Derby Day Read online

  ‘They’re uncommon down on racing here, I believe,’ Captain Raff said sadly. There was a kind of dull astonishment in his eye, as if he could not imagine how anyone could have a down on the sport of kings. ‘Why, the magistrates tried to close the course down last Michaelmas, a fellow told me, on account of drunkenness.’

  ‘Look, there is Curbishley waving,’ Mr Happerton said. ‘What does he want, I wonder?’

  But it turned out that Mr Curbishley wanted only some minor readjustment of his bridle, and Mr Happerton sighed with relief. Another five minutes and the race had begun.

  It was Captain Raff’s immemorial habit, when attending race-meetings, to station himself at the rail with a pair of field glasses, and then, oblivious of the crowds who swarmed around him, relay the finer points of the competition back to the friends he had brought with him. Shoulder to shoulder with the rustic audience, this service he now delighted to perform for Mr Happerton.

  ‘… Well now, off they go. Frightfully bad piece of starting, too. Why, the horse was a yard behind the line, at least … Now, sir, there is plenty of room for both of us … I see Curbishley is taking him away from the rail. Well, I daresay that is the thing to do … Indeed, sir, you shan’t stand there’ (it was a marvel how Captain Raff’s natural timidity deserted him at race-meetings and he became quite bellicose). ‘Now, where has that brown horse come from? Calliope, I suppose. Tremendous little fellow riding her, too. Wonder how he stays on? Ugh! There’s a fellow down there – never saw such a lot of potholes in my life. Stuck, is he? No, he is getting to his feet. Come now, Curbishley. Why does he stay with the pack, I wonder …? I shall thank you to keep your elbows to yourself, my man … Now, where are they? If I were Mr Jenks I should not put any wagers on Calliope, indeed I shouldn’t. Dear me, but that’s a sharp turn – I wonder it’s allowed. Why’s Curbishley standing up? I declare, he’ll fall over. A little grey’s making a run – quite a stylish horse. No stamina though – see the foam coming out of her mouth! Looks half done. Here comes Curbishley. That’s it, sir! Always very sparing with the whip, Curbishley, but never mind. Three lengths clear, I should say. Is he quickening, do you think, or is it the others fading away …? My good man, I shall certainly thrash you if you come a step nearer … Five lengths! That Calliope you see is nowhere – a lot of carthorses. Ten lengths, Happerton, and could have had more …’

  *

  In Belgrave Square Mrs Rebecca stood at her dressing table, hairbrush in hand, and thought about Mr Gaffney who, coming to tea again, had disclosed, amid much handpatting and many confidential remarks, that Tiberius was now regarded as a certainty for the Derby and that the price put upon him had fallen to 5–1.

  XII

  What Bell’s Life thought about it

  IT BEHOVES US to state our opinion of the great Derby race. While we are happy to vouchsafe this information, we observe that we are not a prophet. If prophecy is required, then recourse should be made to that modern seer, Captain Crewe of the Star. We insist, moreover, that though we may note the fact of a horse’s entry into a race, we cannot guarantee its appearance on the Epsom course. Only Mr Dorling’s cards can do that, and even they, it seems, are not infallible. Of the smaller fry – and we mean by this term no disparagement – Mr Abernethy’s PENDRAGON is a smart horse (though whence came his Cornish name, when he was bred up in Barnstaple, we cannot guess), a trifle finicky and uncertain on his feet – he threw Joe Darby at Croxton Park and broke that gentleman’s thigh at the hip – but sweet-tempered and generally biddable. Of Lord Martindale’s SEVERUS there is not much to say. Our correspondent, who saw him at Wincanton early in the season, declared him lively, but with a propensity to hug the rail. He was got by NECROMANCER of WESTERN STAR and may be thought not yet to have honoured this noble parentage …

  DAWN TREADER – a pretty name for an ungainly animal – delighted those who saw him at Newmarket in the March gallops, but is said, like a certain political party, to be ungovernable. He is the property of Mr Cartwright, a gentleman not previously known to us, or indeed to anyone, was brought, obscurely, out of Lancashire and, we anticipate, may very soon be taken back there. Will PERICLES (we confess to being tired of these classical names, and would mention poor Lord Fitzharding, who called his horse after a river in Sparta only to see it ruin itself at a brook in Sussex) run? Mr Grant, his trainer, is supposed when asked this question to have savagely shaken his head, but one can think of half a dozen animals of whom this gentleman has despaired, who have then stepped out of their stalls and done him credit …

