HORNBY was lying ou his back on the sofa in the window, and looking out. He had sent for Charles, and Charles was standing beside him; but he had not noticed him yet. In a minute Charles said, “You sent for me, sir.”
Hornby turned sharply round. “By Jove, yes,” he said, looking straight at him; “Lord Welter is married.”
Charles did not move a muscle, and Hornby looked disappointed. Charles only said —
“May I ask who she is, sir?”
“She is a Miss Summers. Do you know anything of her?”
Charles knew Miss Summers quite well by sight — had attended her while riding, in fact. A statement which, though strictly true, misled Hornby more than fifty lies.
“Handsome?”
“Remarkably so. Probably the handsomest” (he was going to say “girl,” but said “lady”) “I ever saw in my life.”
“H’m!” and he sat silent a moment, and gave
Charles time to think. “I am glad he has married her, and before tomorrow, too.”
“Well,” said Hornby again, “we shall go down in the drag tomorrow. Fen’ers will drive, he says. I suppose he had better; he drives better than I. Make the other two lads come in livery, but come in 1)lack trousers yourself. Wear your red waistcoat; you can button your coat over it, if it is necessary.” “Shall I wear my cockade, sir?” “Yes; that won’t matter. Can you fight?” Charles said to himself, “I suppose we shall be in Queer-street tomorrow, then;” but he rather liked the idea. “I used to like it,” said he aloud. “I don’t think I care about it now. Last year, at Oxford, I and three other University men, three Pauls and a Brazenose, had a noble stramash on Follybridge. That is the last fighting I have seen.”
“What College were you at?” said Hornby, looking out of the window; “Brazenose?”
“Paul’s,” said Charles, without thinking. “Then you are the man Welter was telling me about — Charles Ravenshoe.”
Charles saw it was no good to fence, and said, “Yes.” “By Jove,” said Hornby, “yours is a sad story. You must have ridden out with Lady Welter more than once, I take it.”
“Are you going to say anything to Lord Welter, sir?” “Not I. I like you too well to lose you. You will stick by me, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Charles, “to the death. But oh, Hornby, for any sake mind those d — d bones!”
“I will. But don’t be an ass: I don’t play half as much as you think.”
“You are playing with Welter now, sir; are you not?”
“You are a pretty dutiful sort of groom, I don’t think,” said Hornby, looking round and laughing good-naturedly. “ What the dickens do you mean by cross-questioning me like that? Yes, I am. There — and for a noble purpose too.”
Charles said no more, but was well pleased enough. If Hornby had only given him a little more of his confidence!
“I suppose,” said Hornby, “if Haphazard don’t win tomorrow, Lord Ascot will be a beggar.”
“They say,” said Charles, “that he has backed his own horse through thick and thin, sir. It is inconceivable folly; but things could not be worse at Ranford, and he stands to win some sum on the horse, as they say, which would put everything right; and the horse is favourite.”
“Favourites never win,” said Hornby; “and I don’t think that Lord Ascot has so much on him as they say.”
So, the next day, they went to the Derby. Sir Robert Ferrers of the (ruards drove (this is Inkerman Bob, and he has got a patent cork leg now, and a “Victoria Cross, and goes a-shooting on a grey cob); and there was Red Maclean, on furlough from India; and there was Lord Swansea, youngest of existing
Guardsmen, who blew a horn, and didn’t blow it at all well; and there were two of Lieutenant Hornby’s brother-officers, besides the Lieutenant: and behind, with Hornby’s two grooms and our own Charles, dressed in sober black, was little Dick Ferrers, of the Home Office, who carried a peashooter, and pea-shot the noses of the leading horses of a dragful of Plungers, which followed them — which thing, had he been in the army, he wouldn’t have dared to do. And the Plungers swore, and the dust flew, and the mnd blew, and Sir Ptobert drove, and Charles laughed, and Lord Swansea gave them a little music, and away they went to the Derby.
When they came on the course, Charles and his fellow-servants had enough to do to get the horses out and see after them. After nearly an hour’s absence he got back to the drag, and began to look about him.
