The Tree of Knowledge Part 25

"My dear Fred, where's G.o.dfrey?" asked Mrs. Orton, a handsome, very dark young woman, with a high color and flashing eyes.

"Oh, he's somewhere about: Letherby's looking after him," was the nonchalant reply, as he lifted a pair of field gla.s.ses to his eye, and presently announced, in a tone of keen excitement; "They'll be out directly. Wait till they canter past the stand. Mrs. Learmorth, you've never seen Invincible, have you?"

"Never!" cried the lady, eagerly. "Mind you point him out to me."

"Here they come," said the colonel. "Look--that's Lord Chislehurst's Falcon--I've backed him for a place--lathy beast: but a good deal of pace. This one and this are both outsiders. There's the duke's daffodil livery, but that is only a second horse put on to make the running. Here comes the Castilian, Orton."

Mr. Orton was watching with an absorbed fascination.

"Ay, there's Carter," said he, studying the well-known jockey's face.

"He means business, I tell you."

The Castilian was a large dark-brown horse, and the crimson and pale-blue colors of his rider set him off to advantage; but, like many good race-horses, he was not singularly beautiful to the eye of the unlearned. He cantered by with some dignity, amid a good deal of cheering, when suddenly there was a rush, something like a flash of light, a bright chestnut horse, with a jockey in daffodil satin, darted like a fairy thing past the stand, followed by a spontaneous shout from the crowded onlookers. The magic hoofs seemed scarcely to touch the turf over which they swept; and Mrs. Orton, watching with a somewhat sardonic smile, observed,

"You'll lose your money, Fred."

"You wait and see," said her husband, oracularly.

"I'm sure I hope he has been careful," she went on, with a laugh, to Mrs. Learmorth, "for he has promised to take me to Homburg if he wins."

"Don't talk, Ottilie," cried Frederick Orton, irritably; "don't you see they are just going to start!"

The race began--the memorable race which crowned Invincible with the chief of his triumphs. Not even with "Carter up" was the Castilian able to make so much as a hard fight for it. The lovely chestnut was like a creature of elfin birth--it seemed as if he went without effort; the field toiling after him looked like animals of a lower breed.

The wild yells of applause rang and echoed in the blue firmament--the mad excitement of racing for the moment mastered everyone, from the youth whose last sovereign hung on the event to the pretty, ignorant girl upon the drag, who had laid her pair of gloves with blind devotion on the daffodil satin as it flashed past.

One small boy, held up on the shoulders of an elderly groom, added his shrill screams with delight to the tumult around.

"Well done, Invincible! Well rode, Bartlett! Bravo! bravo! Didn't I tell my uncle he'd do it! Pulled it off easy! Knew he would! Look at poor old Carter! What a fool he looks! Ain't used to coming in a bad second! Let me down, Letherby, I want to find my uncle! I say, though, this is proper! I've made five pounds over this."

"You just wait one minute, Master G.o.dfrey, till the crowd is cleared off a trifle--you'll be jammed to death in this 'ere mob if you don't look out, and the master said I was to see to you. You stop where you are."

"You old broken-winded idiot," shouted the child, a boy of fourteen, very small for his age, but handsome in a dark, picturesque style. "Do move on a bit, you are no good in a crowd. I can't stay here all day--elbow on!"

Letherby accordingly "elbowed on" through the yelling, shouting ma.s.s of betting-men, followed by the excited, dancing boy, who kept on talking at the top of his voice.

"Isn't it a sell for aunt, by Jove! She said she wouldn't give me five shillings to spend at Homburg next month, and now I've got five pounds!

Why, Letherby, I knew a fellow who went to the table with five pounds, and came back with five hundred. I warrant you I have rare sport at Homburg!"

"That I can answer for it, you won't," said his uncle's voice suddenly in his ear, and the urchin felt himself abruptly seized by his coat-collar with no gentle hand. "Thanks to the upshot of this confounded race," said Mr. Orton, angrily, "you won't go to Homburg at all, for I can't afford to take you; and what the deuce do you mean by hiding away here when you're wanted? Your aunt's going home, and you'll go with her. I'll have you out of harm's way."