  And then a gaggle of horses of whom no one has ever heard and, it may confidently be predicted, will never hear of again. Mr Coveney’s WARWICK LAD was apparently got by SPARTACUS of DAMOSEL, but then the toothache may be got of an over-indulgence in toffee. TELEMACHUS (Mr Duchesne) was given up for dead after his accident at York, but is supposedly recovered. We have seen LONGSHOREMAN run and did not esteem him. Mr Harrison will do no good if he continues to exhibit POTENTATE to the public. Are gentlemen, knowing his habits, expected to back him out of charity? Or because Mr Harrison’s attachment to the sport goes back to the old king’s day? Alas, sentiment has no place in racing and neither does POTENTATE, next to whom Mr Bellingham’s AVOCET might have carried Prince Rupert into battle at Naseby and Lord Havergal’s CONQUISTADOR been put to drag an Athenian chariot. BOSKY BOY: a dull horse, never seen to do anything. Won the Tradesman’s Plate at Chester, but the field was of three only, and the third horse destroyed. VALENTINE: need not detain us, and indeed in the past has only detained course officials anxious to get home for their dinners. EMPEROR’S FRIEND: why Mr Malplaquet persists with this animal we cannot imagine. AVOIRDUPOIS: we are reliably informed that Lord Eddington spent the winter attempting to sell this horse, but got no takers. HIBERNIAN: an Irish horse; a shamrock has more novelty. FELIX (Lord Fitzpatrick), his lordship’s pride and joy, not thought likely to run …

  XIII

  An Evening in the City

  Messrs Gallentin of Leadenhall Street are pleased to advise clients of their recent acquistion of the ‘Corinthian’ safe. Devised by Messrs Milner, of cast iron to a depth of two inches, the lock – designed by Mr Chubb – consisting of a brass front with steel reinforcements, its manufacturers are confident that no more secure repository has yet been laid before the public.

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  SPRING HAD FINALLY come to Shepherd’s Inn. The gillyflowers were blooming in the window boxes, there was a patch of bright green grass growing in the dust before the statue of the shepherd boy, and the old porter had been sufficiently animated by the joys of the season as to take his chair out into the courtyard and read his newspaper in full view of the passing traffic. Not that there was a great deal of this. April is a rather questionable time in Shepherd’s Inn. The half-pay majors don’t like it – it reminds them, perhaps, of past glories – and keep to their rooms. The shirtsleeved young gentlemen with their cigars and their pewter pots are elsewhere – down the river at Greenwich, maybe, or at Richmond or Teddington Lock. But the man who did not wish to be called Mr Pardew and the lady who, conversely, was very anxious to be called his wife, saw it and were presumably gladdened by it. The blind was not so often lowered in the window of their lodging, and the lady could sometimes be seen looking out of it in a rather hopeful manner, and the gentleman could sometimes be found descending the staircase of an afternoon to stand in the courtyard, where he sniffed the scent of the gillyflowers, stared rather sardonically at the shepherd boy, on whose shoulders there was perhaps the hint of a bird’s nest, and spoke a word to the porter, who, with the half-pay majors quiescent and the shirtsleeved young men down the river at Greenwich (or wherever), was, of all things, anxious for conversation.

  It was about five o’clock in the afternoon – still very bright and blustery, with little ribbons of wind darting in and out of the alleyways – and Mr Pardew was sitting in his armchair talking to Captain Raff. Spring, too, had had its effect on Captain Raff, who w
as wearing a blue jacket and a pair of duck trousers that were very nearly white, to the great amusement of his host.

  ‘I declare, Raff, in that get-up I should expect to find you in Oldcastle Street with your hat in front of your feet dancing jigs for halfpennies,’ Mr Pardew now said acidly. The stick lay on the table between them.

  ‘No need to insult a fellow, you know,’ Captain Raff said. ‘It’s a nice jacket, ain’t it though?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder if the Prince wanted the name of your tailor,’ Mr Pardew said. ‘Now, what is it that I can do for you?’

  Despite the mockery of his three-guinea coat, Captain Raff thought that he was getting the measure of Mr Pardew. ‘Hang it all,’ he said. ‘You know what we want. Why, May is nearly come and nothing ventured. When’s it to come off?’

