Chapter IX: Mostyn Makes a Purchase

At an unreasonably early hour the next morning Mostyn, who had slept peacefully enough in his new quarters, was aroused by the advent of Willis, the gardener. The latter, as on the day before, seemed concerned as to the reception which might be offered him. He rubbed his lantern jaws nervously with a work-hardened forefinger while he informed Mostyn that it was a fine day, and that he had brought up the hot water for shaving.

"How's the boy?" asked Mostyn, stretching himself and yawning, but half awake.

"Nicely, thank you, sir." Willis drew a breath of relief. No doubt he had expected to be taken severely to task for not having revealed to his master the fact of Rada Armitage's frequent occupation of the Grange, a trespass which he had palpably condoned. "Miss Rada's been very good to him, pore lad, and is goin' to send him some books to read. Reads a treat, does our Jim." Willis spoke Miss Armitage's name as though to give the necessary opening for explanations. And these were immediately demanded by Mostyn, who woke up completely at the mention of the girl's name.

The explanation was as Rada had hinted. Her appearance had not been looked for since she had slept at the Grange the night before, and had never yet spent two consecutive nights there. Willis meant to have taken the earliest opportunity of warning her that the Grange was no longer unoccupied; he had thought it would not be necessary to mention the matter to Mr. Clithero at all. As for the clothes in the cupboard, he had quite forgotten all about them, and he had thought that the roses in the vases had been left from overnight. He was very penitent, as was his wife, and they both hoped the matter would be overlooked.

Mostyn took it all as a joke, much to the gardener's relief. It was a perfect June morning: the sun shone in at the latticed window, bearing the scent of roses and jasmine, and he felt that he had awakened to a new day, a new life. How different this was to his dingy London lodgings! How different, even, to the pretentious gloom of his father's house! Yet everything about him was his own, absolutely his own! The blood coursed quickly through his veins. How could he be angry with Willis?

Mostyn proceeded to put some questions as to Rada. The girl's name came glibly to his lips. A desire had come upon him, born, no doubt, partly of that strange fascination which she exerted and partly of the revelation of his own masculine power which had followed her fear of an indefinite danger, to master the little vixen, as he mentally described her, to curb and break her in as an untrained filly--he was already beginning to use sporting metaphor, even to himself.

But Willis, who appeared very ready to discuss Rada, almost took Mostyn's breath away by his first statement.

"She's a hangel!" he said emphatically.

"A what?" Mostyn had regarded Rada in anything but an angelic light.

"A hangel," repeated the gardener, laying great stress on the aspirate. He proceeded to sing Rada's praises with evident enjoyment, and palpably from a sense of conviction. She was, it appeared, although as poor as a church mouse, the Lady Bountiful to all the cottage folk in the neighbourhood, by whom she was simply adored. She would minister comforts to the sick and needy, often little more than a cheerful word and the sunlight of her presence, but no less welcome for all that. She would take charge of unruly children and attend to the house-keeping in the unavoidable absence of the mother; she would cook little dainties with her own hands; she had an extraordinary capacity for lulling restless babies to sleep. Willis declared stoutly that she had pulled his own little daughter through a fever when the doctor had been despondent, and she was not afraid of infection either, he added proudly.

Here, indeed, was Rada in a new light! What a queer and complex little creature she must be! She had treated him with such shocking rudeness: he had thought her the very contrary to the "hangel" described by Willis, but now it was evident that there were depths in the girl's nature which had not yet been revealed to him.

Having praised Rada to the full, Willis proceeded to abuse her father, and that in no measured terms. He was a shiftless, idle ne'er-do-well, who had lost all pretensions to being considered a gentleman, though up in London, Willis had heard, he did play the "high and mighty." He went about to race meetings when he could, and had sometimes been away for days without leaving provision for his daughter. He kept one or two race-horses at Treves's stables, but had not brought off a win for some time past. When at home he lounged about in his shirt-sleeves, read the sporting papers, and drank himself silly. Rada, very naturally, found her own distractions, and her chief joy was to career about the country upon her black mare, Bess, a creature as wild as herself.

"The captain don't take no stock of his girl," said Willis emphatically, "an' he'll be sorry for it one of these days. I see her about with young Jack Treves more'n enough, an' Jack ain't the right sort for her, not by a long way."

This was a revelation at which Mostyn felt vaguely annoyed. He took an immediate dislike to Jack Treves. Yet why should he worry himself over Rada's flirtations?

Later that morning, while he ate a comfortable breakfast served up by Mrs. Willis, he heard all the gardener's ideas recapitulated by the good woman. She was just as emphatic on the subject of the captain as her husband had been, nor did she swerve from her opinion when she learnt that Mostyn was already acquainted with the Armitages, though the knowledge of this fact reduced Willis to awkward silence and to much rubbing of his jaw.