G.o.dfrey Brabourne made no reply. He skulked at his uncle's heels with a look of sulky fury on his face which was not good to see. The spoilt boy knew that, on the occasions when his uncle was out of temper like this, silence was his sole refuge; but, if he did not speak, he thought, and his thoughts were not lovely, to judge from the expression of his eyes.

Letherby hurried away to put-to the horses, knowing that in this mood his master would not brook waiting; and, in half-an-hour from Invincible's winning of the Hardwicke Stakes, Mr. Orton and his party were spinning along towards the Oaklands Park hotel, where they were spending Ascot week.

A very subdued party they were. Spite of his winnings, G.o.dfrey was silent and sullen. Mrs. Orton's temper was not proof against the shattering of all her plans for next month; she knew that, if she spoke at all, it would be to upbraid her husband, so she held her tongue; and he was in a state of mute fury, less at the loss of his money than at his own error of judgment in such a matter.

The very impression of his silent wife's face irritated him. "I told you so," seemed written on every feature.

When they arrived at the hotel, he petulantly flung his reins to the groom, and went indoors by himself, "as sulky as a bear with a sore head," mentally observed the wife of his bosom.

At dinner there was Colonel Wynch-Frere, who had come in a couple of hours later, having been invited by some other friends.

He was sitting at a table some distance from the Ortons, but afterwards joined them in the drawing-room. The dinner had been good, and Frederick's temper was improving; he was not an ill-tempered man, as a rule, and he was now half-ashamed of his late annoyance. Mrs. Orton was less placable; she sat aloof, and secretly longed to be able to say her say.

The colonel strolled up.

"Where's the boy?" he asked.

"In the stables, I suppose--where he always is," said the boy's aunt, snappishly.

How she had wanted to go to Homburg! The Davidsons were going, and the Lequesnes, and Charley Canova; what parties they would have got up! And now----

"G.o.dfrey's not always in the stables, Ottilie," said Fred, seating himself on a sofa at her side. "He has only gone now with a message from me. He'll be back directly."

Frederick Orton was a rather picturesque young man of about five-and-thirty. He was dark, with brown eyes, and a short, pointed, Vandyck beard and moustache. The moustache hid his weak mouth. He was slight and pale, and looked delicate, which was probably the result of late hours and pick-me-ups.

His wife was handsome, and rather large, a year or two younger than he, and showing an inclination to stoutness. Her eyes and complexion were striking, her voice deep and rather loud--a fine contralto--and her disposition energetic.

She was very handsomely dressed for the evening in a dark-green dress covered with green beetle's wings, which flashed as she turned. The colonel rather liked her, though he never dared say so to Lady Mabel.

"How is your Lady Mabel?" she asked of him, just as this thought was crossing his mind.

"Lady Mabel is, as usual, having a good many adventures," he said, taking a chair near. "She has been on a driving-tour with her brother--"

"Mr. Cranmer? I know him slightly," said Frederick.

"Yes; they are in Devonshire, at a little place called Edge Combe, near Stanton."

"Dear me! Isn't that where all those old maids live--the Miss Willoughbys?" said Ottilie, turning to her husband.

He made one of the many English inarticulate sounds representing "Yes."

"I wonder if Lady Mabel has come across G.o.dfrey's step-sister, Elaine Brabourne?" she went on, in her deep contralto accents.

"Oh, yes, certainly; she mentions a Miss--is your nephew's name Brabourne? I never knew it. Then his father used to be colonel of my regiment."

"That's it," said Frederick, calmly. "Yes, he has a step-sister, I'm sorry to say, who has been brought up by a set of puritanical old maids--old hags, my poor sister used to call them."

"Lady Mabel is staying with the Miss Willoughbys," said the colonel, rather red in the face.

There was an uncomfortable pause; then Mr. Orton laughed lazily.

"Put my foot into it," he said. "I usually do. Very sorry, I'm sure. I don't know the good ladies myself, and I expect my poor sister made them all sit up; she was as wild a girl as ever I saw, and they used to take her and set her down for hours in a rotting old church which smelt of vaults, and where the damp used to roll down the walls in great drops.

She said it gave her the horrors. But that's a good many years back now, and I daresay they have changed all that."

"My wife says they are--well--very primitive," said the colonel. "But she speaks of Miss Brabourne as a most lovely girl, who only needs a little bringing out."