  ‘Such things don’t arrange themselves, Raff, as you very well know.’

  ‘I daresay they don’t. But that was another twenty pounds you had last week, and Mr – that is, my people – would like to know when they can see a return on their money.’

  Mr Pardew looked at Captain Raff, whose white face contrasted very oddly with the splendour of his costume, at his stick, and at the light streaming in at the window. He wondered how much might be gained by drawing Captain Raff’s attention to certain facts that had come his way since their last meeting.

  ‘Seventy pounds, you know, you’ve had now,’ Captain Raff said again, a shade portentously. ‘We shall be wondering – indeed we shall – if you intend to carry off the business at all.’

  ‘A sporting gentleman, isn’t he, your Mr Happerton?’ Mr Pardew enquired.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’ Captain Raff demanded, with an expression of stark horror on his face.

  ‘Mr Happerton, who has sent me that seventy pounds, is a sporting gentleman, I believe?’ Mr Pardew ventured again.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Not know about your own principal?’ Mr Pardew went on, and Captain Raff thought that he had never hated a man so much. ‘Or of Tiberius, that everyone says is entered for the Derby? I suppose you’ll be backing him yourself, Raff?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Captain Raff said miserably.

  ‘And I dare say Mr Happerton don’t know anything about Milner’s Quadruple Patent. Perhaps,’ said Mr Pardew, almost to himself, ‘he means to back it himself. Is that the case, eh, Raff? Well, never mind. You had better tell Mr Happerton, who you don’t know anything about but I do – I dare say he paid for that jacket, didn’t he, Raff? – that I intend to bring it off within the week. There, will that do?’

  Captain Raff, very humble now and with half an eye perhaps on the stick, said that it would do, and took his leave, clattering away down the wooden staircase with such haste that Mr Pardew fairly laughed out loud. After this he sat in his chair for an hour until there came a noise of footsteps on the stairs and Jemima walked into the room with a marketing basket on her arm.

  ‘Gracious,’ she said, seeing the attitude in which he sat. ‘Have you been sitting here all this time?’

  ‘Well – maybe I have,’ Mr Pardew conceded. But he brightened at the sight of the basket, and at Jemima, whose complexion was very fresh, quite glowing from her walk indeed, and thought that there were some pleasures which even Captain Raff could not take from him.

  Mr Pardew saw Captain Raff on a Tuesday. On the Wednesday he and Jemima did not stir from their chamber, and on the Thursday the extent of their recreation was a little walk in the sunshine up and down Chancery Lane. But on the Friday, quite early, Mr Pardew put on his best coat, took his stick in his hand and went off to an address in Amwell Street to see a friend from his early days in London of whom, as he explained to Jemima, he had the most pleasant recollections. Mr File, Mr Pardew’s friend, was an amiable old gentleman of sixty-two or -three, very small and demure, with a shiny bald head, who had once worked as a locksmith for Messrs Chubb and now lived in the greatest seclusion in a nice, neat house which those with knowledge of a locksmith’s emoluments might wonder how he was able to afford. Although it was barely ten o’clock in the morning, Mr File greeted his visitor with a glass of sherry-cobbler, toasted him with his own glass, and then embarked on a catechism so oblique that the bare record of it set down on paper would be altogether mystifying to anyone who read it.

  ‘So it’s to come off then, is it?’ Mr File asked, settling his spectacles comfortably on his nose.

  ‘Well – yes, I suppose it is,’ said Mr Pardew, who did not sound very certain.

  ‘A Milner, you know,’ said Mr File, whose respectful tone suggested that he was discussing the antecedents of a great lady.

  ‘I don’t doubt Mr Milner knows his business.’

  ‘Reinforced, I believe,’ Mr File went on. ‘You shall have to take the alderman with you.’

  ‘Well – I dare say.’ They might have been talking of a Guildhall dinner. ‘Did you ever see a Milner?’ Mr Pardew went on.

  ‘Oh, indeed. I saw a jack-in-the-box set on it once, and even then the lock held. But the alderman would do it, I imagine. How shall you get in?’

  ‘Circumnavigation,’ said Mr Pardew with a bitter laugh. ‘Do you have anything?’

  ‘Well, there is this, perhaps.’

  And Mr Pardew smiled and secreted whatever ‘this’ was in the inner pocket of his coat.

