Boy Woodburn Part 5

Old Mat came unconsciously to the rescue.

"Why, Four Pound, o' course," he panted, labouring up the hill, his hands on his knees.

"Is she Black Death blood?" asked the young man.

"Yes, she's Black Death all right," answered the old man. "That's the old Pocahontas strain. Jumpers to a gee. You know. Look at them gray hairs at the root of her tail--and that lazy, too! s.l.u.ttin' along with her nose out and her tongue a-waggin'. They're all like that, Black Deaths are. If you was to let off a bomb under her belly, she wouldn't so much as switch her tail. Couldn't be bothered. Const.i.tutions like hoxes, too." He paused to pant. "If what that feller said was O.K., why then she's worth money, too. Only o' course it ain't. Else he wouldn't ha' said it."

On the top of the Downs, facing the wind that blew straight from the sun sinking over Newhaven into the sea, they paused to breathe. Beneath them stretched the Weald, and the great saucer of Pevensey Bay ringed about with a line of brown sand fringed with foam. Northward was Crowborough Beacon, the Ashdown Forest Ridge, and the hills about Battle Abbey. Southward, and the way of the setting sun, the Downs ran out in huge spurs, line behind line of them, into the shining splendour of the sea, to break off abruptly in the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The hills were bare and bleak in their austere yet rounded strength, stripped of trees, clothed only in resplendent gorse, here a squat haystack dumped upon a ridge against the sky, there a great patch of plough let into the green.

"By Jove!" cried the young man; and the girl thrilled to him because she felt he loved what was so much to her.

"Some s.p.a.ce," panted the old man, climbing back to his seat, and tucking the rug around him. "Room to stretch a hoss here; and somethin' for his windpipe better'n Owlbridge's lung-tonic."

Boy said nothing but stood breathing deep and with quiet eyes. At her side was Billy Bluff, his s.h.a.ggy hair blown back from his forehead and astrew across his face, lifting his nose as though to sniff the sunset.

They jogged quietly along the crest of the hills, travelling always toward the sun, over the ancient Pilgrim's Way that runs from Pevensey, by the Holy Well in Cow Gap, and the Lamb on the hill at Eastbourne, past the Star at Alfiriston along the top of the Downs to that cathedral beyond the Arun, once a chapel of wood, whence St. Wilfrid set out to take the Gospel from the coast to the heathen dwelling in the dark and savage Andred's Weald.

The slope was with them; and Goosey Gander made his own pace, slipping along with smooth and easy stride.

They followed the line of the telegraph poles, skirting steep coombes shrouded at the foot with beech woods, past round-eyed dew-ponds, at which cloaked shepherds were watering their flocks. Once an encampment in the gorse caught their eyes. A yellow van, an ancient horse or two hobbled in the gorse-bushes, a patch of brown tent, and a whiff of blue smoke rising from an unseen fire, betrayed the nature of the squatters.

The old man pointed them out with his whip.

"There they are, the beauties," he said. "Thought they wouldn't be fur.

Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Silver!" he cried, twiddling his whip, and raising his voice to a sort of chant. "Rogues and rasqueals on h'every side, layin' in wait for to take a little bit off you--same as the Psalmist says. And it's no good talkin' to 'em. None whatebber." He dropped his voice to the old confidential note. "Pinch the hair off the back o' your head while you're sleepin', they would. Wonder who they sneaked _her_ off?"

He turned his rogue-eye on the young man on the chestnut pony jogging at his side, winked, and made a movement with his elbow.

"Course if they was to claim her, I got her off of an old friend o' mine down in the West Country," he said, raising his voice. "Better still Ireland as further away. Yes, South of Ireland--a'ter Punchestown. He'd better be dead, too, my old friend--so he can't tell no tales and deny no stories." He elaborated his idea with glee, clapping his sides with his elbows. "Yes, that's about it. I bought her in at the sale of the effects of an old friend o' mine, South of Ireland--to help his widie.

That's got it. Good idee. Very good idee. Charity _and_ business--what they like. Micky Mahon, his name was. Died o'--I must have it all pat on the tongue. What _did_ he die of, Brand? You're an artful little feller, settin' there so smug and secret like a hen crocodile a-hatchin' h'out h'its h'egg."

"Lung-trouble's best, sir," replied the little jockey gravely. "I reck'n you can't go far with lung-trouble. See, we all dies o' shortness o'

breath in the latter end. That _is_ lung-trouble in a manner o'

speakin'."

"Lung-trouble's good," said the old man. "Vairy good. You're a good little lad, Brand. You help me in my hour o' need...."

"Father!" came the stern voice from the back seat.

The old man began to flap with his elbows.

"There she goes, givin' tongue! Is that you, Miss?" he called, in his half-humorous whimper. "You wasn't meant to hear that. Your ears is altogether _too_ long--like that young Lollypop hoss o' mine."

They swung away off the crest of the Downs and began to drop down the slope into the village of Cuckmere lying beneath them in the valley among trees.

