but it came into my mind to be glad that I had chanced to go that morning to Harry Parker’s.
“Suppose you meet me in Sansome Walk this afternoon, Johnny Ludlow? Say at” — considering— “yes, at four o’clock. That will be a safe hour, for they will be on the racecourse and out of the way. People will, I mean,” she added hastily: but somehow I did not think she had meant people. “Can you come?”
“I will manage it.”
“And, if you don’t meet me at that time — it is just possible that I may be prevented coming out — I will be there at eight o’clock this evening instead,” she continued. “That I know I can do.”
“Very well. I’ll be sure to be there.”
Hardly waiting another minute to say good-morning, she went swiftly on. I began wondering what excuse I could make for leaving the Squire’s carriage in the midst of the sport, and whether he would let me leave it.
But the way for that was paved without any effort of mine. At the early lunch, the Squire, in the openness of his heart, offered a seat in the phaeton to some old acquaintance from Martley. Which of course would involve Tod’s sitting behind with me, and Giles’s being left out altogether.
“Catch me at it,” cried Tod. “You can do as you please, Johnny: I shall go to the course on foot.”
“I will also,” I said — though you, naturally, understand that I had never expected to sit elsewhere than behind. And I knew it would be easier for me to lose Tod in the crowd, and so get away to keep the appointment, than it would have been to elude the Squire’s questioning as to why I could want to leave the carriage.
Lunch over, Tod said he would go to the Bell, to see whether the Letstoms had come in; and we started off. No; the waiter had seen nothing of them. Onwards, down Broad Street we went, took the Quay, and so got on that way to Pitchcroft — as the racecourse is called. The booths and shows were at this end, and the chief part of the crowd. Before us lay stretched the long expanse of the course, green and level as a bowling-green. The grand-stand (comparatively speaking a new erection there) lay on the left, higher up, the winning-chair and distance-post facing it. Behind the stand, flanking all that side of Pitchcroft, the beautiful river Severn flowed along between its green banks, the houses of Henwick, opposite, looking down upon it from their great height, over their sloping gardens. It was a hot day, the blue sky dark and cloudless.
“True and correct card of all the running horses, gentlemen: the names, weights, and colours o’ the riders!” The words, echoing on all sides from the men who held these cards for sale, are repeated in my brain now; as are other sounds and sights. I was somewhat older then than I had been; but it was not very long since those shows, ranged round there side by side, a long line of them, held the greatest attraction for me in life. “Guy Mannering,” the past night, had been very nice to see, very enjoyable; but it possessed not the nameless charm of that first “play” I went to in Scowton’s Show on the racecourse. That charm could never come again. And I was but a lad yet.
The lightning with which the play opened had been real lightning to me; the thunder, real thunder. The gentleman who stood, when the curtain rose, gorgeously attired in a scarlet doublet slashed with gold (something between a king and a bandit), with uplifted face of terror and drawn sword, calling the war of the elements “tremendious,” was to me a greater potentate than the world could almost contain! The young lady, his daughter, in ringlets and spangles, who came flying on in the midst of the storm, and fell at his feet, with upraised arms and a piteous appeal, “Alas! my father, and will you not consent to my marriage with Alphonso?” seemed more lovely to me than the Sultanas in the “Arabian Nights,” or the Princesses in Fairyland. I sat there entranced and speechless. A new world had opened to me — a world of delight. For weeks and weeks afterwards, that play, with its wondrous beauties, its shifting scenes, was present to me sleeping and waking.
The ladies in spangles, the gentlemen in slashed doublets, were on the platforms of their respective shows to-day, dancing for the benefit of Pitchcroft. Now and again a set would leave off, the music ceasing also, to announce that the performance was about to commence. I am not sure but I should have gone up to see one, but for the presence of Tod and Harry Parker — whom we had met on the course. There were learned pigs, and spotted calves, and striped zebras; and gingerbread and cake stalls; and boat-swings and merry-go-rounds — which had made me frightfully sick once when Hannah let me go in one. And there was the ever-increasing throng, augmenting incessantly; carriages, horsemen, shoals of foot-passengers; conjurers and fortune-tellers; small tables for the game of “thimble-rig,” their owners looking out very sharply for the constables who might chance to be looking for them; and the movable exhibitions of dancing dolls and Punch and Judy. Ay, the sounds and the sights are in my brain now. The bands of the different shows, mostly attired in scarlet and gold, all blowing and drumming as hard as they could blow and drum; the shouted invitations to the admiring spectators, “Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, the performance is just a-going to begin;” the scraping of the blind fiddlers; the screeching of the ballad-singers; the sudden uproar as a stray dog, attempting to cross the course, is hunted off it; the i
ncessant jabber and the Babel of tongues; and the soft roll of wheels on the turf.
