Cantire shook his head. He had straddled the wooden horse. Lord Ferrers was on the divan, Welden on a chair.
De Dol turned. “Have you, Monsieur Welden?”
Welden nodded.
“And they said nothing about the race?”
“Nothing.”
“It is unbelievable!”
“They could not very well,” Welden resumed. “I was having a word with Malakoff and they were acting for him.”
“The deuce!” cried Cantire, sliding from the horse. “A duel! And you not even pinked!”
He laughed. The idea of it pleased him. His grandfather was a duke, a real one, a stately old man with a head empty but noble. Whether on that account or for other reasons is immaterial, but he had always thought Malakoff a mucker. It was not on his account he had gone to Deauville. It was for Sally.
“But!” exclaimed de Dol, his mouth agape. A little panorama was unfolding before him—Welden and Sally surprised in amorous conversation by Sally’s husband. “And Malakoff?”
“He will be all right shortly.”
As Welden spoke, de Dol bowed slowly to an advancing understanding of it all. Malakoff’s seconds, aware of the conversation and foreseeing that for at least one of the principals the duel would be damaging had, for that reason, asked that the race be postponed.
“All the same,” he affably rejoined, “It was most amiable of you to come. When it rains one’s friends are doubly welcome.”
Welden turned to Cantire. “Are you afraid of a wetting?”
“Good Lord, no, why?”
“Our horses are here, if we don’t race now we won’t race at all. I will back myself against you. I will back myself against Ferrers too, if he will. M. de Dol can give him a mount.”
“Done,” said Cantire. “Let’s make it a fiver.”
Lord Ferrers dropped his monocle. “Not for me, thanks, but I’ll hold the stakes.”
“You were saying?” asked de Dol, who had caught his name but who otherwise was again in the dark and that too despite the fact that a flash of intense vividness lit the room, one which a great crash followed instantly.
“It will be clearing shortly,” said Ferrers, rising from the divan and peering through a window. “I say,” he called, “I believe it is.”
De Dol meanwhile, to whom Welden had translated the gist of it and who thought him and Cantire crazy, was giving the necessary orders.
Welden got from his chair and joined the others at the window. The rain had ceased. In the west was the glow of renaissant day. From a tree near by water was falling in little drops, soft and multiple. Overhead in the still neutral sky, long ribbons of ravens formed themselves into black wreaths and sombre garlands. Welden, to whom the visible existed, considered the signs which it is perhaps their mysterious duty to convey.
But now a footman appeared with raincoats and a lad from the stables, touching his forehead, just showed his nose.
“The horses are here,” said de Dol. “Will you have a coat, monsieur?” he asked of Ferrers.
The latter displayed an umbrella that was thin as a walking-stick.
“Thanks, no. This will do me.”
De Dol however had himself helped into a greatcoat, took a fat umbrella besides, swung a field glass about him and, accompanied by the others, went out to the perron before which stablemen swarmed and the hunters stood.
The course began the throw of a stone beyond. While Welden and Cantire examined the girths, verified the stirrups, looked to the bits and bridles, Ferrers and de Dol passed on. Before they reached the stand, Cantire and Welden were in the saddle.
“I say, Ferrers,” Cantire called. “You give the signal, will you?”
“Very good,” the Englishman answered. “Now, then, steady.”
He pulled a rope. Before the flag could fall, Welden’s horse, over zealously, had bolted.
Welden got him in hand, turned him, brought him back, flattering him with pats on the shoulder.
“Vive l’Angleterre!” shouted de Dol. “Vive l’Amerique!”
“And vive la France!” Welden and Cantire, almost in unison, responded.
De Dol laughed with satisfaction. He still thought them mad and said as much to Ferrers.
The latter inserted his monocle. “The going does not seem so bad and the obstacles are not tremendous.”
He spoke in French, very correctly, but with so marked a British accent, that he might as well have replied in English. De Dol thought he was agreeing with him and laughed again.
“Steady!” Ferrers called and for the sec ond time pulled the flag-rope.
This time they were off, taking the sticks as though there were nothing there, clearing them, in spite of the rain, easily, without effort.
De Dol followed them through his glass, Ferrers through his monocle.
Beyond, the country stretched, inert and dolent. In the west the glow had heightened. Overhead, the darker sky was veined with flashes thin and sudden. The ravens, assembled now in screaming flight, shot southward.
Quickly but quietly Ferrers swore. Cantire was down.
“I awaited it!” cried de Dol. But at once he could see that the boy was up and in a moment that he was on and off again.
Welden now was leading. Blazes tore on. The splendid brute, with his impudent eye and shoulders like the top of a haystack, had covered the course; he was nearing the stand when, just as he was about to take the final fence, there came a flash vivider than any, a bolt so neighbourly and dazzling that it looked raspberry, and whether it unnerved the horse or the man or both, in any event Welden bent heavily forward and together, turning a somersault, they tumbled.
For a second, without sense of injury or sensation of pain, Welden lingered. Then his two selves, the conscious and the subconscious, scattered, evaporated, ceased to know. Again on that day it was night.
“God of gods!” cried de Dol. “I said they were mad!”
Ferrers, extracting his monocle, vaulted to the ground, where, as from the ground