The sun dipped into the sea as they turned with a noise of grinding wheels into the village street. The news of Goosey Gander's victory had preceded them and they drove slowly through little crowds of cheering children, between old flint cottages with tiled roofs, and gardens white with arabis and overspread with fig-trees.

As they turned a corner, Putnam's lay before them, a Queen Anne manor-house, homely, solid, snug, with low blue parapeted roof, standing a little back from the road, and b.u.t.tressed by barns and stable-buildings.

Directly they came in sight of the windows of the farm the old man took his hat off his shining head, put it on the end of his whip, and began to twiddle it.

The signal was instantly answered.

A handkerchief was waved at a lower window.

"There's Mar!" Mat said comfortably, easing into a walk. "One thing, she ain't dead. _That's_ a little bit o' better."

He gave his plump body a half-turn and began again to whimper over his shoulder to the occupant of the back seat.

"You wouldn't get your old dad into trouble, would you then, Boy?--not by tellin' Mar I done a lot o' things I never dreamed o' doin'. If you was to say I betted now you'd say what wasn't true, wouldn't you?--and you've often told me what come to Annie Nyas and Sophia in the Book, haven't you? A lesson to us all that was--to be took to 'eart, as the sayin' is. All I done was just this: An old friend come up to me--had a drop in him, must have had!--and he says: 'Your old hoss won't win, Mat,' he says, very insultifyin'. 'My old hoss _will_ win then,' I answers, polite as you please. 'De we,' I says, mindful o' Mar. 'Will you back your opinion?' says he, sneery. 'No,' I says, very firm. 'No; I never bets--cause o' you know.' 'Oh, yes,' he says, 'I know you--and I know your master,' meaning Mar." He swung round and addressed the young man riding on his right. "That's 'ow they go on at me all the time, Mr.

Silver," he whined. "Persecute me somethin' shockin' because o' me religion--for all the world as if I could help it."

"It's not your religion," came the deep voice from the back seat. "It's mother's."

"What's it matter whose religion it is if they martyrizes you for it at the stake?" wheezed the old man. He took up his tale anew. "So as I was sayin' he says to me, Sam Buckland do: 'Man to man,' he says, 'I respeck you for stickin' to principles what you don't 'old, Mat,' he says. 'And far be it from me to undermine a man's faith what he learned acrost his mother's knee,' he says. 'But see here,' he says; 'if that 'ole rockin'-hoss o' yours gets round the course I'll give you fi' pun for yourself; if a miracle happens and he gets a place I'll make it a tenner; and if all the other hosses takes and lays down and dies so as he wins outright, it's a pony to you.' And I says to him: 'As to my champion, Mr. Buckland,' I says, 'you're jealous of him and I don't blame you, seein' as he can roll faster nor any hoss o' yours can gallip. But if he _don't_ win,' I says, 'I'll give you fi' pun to buy yourself some manners with, fi' pun for your missus to get her a better 'usband, and fi' pun for that bald-faced, ewe-knecked, calf-kneed son of a laughin' jack-a.s.s who calls you dad.' That's all that happened' Boy.

That's not bettin', is it? That's fair give-and-take. Quite a different thing entirely. Ask the clergee."

They pulled up in the road.

Mrs. Woodburn came slowly down the steps of the old manor-house to meet them.

She was a tall woman, gray, rather gaunt, and perhaps twenty years younger than her husband. She wore a plain black dress, and there was about her a wonderful atmosphere of peace and dignity.

n.o.body but Mat would have dreamed of calling such a woman Mar, and any other woman of the type but Patience Longstaffe would have resented the name.

"I'm glad you won, dad," she said in a voice deep as her daughter's, but harsher, as though from wear. "And I hope you won fair."

The old man, who had alighted, was pa.s.sing the reins through the rings of the saddle.

"There she goes!" he croaked in his protesting voice. "Might just as well be on the crook--straight, I might, for all the credit I gets."

Mrs. Woodburn kissed him and the girl, and ran a practised eye and hand down Goosey Gander's fore-legs.

His wife might be a Puritan, but Mat was the first to admit that there was little about a horse he could teach her.

"He got round all right, then, Brand?" she said.

"Oh, yes, 'm," chirruped the little jockey. "It was light goin', so his pipe didn't trouble him; and he fenced like he was in Paridise. I lay off a bit till they was all bust, then I come right away through 'em and spread-eagled the lot."

The woman's hand, strong yet tender, pa.s.sed down the old horse's flank.

"I see you waled him," she said.

"Well, 'm, just a couple of taps like--to settle it," deprecated the other. "Three fences from home I see I'd got the measure of 'em, and come away from the ruck with a rattle. Then I easied him home."

"You'd no call to take up your whip, Brand," grumbled the old man. "He'd ha' won without that, and you'd a plenty in hand."

"_I_ told him to come through and finish it if he got a chance,"

interposed Boy from the back.