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"The Unknown Path," D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1927
"The Unknown Path," D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1927
THIS story by Bertram Atkey is one in which a universally popular theme is presented with delightful originality in treatment. "The Unknown Path" is a vigorous, quick-moving story of men and horses. More than this, it is an appealing love romance. The opening scene is laid at "Houndsdown," an old English farm, where Job Armsman raises the finest Shire draught horses in England, as did his father before him. The farm does not flourish as it did in the days before the machine tractor invaded the province of the draught horse, and Job is forced to surrender "Houndsdown" and his thoroughbreds. This means the wrench of his life, and he determines to win back his heritage. How he goes about it, and how the magnificent, champion-bred horses, Gloriana and Thor, play their parts in regaining "Houndsdown" make a narrative rich in suspense and dramatic episode. There is a highly individualized character portrayal in the story, too. MacLeod is a "character" in himself, and Waverley Bell, the young woman Job loves, and Marcus Bell, her generous, square-dealing father, are well deserving of acquaintance.
"And I will bring the blind by a way they knew not; I will lead them in paths they have not known; I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight."
A RAY of reddish light struck the bellmouth of the humane killer ready in the vet's hand and Armsman glanced east at the dully-glowing, copper-red disc of a rising sun that seemed to peer over the rim of the smooth downland into the wind-swept outer yard of the Houndsdown Stud Farm with the smouldering regard of an ill-tempered and ferocious man not yet fully awake.
The thought went weaving through his mind that this was exactly the sort of sunrise to suit such a duty as he, with Hardaway, the veterinary surgeon, and MacLeod, his foreman, were now carrying out.
They were putting the big brown colt out of his pain.
"All right, Job?"
Hardaway's voice was curt, for he had never learned to be absolutely callous at such a killing—even though its sole purpose was to put an end to an animal's hopeless suffering.
Job Armsman nodded, unconsciously scowling, his sombre eyes on the colt.
Behind Job, Mac was muttering in his sparse, sandy beard a chain of words which, unconnected and meaningless though they were, would have got him arrested in almost any public place. But then, Mac had worn his nerves raw through the long fight against the attack of strangles which had cost Armsman four of his most promising young stock... of which this colt was the best.
The killing instrument thudded heavily and the head of the colt fell like a toppled ingot of lead.
Job stared down, both brown hands clenched so that the knuckles were like old ivory.
"Too bad, old man! Never liked a job less," sympathized Hardaway. "But, with luck, it's the last casualty."
"It's got to be"... Job broke off abruptly, the dance and flurry of lively hoofs bringing him sharply round to see that Waverley Bell had just put the spoilt darling of a hunter she called Ripple over the rails of the yard and was cantering up to them.
All the pink which a sharp two-mile gallop through the chill dawn, had pastelled on her cheeks had faded and her clear, steady eyes were troubled as she leaned from her saddle to greet Armsman.
"Why was that?" she called as quietly as one may while controlling a highly-bred, nervous young horse whose blown-red nostrils are full of the strange and terrifying odour of blood and burnt gunpowder.
"Strangles!" said Job, shortly, mechanically raising his hat.
For a few moments the girl said nothing... just looked at them all. Her lips were slightly parted and a little ringed like those of one who might have just uttered an "Oh" of dismay.
Although she had only been back in the home of her childhood two months she was already known to many in that district as Waverley Chin-in-the-Air... by reason, it is to be supposed, of the real or fancied haughtiness with which she carried her neat small head... but now, for a few moments, that appellation seemed misapplied. She could not have looked more distressed if the poor carcass lying so close had been that of her own adored Ripple...
"Waverly Chin-in-the-Air," said the vet later to a crony. "That might suit the short-sighted for a name... but not for me! Don't tell me she's proud... or cold. I tell you I thought she was going to cry for sake of a colt... or, maybe..." his eyes twinkled... "for sake of Job Armsman! I'll swear she hasn't been nearer tears this side of last Christmas... for a few seconds anyway. Though, mind you, she pulled herself together about as quick as you can cock the hammer of a gun!"
That was true enough. Quickly Waverly's eyes lifted from the dead colt to the face of the man who had bred him and, notoriously, had believed that in him he possessed another Shire horse that some day would make Shire history.
This was the fourth in two months which Armsman, in spite of desperate care and watchfulness, had lost to that insidious disease they call strangles; and, in addition to these, two foals had fallen victims to the thing which, for lack of a better name, Shire breeders call "Joint evil," from which the only real protection is time or growth—in that it appears to attack only the youngest stock.
Waverley studied for a second or so Armsman's lean... almost too lean... strong, weather-tanned face, and seemed to see in it something, a mute resentment, which spurred her into action.
She slipped out of the saddle, as the vet moved off.
"Take Ripple, please," she said crisply to the raw-boned, lank-bearded Scot who was chief aid to Job and had been that for years to his father before him. "I am going to walk back to the house with Mr. Armsman!"
Mac took the bridle, with that morose and dour air which, as every one who knew him was perfectly well aware, merely veiled his unfailing if slow camaraderie for any sensible man and his sardonic dislike for any fool.
And Waverley Chin-in-the-Air, looking in her neat riding kit, rather like a light, slender, good-looking boy, walked up to Armsman.
He seemed to wince a little, to shrink within himself, as she came... as men do who can trust themselves less to receive sympathy than blame.
But Waverley saw that and her condolence was brief.
"Almost everybody will be sorry," she said quietly, and that was all she had to say about sorrow or sympathy. "I've been out an hour and I'm just ravenous. Would you like to invite me to breakfast?"
Job's face seemed miraculously to lose a tithe of its leanness.
"Would I like...?" he began.
"Come on, then," said Waverley. "I don't remember having breakfast at Houndstown since I was a mite of six."
They walked slowly to the old stone-built, low-pitched house, now glowing with the autumn gold and red and purple of Virginia creeper.
"I was out for a gallop, and happened to see what you were doing," said Waverley vaguely, as though to explain her sudden appearance. "If I had not known you years ago I suppose it would be cheek, my jumping into your affairs like that."
"No... Waverley!" There had been a second's hesitation—but neither regretted that he had made it her Christian name without the prefix. It had always been so in the old days. "It would never be that."
"Ah, well, that's all right." She was looking about her, immensely interested in everything. It was a long time since she had been at Houndstown, for her people had left the district when she was twelve and had not returned till seven years after—about two months before that day.
"The old place is as beautiful as ever," she continued, in her clear-cut direct way, and shook her head as he shrugged.
"Oh, you're shrugging because of the buildings... yes, they want some money spent on them, of course, but I meant the stock. Everything looks such good clean strain—well bred. It always did. Even the fowls!" Job nodded.
"Well, it ought to be... I've taken no end of trouble about it... even the fowls. But I wonder whether it has shown me any better return than some get out of their mixed, cross-bred stock, Waverley. Still, the blood may tell on the prices at the sale."
His quiet, level voice dropped a little at the end of the sentence.
"The sale!" she echoed. "Yes... I've seen the posters of that." She hesitated. Then went on rather earnestly. "But Job—is it absolutely necessary for you to sell out?"
His voice was rather grim as he explained.
"You've been away so long that you haven't quite gathered all the local news," he told her. "It's a case of willingly selling out now or being unwillingly sold up in a few months... to put it as bluntly as I had the pleasure of hearing some one say the other day!"
"Only somebody who disliked you would say that in that way," said Waverley, frowning a little. "A thing like that is meant to hurt—to wound. Who said it?"
Armsman was opening the door of the house.
"Oh, somebody or other. It was in the marketplace. I... just caught it as I went by." His tone was even... almost too even.
Waverley glanced up at him as she went by into the hall.
"That's the sort of cat-scratch which makes me furious," she told him.
He shook his head at her, smiling rather mirthlessly.
"I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing... nowadays," he said.
Waverley said no more then. But, wandering about the long, oak-beamed and paneled dining room while Armsman was interviewing his housekeeper in the matter of breakfast for two, her lips were tight and her eyes sparkling.
"He pushed that aside very lightly and easily," she told herself, "but I don't think he is the kind of man who will forget it or forgive it quite so easily... He is evidently having dreadful luck. I am glad I came along when I did. I ought to have come to see him before... but there's been so much to do..."
She began to inspect the old colored sporting prints hanging on the walls.
The sole motive in Waverley's mind when she had invited herself to breakfast with Armsman had been to cheer him over a depressing hour. That was the impulsive sort of thing she was always doing. They had been very good comrades years before in the days when the mighty Shire horses bred by Armsman's father had been known from one end of the country to the other; when the buyers from the North, for ever seeking staunch and powerful animals, capable each one of continuously hauling a minimum of four solid tons of goods through the congested, difficult and slippery-surfaced streets of Liverpool, would pay down record prices for the Houndsdown giants.
Yes, they had been good comrades... in a quiet sort of way. But their comradeship had been occasionally gapped; for Job was, even then, a silent, steady-going, reliable youth... and Waverley was not quite the girl who could be happy all the time with steady-goers. Waverley was winged in those days and often flew wild... in the innocent wildness of reckless, happy youth. She never had any difficulty in finding companions perfectly willing, even anxious, to aid and abet her in precipitating herself and themselves into trouble; though Job Armsman had never been one of them. Job came in later, when the running-wild mood had temporarily vanished in favor of a brief spell of steadiness.
She had once told him with the delightful frankness of youth that she liked him on Monday, could endure him on Tuesday, and even put up with him on Wednesday... but the rest of the week was entirely his own as far as she was concerned. That had been just before both left for boarding school, and she had not forgotten yet his rather puzzled stare or his perplexed enquiry, "But Waverley, why? Why? What's wrong with me after Wednesday?"
He hadn't understood and for some reason she hadn't time to explain her idea that if he wasn't exactly dull all the week he had a gift for making things seem dull for at least three days of it.
