Boy Woodburn Part 16

Sometimes Mr. Bromhead would look in, grim and gray behind his spectacles.

"Talking horses as usual, Jim, I suppose," he would say.

"And dog, sir," corrected young Amersham.

"With an occasional shorthorn chucked in to tip the scale," added old Sir Evelyn's fair grandson.

When Brazil Silver died, the year his son was the heavy-weight in the Oxford boat, he left a will which was in accordance with his life.

Every penny he had--and he had a good many, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer remarked in the House of Commons--was tied up in the Bank, and to remain there.

It was all left to his son. "I can trust him to see to his mother," ran the will, written on half a sheet of paper, "and to any dependents.

Charities I loathe."

The son was free to save anything he liked from his vast income, but the capital must stay in the Bank.

The old man made no condition that Jim should enter the Bank, and expressed no wish to that effect. His friends, therefore, speculated what Jim would do.

They might have spared themselves the trouble. He left Oxford, in spite of the protests of the Captain of the boat, who spent a vain but hectic week pointing out to the apostate the path of duty, which was also the path of glory, and went into the Bank.

His reasoning, as always, was simple and to the point.

"The Bank was my father's show," he said. "He made it, and left it to me to carry on. And I shall--to the best of my ability."

With that capacity for dogged grind which distinguished him, he tried to render himself efficient, working early and late like any clerk.

It was a well-nigh hopeless task. Jim Silver's head was sound if slow; but he had no apt.i.tude for figures.

"I'm worth two pound a week in the open market," he told his old house-master. "And I'm supposed to be bossing--that." And he brandished the latest report of the Bank of which he was nominal chairman.

Notwithstanding obvious differences in many ways, Jim inherited some of his father's characteristics.

Brazil Silver, in spite of his success, had always remained in his personal life the simple farmer's son. Indeed, it was said in the City that he never owned a dress-suit, and that when he had to attend City banquets he hired his butler's.

When he died he left behind him none of the usual enc.u.mbrances. Original in his private life as in finance, he had steadfastly refused to go the way of the world. He had never bought a great place in the country or a big house in town. He had never taken a Scotch moor or a river in Norway. In London he had a plain but perfectly appointed flat; and sometimes in the summer he took a house on the river or at St. Helen's.

In these respects Jim followed faithfully in the steps of his father.

He kept on the flat in town, worked in the City all the day, and spent much time of evenings at the Eton Mission in Hackney Wick.

One small extravagance he attempted: he tried to buy from old Sir Evelyn the farm on which his fathers had lived and died for generations.

The old gentleman, who would sooner have parted from his soul than from an acre of his inheritance, refused to sell.

"I suppose the boy'll cut up rough now," grumbled the old baronet, who was fond of Jim.

"Oh, no, he won't, grandfather," replied his grandson. "He's awfully decent."

"We shall see," mumbled the old man; but he had shortly to admit that Billy was right.

Jim Silver, thwarted in his desire to acquire his grandfather's farm, rented a little hunting-box near by instead. There he kept his weight-carriers, and there during the hunting season he spent his week-ends and occasional holidays.

Since the days when he walked his grand-dad's farm as a child, his ambitions had changed in degree but not in kind. Then he had proposed to devote his life to breeding shire-horses. Now he meant, when once he had mastered his job, to devote his leisure to owning and breeding 'chasers.

Some time elapsed after his father's death before he let himself go in this respect. His sensitive conscience and high sense of duty gave him an uneasy mind in the matter. His father had disapproved of horses, or rather had been afraid of the Turf and its consequences.

It was a while before the son could a.s.suage his qualms and feel himself free to go forward in the prosecution of his desire.

His old house-master, still his father-confessor in spiritual distresses, finally dispelled the young man's doubts and launched him on his destined way.

"Be yourself," he said, "as your father was before you. He wouldn't farm--because he hadn't got it in him. What he had in him was banking.

So like a wise man he banked. You've got it in you to breed steeplechase horses. So breed them. Only--breed them better than any man ever bred them before."

The young man's mind once finally resolved, nothing could stop him. And it was in the pursuit of his desire that he first came across Mat Woodburn.

The old man and the young took to each other from the first. Indeed, there was much in common between the two. Both were simple of heart, children of nature, caring little for the world, and both believed with pa.s.sionate conviction that an English thoroughbred was the crown and glory of G.o.d's creatures.

"_HE_ didn't make no mistake _that_ time," the old man was fond of saying with emphasis, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Mr. Haggard and the annoyance of his wife.

CHAPTER XIII

Boy in Her Eyrie

In the corner of the yard at Putnam's was Billy Bluff's kennel. Above the kennel, a broad ladder, much haunted by Maudie, the free, who loved to sit on it and tantalize with her airs of liberty Billy, the prisoner on his chain, led to the loft above the stable.

It was a very ordinary loft in the roof, dusty, dark, with hay piled in one corner, a chaff-cutter, and trap-doors in the floor, through which the forage was thrust down into the mangers of the horses below.

At the end of the loft was a wooden part.i.tion. Behind the part.i.tion was the girl's room.

She slept and lived up there over the stable at her own desire. It was less like being in a house: the girl felt herself her own mistress as she did not under the maternal roof; and most of all she was near the horses.

"I keep two watch-dogs at my place," Old Mat would say. "Billy Bluff a-low and my little gal a-loft."

Boy loved to go to sleep to the sound of the rhythmical munching of the horses beneath, and to wake to the noise of them blowing their noses in the dawn. Never a mouse moved in the stable at night but she was aware of it. And when a horse was training for a big event barely a night pa.s.sed but in the small hours a white, bare-footed figure issued from the part.i.tion and came swiftly along the loft, disturbing rats and bats as she came, to lift a trap-door and look down with guardian eye on the hope of the stable dreaming unconsciously beneath.

In her solitary eyrie up there the girl learned a great deal.

Elsie Haggard, the vicar's daughter, or, as Mrs. Woodburn would say, with that touch of satire characteristic of her, the daughter of the vicar's wife, who was two years older than Boy, and at college, once asked her if she wasn't afraid.

"Afraid!" asked the girl. "What of?"

"I don't know," answered Elsie. "It's so far from everybody."