Short Story.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 9, Issue 80, 7 October 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

Short Story.

A Tale of the Turf.

By DALRYMPLE BELGRAVB. Author of “Luck at the Diamond Fields,” “ Turf and Veldt,” “ A Great Turf Fraud,” &c., &c. (All Rights Reserved.) (Concluded.) In the ballroom Phil had no difficulty In making out Mrs. Mullet from his friend’s description, and he soon managed to be introduced to her. He danced one dance with her and sat oat several others. They got on very well, and soon became extremely confidential. “They don’t.cotton to me about here, and I don't wonder ajt it. Lord ! look at that gal who just passed us ; she is a pretty gal, ain’t she, and ain't she just proud, too—she almost looks at me as if I were dirt,” she said, as Jenny and her partner walked through the passage where they were sitting. Jenny was about the last person that Phil wished to talk about, so lie did not answer.

“ Are yon any relation to Sir Paul Caleb cot ?” she asked. Phil said that he was Sir Paul’s younger brother. “ Well, you are better family than those Westerns. I know all about the county, as well I might, for I began life as a barmaid at the hotel round the corner. I was fool enough to come here, you say ; well so I was, though I guess wherever I went they wouldn’t think I was any great shakes in the way of birth. And I said I will go back to the old country and be a boss there, and so I mean still, but .it is a longer job than I thought. Well, about yourself now. You said just now you were thinking of going out yonder. Have you done anything—l mean people who go out there don’t iisualiy have a thousand a year and a certificate of good character from the parson of their parish. They are generally a bit under a cloud.” Phil said he hadn’t the thousand, but he fancied he could get some sort of certificate of good character. “ Ah, well, that’s satisfactory. It is a oiity you ain’t an elder’ son. but there is ..Ir. Hardiman come to dance the Lancers with me. He ain’t altered much these twenty years since he used to stop at the hotel. Phil noticed a man of about GO in evening clothes, and recognised him as the elder of the two men he had seen the day before in the train. As they drove home Phil and Jenny both seemed to be in very high spirits, but as a matter of fact Jenny’s maid found her mistress in floods of tears, while Phil ’Snarled at Mr. Ribstone in the smokingroom till that gentleman walked off to bed'in a rage. The next day’s races at Barmouth will not soon be forgotten. The racing was good, but a curious incident that took place in the ring will for a long time be a matter of turf gossip. Phil Oaldicot isaw a good deal of that incident. In the ring at Barmouth there is a lettered blackboard, on which telegrams are fixed.

Hovering near the board was a dark, 'half good-looking man, with very black whiskers and moustache, a broken nose and a pair of black eyes that seemed ito take in everything that was going on an the ring, and to notice everybody who ’was there. He was an impudent, flashlooking fellow, who looked less like an honest man than most of the men about him, and yet there was an air of bonhomie and good nature about him. This gentleman was Gyp Stanley. Captain Stanley he would sometimes call himself, though unless you were very young and very green he would laugh merrily in your face merrily in your face if you asked him what regiment he had belonged to. He had received one or two telegrams, and he had cast those sharp black eyes of bis over tlhe other envelopes displayed on the board. Presently Mr. Hardiman, who was dressed in the shabby, brown, great coat and pot hat which he wore when Phil fii’st saw him, passed by. “ There’s a telegram on the board for you, Mr. Hardiman,” said Stanley. “ What the devil do yon mean by talking to me, you scoundrel ?” was the response to this speech. “ Hope old Beggarman is going, strong and well—that was a nice trial he won the other day,” said Gyp with an impudent grin on his face, perfectly unmoved by the snub. Mr. Hardiman walked up to the board, took up the telegram, tore open the envelope, and as he read the message he uttered a curse, and tearing the pink paper he threw the pieces on the ground and walked away with the air of a man who has read some very disagreeable news. It happened that the pieces he threw down fell just by the feet of Gyp Stanley. Gyp was watching him—he generally seemed somehow or other to be watching most people. He was of an inquisitive turn of mind—he picked up the bits of paper and pieced them together and read the message : “ Dobson Compton to Hardiman, grand stand, Barmouth. Beggarman broken down badly in his gallop this morning. Case hopeless.” Gyp Stanley felt inclined to echo Mr. Har'diman’s curse. Hidden behind an bush he had some weeks before witnessed Beggarman’s trial, and learnt that the horse looked like being a certainty for the Cambridgeshire. He had put his patrons on to the horse and stood to win a nice stake on it. Well, anyhow, lie had got early information. He slipped across the ring to the corner of the grand stand and the paddock railings, where Jim Groves, the big bookmaker, had taken up his position—whispered to him what he had seen, and showed him the telegram. Groves took a glance at Hardiman, who was standing by himself. looking very upset and angry. “ Thought he’d have been a bit wiser than to have chucked that about, but you can never tell what a man will do when he gets a regular facer,” said Groves, “ and that’s what he has had.”