She had not seen him half a dozen times since then, and though perhaps she was nearer the truth of it, she had not yet completely learned that it takes two to make a dull half-hour—or half-week.
She found herself wondering, as she turned to look out of the window, whether she would find him still possessed of the gift of dullness. She suspected that he had "grown out of it."
Face to face with him at a round table in the sunny window she saw more of him in ten minutes than she had seen during the whole of their brief meetings since her return to the neighborhood. It gave her a little shock to see that already the dark crisp hair about his temples and over his ears was touched slightly with gray.
Somehow, her lips drooped ever so little at that. The gray, marksman's eyes, sunken in his strong, but rather haggard face, saw.
"What is it, Waverley?"
"You're only three years older than I am, Job..." the quaint Christian name came out quite unconsciously as of old... "but you look at least ten years older now! Why is that?"
He laughed so genuinely that it was evident that she had at least made him forget the colt for a moment.
"I should be a pretty thorough optimist with a pretty thorough notion of myself if I were very much surprised that I look older than you. Why, that's not in the nature of things."
"I don't see why," she demurred, then suddenly nodded. "Oh, yes I do. It was the war... you had a bad time?"
"Not so bad as some, Waverley... but as bad as I wanted," he admitted.
"And things went a little wrong here at home while you were away?"
"Well... things aren't what they were in the old days any more, you know."
"No. That's true, Job... And you've had to worry a lot since you've been home."
"Yes, Waverley."
"What a shame!" she hesitated, then continued, "Job, did you really mean that there's no way but selling out? Is it so bad as that?"
"I did," grimly.
"But you have some glorious horses—famous ones! I have seen them on the road. Can't you go on? I shall hate to see you sell out... everybody will!"
He shook his head slowly.
"Not quite everybody. But we—that's Mac and the horses and I—and everybody like us all over the world, Waverley, are up against a miraculous and merciless thing called the internal combustion engine... the motor engine."
Waverley nodded.
"Yes, I have heard them talking about the motor wiping out the horse, but I've never thought seriously about it. You still see the plow horses standing on the hillside, and the cart horses in the hay wagons along the lanes." She frowned a little.
"But not so many as there used to be."
"Of course not," she admitted. "I see, but still they will always need some good cart-horses, Job!"
He nodded.
"Well, I've staked my home on the same opinion... and lost it, Waverley, I ought to have got out while I could, immediately after the war... but I suppose I was sentimental. And that doesn't pay in this business."
"You see," he leaned to her with the lonely man's anxious, eagerness to confide. "I was born here, lived here all my life. I know every inch of the old place, and the horses, the older ones, are like relatives to me. It's in my blood, this place, this life, Waverley, and I wouldn't be able to describe to you how I used to hunger for it all again in a dugout in France. I-I'm like a tree... rooted here. And when I came back I trusted partly to myself but more to good luck... like thousands of others... and decided to stay and fight it out with the horses. It seemed impossible to me then—it still does—that the world can ever really get to such a pitch of mechanical perfection or ingenuity that it hasn't any use for draught horses... like the Houndsdown stock, for instance. Or that it isn't willing to provide bread and cheese for men who are competent to rear such horses! Waverley, they have served the world like galley slaves for God knows how many thousands of years... and now we have got them perfect, docile, beautiful and incredibly powerful... and the world doesn't want them!
"Well, I thought a lot about it and it's no good whining... but it's a thing you can understand a man... a man like me, bred up in the midst of it... putting up a fight for, Waverley, can't you? For don't you agree that a first-class, pure-bred Shire horse, in the pink of condition, is one of the handsomest living things in the world? Almost any decently bred and decently looked-after horse is a fine sight, but a Shire's the noblest looking of the lot I know draught horses... Clydesdales, Suffolk Punches, Percherons... but to my mind the Shire's the king of them all! Great, gallant, lion-hearted workers and yet, in their way, as friendly and gentle as—kittens. They'll pull till they break their hearts. I wonder sometimes if anybody has ever found out just exactly how much they can do... or try to do. I don't think a horse like old Houndsdown Thor would ever stop trying though you harnessed him to a mountain. Courage... he's all courage and strength and stick-it, Waverley! he's..."
Job broke off suddenly, a look of apology on his face,
"But... I'm boring you to death! Good Lord! I'm running on like a village gossip. That's because I haven't had much time lately to talk about the horses to some one who is really interested. When I do, I overdo it... without thinking."
But Waverley pointed to her plate, laughing.
"People who are bored don't let their breakfast get cold, do they? I've never been so interested in my life. I think you have had dreadful luck. And I want to see the horses. Do show me round presently."
He beamed. And Waverley forgot the gray-tipped hair, the strained, brooding eyes, and the haggard face above the strong jaw when Job looked like that.
"It will be... be... like a stroke of good luck to me... to show you round," he declared.
"I want to see all of them and be told about them and make friends with them. And, just for once, you'll forget about the machine horses... the motors!"
He said he would.
But even while he said it he could hear faintly from somewhere on the farm opposite the harsh drumming and barking of a tractor, inexorably reminding him that although showing Waverley Bell his horses might help him for an hour pleasantly to chloroform himself against grim facts it did nothing practical to help him compete with what the girl had called the machine horses.
And as though to clinch remorselessly the warning of the tractor, there burst out a minute later, the fierce and clamorous roar of a bigger exhaust than that of any of the comparatively small agricultural tractors which were increasing so rapidly in the district He recalled then that this was the day on which Marshall his neighbor on the opposite farm, who had made his pile during the War and kept it, was hauling big tree stumps from the ground on which he intended to put up the big new house he had planned.
Unconsciously his eyebrows drew in.
"What's that noise?" asked Waverly, watching him.
"Oh, that's another enemy of my Shire's," he said rather grimly. "We didn't mind the trucks and the small tractors, at least we said we didn't and tried to believe it... but that musical thing is a different matter. The tractors—I mean the small ones they use about here—are what you called them—machine horses! And there are one or two points about them which seems to give a horse-breeder a chance to hit back... with almost a possibility of holding his own. But that thing is a... different matter. That's a machine elephant, Waverley... what they call a caterpillar tractor. And the finest draught horse on earth is about as well able to compete with it as a pony with a mammoth! The tractors shook us up... but it's those irresistible machines that will finally kill the heavy draught-horse business as a regular business."
Waverley stood up.
"Well, we'll forget about it for an hour, at least," She said. "Let's go out."
But as they got to the door a motor turned in from the road, moving along the drive towards them.
Armsman's face darkened with disappointment
"Waller! I'd clean forgotten about him."
"Waller?"
"The auctioneer, Waverley. He's come over to lot the stuff for the sale."
Waverley glanced at him sidelong. His face had quite changed. It was hard and bleak—entirely without feeling—just as if he had slipped on again the same somber mask which he had been wearing when the brown colt was killed, and which she had been able to charm away for an hour.
"I wanted to see the horses with just we two only," said Waverley. "Can I come over this evening after these people have gone?"
"Yes, do, Waverley, I'll have them ready," said Job rather eagerly.
"Thank you, Job. About six?"
For a second she stood slim, trim, poised, tapping her ridding boot with her whip and frowning at the approaching car. Then abruptly she turned.
"I'm going, Job. Auctioneers irritate me... when they are selling my friends' things... but it's not quite fair to be rude to them! Don't forget... about six."
She strode off, chin up, jaunty, neat as a new pin, snapping her business-like riding-whip at nothing in particular—unless she was flicking it at imaginary auctioneers.
The gaunt, lank, sandy-bearded MacLeod appeared at the gateway leading to the stable-yard.
"Let me have my horse, please, MacLeod," commanded Waverley.
"You're no' leavin' without a look at the horses, Miss Waverley?" demurred Mac, his eyes warming as he studied her.
"Yes, I am. I was just going to have a good look round when the auctioneer came to lot the things for the sale."
Her voice was sharp.
Mac shot an incandescent glare towards the car, uttered what might have been a little Gaelic in his beard, together with a disjointed reference to hoodie crows, carcases and auctioneers, and snarled an order to a stable hand to "bring oot Miss Bell's horse and mighty quick about it!"
It was staringly evident that Mac was at present loaded to the muzzle with rank mutiny against a fate which seemed to have decreed the extinction of Houndsdown as a Shire-breeding establishment.
And Waverley was in the mood to sympathise with him.
"Never mind, McLeod... perhaps it's not all over yet Something might happen still to save the old place!" she said.
She settled herself into her saddle. "And I'm coming to see the horses this evening, anyway," she added.
She looked down at the bony old Scot and realized that behind the sour resentment in his eyes there lurked a real wistfulness.
"Never mind, MacLeod," she said again. "I'm going to see if something can't be done about it... but that's between ourselves."
She flushed, her eyes sparkling, a little excited, and presented to the astounded Ripple an unusual gift—a touch of the spur, causing that startled favorite to leave the yard as though wolves were after him.
"There's temper for yuh, Mr. MacLeod," observed the stable hand staring. "As spirited a little lady as ever rode out a Houn'sdown is Waverley Chin-in-the-Air."
Mac turned on him. He was in the mood to find a garrulous hand a blessing.
"Get to hell to your work!" he jarred. "Who d'ye think ye are to lean up against me wi' your hands in your greasy pockets and jaw aboot a young lady like Miss Bell!"
But for some seconds after the rebuffed hand had retreated, mumbling, to his stable cleaning, Mac stood staring after the girl.
"But the low deevil was right," he muttered. "She's as spirited as she is bonny!" He cocked a fiery eye across at Armsman. "And I'm no' the only one thinking it. I wonder now, has she any money?" he added thoughtfully and, lingering only to relieve his pressure by one more brief but high explosive observation to the stable hand, moved across to his employer.