Hark! The bell rings for the clearing of the course. People know what it means, and those who are cautious hasten at once to escape under the cords on either side. The gallop of a horse is heard, its rider, in his red coat and white smalls, loudly smacking his whip to effect the clearance. The first race is about to begin. All the world presses towards the environs of the grand-stand to get a sight of the several horses entered for it. Here they come; the jockeys in their distinguishing colours, trying their horses in a brisk canter, after having been weighed in the paddock. A few minutes, and the start is effected; they are off!
It is only a two-mile heat. The carriages are all drawn up against the cords; the foot-passengers press it; horsemen get where they can. And now the excitement is at its height; the rush of the racers coming in to the winning-post breaks on the ear. They fly like the wind.
At that moment I caught sight of the sharply eager face of a good-looking, dashing man, got up to perfection — you might have taken him for a lord at least. Arm-in-arm with him stood another, well-got-up also, as a sporting country gentleman; he wore a green cut-away coat, top-boots, and a broad-brimmed hat which shaded his face. If I say “got-up,” it is because I knew the one, and I fancied I knew the other. But the latter’s face was partly turned from me, and hidden, as I have said, by the hat. Both watched the swiftly-coming racehorses with ill-concealed anxiety: and both, as well-got-up gentlemen at ease, strove to appear indifferent.
“Tod, there’s Captain Bird.”
“Captain Bird! Where? You are always fancying things, Johnny.”
“A few yards lower down. Close to the cords.”
“Oh, be shot to the scoundrel, and so it is! What a swell! Don’t bother. Here they come.”
“Blue cap wins!” “No! red sleeves gains on him!” “Yellow stripes is first!” “Pink jacket has it!” “By Jove! the bay colt is distanced!” “Purple wins by a neck!”
With a hubbub of these different versions from the bystanders echoing on our ears, the horses flew past in a rush and a whirl. Black cap and white jacket was the winner.
Amidst the crowding and the pushing and the excitement that ensued, I tried to get nearer to Captain Bird. Not to see him: it was impossible to look at him with any patience and contrast his dashing appearance with that of poor, faded Lucy’s: but to see the other man. For he put me in mind of the gentleman-detective Eccles, who had loomed upon us at Crabb Cot that Sunday afternoon in the past winter, polished off the sirloin of beef, crammed the Squire with anecdotes of his college life, and finally made off with the other earring.
You can turn back to the paper called “Mrs. Todhetley’s Earrings,” and recall the circumstances. How she lost an earring out of her ear: a pink topaz encircled with diamonds. It was supposed a tramp had picked it up; and the Squire went about it to the police at Worcester. On the following Sunday a gentleman called introducing himself as Mr. Eccles, a private detective, and asking to look at the other earring. The Squire was marvellously taken with him, ordered in the beef, not long gone out from the dinner, and was as eager to entrust the earring to him as he was to take it. That Eccles had been a gentleman once — at least, that he had mixed with gentlemen, was easy to be seen: and perhaps had also been an Oxford man, as he asserted; but he was certainly a swindler now. He carried off the earring; and we had never seen him, or it, from that day to this. But I did think I saw him now on the racecourse. In the side face, and the tall, well-shaped figure of the top-booted country gentleman, with the heavy bunch of seals hanging from his watch-chain, who leaned on that man Captain Bird’s arm, there was a great resemblance to him. The other earring, lost first, was found in the garden under a small fir-tree when the snow melted away, where it must have dropped unseen from Mrs. Todhetley’s ear, as she stopped in the path to shake the snow from the tree.
But the rush of people sweeping by was too great. Captain Bird and he were nowhere to be seen. In the confusion also I lost Tod and Harry Parker. The country gentleman I meant to find if I could, and went looking about for him.
The carriages were coming away from their standing-places near the ropes to drive about the course, as was the custom in those days. Such a thing as taking the horses out of a carriage and letting it stay where it was until the end of the day was not known on Worcester racecourse. You might count the carriages-and-four there then, their inmates exchanging greetings with each other in passing, as they drove to and fro. It was a sight to see the noblemen’s turn-outs; the glittering harness, the array of servants in their sumptuous liveries; for they came in style to the races. The meeting on the course was the chief local event of the year, when all the county assembled to see each other and look their best.
“Will you get up now, Johnny?”
The soft bowling of the Squire’s carriage-wheels arrested itself, as he drew up to speak to me. The Martley old gentleman sat with him, and there was a vacant place by Giles behind.