  Reaching Shepherd’s Inn once more at about twelve, Mr Pardew found that his chambers were empty. Not feeling the need to eat anything, after Mr File’s sherry, he sat down in a chair and began to brood. He had told Captain Raff and Mr File that ‘the thing was to come off’, but in truth he was not so very sure. He had once before pulled off a bold stroke of this kind and he was not certain that it had done him any good. Another bold stroke might do him some considerable harm. And then, even if he succeeded, where should he go? Boulogne was all very well, but Mr Pardew had an idea that, given the boldness of the stroke, Boulogne might not be far enough away, and that even Pau or Lisbon might not satisfy his peculiar needs for quiet and seclusion.

  And so he brooded on, sometimes picking up a slip of paper and writing a note on it, sometimes staring out of the window, and sometimes plunging his hands into his trouser pockets and jingling the coins in them. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, finally, when perhaps an hour had passed, ‘I shall have to decide, anyhow.’ There was a little pile of silver – quite a little pile – lying on the sideboard, and he selected from it a florin, with that picture of Her Majesty on its reverse side that has so lately been superannuated, spun it in the air, looked at the result – the coin fell heads up – and gave a little smile. When Jemima came back he was sitting once more in the chair with a newspaper open in front of him and apparently in high good humour.

  ‘I think I may not have told you,’ he said, ‘but I am called away this weekend.’

  ‘Where to?’ Jemima wondered, with her eyes open very wide.

  ‘Well – in fact it is that Lord Fairhurst wants to see me down in Hampshire. I really have half a mind not to go.’

  ‘If his lordship wants to see you, then I think you ought to go,’ said Jemima very firmly. ‘When shall you be back?’

  ‘Sunday afternoon, I imagine.’ The expression on Mr Pardew’s face as he said this was quite inscrutable. ‘But I don’t like to think of you here alone. Perhaps you would like’ – there was now a particular glint in his eye – ‘to visit your sister?’

  ‘Well, perhaps I shall,’ Jemima said. She was still considering Mr Pardew’s invitation. ‘Does Lord Fairhurst have a large establishment?’

  ‘It is just in the normal way of things. There is eighty acres, I believe. But he is very much in debt.’

  ‘You must certainly go,’ Jemima said.

  *

  Saturday morning came and Mr Pardew went quietly about his business. By noon he had been out to make one or two little purchases at an ironmonger’s shop in Oldcastle Street – brought back secretly in a carpet-bag – and packed Jemima of
f in a cab to her sister in Islington. This done, he sat the carpet-bag on the kitchen table, made sure the door of the lodgings was firmly shut, and began to stow into it certain items that would have been looked at very oddly by the manservant who unpacked them at Lord Fairhurst’s, had that domestic or his master existed. There was a big three-pound hammer, which Mr Pardew took out of a cupboard and wrapped up expertly in a cloth, and a couple of wrenches, which he concealed in the end of a sheet. Finally he went and looked into one of the trunks that had come with him from Boulogne, and from among several queer items that rose to view, chose a mysterious-looking piece of iron, apparently only twelve inches long, but capable, if manipulated in a certain way, of being extended to a length of five feet. This, too, was put in the carpet-bag, which Mr Pardew then picked up and shook. There was a clanking noise, which seemed to disturb him, and so he went back to the trunk and found a rag or two to wrap round the objects within.

  Looking at his watch, he discovered that it was barely one o’clock – a church clock a quarter of a mile away was striking the hour – and he told himself that he had been premature in his schemes, and that there were several hours to fill before he could set about his day’s work. What was he to do with himself? There was bread and cheese in the kitchen cupboard, and he ate this looking out of the window at the courtyard, where the old porter was sunning himself in his chair and a couple of undertakers’ men were bringing in a coffin on a trestle. Mr Pardew shifted his gaze to take in the rooftops and the smoking chimneys that lay northwards in the direction of Chancery Lane. But there was something about the bright air and the smoky tints that annoyed him, and he let his eye turn back to the room in which he stood. He was struck by its shabbiness. Everything – chairs, table, the profusion of knick-knacks – was set out in the neatest imaginable way, but it was clear that the things had been bought second-hand. Mr Pardew resolved to himself that, whatever happened, he would be quit of Shepherd’s Inn. The thought cheered him, and he picked up the carpet-bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, seized his stick in his right hand, stepped out onto the landing, fastened the door behind him and went off down the stairs.