"NOW what did little Miss Chin-in-the-Air slip off like that for?" demanded old Tom Waller, aggrievedly, as he shook hands with Armsman. "She knows me perfectly well. Anybody'd think I'd offended her..."
"She was just going to look around," said Job. "She's fond of horses and it was a bit of a disappointment having to put it off till to-night."
Waller's rosy, good-humored face cleared, and his shrewd old eyes twinkled. He had handled too many farm sales not to understand that it might be his mission at Houndsdown that day rather than his presence which had irked the girl. Though, unless Waverley Bell thought a lot more of Armsman than was generally known, he couldn't see why she should cold-shoulder him. He wasn't preparing to sell her out of her old home.
"Well, Job, we'd better get on, I suppose," he said and turned to the two clerks he had brought. "Run the car round to the yard, you boys, and come back here."
He dropped his hand on Armsman's shoulder. "It ain't such a pleasant job this having to fix up a sale for you at Houndsdown," he said. "I've lotted and knocked down a good deal of stock on a good many places round about here in my life, but I never reckoned that this place would need me. I'll say, though, that, to my mind, you're right. Why throw good money after bad? Times are changing... but you aren't like a lot of the men about here... you've got time to change your plans to suit the times. You're the right end of your life for that I've made my bit of a pile, but I'd change places with you and glad of the chance... if that's any consolation to you, Job! Anyway, I'm going to get you out right I I'm going to make 'em pay for the Houndsdown stuff."
The old fellow chuckled.
"There'll be no bargains at this sale if I can help it You tell little Miss Chin-in-the-Air that, from me, will you!... Hey? She went out of here as if I was an escape of gas! They don't like the auctioneer, the women-folk... unless it's a stranger's auction, when they'll all beam on him for the bargains! I know 'em! I know. Seen it a thousand times, bless 'em!... I'll take down the horses first, if that suits you, Job."
It suited Job just about as well as it would have suited him to clip off his ears and hand them to old Waller as Lot One. He smiled rather grimly.
"It doesn't suit me at all," he said. "But I'm not Suiting myself to-day. What you say will do for me. Let's make it the horses. You won't want to note the points of the older ones down in detail. I've got plenty of printed descriptions... old Thor's been described in about a thousand newspapers. It's only the youngsters you'll need to go over! Oh, and much obliged to you, Tom, for coming over yourself. I know you don't bother yourself with the lotting as a rule."
"Thaf's all right," the old chap nodded. "I'm getting too old to bother about lotting most of the stuff at most of the places. But, as I told my missis, if I'm too old to look after lotting the Houndsdown stock then I'm too old to sell it—hey?"
They went off to the big paddock where they were awaited by the glaring Mr. MacLeod.
From the day when, after an interview concerning overdrafts with the bankers, and another concerning mortgages and mortgage interest with the lawyers, at Milchester, the county town, Armsman had decided to sell out, Mac's temper had been less like that of an ordinary human foreman on earth than that of a totally inhuman foredevil elsewhere than on the earth. Trodden-upon rattlesnakes were benign and fulsome compared with the MacLeod.
Like Job, Mac could claim that he had a taproot thrust deep into the soil of the old farm... and a longer one, at that.
Forty-seven years was the extent of Mac's service at Houndsdown. Job's father had taken him over in Liverpool, a lad of thirteen, from a drunken cattle-drover from the North. He had come there a lank, underclad, half-starved, silent little devil with a rather, more than half-starved, ragged-looking Highland cattle dog at his heels. He had settled in right away. Having got over his dazed surprise at the profusion which characterized old John Armsman's idea of a respectable supper for his retainers, and having proved himself amazingly competent to cope with the said profusion, Master Neil MacLeod had launched himself at his job like a fighting black-faced ram and had been at it ever since. He had decided in his own most private mind, at the start, that Houndsdown was about as good an imitation of any Heaven he, Neil MacLeod, was ever likely to be called upon to occupy; that John Armsman was the only man he cared to work for, and, this being so, any person who had desired to discharge Mac from Houndsdown would have required to employ blasting powder as chief factor in the operation.
Not that any one sane would have desired to discharge him—in spite of habit, when illumined by whisky, of quoting peculiarly biting Biblical phrases, or, in his unillumined leisure, of playing in his room above the stables of the champions, the pipes. He was self-taught at all these accomplishments and expected, and received, no praise for any of them.
"For God's sake, man, put a linseed poultice on that instrument of yours!" old Armsman had advised when he first heard the pipes, as performed upon by the MacLeod. "It starts my gout shooting, damme!" But Mac had only grinned dourly at the old man—refraining till he was out of sight, when he confided to the 'steenth descendant of the original cattle-dog that it was a fine instrument for the stimulation of the blood and he'd never regret the money he had saved to buy it.
Either because he had a natural gift, or because he had spent his life with them, Mac was a wizard with the horses. As must occur on every establishment of the kind, there had occasionally been bred a very ugly customer—probably a throw back to some savage brute long since dead and forgotten. It had been recognized for many years that it was the peculiar perquisite and privilege of Mr. MacLeod to deal with these intractables, and he had, on the whole, been successful. That is to say, they had not killed him before they were either tamed or, for the sake of the stud's reputation and the safety of the public, had been killed.
He knew as much about draught horses as any vet and more than most. And he had become so accustomed to a life which was bounded on every horizon by Shire horses that he had become incapable of figuring himself in a state of existence devoid of the massive giants.
He was not angry with Job—for he knew that Job had reached the end of his financial tether; he was not angry with himself for he had done his best; he was not angry with the horses for they were what, in the queerly accented brogue which had resulted from the blending of forty-seven years southern dialect with his powerful original Scotch, he called "puir wee dumb beasts."
He was not angry and he couldn't get calm again and had no desire to. Mac was a simmering volcano—but not likely seriously to erupt until he had somebody well and truly caught in the path of his lava flow.
But all this made not a shadow of difference to the masterly way in which he paraded the young stock for Waller's inspection.
"Ye'll understand, Mr. Waller, that this is no' intended for a special exhibition," he explained clearly at the start. "I'll be having 'em right up to show standard, ye ken, when sale day comes. They're just for your private eye the day!"
"Certainly," agreed old Waller tactfully gruff. "Ye don't need to tell me, man, that there's not another horse-handler in the country can compare with ye at getting 'em up for sale or show—for haven't I known it this thirty years!"
"Thirty-four, man!" corrected Mac acridly... In a very few minutes Mr. Waller's clerks had been dismissed to get on with lotting less important matters, and the old auctioneer had settled down to a full morning's inspection of the horses—admitting freely that this had been his sole object in coming over.
"My boys will see to the other things as well as I could—better maybe," he told Job. "But, me, I love a top-notcher whether it's a cart horse or a cow, and this is a chance I'll not get again, more's the pity! Ye're the last of the Shire breeders in this county, Job."
So, one by one they came out before his eye, were studied, appraised, and entered, each with its tentative reserve, in his books—wooly, long-legged foals; slightly less nervous yearlings, just beginning to show signs of the wealth of solid bone that was coming to them; two-year-olds, a heavy stage further developed; three- and four-year-olds, all muscles, bone and vitality. But it was not until after lunch that they came to the last of them... the Big Three which Long Mac had reserved to the end.
With Job and Waller now was Waverley Bell—she had cantered up just as they finished lunch, urgent that Armsman should dine at her home, Hareshill, that night. She conveyed that it was very important for him to come and having extracted, without much difficulty, his promise, she handed over her horse to be stabled and declared that she would take the present opportunity of inspecting, in their company, those of the horses which still remained to be shown to Mr. Waller.
"Well, there are only three more... but they are the very pick of the whole stud," said Job as they strolled out to the big paddock.
Mac was waiting for them with many symptoms of sour impatience. He was satisfied with his morning's work showing the younger horses. But he speedily made it apparent that, while the morning had witnessed something a little out of the ordinary, the afternoon was going to be made the occasion of a ceremony of the first importance. Job Armsman's eyes twinkled faintly as he recognized that the ordinarily taciturn Scot was a little excited.
"He means to show them off in style this afternoon," he told Waverley and Waller, as he nodded across to Mac. "And even though they aren't got up they'll be worth seeing. He's handled them from the moment they were born, fussed over them, waited on them, slaved for them. I've known him to pass one of them perfectly cleaned and trimmed up by one of the men, and yet, less than twenty minutes after, he's spent an hour trying, with his own hands and in what should be his own leisure time—if he ever took any—to get that horse looking more perfect still. Here's Vulcan!"
His eyes brightened as Mac led up a heavy-tramping red-roan stallion of about sixteen and a half hands high.
Now Mac had nothing to tell trailer about this horse, or the others, which Armsman did not know, for Job, blindfolded, could have named any of his big ones from the deep thud of its great, iron-armored ten-inch hoofs. But, nevertheless, he thrilled responsively to the dour pride in the gaunt Scot's voice as he paraded the big horse.
"Houndsdown Vulcan!" shouted Mac, turning to fix a glare on Waller which clicked that comfortable old gentleman into the last notch of eager attention. "Nine years old... fairr-rr-r-st prize at the Royal Lancashire Show... and scores of other prizes... never left a show wi' nothing in his pouch! Winner o' the champion weight-pulling prize at Shrewsbury last year—aye, and the year before that. D'ye hear me, Mr. Waller, sir-rr! Yon's the demon to pull. Ye don't know what he canna pull, it's no' yet been found oot Stand, ye deevil... stand still!"
It was quite evident that the fiery headman was no more than on the threshold of the truth.
Houndsdown Vulcan was a weight-puller rather than a beauty—there was not a line in him which did not speak of his massive, irresistible, solid strength. Many a tempting offer had been made to Armsman for him but, until now, Job, had kept hold of him. Old Waller knew and he nodded his head reassuringly as he stared at the horse.