“No, thank you, sir. I would rather be on foot.”
“As you will, lad. Is your watch safe?”
“Oh yes.”
“Where’s Joe?”
“Somewhere about. He is with Harry Parker. I have only just missed them.”
“Missed them! Oh, and I suppose you are looking for them. A capital race, that last.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mind you take care of yourself, Johnny,” he called back, as he touched up Bob and Blister, to drive on. I generally did take care of myself, but the Squire never forgot to remind me to do it.
The afternoon went on, and my search with it in the intervals of the racing. I could see nothing of those I wanted to see, or of Tod and Harry Parker. Our meeting, or not meeting, was just a chance, amidst those crowds and crowds of human beings, constantly moving. Three o’clock had struck, and as soon as the next race should be over — a four-mile heat — it would be nearly time to think about keeping my appointment with Lucy Bird.
And now once more set in all the excitement of the running. A good field started for the four-mile heat, more horses than had run yet.
I liked those four-mile heats on Worcester racecourse: when we watched the jockeys in their gay and varied colours twice round the course, describing the figure of eight, and coming in, hot and panting, at the end. The favourites this time were two horses named “Swallower” and “Master Ben.” Each horse was well liked: and some betters backed one, some the other. Now they are off!
The running began slowly and steadily; the two favourites just ahead; a black horse (I forget his name, but his jockey wore crimson and purple) hanging on to them; most of the other horses lying outside. The two kept together all the way, and as they came in for the final run the excitement was intense.
“Swallower has it by a neck!” “No! Master Ben heads him!” “Ben wins! Swallower loses!” “Swallower has it! Ben’s jockey is beat!” and so on, and so on. Amidst the shouts and the commotion the result was announced — a dead heat.
So the race must be run again. I looked at my watch (which you may be sure I had kept carefully buttoned up under my jacket), wondering whether I could stay for it. That was uncertain; there was no knowing how long an interval would be allowed for breathing-time.
Suddenly there arose a frightful commotion above all the natural commotion of the course. People rushed towards one point; horsemen galloped thither, carriages bowled cautiously in their wake. The centre of attraction appeared to be on the banks of the river, just beyond the grand-stand. What was it? What had occurred? The yells were deafening; the pushing fearful. At last the cause was known: King Mob was ducking some offender in the Severn.
To get near, so as to see anything of the fun, was impossible; it was equally impossible to gather what he had done; whether picked a pocket, or cheated at betting. Those are the two offences that on Pitchcroft were then deemed deserving of the water. This time, I think, it was connected with betting.
Soon t
he yells became louder and nearer. Execrations filled the air. The crowd opened, and a wretched-looking individual emerged out of it on the hard run, his clothes dripping, his hair hanging about his face like rat’s tails.
On he came, the mob shouting and hallooing in his wake, and brushed close past me. Why! it was surely the country gentleman I had seen with Bird! I knew him again at once. But whether it was the man Eccles or not, I did not see; he tore by swiftly, his head kept down. A broad-brimmed hat came flying after him, propelled by the feet of the crowd. He stooped to catch it up, and then kept on his way right across the course, no doubt to make his escape from it. Yes, it was the same man in his top-boots. I was sure of that. Scampering close to his heels, fretting and yelling furiously, was a half-starved white dog with a tin kettle tied to its tail. I wondered which of the two was the more frightened — the dog or the man.
And standing very nearly close to me, as I saw then, was Captain Bird. Not running, not shouting; simply looking on with a countenance of supreme indifference, that seemed to express no end of languid contempt of the fun. Not a sign of recognition crossed his face as the half-drowned wight swept past him: no one could have supposed he ever set eyes on him before. And when the surging crowd had passed, he sauntered away in the direction of the saddling-place.
But I lost the race. Though I stayed a little late, hoping to at last see the horses come out for the second start, and to count how many of the former field would compete for it, the minutes flew all too swiftly by, and I had to go, and to put the steam on. Making a bolt across Pitchcroft and up Salt Lane, went I, full split, over the Tything, and so down to Sansome Walk. St. Oswald’s clock was tinkling out four as I reached it.
Lucy did not come. She had indicated the spot where the meeting should be; and I waited there, making the best I could of it; cooling myself, and looking out for her. At half-past four I gave her up in my own mind; and when five o’clock struck, I knew it was useless to stay longer. So I began to take my way back slower than I had come; and on turning out by St. Oswald’s, I saw the carriages and people flocking up on their way from Pitchcroft. The first day’s racing was over.