Rada, it appeared, had left the cottage early that morning, probably, Mrs. Willis opined, to return home, though it was quite possible she might have gone to other friends. Captain Armitage had been on the drink, and was best left alone.

After an hour or so spent in surveying his new domain, and in discussing plans for the future with the Willis's, Mostyn set out to pay a visit at Barton Mill House. Captain Armitage might be in an objectionably bibulous condition, but Mostyn was not afraid of meeting him.

Of course, he told himself that he wanted to discuss the matter of Castor, and that there was really no time for delay; also that Captain Armitage might very well introduce him to the trainer, William Treves; all of which was good and plausible, but it was neither of the horse Castor nor of the trainer that Mostyn thought, as with some difficulty he found his way through the narrow lanes to Mill House: his reflections were concentrated upon Rada.

He found Captain Armitage at home, but to his great disappointment Rada was not at the Mill House, nor had Captain Armitage the smallest idea where she had gone to. He didn't seem to mind. He laughed immoderately when he heard the story of the rencontre at the Grange the night before, and conjectured that Rada must have gone off to stay with some friends of hers, some folk who were accustomed to her erratic ways, and who lived in the neighbourhood of Newmarket. She had turned up at the Mill House, it appeared, quite early in the morning, had selected some books from her little library, had had Bess saddled, and had then ridden off. Captain Armitage had not seen her because he was in bed.

"We don't always hit it off together," he explained jerkily, "and Rada's quite capable of taking care of herself. She is a little devil, but I like her spirit."

Mostyn found it difficult to reconcile the divergent views of his gardener and of Captain Armitage as to Rada's character, but he did not feel called upon to make any comment upon the subject. Personally he was inclined to agree with the captain.

Of course Captain Armitage was very surprised to receive a visit from Mostyn, and he broke off into a volley of oaths when he learned that the latter had profited under the will of Anthony Royce; this, though Mostyn did not give the full particulars as to his strange bequest, seeing no reason why he should do so, but merely mentioned that he had inherited the Grange and a certain sum of money as well.

"He never left me a penny, not a brass farthing," said Captain Armitage solemnly, "yet I was one of his oldest friends, a school-fellow and all the rest of it." This was a lie, and Mostyn knew it to be a lie, but the matter was not worth discussing.

The captain did not present an imposing figure that morning. Mostyn found him lounging in a disreputably worn arm-chair, clad in a soiled but brilliantly-flowered dressing-gown, smoking an old meerschaum pipe, and perusing a sporting paper. His white hair was untidy, his beard unkempt, and his slippers down at the heel. The little sitting-room was dingy and uncared for; Rada had evidently abandoned the hopeless task of tidying it.

"I told you that I was a poor man, Mr. Clithero," Captain Armitage said, waving a deprecating hand round the room, "and now you can see for yourself." Suddenly his dull eyes brightened. "You say Royce has left you some brass," he insinuated. "Have you thought better of that offer I made you the other day?"

"That's what I'm here for," explained Mostyn. "Are you still willing to sell Castor, Captain Armitage?"

"I should say I was, my boy." The old man sprang from his chair with something of the nervous energy that Mostyn remembered he had displayed when on the coach. "Fifteen hundred pounds! Why, it would be the making of me just now." He spoke eagerly. "I know how I could turn it into five, into ten thousand. There's Cardigan, a sure thing for the Liverpool Cup, and Boscowen, a perfect snip at Sandown. Give me fifteen hundred down, and I'll make a fortune. You shall have the tips, too; I'll throw them into the bargain."

So it came about that, without loss of time, Captain Armitage, muttering and mumbling to himself, had shuffled out of the room, leaving Mostyn to gaze out of the uncleaned window over a strip of garden where the grass grew rank, and where weeds choked the few hardy flowers that had endured. Whatever she might be elsewhere, Rada evidently took no pride in her own home; Mostyn told himself that the Mill House, practically little more than a tumble-down cottage, was one of the most dreary spots he had ever visited.

It was not long before the captain reappeared, a little more spruce in his attire and ready to go out. It was, it appeared, not more than half an hour's walk to the training stables, and there was no reason why the bargain should not be clinched at once.

This was all very well, but Mostyn did not feel capable of relying upon his own judgment, nor did he trust Captain Armitage's word. Fifteen hundred pounds was a large sum, and not to be merely thrown away to put cash into the pocket of a drunkard. Would he do well to purchase Castor? Certainly Sir Roderick had admitted the value of the colt. That went for a good deal, but at the bottom of his heart Mostyn knew that his desire to own the horse had something to do with the struggle which he felt, in an indefinite sort of way, had commenced between himself and Rada. "I'm a girl, but I'll back myself to win a Derby before you!" she had cried contemptuously, and the words had galled and stung him. She had great faith in Castor, he knew that; well, it would be a fitting punishment upon her if, by extraordinary luck, he contrived to carry off the race with that particular horse. Mostyn was not spiteful by nature, but he was very human.