"All right, Job—who gets him at the sale will pay for him. Mind me, now—they shall pay his worth and a trifle atop of it."
Job nodded, his eyes burning.
"He'll be worth every penny he fetches! There's not a horse in the country could out-pull him—unless maybe it's Thor. But old Thor's getting on."
Waverley was staring, rapt, at the beautiful, rich roan hide, the splendid mane, and the colossal neck. But she said nothing.
Mac moved the horse around, every now and then violently ejaculating a sharp brevity concerning his show successes, more often naming some of the staggering weights which he had pulled in various contests.
Presently Job made a sign and the weight-pullet yielded place to a bay mare, bigger and more shapely, but without quite the look of steel-wire strength of the roan.
"Houndsdown Gloriana!" barked McLeod. "Eight years old. Champion at the County Show three years runnin'."
He faced them half-defiantly, almost as if they had insulted her.
"Glor-rr-iana!" he insisted hoarsely. "She's bred four foals an' they're taken more than a hundred prizes between 'em... winning yet Note this mare, sir-rr-r, Mr. Waller... she's a fortune, sir-rr-r, on four legs."
He ran an excited hand down the muscular forearm, the big-kneed, flat-boned forelegs, twitched the huge muff of silky, white feather that hid the vital pasterns, the huge mare standing quiet and mild-eyed as the placid but indomitable and perfectly-bred matron she was.
Waller was muttering, half to himself.
"Yes, yes—a grand mare! Nobody knows it better than I do. Saw her win the County Champion Challenge Cup only last month. Eh, my boy? I'll make 'em pay a barrow-load o' money for her!"
Mr. Waller appeared very certainly to have it in for some unspecified horse buyers.
Mac was showing off the action of the mare.
"Me, I'm old-fashioned," muttered Waller. "It ain't right that a man who can breed this stamp of draught horse should be blown out o' business by a herd of tractors! Hey?... Barrow-loads o' money!"
Job, staring after this grand beast, easily the handsomest and most successful mare ever bred at Houndsdown and generally admitted to be the best in the south of England, heard Waverley Bell, by his side, whisper something like "Never mind—never mind!"
And now Mac was returning with the glory of the stud... a noble, black stallion with a big white blaze. Seventeen and a half hands, as perfect in action as he was compact in build, impossible to beat for looks. A Champion, from his wide, solid, bluish hoofs, to the tips of his small, cocked ears.
"Champion Houndsdown Thor!"
The voice of the MacLeod pealed with a wild pride that was perilously akin to sheer arrogance.
"Do you want the record of this hor-rr-se, man?" The fierce voice quavered, cracked, re-strung itself, and continued.
"Sixteen years old! First prize yearling at the Royal, first two-year-old at the Royal, first three-year-old at the Royal—and hundreds of prizes since! Ye know him, man! Never beaten. Houndsdown Thor! First at the Great Yor-rr-rkshire, first Royal Lancashire, first Peterborough! First! Man, it's the champion Shire stallion of Great Britain... Houndsdown Thor... my beauty! And ye're selling him by the auction in a few days... God forgive ye for a miserable deevil!" (evidently Mac believed that last to be inaudible)...
One bony hand gripped in the mane of the old horse—unnecessarily, for Thor had learned through many triumphant years all a favorite need know about good behaviour on an exhibition parade—the excited MacLeod reeled off an amazing string of successes which this, the unbeaten king of the stud, had won, flinging them bitterly at old Waller's harmless head rather than offering them for his consideration and admiration.
When, if ever, a Scotsman does let himself go, he makes a thorough business of it And Mac was doing just that.
But he did it convincingly.
Job's muttered excuse for him that he had looked after Thor from foal-hood, travelled with him, slept with him, watched over him like a miser over his money was unnecessary.
"Oh, let him tell us," said Waverley, a little flushed, while Waller nodded solemnly. Job let him. It was as good as music to him, anyway. Mac's terrific pride and arrogant, defiant affection for the old horse could not be greater than his own—even if it were more easily to be seen.
But, at last, MacLeod ran down, released his unconscious grip of mane and head rope, and, with a single word to the stallion moved off towards the stables.
Sleek, graceful in spite of its bulk, faultless, the great horse followed him, massively vibrant on spring-steel pasterns.
"Let the auctioneer make th' best o' that... and if he wants more he can have it! It's all but a ton ye weigh but ye're worth your weight in gold. Houndsdown Thor!" snarled Mac as he went. "Aye, my beauty! What will they say to ye in the auction ring... damn them all!... An' what will old MacLeod say when he sees ye there?"
The great horse followed him docilely into the stable.
"For-rr-rty-seven years! Hold up, horse! There's for-rr-ty-seven years of my life... there's all I know or ever learned... aye, there's the last drop o' my heart's blood in ye, Champion!" said the MacLeod. "An' it's all up for the public auction this day fortnight!"
Thor's nose came pressing close, even as though he understood each word wrung from this lonely and embittered old man.
IT was a quiet trio that returned to the house after the parade of the horses, and the thrill which the excited MacLeod had imported into his afternoon's work had died out leaving Armsman again face to face with the cold and inexorable fact that he could not carry on, and Waller with the knowledge that all he could do for the son of an old friend was to screw the last penny possible out of those who, more fortunate than Job, would come to buy that which he would have given years of his life to keep.
Waverly, walking between the two men, was inclined to be rebellious, but that was only because she had, instead of the practical knowledge of market prices and farm costs of the others, an instinct that behind it all lurked an obscure something that was wrong, or some one who was unfairly benefiting at Job's expense.
She said it flatly as they approached the old house. "It's all very well, you know, but I'm sure there's something quite wrong somewhere. When any one has worked so hard as Job and when, after all these years, Houndsdown has succeeded in producing such perfect horses as those, and still the business has to be given up because it doesn't pay, something must be wrong!"
Old Waller nodded.
"Well, Miss Waverley, I agree with you there, but what is it that's wrong? There's a lot of people in this country... yes, and in this neighborhood... who would like to know the answer to that."
"It's the progress of the motor folk which is killing the business of the horse breeding folk," said Job. "Men like me have got to get out of the way of tractors or be run over." Waller nodded.
"That's it, Job... as far as you're concerned... Though I never thought I'd live to see it." Waverley seemed to seize on that rather quickly—even with a certain eagerness.
"Well then, the way to escape being run over by the tractor folk is to progress with them, to join them, to get free from the old-fashioned non-progressive business and be progressive."
Old Waller chuckled—but drily, without much amusement.
"You've got to get free first... at a reasonable price! And that's just what Job's doing... getting free... ain't it? And it's like tearing up a tree by the roots! The same as that fiery, sour old Scotchman of his! Tearing up a prickly, tough old blackthorn that'll die before it settles down on different soil. You can transplant some trees, my dear, and they'll thrive, but there's a lot will die. You've got to move 'em young or not at all! And that's where Job comes in. He's young and he's tough and he can stand a change even if he don't enjoy it, hey, Job?"
Armsman agreed rather grimly, his somber eyes on the old house which was the only home he had ever known.
"He's going out of the old business... and sorry I am he is. But he's wise and the first thing to be done about it is to go out in style. And I'll attend to that, damme!" declared the old chap. "And now, if there's a glass of that sherry I sold your father at Lord Longland's sale left in the house, Job, I should be obliged for it."
There was—also, Job suggested some tea for Waverley. But Waverley could not stay.
She reminded Job very carefully that he was dining at Hareshill, shook hands with old Waller—her smile making amends for her slight of the morning, and the ever ready Ripple was once more called upon.
They watched her canter away.
"Now, that's a very nice, very purty little soul," mused old Waller aloud, dry shaving his chin, and added inaudibly, "little Miss Chin-in-the-Air, hey? Very likely so. But if some young feller plays his hand well he'll soon alter that to little Miss Kiss-in-the-Dark, haw haw."
He glanced sidelong at Job—but Job was staring after Waverley.
"Shouldn't be surprised if there was a tidy bit o' money coming to her!" mumbled the old chap, "and that'd be very suitable, very suitable... to be sure!"
He nodded again, and went to the sherry quite cheerfully. When presently he issued forth, refreshed, to chase his "boys" along with their share of the lotting, Job let him go alone.
The afternoon was well advanced and Job had a little task before him which had not troubled him more than perhaps a couple of times since the end of the War.
Thus, while old Waller was urging his clerks to be prodigal with their "new-fangled" adjectives concerning the lesser Houndsdown lots, Job instead of tagging along with them was upstairs carefully overhauling his dress clothes.
He was dining at Waverley's that night and it was no ambition of his to look the part of a broken down horse breeder even if he felt it.
He had not been free from an occasional anxious twinge of doubt concerning the enterprise of the moths... for he was well aware that they had "corrupted" the dress clothes of better men than he... but a close inspection of the raiment assured him that at least this calamity had been spared him.
With a serious face he spread them on his bed and hunted up a shirt.
It was so long ago that he had put them on, even the simple dinner jacket, that they helped give him a remote sensation of adventurousness. In the old days they had been a regular nightly requirement—but for several years now the worn riding breeches and tough Bedford cord coat had been good enough to keep on for the short time between supper and bed after a day that had begun at dawn.
"Let's look... what about a tie, now?"
He found a sufficiently creditable one and was greatly relieved.
Finally assured that his neglected wardrobe was equal to the strain of making him respectable he turned to his glass and decided that a shave would do no harm.
"There's no sense in going up there like a tramp," said Job. "I may a bit down... but no need to advertise it."
There was something rather winning—a simplicity of heart—about Job Armsman.
