The Rock Ahead (Vol. 1&2). Edmund Yates
betting-book, enters freely into conversation and is on an equality with the gentlemanly-looking man whose only visible "horseyness" is expressed in his tightly-cut trousers and his bird's-eye neckerchief with the horseshoe pin. Patrons of the turf, owners of racehorses, commission-agents, bookmakers, touts, tipsters, hangers-on of every kind to turf speculations and turf iniquities, are here at Brighton on this lovely Sunday afternoon.
There was one group, consisting of three people, planted on the Esplanade, just in front of the Old Ship Hotel, the three component members of which were recognised and saluted by nearly everyone who passed. One of them was a short square-built man, with keen eyes closely set and sunken, small red whiskers, and a sharp-pointed nose. He was dressed in black, with a wonderfully neatly-tied long white cravat, folded quite flat, with a dog's tooth set in gold for a pin; and he wore a low-crowned hat. The other two were young men, dressed in the best style of what is known as "horsey get-up." They had been talking and laughing ever since they had taken up their position, immediately after lunching at the hotel, out of which they had strolled with cigars in their mouths; and it was obvious that any respect which the elder man might receive was not paid to him on account of his age, but rather in acknowledgment of the caustic remarks with which he amused his companions. These remarks seemed at last to have come to an end. There had been a long silence, which was broken by the elder man asking,
"O, seen anything of Gore--Harvey Gore? Has he gone back, or what?"
"Don't know; haven't seen him since Thursday night," said the taller of the young men.
"Won a pot of money on the Cup," said the other sententiously; "regular hatful."
"What did his pal do?" asked the elder man. "Lloyd I mean. Did he pull through?"
"Dropped his tin, Foxey dear. Held on like grim death to Gaslight, and was put in the hole like the rest of us. He tells me he has been hit for--"
"He tells you!" interrupted the elder man; "He tells you! I've known Gilbert Lloyd for two or three years, and anything he tells me I should take deuced good care not to believe."
"Very good, Foxey dear! very nice, you sweet old thing! only don't halloo out quite so loud, because here's G.L. coming across the road to speak to us, and he mightn't--How do, Lloyd, old fellow?"
The new-comer was a man of about four-and-twenty, a little above the middle height, and slightly but strongly built. His face would generally have been considered handsome, though a physiognomist would have read shiftiness and suspicion in the small and sunken blue eyes, want of geniality in the tightly-closing mouth visible under the slight fair moustache, and determination in the jaw. Though there was a slight trace of the stable in his appearance, he was decidedly more gentlemanly-looking than his companions, having a distinct stamp of birth and breeding which they lacked. He smiled as he approached the group, and waved a small stick which he carried in a jaunty manner; but Foxey noticed a flushed appearance round his eyes, an eager worn straining round his mouth, and said to his friend who had last spoken, "You're right, Jack; Lloyd has had it hot and strong this time, and no mistake."
The young man had by this time crossed the road and stood leaning over the railing. In answer to a repetition of their salutes, he said:
"Not very bright. None of us are always up to the mark, save Foxey here, who is perennial; and just now I'm worried and bothered. O, not as you fellows imagine," he said hastily, as he saw a smile go round; and as he said it his face darkened, and the clenching of his jaws gave him a very savage expression,--"not from what I've dropped at this meeting; that's neither here nor there: lightly come; lightly gone; but the fact is that Gore, who is living with me over there, is deuced seedy."
"Thought he looked pulled and done on Thursday," said Foxey. "Didn't know whether it was backing Gaslight that had touched him up, or--"
"No," interrupted Lloyd hurriedly; "a good deal of champagne under a tremendously hot sun; that's the cause, I believe. Harvey has a way of turning up his little finger under excitement, and never will learn to moderate his transports. He's overdone it this time, and I'm afraid is really bad. I must send for a doctor; and now I'm off to the telegraph-office, to send a message to my wife. Gore was to have cleared out of this early this morning, to spend a day or two with Sandcrack, the vet, at Shoreham; and my proprietress was coming down here; but there's no room for her now, and I must put her off."
"Do you think Harvey Gore's really bad?" asked one of the younger men.
"Well, I think he's got something like sunstroke, and I know he's a little off his head," responded Lloyd. "He'll pull round, I daresay--I've no doubt. But still he can't be moved just yet, and a woman would only be in the way under such circumstances, let alone it's not being very lively for her; so I'll just send her a message to keep off. Ta-ta! I shall look into the smoking-room to-night at the Ship, when Harvey's gone off to sleep." And with a nod and a smile, Gilbert Lloyd started off.
"Queer customer that, Foxey."
"Queer indeed; which his golden number is Number One!" said Foxey enigmatically.
"What's his wife like?"
"Never saw her," said Foxey; "but I should think she had a pleasant time of it with that youth. It will be an awful disappointment to him, her not coming down, won't it?"
"Foxey, you are an unbeliever of the deepest dye. Domestic happiness in your eyes is--"
"Bosh! You never said a truer word. Now, let's have half-a-crown's-worth of fly, and go up the cliff."
A short time after Gilbert Lloyd had left the house in which he had taken lodgings, consisting of the parlour-floor and a bedroom upstairs, Mrs. Bush, the landlady, whose mind was rather troubled, partly because the servant, whose "Sunday out" it was, had not yet returned from the Methodist chapel where she performed her devotions--a delay which her mistress did not impute entirely to the blandishments of the preacher--and partly for other reasons, took up her position in the parlour-window, and began to look up and down the street. Mrs. Bush was not a landlady of the jolly type; she was not ruddy of complexion, or thin and trim of ankle, neither did she adorn herself with numerous ribbons of florid hue. On the contrary, she was a pale, anxious-faced woman, who looked as if she had had too much to do, and quite enough to fret about, all her life. And now, as she stood in the parlour-window on a hot Sunday, and contemplated the few loungers who straggled through the street on their way to the seashore, she assumed a piteous expression of countenance, and shook her head monotonously.
"I wish I hadn't let 'em the rooms, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bush to herself. "It's like my luck--and in the race-week too. If he's able to be up and away from this in a day or two, then I know nothing of sickness; and I've seen a good deal of it too in my time. No sign of that girl! But who's this?"
Asking this, under the circumstances, unsatisfactory question, Mrs. Bush drew still closer to the parlour-window, holding the inevitable red-moreen curtain still farther back, and looked with mingled curiosity and helplessness at a cab which stopped unmistakably at the door of her house, and from the window of which a handsome young female head protruded itself. Mrs. Bush could not doubt that the intention of the lady in the cab was to get out of it and come into her house; and that good-for-nothing Betsy had not come in, and there was nobody to open the door but Mrs. Bush--a thing which, though a meek-enough woman in general, she did not like doing. The lady gave her very little time to consider whether she liked it or not; for she descended rapidly from the cab, took a small travelling-bag from the hand of the cabman, paid him, mounted the three steps which led to the door, and knocked and rang with so determined a purpose of being admitted that Mrs. Bush, without a moment's hesitation,--but with a muttered "Mercy on us! Suppose he'd been asleep now!" which seemed to imply that the lady's vehemence might probably damage somebody's nerves,--crossed the hall and opened the door.
She found herself confronted by a very young lady, a girl of not more, and possibly less, than nineteen years, in whose manner there was a certain confidence strongly suggestive of her entertaining an idea that the house which she was evidently about to enter was her own, and not that of the quiet, but not well-pleased, looking person who asked her civilly enough, yet not with any cordiality