As they walked together, passing through the little town and then emerging upon open country, Captain Armitage exerted his powers of persuasion to the full, and he had a plausible tongue. Mostyn had an eye for a horse, so the old man asserted, and he had recognised that fact upon Derby day, or he would not have dreamed of making his offer. He had taken a fancy to Mostyn from the first, especially because the latter had taken his joking in good part. What he was doing was purely out of personal consideration.

"Look here, Clithero,"--he halted in that sudden and abrupt manner peculiar to him, and seized the young man by the arm--"we don't want a lot of palaver over this business. Treves will tell you that the colt's all right, and his word's as good as gospel. Settle on the nail and we'll cry quits at a thousand."

They reached the training stables at last, a low narrow building, lying a little back from the road, a building that formed three sides of a square and was approached by a large gate. Beyond it, and indeed, on either side of the road, was open level country. "A capital pitch for exercising," as Captain Armitage put it, pointing to a row of horses that were following one another in steady line over the down.

Castor had just returned from exercise, and they found him in his stable where he had been groomed by one of the boys. William Treves himself, an important personality, a man who had accumulated a considerable fortune, but who had no pride about him, and who was not ashamed of his humble origin, nor of the fact that he had never acquired a mastery of the king's English, discoursed volubly on the perfections of the colt. Apparently he already knew of Captain Armitage's desire to find a purchaser. The man gave Mostyn the impression of honesty.

As for Castor, little as Mostyn knew of horses he was impressed by the animal's appearance. Stripped of his clothes, he appeared a black colt of such magnificent proportions as to give one the idea that he was a three-year-old, instead of a nursery youngster.

After much talking, in which Mostyn took small part, the bargain was struck. In return for his cheque for a thousand pounds, Mostyn became the proprietor of "as fine an 'oss as the eye of man could look upon;" so William Treves put it.

"'E 'as a terrific turn of speed," the trainer continued, "and there isn't a three-year-old in this country that can 'old 'im at a mile at weight for age. I borrowed a couple of Colonel Turner's youngsters the other day to try 'im with, an' 'e left 'em fairly standing still, and the Colonel's 'ed man went 'ome with a wonderful tale about 'em, although 'e didn't know I'd put an extra five pound on Castor. Take my advice, if you're set on winnin' next year's Derby, don't pull 'im out too often this year. 'E's entered for the Eclipse at Sandown and the National Produce Breeders' Stakes, and you might let 'im run about four times just to give 'im a breather and get 'im used to racecourse crowds. No man livin' can say to-day wot will win the Derby next year, but if 'e trains on and puts on more bone, as I expect 'e will, 'e must stand a grand chance."

"You hear that? He'll win the Derby for you." Armitage smote his young friend heartily on the back as he spoke. "Take my word for it."

Mostyn was content with his purchase, proud of himself. There was but one hitch, and that occurred later in the morning when Armitage and Treves had moved away to inspect a new arrival at the stables, leaving Mostyn standing alone, a little awkwardly, in the great square yard.

A young man approached him, a tall, broad-shouldered youth, good-looking after a coarse and vulgar style. He was aggressively horsey in his attire, and wore a cap set at the back of his head, displaying sleek hair plastered down over his forehead. This, as Mostyn was subsequently to learn, was Jack Treves, the son of the trainer. He had a familiar way of speaking, and made use of slang which jarred at once upon Mostyn's ears.

He began by making a few casual remarks, then he jerked his head in the direction of his father and of Captain Armitage. "I hear you've bought Castor," he said. "A fine horse, sir."

"Yes," replied Mostyn, "I've bought the colt."

"Well, it may be all right." Jack Treves shook his head doubtfully. "And of course the captain can do what he likes with his own--that is, if it is his own--but I'll bet there'll be ructions, for Castor's entered for the Derby in the name of Miss Armitage, and she's always looked upon him as her particular property." He stooped and picked up a wisp of straw, passing it between his fingers.

"Her property?" faltered Mostyn. "I don't understand."

Jack Treves nibbled at his straw. "The captain didn't tell you then? I thought not. You see, when he went broke three years ago and appeared in the forfeit list at Weatherby's, she sold all her mother's jewels and paid his debts, and it was then that she registered her colours--

"_Her_ colours!" gasped Mostyn. "Do you mean to tell me that Rada--er, Miss Armitage--has registered racing colours?"

"Lor lummy, yes!" was the reply, spoken with a certain malice. "A bit young, of course, but she's not like other girls. She's not had the best of luck, though, up to date, and that's why she's so keen on seeing the lemon and lavender carried to victory at Epsom next year. She simply dotes on Castor, and considers that the colt is hers in return for that jewellery."

Jack Treves threw his whittled straw away. "I guess," he said, "there'll be the devil of a row."