He had never been much of a Beau Brummel even in his most prosperous days—plain riding kit had ever been his idea of clothes for a decent, God-fearing country gentleman—but nevertheless few folk would have found much to complain of in his appearance when, in due course, he slipped off his overcoat at Hareshill. The dinner jacket may have been a shade past its bloom and the shirt might have looked a trifle less as if it had just come out of lengthy cold storage... but it had been in storage in an old, old chest of drawers which was still pervaded with a faint, far fragrance of lavender, put there many years ago by his mother. His powerful face had grown gloomy for a second as, opening the little-used drawer, that incomparable fragrance had, for an instant, taken Job back across a gulf of many years... but brightened at another thought.
"Waverley was always a favorite of hers!..."
In its misty, old lavender sort of way that was a heartening thought... not lessened by the vaguely apologetic sense of satisfaction with which he took a glance at himself in the old, mahogany framed Victorian swing glass after he had dressed.
"Well—not too disgraceful, anyway," was his modest claim as he surveyed, inspected and passed himself.
There was a red autumn moon hanging low as he took the road up past the stables, heading for the hoof-marked downland path.
In the "bothy" over the best stables a dim light was shining, and as he approached he heard the faint lugubrious wail of poorly-played bagpipes dying out.
Evidently Mr. McLeod had been stimulating his blood with a little melody.
Job, slinging himself along with the loose, easy stride of a man who spends very little time in armchairs, thought of something and checked.
"Hey, Mac!" he called.
The thud of a heavy hoof answered him instantly... old Houndsdown Thor had heard his voice and had half turned to listen. Job's face softened.
"Har, old wide-awake," he said.
A side door opened and the gaunt form of Mac framed itself under the lintel.
"Mac, old man," said Job, "nobody could have shown 'em better than you did to Mr. Waller this afternoon. It was fine, Mac."
The bony frame swayed slightly in the doorway.
"Man, it was just that!" agreed Mac frankly. "But, ye ken, it fair broke my hear-r-t."
It was evident that this was one of the evenings on which Mac had sought to revive his drooping spirits by reference to a bottle.
"Ye'll understand that the sight of the man, Waller, takin' notes on Houndsdown was no' a cheerin' spectacle!... an' I've been sittin' down to wonder who'll follow us here and, laddie, I'm lone the nicht an' older than my years. Some jumped-up outsiders will fill the shoes of your father, yourself, and old Mac... and laugh at the stiff-necked stubborn folk who fell to ruin with the puir wee dumb beasts they'd bred. Aye!..." the harsh voice rose. "What says the Book, laddie... the Book o' your ain namesake... 'They that are younger than I have me in derision whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock!"
It jarred out on the moonlight like a dour and sardonic malediction. Job shrugged and moved on.
It was only old Mac, who had had "a couple"—and he couldn't help him find the consolation of which even the whisky had clearly failed to-night to produce its dismal mirage.
They were up against it together, Job told himself. But, he added, Mac was growing old.
He wished old Mac could have been spared the finish of the Armsmans at Houndsdown.
IT was the first time since the return of the Bells to their old home that Job had been there. Waverley was not yet down, but her father received him and took him into the comfortable, cigar-scented den by the billiard-room.
"Glad to see you again, Armsman," said Waverley's father, "though it's taken you a long time to find your way up here again."
"You were glad to get back to the old place?" Job asked it more for sake of saying something than because he needed to know.
Over the fat, expensive-looking cigarette he had just raised his hand to light, Marcus Bell looked at his guest with hard, keen, unwavering eyes.
"'Glad' will cover it, Job, but only just. I was like a ship coming into her home port. Waverley, of course, was delirious for a fortnight It's a cheerless business uprooting oneself. Though sometimes it gives a man a chance to get out of a groove. I'm sorry to see that you're giving up, Job."
"I've got to... the horse-breeding business has seen its best days." Marcus Bell nodded.
"Yes. I agree with that I think you're right: though there was a time when I believed a horse, any kind of good horse, was the most important thing in the world... Light your pipe if you don't care about cigars or cigarettes."
"Are you going to train a horse or two?" asked Job, remembering that in the old days Bell had kept a couple of race horses which he had trained himself on the downs.
Under his close-clipped gray moustache Bell's lips widened in a rather hard smile.
"No. A mount or so each for Waverley and myself will be about all the horses kept here. And race horses... why, I don't care if I never see another race horse in my life. It was the racing... the betting losses... that drove us out of here years ago. And for seven years I had to fight to get my money back, I got it back by a fluke... no, a series of steady flukes topped off by a crazy plunge on a long-odds chance, which came off, Job! My own money, come back again after all those lean years, and..." the hard gray eyes gleamed... "before I bet again on or off any race course in the world I'll voluntarily retire to the nearest home for mental cases! Horses! No more horses for me, Job... bar just a nag good enough to keep somewhere not too far behind the pack."
Marcus Bell's voice was slightly vibrant Job had seen at first glance that this was a much harder, colder, more steely man than the genial Marcus Bell he remembered. Evidently he had been through a bad time, and it had left a mark on him.
As though divining his thoughts Marcus Bell spoke again.
"I've been out in the desert, among the desert wild beasts, so to put it, Job, and now I've come back again to the oasis. The oasis will suit me for the rest of my life."
Job nodded, a little uncomfortably.
"Waverley looks well... and happy."
"She is..." the bold eyes fastened piercingly on his. "She had it easier than I... or her mother, before she died. After she left school Waverley lived mostly with relations... aunts and so on... who had the sense to keep such money as they possessed."
Somehow Job was relieved to hear that; it was oddly comforting to know that Waverley had lived in homes that probably were far more real than any which this gray, thin, distinguished-looking but stone-hard father of hers, pre-occupied and intent on his warfare on the race courses, would have been able to provide for her.
Nevertheless, Job liked him and was inclined to admire him for that he too had once lost his home and yet, untrained in the art of money making, had somehow fought his way back to repossession.
Job wondered if he, too, would ever be able to win back Houndsdown... and whether, if he did, he, too, would be so hard-seeming as Bell.
"Well, I congratulate you on your success," he said slowly, "everybody is pleased to think that you are back again at Hareshill."
He hesitated, then went on a little awkwardly, "I hope I shall have the good luck to get back Houndsdown as quickly."
Bell nodded slowly,
"Why not? Of course you will if you keep wanting to hard enough and long enough. Plenty of time. But, things being so tight, I think you're right to sell out now, Job I'm sure you are. The future belongs to the oil engine. Devil a doubt of it, my boy. You might do worse than look into the motor business when you've wound up at Houndsdown... plenty of men making money at it, Job. Take young Calment... he seems to be making a good thing out of this Power and Transport Company of his, don't you think? He's dining here tonight—should be along any minute."
Armsman's face seemed to darken, and his deep eyes steadied in a level, thoughtful stare at his host.
"Calment?" he said slowly.
"Yes, Fred Calment They tell me he's very smart, up-to-date—going to get on." Job nodded.
"Yes. It looks like that," he agreed. "He certainly is putting a lot of tractors into the district... and bigger things than the ordinary agricultural tractors."
"You mean these caterpillars?" Marcus Bell's eyes were fast on Job's face.
"Yes. Wonderful things. I don't like them... naturally... but they'll go anywhere, do anything. And they don't eat when they're not working," admitted Job.
"Quite." There was a cold twinkle in Bell's eyes. "The future of heavy transport, Calment says, belongs to these things."
"I shouldn't be surprised!"
"You believe there are big winnings coming to Calment's Power and Transport Company? So do I."
Marcus Bell thought for a moment.
"What would you say to a chance to get in it on the ground floor, Job? When you've sold out at Houndsdown you ought to have a good deal of capital in reserve. Calment told Waverley the other day that with a few thousands of additional capital he could extend his field enough to take in a big slice of the roads repairing work in the southern counties. It seems rather a chance for you."
He laughed, still studying Job's face.
"Stepping off the leaky old windjammer on to the grand new oil-burner, eh? Job, I'll let you into a secret... this is Waverley's idea. She came back this morning full of getting you and Calment together!"
Job did not answer for a moment He knew rather more of Calment and his activities than either Waverley or her father... he had been studying them more years than they had known of them months.
But Marcus Bell had long learned to glean information from the inscrutable face of a silent man.
One learns the trick of it on race courses and places where dog eats dog.
"You don't like Fred Calment!" he said suddenly.
Job smiled a little.
"I do not."
"You wouldn't invest in his company, Job?"
"I would not."
His replies were as blunt and definite as the thud of his own horses' hoofs.
"I like a man to be blunt," said Marcus Bell easily. "Do you think he's straight?"
"What is one man's straight is another man's crooked, as old Tom Waller puts it," said Job.
He frowned a little, then spoke rather more quickly.
"That's not implying that I think Calment's crooked. I mean that we see things differently. I'd better explain," he went on. "I've known Fred Calment all my life. I never... chimed with him, and he never chimed with me. We're different He was always the hare... I was the tortoise. Put it that way. Well, that's all right. If we don't chime... we haven't clashed. Hardly see enough of each other. I wouldn't work with him... because I don't think we'd go well as a pair. I wouldn't invest money on him or with him because I prefer to handle what little I may have myself. Let it go at that, Mr. Bell."
"Certainly, my boy. Nothing like knowing your own mind."
The cold eyes were very keen.
"You've got nothing against him?"
Job shook his head.
"Nothing."
"I'm glad to hear that, Job."
For a moment they were silent
"So you don't believe in the Transport Company?" asked Bell presently.
"I wouldn't say that. The motors are bound to be better than horse breeding, anyway. Have you invested much in Calment's company?"
Marcus Bell laughed.
"At my age, Job? God forbid. But I'm old-fashioned too, there. I let the bulk of my money out of my reach once before... and it took seven years and a string of small miracles to get it back. No. The comforts of my old age are bolted solidly on to gilt-edged securities and will stay..."
The door opened.
