The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
mean to speak to Chifney. I--I mean to see the stables."
"It's as much as my place is worth, sir."
"Oh! bother your place!" the boy cried impetuously.--Dear heart alive,
how fine they were as they filed by! That chestnut filly, clean made as
a deer, her ears laid back as she reached at the bit; and the brown,
just behind her--"I mean, I mean you needn't be afraid, Chaplin--I'll
speak to her ladyship. I'll arrange all that. Go to the pony's head."
At the end of the long string of horses came the trainer--a
square-built, short-necked man, sanguine complexioned and clean shaven.
Of hair, indeed, Mr. Chifney could only boast a rim of carroty-gray
stubble under the rim of the back of his hard hat. His right eye had
suffered damage, and the pupil of it was white and viscous. His lips
were straight and purplish in colour. He raised his hat and would have
followed on down the slope, but Dickie called to him.
As he rode up an unwonted expression came over Mr. Chifney's shrewd,
hard-favoured face. He took off his hat and sat there, bare-headed in
the sunshine, looking down at the boy, his hand on his hip.
"Good-day, Sir Richard," he said. "Anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, yes," Dickie stammered, all his soul in his eyes, his cheeks
aflame, "you can do just what I want most. Take me down, Chifney, and
show me the horses."
Here Chaplin coughed discreetly behind his hand. But that proved of
small avail, save possibly in the way of provocation. For socially
between the racing and house stables was a great gulf fixed; and Mr.
Chifney could hardly be expected to recognise the existence of a man in
livery standing at a pony's head, still less to accept direction from
such a person. Servants must be kept in their place--impudent, lazy
enough lot anyhow, bless you! On his feet the trainer had been known to
decline to moments of weakness. But in the saddle, a good horse under
him, he possessed unlimited belief in his own judgment, fearing neither
man, devil, nor even his own meek-faced wife with pink ribbons in her
cap. Moreover, he felt such heart as he had go out strangely to the
beautiful, eager boy gazing up at him.
"Nothing 'ud give me greater pleasure in life, Sir Richard," he said,
"if you're free to come. We've waited a long time, a precious long
time, sir, for you to come down and take a look at your horses."
"I'd have been to see them sooner. I'd have given anything to see them.
I've never had the chance, somehow."
Chifney pursed up his lips, and surveyed the distant landscape with a
very meaning glance. "I dare say not, Sir Richard. But better late than
never, you know; and so, if you are free to come----"
Again Chaplin coughed.
"Free to come? Of course I am free to come," Dickie asserted, his pride
touched to arrogance. And Mr. Chifney looked at him, an approving
twinkle in his sound eye.
"I agree, Sir Richard. Quite right, sir, you're free, of course."
Stolen waters are sweet, says the proverb. And to Richard Calmady, his
not wholly legitimate experience of the next hour was sweet indeed. For
there remains rich harvest of poetry in all sport worth the name, let
squeamish and sentimental persons declaim against it as they may.
Strength and endurance, disregard of suffering have a permanent appeal
and value, even in their coarsest manifestations. No doubt the noble
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who "lay at Brockhurst two nights" on
the occasion of Sir Denzil's historic house-warming, to witness the
mighty bear-baiting, were sensible of something more in that somewhat
disgusting exhibition, than the mere gratification of brutal instincts,
the mere savage relish for wounds and pain and blood. And to Sir
Denzil's latest descendant the first sight of the training-stable--as
the pony-carriage came to a standstill alongside the grass plot in the
centre of the great, graveled square--offered very definite and
stirring poetry of a kind.
On three sides the quadrangle was shut in by one-storied, brick
buildings, the woodwork of doors and windows immaculate with white
paint. Behind, over the wide archway,--closed fortress-like by heavy
doors at night,--were the head-lad's and helpers' quarters. On either
side, forge and weighing-room, saddler's and doctor's shop. To right
and left a range of stable doors, with round swing-lights between each;
and, above these, the windows of hay and straw lofts and of the boys'
dormitories. In front were the dining-rooms and kitchens, and the
trainer's house--a square clock tower, carrying an ornate gilt vane,
rising from the cluster of red roofs. Twenty years had weathered the
raw of brick walls, and painted the tiling with all manner of orange
and rusty-coloured lichens; yet the whole place was admirably spick and
span, free of litter. Many cats, as Dickie noted, meditated in sunny
corners, or prowled in the open with truly official composure. Over all
stretched a square of bluest sky, crossed by a skein of
homeward-wending rooks. While above the roofs, on either side the
archway, the high-lying lands of the park showed up, broken, here and
there, by clumps of trees.
Mr. Chifney slipped out of the saddle.--"Here boy, take my horse," he
shouted to a little fellow hurrying across the yard. "I'm heartily glad
to see you, Sir Richard," he went on. "Now, if you care, as your
father's son can't very well be off caring, for horses----"
"If I care!" echoed Dickie, his eyes following the graceful chestnut
filly as she was led in over the threshold of her stable.
"I like that. That'll do. Chip of the old block after all," the trainer
said, with evident relish. "Well then, since you do care for horses as
you ought to, Sir Richard, we'll just make you free of this
establishment. About the most first-class private establishment in
England, sir, though I say it that have run the concern pretty well
single-handed for the best part of the last fifteen years--make you
free of it right away, sir. And, look you, when you've got hold, don't
you leave hold."