Gyp then went up to Mr. Ribstone, to whom he imparted the same information which he had given to the bookmaker. Mr. Ribstone looked unwholesome when lie heard it, but he acted promptly, and at once went up to a man whogenerally betted for him on commission, and told him to lay all he could against Beggarman.

At Barmouth there is very often a good deal of betting on future events, as the meeting is largely attended by the bookraaking fraternity, who like to enjoy the sea breezes and make a sort of holiday affair of it, though they are always ready to mix up business with pleasure. That year there were an unusually large number of owners of racehorses and backers present, and there had been already a good deal of speculation about the Cambridgeshire, though the layers bad not shown much wish to meddle with the favourite Beggarman. Sud-

denly, however, a change came over the spirit of the dream, and the ominous voice of Jim Groves—lie was called the undertaker because lie was always so certain to lay against a “ dead uu”— was heard offering seven to one on the field for the Cambridgeshire. Mr. Ribstone’s commissioner echoed the cry and offered a hundred to twelve. A few backers came to the rescue, but in another minute twelve to one was offered. People looked at Mr. Hardiman, but he made no sign of coming to the rescue. He seemed to be very angry and put out about something. Suddenly he rushed up to Mr. Ribstone as if he could control himself no longer. “ You infernal thief, that fellow is betting for you, isn’t he ?” he said, pointing to Ribstone’s commissioner.

“ What do yon moan by talking to me like that, Mr. Hardiman ?” said Ribstone, looking very nervous and uncomfortable. “ Mean—why that my training ground is infested by your touts—that you forestalled me when I wanted to back my horse, and now when I hear that he has broken down I find that you have the same information.”

Then he put his hand in his pocket and uttered another exclamation. “ Why, you have employed some scoundrel to pick my pocket and get my telegram. Yon ought to be kicked off the turf, and by George I will do it for you,” and taking his enemy by the scruff of the neck Mr. Hardiman began to propel him by a series of kicks towards the gate that led from the ring into the course. The spectacle of one prominent turfite kicking another out of a grand stand is likely to excite considerable attention. Every one in the ring, and a good many people in the carriages on the other side of the course, noticed the incident. Amongst the betting men the news spread like wildfire that Ribstone had managed to hear that Beggarman had broken down, and almost before Hardiman had administered his final kick, which sent Ribstone sprawling on all fours on to the course through the gate, almost everybody knew what it was about. By the time Mr. Ribstone had picked himself up and slunk off (however much a man be in the right it is difficult to assert oneself after one has been kicked) the incident had seriously affected Beggerman’s market position, and 20 to 1 was offered. After the next race had been run, and attention again tinned to future events, 30 to 1 was offered against Beggarman,