It was Waverley who came in—though for a moment Job doubted his own eyes.
The picture he was carrying in his mind was that of her as he had seen her last—slim, trim, trig in her riding kit and jaunty felt hat But here was a different picture. Waverley was wearing a frock of a kind in which it had not occurred to Job to imagine her.
She would have been honestly amazed if she had realized the full extent of the devastation her appearance worked on Job's faculties for, though she had taken more trouble dressing that night than she usually did for a little dinner party at home in the country, nevertheless, the pretty silver-trimmed petunia and gold "creation" was, after all, not her best. It was no more than a modern little dance frock, quite good enough for a dance at a hotel after a long motor run, but one which, while it still satisfied her, she had owned long enough to have outlived her first adoration for it. And that went, too, for the slim, silver-worked shoes and all the other frills and fairy fancies that accompanied the gay trappings for the glorious game of jazz.
But Job did not know this.
She made him catch his breath.
Was this radiant and lovely being that girl who in riding breeches and coat had sat on an old box next to Mr. Waller that afternoon and talked interestedly and sensibly about cart-horses?
Well, it must be. She was shaking hands with him—her arms were like pale ivory—brown eyes dancing.
"Hello, Job—-I'm glad you found your way up here," she said gaily. "Is there a cigarette, daddy, for the apple of your eye? Hasn't Freddy come yet?"
She lifted her father's arm, as if it were some bit of the necessary furniture, and looked at the wrist watch he wore.
"Oh, well, there's five minutes yet. Like my frock, Job? I can see you do, bless you. We're making a dash for an hour or two at the Lorraine to-night. I forgot to mention it... Job, no, I didn't know. Freddie rang up after I left you. He picked up a bargain chassis last month... and he's had a special body put on to it... a body he invented himself, he says... he calls it a Cruiser Coupé. What a jazz name! But it's catchy. He's running me up to town to-night. Like to come... Job? It's only a two-seater, I think, but we can squash in somehow!"
Her eyes danced from the men to the table, the mantelpiece, the ledge round the wall.
"Why, daddy, you haven't given Job a cocktail! I'll get them!"
She disappeared like a blown petal.
Job stared after her.
He was not, ordinarily, one who showed his emotions much on his face. And perhaps that was as well, for if his feelings had been faithfully reproduced by his features he must, for a few seconds, have looked a little quaint.
Marcus Bell noticed his semi-bewilderment... as he noticed most things... and smiled a little under the gray moustache.
"Quicksilver, eh? She's in one of her lively moods, Job. It's the modern daughter, my boy. But she's got a sort of solid respect for you. That's the way of it nowadays."
Job agreed quietly.
"Yes, I know. It was just coming into full bloom after the armistice. I saw it... for the month or two I was quartered near London. But she caught my breath just a second."
Marcus Bell understood. She had caught his breath for him that way more than once.
"She's a sound little soul, Job, and I'm glad I've got her around!" The door opened and he added a little more loudly.
"Some days she's as wild as a hawk over the hills... some days serious as an old housewife, changeable as a complete climate."
"Who is?" demanded Waverley coming in with a tray of little pink glasses.
"You are," said her parent frankly. "I was just explaining you to Job."
She laughed at first, then suddenly was serious. She set down the tray and looked at them with wide reflective eyes.
"No, but am I really? Seriously, I mean. No, not you, daddy—you always make a joke of it Am I changeable, do you think, Job?"
An infinitely far recollection homed like light to Job's mind... something she had said years and years before...
"On Monday I like you, on Tuesday I can endure you, on Wednesday I can put up with you, Job... but the rest of the week's entirely your own!"
That had only been a bit of flapper frankness... forgotten by her as soon as she had said it... but it came back with a little thorn-prick of pain.
"Am I, Job? Is it changeable... wild... to enjoy country life, with all my heart, all the afternoon... like to-day... and still love the race of sixty or seventy miles to town for an hour's dancing on the best floor with the best band in London?" she asked.
Job, drinking her in with steady eyes, was saved the difficulty of deciding, for the sudden roar of a motor with a unmuffled exhaust which had turned in from the main road came crescendoing swiftly up the drive.
"Here's Freddy! It sounds like a whole squadron of aeroplanes!" said Waverley, her eyes shining.
"It's a fearful racket! Calment will get himself... and you, too... locked up if he doesn't cut out that shocking din!" protested her father, half seriously.
"Oh, no... why, daddy, that noise... with the flare of the lamps... makes night driving absolutely safe," expounded Waverley indulgently, and went out to where the Cruiser Coupé was bellowing.
"Safe! Well, I suppose so. Only a blind, deaf person could say he didn't see or hear it coming!" said Marcus Bell. "But... I'd as soon be rolled to town and back in an iron cistern with a few bricks as company as drive there in that machine! No accounting for tastes, eh, Job?"
He shrugged and drank off his cocktail.
"Still, I'll say for Calment that he can handle a car."
His gray eyes were on Job... who fancied he saw in them a touch of enquiry... almost as though Bell would welcome an assurance that it was indeed so.
"He certainly has the reputation of being a first-class driver," said Job, and refrained from adding that Calment had also the reputation of being a muffler-boob of the most virulent type.
Almost immediately Waverley was back with Calment.
Job had enjoyed the surprise which the radiance of Waverley had given him. In a lesser degree Calment gave him a similar, though far less enjoyable, surprise. Job, watching him greet Marcus Bell, became suddenly conscious of his rusty dinner jacket, his big brown hands, his shirt front, and, above all, his boots. He had walked up to Hareshill, in a pair of black glacé boots—after his daily riding boots they had seemed fairly light—had satisfied him. But the one swift glance with which Calment's black eyes had played over him even as he entered had seemed to him, rightly or wrongly, pointed, significant... and the look which Job took at Calment while that one was shaking hands with Marcus Bell did nothing to deaden the queer little cold twinge which touched him.
Calment was as brilliantly got up as Job was noticeably not so.
"Why, if the chap was going to a ball at Marlborough House he couldn't have got himself more bright and shining!" thought Job, noting the black patent-leather dress boots, the perfectly fitting dress coat, the desperately creased trousers, white waistcoat, tie, gleaming black brushed-back hair, itself like patent leather, the careful hands. "And me—Waverley must think I look like an undertaker's mute! Probably I do!" And since a young man is apt to feel much as he thinks he looks, Job's greeting with Calment was so sombre that if Waverley had not been so plainly anxious to hurry them in to dinner, it must have been noticeable.
"Going to drive his machine sixty odd miles to a dance in those boots. Chap's mad, or doing it to show off... Dancing at the Lorraine hotel, hey?... ought to be patching up his damned tractors... Not with those ladylike hands... Me, I look like a rusty old rook beside a... a... smart magpie. Damned broken down horse-breeder, pretty near bankrupt at that... She's was a little brick to invite me... Couldn't possibly have wanted me... Must think I'm just a clodhopping clown, eh?" boiled Job's thoughts for a moment Then his balance and sanity came back with a rush and he found himself natural and normal again.
"Easy, easy, easy..." raced the thoughts,... "That's jealousy... jealousy, old man. Easy does it. What does old Waller say... a man's mostly the stuff inside the clothes he wears... not t'other way round... Good. That's true. You're a draught animal, a farm horse, Calment's a flash hack! Let each eat out of his own manger in his own way!"
Job nodded to himself and by the time some one spoke to him he was as steady and collected and balanced as ever. Though the prick of the thorn was still with him.
It became quickly apparent that there was no time for leisured talk.
Waverley apologized very sweetly because of that.
"... After all, it's a fairly long run for a dance and I know Job and daddy understand, don't you both?" she exclaimed. "And in a day or two we'll have a good, long gossipy evening. There are lots of things I still want to ask about Houndsdown..."
"And so do I," stated her father. "For instance, what happened to those setters that always used to be part of Houndsdown, Job? A brace of rare good dogs."
Job shrugged.
"They're victims of the times... too," he said quietly. "There's nothing for a setter to do in present-day farming. It was that way long before you left Hareshill, if you remember. There are no stubbles nowadays for the partridges to lie in. The motor reaper cuts too close to leave any cover..."
"Get's you more straw though, Armsman," cut in Calment
"Yes, that's true," agreed Job. "I'm not arguing against motor reapers or any kind of machine harvester. I'm explaining why setters are more or less out of a job."
Waverley spoke.
"I think a setter working is the most beautiful sight any one can see!" Job's eyes shone.
"Well, you'd better let me give you one of the descendants of the setters. I've... hung on to them, not so much because I needed them for work... for real stylish setter work, I mean... as because I couldn't sta... I didn't care for the idea of parting with them. There always was a brace of them knocking about... and always wi... ought to be. There are four puppies at home, if you'd like to take your pick."
Waverley clicked her fish knife and fork on to her plate and jumped up.
"Job, you're an old darling... old sportsman, I mean. Thank you, I'd love one of the puppies. Can I come and choose to-morrow? Daddy, isn't that decent of Job? Come on, Freddy, have you had enough? Time's getting on. No... you two sit down."
She tried to press Job down in his chair... a slender white hand to each broad shoulder.
"Please be sweet and don't think me too appallingly rude. I wouldn't go at all... if only the Samoan Ukulele Band wasn't alternating with the Lorraine band to-night from eleven to midnight." She patted Job's shoulders with both hands.
"Good night, Job. Will you come cub-hunting with me soon? No, don't get up! Daddy, sit down and enjoy your dinner. It's a nice dinner... because of Job and Freddy. I must fly!"
She laughed... and flew.
Calment said something vague about the car and followed her.
Job and her father looked at each other, a little dizzy.
"Job, we're a bit behind the times," said Marcus Bell. "We'll see them off. But she'll be five minutes getting her coat on. Man, your glass is full. Try that Chablis... it's pre-War."
