“You cannot be happy without her?”
“I did not say so. You ask me whether I should like to have her here—and I say Yes. What would you think of me if I said No?”
“My being here is not enough?” This should not have been said, of course, but the little speech came from the exquisite pain of the moment. She had meant to have said hardly anything. She had intended to be happy with him, just touching lightly on things which might lead to that attack which must be made on the morrow. But words will often lead whither the speaker has not intended. So it was now, and in the soreness of her heart she spoke. “My being here is not enough?”
“It would be enough,” he said, jumping on his feet, “if you understood all, and would be kind to me.”
“I will at any rate be kind to you,” she replied, as she sat upon the bank looking at the running water.
“I have asked Miss Boncassen to be my wife.”
“And she has accepted?”
“No; not as yet. She is to take three months to think of it. Of course I love her best of all. If you will sympathise with me in that, then I will be as happy with you as the day is long.”
“No,” said she, “I cannot. I will not.”
“Very well.”
“There should be no such marriage. If you have told me in confidence—”
“Of course I have told you in confidence.”
“It will go no farther; but there can be no sympathy between us. It—it—it is not—is not—” Then she burst into tears.
“Mabel!”
“No, sir, no; no! What did you mean? But never mind. I have no questions to ask, not a word to say. Why should I? Only this—that such a marriage will disgrace your family. To me it is no more than to anybody else. But it will disgrace your family.”
How she got back to the house she hardly knew; nor did he. That evening they did not again speak to each other, and on the following morning there was no walk to the mountains. Before dinner he drove himself back to Crummie-Toddie, and when he was taking his leave she shook hands with him with her usual pleasant smile.
XLIII
What Happened at Doncaster
The Leger this year was to be run on the 14th September, and while Lord Silverbridge was amusing himself with the deer at Crummie-Toddie and at Killancodlem with the more easily pursued young ladies, the indefatigable Major was hard at work in the stables. This came a little hard on him. There was the cub-hunting to be looked after, which made his presence at Runnymede necessary, and then that “pigheaded fellow, Silverbridge” would not have the horses trained anywhere but at Newmarket. How was he to be in two places at once? Yet he was in two places almost at once: cub-hunting in the morning at Egham and Bagshot, and sitting on the same evening at the stable-door at Newmarket, with his eyes fixed upon Prime Minister.
Gradually had he and Captain Green come to understand each other, and though they did at last understand each other, Tifto would talk as though there were no such correct intelligence;—when for instance he would abuse Lord Silverbridge for being pigheaded. On such occasions the Captain’s remark would generally be short. “That be blowed!” he would say, implying that that state of things between the two partners, in which such complaints might be natural, had now been brought to an end. But on one occasion, about a week before the race, he spoke out a little plainer. “What’s the use of your going on with all that before me? It’s settled what you’ve got to do.”
“I don’t know that anything is settled,” said the Major.
“Ain’t it? I thought it was. If it ain’t you’ll find yourself in the wrong box. You’ve as straight a tip as a man need wish for, but if you back out you’ll come to grief. Your money’s all on the other way already.”
On the Friday before the race Silverbridge dined with Tifto at the Beargarden. On the next morning they went down to Newmarket to see the horse get a gallop, and came back the same evening. During all this time, Tifto was more than ordinarily pleasant to his patron. The horse and the certainty of the horse’s success were the only subjects mooted. “It isn’t what I say,” repeated Tifto, “but look at the betting. You can’t get five to four against him. They tell me that if you want to do anything on the Sunday the pull will be the other way.”
“I stand to lose over £20,000 already,” said Silverbridge, almost frightened by the amount.
“But how much are you on to win?” said Tifto. “I suppose you could sell your bets for £5,000 down.”
“I wish I knew how to do it,” said Silverbridge. But this was an arrangement, which, if made just now, would not suit the Major’s views.
They went to Newmarket, and there they met Captain Green. “Tifto,” said the young Lord, “I won’t have that fellow with us when the horse is galloping.”
“There isn’t an honester man, or a man who understands a horse’s paces better in all England,” said Tifto.
“I won’t have him standing alongside of me on the Heath,” said his Lordship.
“I don’t know how I’m to help it.”
“If he’s there I’ll send the horse in;—that’s all.” Then Tifto found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain also said a few words to himself. “D⸺ young fool; he don’t know what he’s dropping into.” Which assertion, if you lay aside the unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge was a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was being dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of the man whose company on the Heath he had declined.
The horse was quite a “picture to look at.”