Plhil Cal dicot had been in the enclosnre and witnessed the ineident in which Mr. Ribstone had played so uncomfortable a part without feeling much compassion for him. When he heard about Beggarman having broken down he remembered the conversation he had heard in the railway carriage, and as he thought over it he noticed the smoothfaced man he had seen talking to Hardiman saunter up to Groves, the bookmaker. He was near enough to hear Mm back Beggarman for one hundred pounds at 30 to 1. Then he saw him go up to Ribstone’s commissioner and then to another bookmaker. Phil had changed his cheque before he left London, and he had won another hundred and twenty pounds, for, when he had determined to marry the widow if she would have him, and he believed she would, and money therefore was of no importance to him. his luck turned. As 'he watched the smooth-faced man the whole meaning of the scene that was being played suddenly flashed across him, and he determined to take the tip that chance had given him, and going up to a bookmaker who he knew would be able to pay a large sum of money, and who had just offered 30 to 1 against Beggarman, ho took those odds to two hundred pounds. Then he crossed the course. Should he go and talk to the widow, who was in a waggonette dispensing luncheon to a small though not particularly select circle of friends, or should he go back to Tom Western’s drag, where Jenny Western was ? She seemed somehow different that morning from winn she was the evening before, and her face did not wear the same defiant look. The drag was just opposite the grand stand, and she had witnessed Mr. Ribstone’s discomfiture. If Mr.. Ribstone had known that she had seen it all and could have understood What she would think of it he would not have come round to the drag as he did after he had pulled himself together. Why should a woman think the worse of him because he had been attacked and assaulted by Hardiman ? He was not a fighting man, and if any fighting bad to he done he could well afford to pay others to do it for him. So he came back and bore himself as if nothing had happened. Jenny had seen him kicked out of the enclosure by a smaller and much older man than himself. Mere physical courage is, we arc told nowadays* a very second-rate quality, but moslt women have enough of the instinct inherited from the savage ages when men fought to gain them and keep them, to have a very genuine contempt for the man who is without it. And the sort of moral courage which enabled Mr. Ribstone to bear his disgrace so easily only disgusted her all the more. Cal di cot saw that Mr. Ribstone Was no longer a formidable rival to any one who wanted to win Jenny. “If only Beggarman would win the race he would never make a bet again, but would go off to seek bis fortune in some land where success was not so bal’d to gain by one who bad a small capital and plenty of pluck and energy. And if be went to Jenny like a man and told her that be was going to fight hard to make up for lost time, instead of scowling and snarling as he had ..oner the evening before, maybe she would be kinder to him.

There was another who watched the kicking episode, and let it to a certain extent influence her life, and that was the golden widow. She had been a goo deal taken by two men she had met at the ball the evening before—Phil and Hardiman.

The latter she felt really liked her better than the former, and she liked him almost as well as she did Phil, though it was a pity he was not a little younger.

When she saw him begin to kick Ribstone she had thought that there was plenty of spirit left in him, when he sent his enemy sprawling on to the turf she declared to herself that he was quite young enough for her, and that she would take the first opportunity of letting him know that he could have her and her quarter of a million of money for the asking. So When Hardiman came round to her carriage she asked him to dinner that evening, and after dinner it was all settled. “ I liked you before, but when I saw you go for that chap I said you were the man for my money,” she said as they sat talking comfortably together after the proposal had been suggested by her, made by him, and accepted. “ Weil, it was a little hard on him, but some people are always finding out

about my horses, so I thought I would do them a. shot, and I hail a telegram sent that Boggarman had broken down and dropped it in the ring. Then when I saw, by the way they began to bet, that it had been picked up and road, it occurred to me that if I kicked Ribstone

for having got the information everybody would learn about it, and the horse would go to a long price at once. So I kicked him more as an advertisement than anything else. Ho feels sick now, hut ho will feel sicker when he finds Beggannan has won, and the old horse is certain lo win." said Hardiman, and the widow laughed, and said that. In future there would be no need for Ids being so clever. “ No, my dear, I will be the most popular owner on the turf, and you shall be one of the leaders of society in this county.” All Hardimau’s prophecies came true. Boggarman won in a canter. Hardiman married the golden widow and raced on a grand scab 1 , and became one of the stewards of the jockey club. though some people after the Grand Prize went about saying things about (lie way in which the Boggarman commission was worked that day at Barmouth. Mrs. Hardiman is a very popular hostess, both in London and at her country place near Barmouth, and people describe her as being so original and amusing. Phil Oaldicot won six thousand pounds, and bought a cattle ranch in Texas, and Jenny Western married him, and has never regretted having taken that rather rash step.