The thorn prick stung as Job drank the pre-War Chablis... which might have been water for all it mattered.
Yes, he was... must be... a bit behind the times, as Bell had said. Left at home... to hobnob with her father... so to put it. She had clean forgotten about her invitation to "squash in somehow." Not that he'd have gone, anyway.
"Yes, fine wine," said Job rather dully, "very fine wine."
"Ha-aa-roo-oo-oo-up," bawled the Cruiser Coupé from outside as Calment warmed her up. "Ha-aa-roo-oo-oo-u-u-u-p!"
It sounded to Job Armsman as if some sardonic giant thing out in the moonlight was snorting with huge and contemptuous laughter...
Waverley's lovely, laughing face, framed in the soft high collar of a big fur coat, looked in.
"Good night, daddy... good night, Job," she said.
They followed her out.
The door of the car... a yellow and black, long, low, boat-like racy-looking thing, with an absurdly low and almost streamline top... was open. Carefully, Waverley stepped into the turreted dimness, illumined only by a tiny dashlight.
"All right, Miss Waverley?" came Calment's voice above the boom of the motor.
"Yes, yes... Please bang the door, daddy! Good night!"
Job remembered something.
"Hope you have a good time!" he shouted and instantly wondered if she had heard him.
The glaring, search-light eyes of the car swung round flooding the drive, and the bellowing machine slid away.
They watched it go... both seeming fascinated by the darkling ruby glow of the tail light until abruptly it leaped to the right and disappeared.
Waverley had gone to the dance.
They stood there for a moment Then Marcus Bell's hand dropped on Job's shoulder.
"Well, Job—and what would your mother have thought of that, hey?"
There was a queer, bleak note in Bell's voice as he continued.
"That's the modern style! A car like a humpbacked bullet... a hundred and twenty odd miles there and back for an hour or so at a hotel dance among strangers! Well, well... a thank God I've got enough sense to be modern too... and..." the voice fell... "and Waverley is man enough to fend for herself!... Well, come along. There's a brace of young partridges needing us indoors."
So they went to the partridges.
JOB left Hareshill early—much earlier than he would have done if Waverley had stayed at home. He claimed to be anxious about an ailing horse and Marcus Bell had seemed to understand.
"Right... I won't keep you, Job. You've lost too many this year as it is. Your luck's been dead out."
He came to the doorway with Job.
"Touch of frost in the air, I think," he said, looking across the moon-blanched downs. "That girl of mine will be glad of her furs before she's home again..."
They shook hands.
"And, by the way..." Bell's clear, incisive voice was studiously casual, "by the way, don't forget that one shouldn't judge the rising generation entirely on its fly-by-night form! Jazz is a sort of nettle-rash. It passes. Remember that, old man... I'd like to drop in some time and look at the horses."
"Certainly, any time!" said Job cordially.
"Thank's I will. Good night."
Bell lingered a few moments on the threshold, watching the big dark figure of his departing guest go down the drive with the easy, slinging gait that was peculiar to Job.
"Tortoise," he said quietly, and laughed to himself. "Oh, no! Bulldog, I think, yes, bulldog!"
He walked back to the empty room and thoughtfully poured himself a glass of port.
"Superficially, of course, Calment can make rings round him at almost everything. They hate each other and, in his heart, one of 'em is afraid of the other. And it isn't Job. That dogged devil couldn't fear anything... except my girl Waverley. And I can forgive him that Half afraid of her myself, by Jove!"
He laughed quietly, his clear steely eyes studying the port glowing in the glass before him. Then he sat down and reached for the Sporting Life.
But he sat a long time before opening the paper, staring at the fire... his mind hunting fast and far along the London road, keeping pace with that flying "humpbacked bullet" of a car, peering in at the face of his girl Waverley.
He was, as one might say, the very model of a lonely man.
Once he spoke absently...
"Running wild? I wonder...?"
Then, after a long pause...
"I'm getting old... older!... still, after all, you can't keep 'em under lock and key nowadays! Not at all!..."
Mr. Marcus Bell, known among the behemoths of the betting ring as the iciest, the most cold-blooded, tenacious and dangerous better they had ever failed to shake off, was only thinking of his girl... his girl Waverley.
Out of the frost-crisped path across the downs Job Armsman was occupying his mind with the same subject though in perhaps a different way.
Waverley had grown into the most exquisite thing... but she had not changed in one respect, he told himself over and over.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday she could put up with him... the rest of the week was his own.
That was as it used to be... and as it was now.
An hour or so of deep interest at the farm... the rest of the day, or night, dancing at the Lorraine to the music of the Lorraine and Samoan bands... whatever they might be.
Job kept his mind rather resolutely off Calment He did not like Calment... and he did not like Waverley liking him.
His mind, too, went hawking after the wasp-colored speedster...
How pretty she was! Her eyes... her hair... the way her face was creamy pink all cosy in the gray fur! And she was like a flower in that bluey-purple dress of hers.
What the hell right did a man like Fred Calment think he had to take her to dances... in that way? No wonder Mr. Bell had said, "Now what would your mother have thought of that, Job?" What would she have said, anyway? Not so much, after all... but she wouldn't have cared about it... Still, Waverley's father didn't care to interfere... and you couldn't look at him, or talk with him long, without realizing that he was a man who knew what he was at, and how to take care of his own. But, after all, they had only been home a couple of months, and probably they thought Calment was all right.
Well, for that matter, what did he himself have against Calment... except a personal dislike, and a hazy idea, wholly unsupported by tangible proof, that the chap wasn't square?
Job stopped suddenly.
"It's all very well to crab a man because you're jealous of him," he said, with a heavy deliberation, "but... if you don't know a man's a wrong 'un it's a shabby business to warn people against him. I don't like him... never have... but you can't call a man a scoundrel because he dresses better and seems a lot more... more polished and civilized than you do."
Which, of course, was perfectly true.
Still... for sake of a girl like Waverley... one ought to find out And if anybody in the neighborhood knew whether Calment was genuine, why, old Tom Waller would know.
Job peered at his watch. It was only half past nine... and Waller was always at the club till half past ten...
A few minutes later, Job slipped into the stable and saddled up old Rory, his riding horse—much to Rory's amazement.
"Just going into town, old man," muttered Job. "I'll be back in a minute."
He went on to the house, changed his clothes, and a little later was cantering across the downs towards the town.
He found Waller, all comfortable in the smoking room, a copy of The Farmer and Stockbreeder on his knees.
"Why, Job Armsman! First time I've seen you here at this time 'o day for months," said the old auctioneer. "I was just turning you and your sale over in my mind. Going to be a notable sale, my boy... hey? We'll make a wonderful best of a bad job. What will you have?"
"Nothing to drink, Tom. I came in looking for you. Want to ask you something."
Job lighted his pipe without haste. They had a corner of the room to themselves, undisturbed, unnoticed, except for an occasional curious look from one or other of the men in the big room... mostly men connected with agriculture in some form.
"It's nothing to do with the sale, Tom," began Job presently. "And it's a confidential matter. I've been to dinner up at Marcus Bell's and..." Quite briefly he described how and why that dining out had been erratic.
"Now, Tom, I'm not ashamed to say that I think... think about as much of Waverley as any man can!"
Old Waller nodded seriously as though that was no real news to him.
"I may be a bit behind the times as far as the dancing is concerned... I've had something else to do these last few years, you know that. The farm and horses have had a fifteen-hour day out of me ever since the War. And I've stood still, as far as all these post-War modern ideas... play-time ideas, I mean... are concerned. I suppose it's done now... a nice girl going off to dances this way. But, as things are, I'm not satisfied that Fred Calment's the right man to take her."
Job paused a moment, thinking. Old Waller said nothing but his eyes were not twinkling quite so cheerfully.
"I don't like him... I never have. Maybe I'm prejudiced. I'm trying not to be. And Calment doesn't like me. He's saved up an old grudge or two from the time we were boys. I lammed him years ago... twice, because he asked for it twice. Something shady, he did. All over years ago as far as I'm concerned, But he remembers it and he will consider it a great day for him when I've sold out He loves to get in a dig at the horses... the dying industry, as he says... when he's glorifying the new industry. You know... you've heard him. He'll feel... and try to convey... that I have gone under to him. Instead of the horses having gone under... or going under... to the engines. Still... that's personal. I guess I can stand that without too much agony..." Job grinned somberly. "But what I want to know is whether he's the right man to whirl about with Waverley Bell... the way he is. You know more about things and folk in this district than I do, Tom. And I'd like your opinion."
Old Waller nodded slowly.
"You can have it, Job. And I'd as lief give it with Calment standing here to listen as if he wasn't. He's flash, he's showy, he cuts a figure. Yes. But there's nothing to him, Job. I'm easy-going, so they tell me... and I know I ain't narrow-minded. But Mr. Fred Calment would not have been allowed to motor off to a dance in town with any daughter of mine. Why? He ain't good enough! He ain't warrantable, Job. He's all window-dressing. That's my judgment of his character... all patent leather and polish when there's anybody with him. I've heard a rumor or two about him..."
Job shook his head.
"Rumor doesn't count," he said.
"I know, my boy," agreed Waller equably. "That's why I was going to tell you that I didn't repeat rumor, when you interrupted me. Well, that's my opinion. I don't believe he's sound in his character... and I know he's not sound in his business!"
Job stared.
"Is that so, Tom? I didn't think that. He's always seemed to me to be piling up money."
Old Waller chuckled.
"There's a lot like that, Job."
Job leaned back staring at the table.
"Marcus Bell doesn't know that Neither does Waverley. They think he's a white man."
"Do they? Well, I can prove to Marcus Bell that there are likelier playmates for his girl than Calment I'll tell him so, if you like..." he chuckled again, "I'm not sensitive like some of you young 'uns."