The Plungers had drawn up behind them, and were lolling about Before them was a family party — a fine elderly gentleman, a noble elderly lady, and two uncommonly pretty girls; and they were enjoying themselves. They were too well bred to make a noise; but there was a subdued babbling sound of laughter in that carriage, which was better music than that of a little impish German who, catching Charles’s eye, played the accordion and waltzed before him, as did Salome before Herod, but with a different effect.
The carriage beyond that was a very handsome one, and in it sat a lady most beautifully dressed, alone. By the step of the carriage were a crowd of men — Hornby,
Hornby’s brother-officers, Sir Robert Ferrers, and even little Dick Ferrers. Nay, there was a Plunger there; and they were all talking and laughing at the top of their voices.
Charles, goose as he was, used to be very fond of Dickens’s novels. He used to say that almost everywhere in those novels you came across a sketch, may be unconnected with the story, as bold and true and beautiful as those chalk sketches of Eaphael in the Taylor — scratches which, when once seen, you could never forget any more. And, as he looked at that lady in the carriage, he was reminded of one of Dickens’s masterpieces in that way, out of the “Old Curiosity Shop “— of a lady sitting in a carriage all alone at the races, who bought Nell’s poor flowers, and bade her go home and stay there, for God’s sake.
Her back was towards him, of course; yet he guessed she was beautiful. “She is a fast woman, God help her 1 ” said he; and he determined to go and look at her.
He sauntered past the carriage, and turned to look at her. It was Adelaide.
As faultlessly beautiful as ever, but ah — how changed! The winning petulance, so charming in other days, was gone from that face for ever. Hard, stern, proud, defiant, she sat there upright, alone. Fallen from the society of all women of her own rank, she knew — who better? — that not one of those men chattering around her would have borne to see her in the company of his ister, viscountess though she were, countess and mother of earls as she would be. They laughed, and lounged, and joked before her; and she tolerated them, and cast her gibes hither and thither among them, bitterly and contemptuously. It was her first appearance in the world. She had been married three days, Not a woman would speak to her: Lord Welter had coarsely told her so that morning; and bitterness and hatred were in her heart. It was for this she had bartered honour and good fame. She had got’ her title, flung to her as a bone to a dog by Welter; but her social power, for which she had sold herself, was lower, far lower, than when she was poor Adelaide Summers.
It is right that it should be so, as a rule; in her case it was doubly right.
Charles knew all this well enough., And at the first glance at her face he knew that “the iron had entered into her soul” (I know no better expression), and he was revenged. He had ceased to love her, but revenge is sweet — to some.
Not to him. When he looked at her, he would havi? given his life that she might smile again, though she was no more to him what she had been. He turned for fear of being seen, saying to himself, —
“Poor girl! Poor dear Adelaide! She must lie on the bed she has made. God help her!”
Haphazard was the first favourite — facile princeps. He was at two and a half to one. Bill Sykes, at three and a half, was a very dangerous horse. Then came Carnarvon, Lablache, Lickpitcher, Ivanhoe, Ben Gaunt, Bathbun, Hamlet, Allfours, and Colonel Sibthorp. The last of these was at twenty to one. Ben Gaunt was to make the running for Haphazard, so they said; and Colonel Sibthorp for Bill Sykes.
So he heard the men talking round Lady Welter’s carriage. Hornby’s voice was as loud as any one s, and a pleasant voice it was; but they none of them talked very low. Charles could hear every word.
“I am afraid Lady Welter will never forgive me,” said Hornby, “but I have bet against the favourite.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Adelaide.
“I have bet against your horse, Lady Welter.”
“My horse?” said Adelaide, coolly and scornfully. “My horses are all post-horses, hired for the day to bring me here. I hope none of them are engaged in the races, as I shall have to go home with a pair only, and then I shall be disgraced for ever.”
“I mean Haphazard.”
“Oh, that horse?” said Adelaide; “that is Lord Ascot’s horse, not mine. I hope you may win. You ought to win something, oughtn’t you? Welter has won a great deal from you, I believe.”
The facts were the other way. But Hornby said no more to her. She ............