"No, I won't," Dickie said stoutly.
Mr. Chifney was in a condition of singular emotion, as he wrapped
Richard's rug about him and bore him away into the stables. He even
went so far as to swear a little under his breath; and Chifney was a
very fairly clean-mouthed man, unless members of his team of twenty and
odd naughty boys got up to some devilry with their charges. He carried
Richard as tenderly as could any woman, while he tramped from stall to
stall, loose-box to loose-box, praising his racers, calling attention
to their points, recounting past prowess, or prophesying future
victories.
And the record was a fine one; for good luck had clung to the
masterless stable, as Lady Calmady's bank-books and ledgers could
testify.
"Vinedresser by Red Burgundy out of Valeria--won two races at the
Newmarket Spring Meeting the year before last. Lamed himself somehow in
the horse-box coming back--did nothing for eighteen months--hope to
enter him for some of the autumn events."--Then later:--"Sahara, by
North African out of Sally-in-our-Alley. Beautiful mare? I believe you,
Sir Richard. Why she won the Oaks for you. Jack White was up. Pretty a
race as ever I witnessed, and cleverly ridden. Like to go up to her in
the stall? She's as quiet as a lamb. Catch hold of her head, boy."
And so Dick found himself seated on the edge of the manger, the
trainer's arm round him, and the historic Sahara snuffing at his jacket
pockets.
Then they crossed the quadrangle to inspect the colts and fillies,
where glories still lay ahead.
"Verdigris by Copper King out of Valeria again. And if he doesn't make
a name I'll never judge another horse, sir. Strain of the old
Touchstone blood there. Rather ugly? Yes, they're often a bit ugly that
lot, but devilish good uns to go. You ask Miss Cathcart about them.
Never met a lady who'd as much knowledge as she has of a horse. The
Baby, by Punch out of Lady Bountiful. Not much good, I'm afraid. No
grip, you see, too contracted in the hoofs. Chloroform by Sawbones out
of sister to Castinette."
And so forth, an endless repetition of genealogies, comments, anecdotes
to which Dickie lent most attentive ear. He was keen to learn, his
attention was on the stretch. He was in process of initiation, and
every moment of the sacred rites came to him with power and value. Yet
it must be owned that he found the lessening of the strain on his
memory and attention not wholly unwelcome when Mr. Chifney, sitting
beside him on the big, white-painted cornbin opposite Diplomacy's
loose-box, began to tell him of the old times when he--a little fellow
of eight to ten years of age--had been among the boys in his cousin,
Sam Chifney's famous stable at Newmarket. Of the long, weary traveling
before the days of railways, when the horses were walked by highroad
and country lane, ankle deep in mud, from Newmarket to Epsom; and after
victory or defeat, walked by slow stages all the way home again. Of
how, later, he had migrated to Doncaster; but, not liking the
"Yorkshire tykes," had got taken on in some well-known stables upon the
Berkshire downs.
"And it was there, Sir Richard," he said, "I met your father, and we
fancied each other from the first. And he asked me to come to him.
These stables were just building then. And here I've been ever since."
Mr. Chifney stared down at the clean red quarries of the stable floor,
and tapped his neat gaiters with the switch he held in his hand.
"Rum places, racing stables," he went on, meditatively; "and a lot of
rum things go on in 'em, one way and another, as you'll come to know.
And it ain't the easiest thing going, I tell you, to keep your hands
clean. Ungrateful business a trainer's, Sir Richard--wearing
business--shortens a man's temper and makes him old before his time.
Out by four o'clock on summer mornings, minding your cattle and keeping
your eye on those shirking blackguards of boys. No real rest, sir, day
or night. Wearing business--studying all the meetings and entering your
horses where you've reason to reckon they've most chance. And if your
horse wins, the jockey gets all the praise and the petting. And if it
fails the trainer gets all the blame. Yes, it's wearing work. But,
confound it all, sir," he broke out hotly, "there's nothing like it on
the face of God's earth. Horses--horses--horses--why the very smell of
the bedding's sweeter than a bunch of roses. Love 'em? I believe you.
And you'll love 'em too before you've done."
He turned and gripped Dickie hard by the shoulder.
"For we'll make a thorough-paced sportsman of you yet, Sir Richard," he
said, "God bless you--danged if we don't."
Which assertion Mr. Chifney repeated at frequent intervals over his
grog that evening, as he sat, not in the smart dining-room hung round
with portraits of Vinedresser and Sahara and other equine notabilities,
but in the snug, little, back parlour looking out on to the yard. Mrs.
Chifney was a gentle, pious woman, with whom her husband's profession
went somewhat against the grain. She would have preferred a nice
grocery, or other respectable, uneventful business in a country town,
and dissipation in the form of prayer rather than of race-meetings. But
as a slender, slightly self-righteous, young maiden she had fallen very
honestly and completely in love with Tom Chifney. So there was nothing
for it but to marry him and regard the horses as her appointed cross.
She nursed the boys when they were sick or injured, intervened fairly
successfully between their poor, little backs and her husband's
all-too-ready ash stick; and assisted Julius March in promoting their
spiritual welfare, even while deploring that the latter put his faith
in forms and ceremonies rather than in saving grace. Upon the trainer
himself she exercised a gently repressive influence.