He eyed Job shrewdly.
"Now, I'll make a guess that you wouldn't say a thing nor hint a thing to Bell against Calment because in your mind you've got a feeling that it would be sort of shabby! Hey? Well, I'm not so particular, my boy. And I'm right, too."
But Job still looked gloomy.
"I've got a kind of feeling that I've put you up to it," he confessed.
"Well, so you ought to have," said Waller flatly. "Why, it's your duty, dammy. You wouldn't let her walk over into the chalk pit up on the downs there, without warning her, would you? I tell you Calment's no good... and I'm telling Bell so next time I see him. If necessary I'll prove it Probably, he's after her for Bell's fortune. He needs money. I know that, too. Never mind where I learnt it."
"Bell's fortune?" said Job. "But he's only got just enough to carry on with at Hareshill quietly."
"Well, what more would a man want than a nice place where he can carry on quietly without worrying?" said Waller.
Job nodded.
That sounded fortunate enough... to him in his circumstances, anyway.
"It's for Waverley's sake I put it to you," he said uncomfortably.
"Well, I know that... I didn't believe it was for your own," explained Waller drily.
A door opened and a group of men came in, disgustedly demanding drinks. They were mainly farmers in a big way from round about, Most of them nodded across to Job.
"What's the matter with 'em?" he asked. The auctioneer laughed a little.
"They've been listening in to the wireless speech of the minister for agriculture and I make no doubt he's serving out the same hogwash as most of the so-called agricultural politicians before him."
He called across to one of them.
"Good speech, John?"
"John" laughed sourly.
"As much good to a practical farmer as a... a kick in the stomach, Mr. Waller! I'd as soon listen to a baby's rattle!"
Through the half-opened door leading to the next room, Job heard the brazen voice of the radio loudspeaker.
"... London calling! In one minute we are switching you over to the Lorraine Hotel to enjoy a little music by the Lorraine and Samoan Bands! In one minute ple..."
The closing door shut it out
But Job straightened suddenly, glancing at the clock.
"Nearly eleven! She'd be there by now!"
"Eh?"
"Tom, I'm going to listen in for a minute!"
"But the speech is over, my boy!"
"Yes, I know. It's the band I want to hear!"
"Do so, Job, do so." The sharp old eyes twinkled. "Miss Waverley's dancing to it, hey?... Well, well, it's a queer business, this radio. You can sit here sixty miles away and hear the shuffle of her shoes...! Evidently Mr. Waller was neither much of an expert on dancing nor over familiar with the outpourings of the loud-speaker. He rose.
"Well, let's hear what she's dancing to!" he said. "Sort of new-fangled eavesdropping, hey?"
They went in to the newly-added listening-in room.
Mr. Waller listened for a few seconds to the baying of the band.
"What's this... music?" he said. "I've heard a jackass in the market-place bawl prettier than that! I'd sooner hear Milchester Brass Band practising round at the Drill Hall of a Saturday night." He laughed.
"I guess this kind of music is a little too rich for my blood, Job. I want word with John Ellerby and I'll catch his while he's here."
And blunt old Waller forthwith showed the old-fashioned taste to turn his broad back upon the harmonious strains of that very expensive and world-famous Band, and make for the door.
He paused for one more criticism.
"Hey, Job, it's like a lot of rozzined eels slithering about on a catgut gridiron... all mixed up with bullocks bawling, hogs squealing and a man hammering nails into a corrugated iron fence!"
Which was pretty good word painting for a country auctioneer!
Job found himself alone.
Neither the braying stridencies, the nasal snivelings nor the metallic yammerings of a modern dance band were unfamiliar to Job Armsman, and almost any other time he would have laughed cheerfully enough with old Tom Waller at the amazing medley of alleged music issuing from the loud-speaker.
But now it did not seem amusing.
He had a special interest in that band to-night Waverley was up there... dancing to that barbarous cacophony in Fred Calment's arms.
He listened intently, and slowly the insistence of the sounds penetrated like a dull drug into his blood.
The jangling beat and thump of the instruments that provided a sort of machine-like bass to the writhing of Waller's "rozzined eels" hammered remorselessly on his brain, a frenzied whistling thing drilled holes in it, and something hysterical that mainly expressed itself in a species of anxious neighing completed an effect that most strangely caught one. That is, it was capable of gripping one... if one were desirous of being gripped.
Job realized that... for, though all his days were spent in a simple, primal routine wholly to do with the growing of crops, the breeding and rearing and taming or breaking of animals, relieved only by an occasional day's shooting or hunting, he had been well educated and was capable of using his imagination.
He listened, and quite soon realized that one might easily find a kind of spurious excitement in dancing to those half-barbaric sounds which could sufficiently resemble genuine pleasure to pass muster as pleasure.
It seemed to fit in. It was the right climax to a flurried, unfinished dinner, a sixty miles' scurry along lonely shadowy roads in the roaring wasp-like car.
To dance to any other kind of music... one of the old style quiet waltzes, for example, would have been in the nature of an anti-climax to such a journey.
Job vaguely got that settled in his mind... but it did not cheer him at all.
It was too much Calment's style... too little Armsman's. He listened a little longer, then turned away.
"The more she does of that the more she'll want to do," he muttered uneasily.
"It's going to be a sort of fight for her... music, the frocks, the color, the dancing, the heat, the light, the little glasses of colored drinks, and Fred Calment against the downs, the trees, the flowers, the wind and the rain, the sunshine, the horses, the hounds, the good air, her daddy, her dogs, and me!... and me! Huh! Could have left the last item out and not missed it."
He made a sound like a short laugh, as he turned away.
He stopped at the door, looking back.
He was quite alone in the room... most of the club members had long ago had all the jazz music they wanted to hear.
Job walked back... because she meant so much to him... spoke into the trumpet mouth.
"Good night, good night, dear little Waverley! I hope you are happy anyway!"
"Blah-ah-ah!" bayed the loud-speaker, tremendously amused.
IT seemed to Job Armsman, as he confessed one evening to Long Mac, that the fortnight between the lotting and the day of the sale flickered past like a string of frightened swallows.
The regular work with the horses went on as usual, plus a good deal of extra labor in the matter of getting even the woolliest foal up to sale form, and the normal routine of the other farm work did not halt.
The dank and misty hour before dawn usually found Job and his foreman moving... and that was well before the hands came to work. And hours after the men had gone at night the two were still busy.
If Mac's light in the bothy over the stables shone late, Job's shone later. And if Job lost flesh which, in spite of his lean, heavy-boned frame, he miraculously did, the fiery old Scot fretted himself to something between a taut banjo string and the edge of a razor.
Those were the days when Mr. Neil MacLeod walked Houndsdown like a winter's wind... the hands made full use of corners, side doors and other like conveniences.
Only Mr. Albery, the ancient shepherd, ushering his flock across the farm one morning withstood him. A couple of ewes had detached themselves from the flock and had mooned into the stable yard. Old Albery's dog, rounding them back, startled slightly a young horse Mac was fussing over. Mr. MacLeod whirled forth to reprove the shepherd... thus, with acrid violence...
"Man, get your greasy muttons te hell on the hillside out o' this. Is this a time to be affrightin' the hor-rr-ses?"
Old Mr. Albery leaned upon his crook and surveyed the nerve-wrung Mac with eyes that seemed to shine through his abundant grey hair, whiskers and beard, with a pale blue, almost silvery gleam. He signed to his dog, an old bob-tailed sheep dog nearly as ancient as his owner, to take on the flock, and after profound deliberation spoke.
"Thee'st taking it mortal hard, mortal hard to be sure, for a man in the prime o' life, MacLeod. When thee'st lived on Houndsdown my length o' years thee'lt have learnt theeself the habit o' patience they tell me thee'st sich a master-man at learnin' to the horses. Now, thee take advice from a old man... nigh old enough to be thy father, MacLeod... and study to be patient and to bide still until thee canst do some good by movin'... and to bide quiet until thee canst do some good by a-hollerin'."
He looked rather like one of those patriarchs of old, serene, tranquil, utterly unmoveable, as he stared at Mac, drawling out his advice in his soft south country brogue.
"Study to bring your horses to the auction ring as finely fit and full o' pride as my yoes will be, my son, but nivver waste no time outfacin' me. Man and boy, winter and summer and all, I been out facing the wind on Houndsdown Hill this seventy year and I heeds a gale o' words no more than a storm o' wind!" he concluded, with the deliberation of the aged, and turned and followed his flock.
Mac eyed him sourly, saying nothing at all for a moment. Like Mac himself, old Albery was a privileged person on that farm.
But... "Hut! ye melancholy old deevil!" he muttered presently and swung back to the yard.
They were excellent friends, but Mr. MacLeod in times of stress was not a man excessively prone to blandishment or compliments.
The forthcoming end of the world... for so he appeared to regard the coming sale... affected him oddly. He had fought as bitterly as a man could against it but when, on the day after the lotting, he realized that it was inevitable his acrid resentment found another outlet It was as though he had said within himself that since a sale there must be, he, personally, would see that it was a thorough sale. To this end he devised to sweep the farm as clean as a field of newly-fallen snow.
With a grim and tireless tenacity he haunted and hunted the Houndsdown barns and buildings; the lofts, the sheds, the byres, the stables and roosts, he haunted them all. Across every acre to the far boundaries and back again and all around, criss-cross like a spider's web, went Mr. MacLeod, a-scavenging for gain... Job's gain.
He nosed out, laid bare, excavated, disclosed, lifted forth, dug up and disinterred the farm scrap of ages. All red and rotten with rust and dust and mildew, he dragged out into the open ancient plows that if set again to a stubble would assuredly dissemble themselves and lay down their ancient bones "with a will," harrows that would never harrow again, cultivators years past any sort of culture, implements of husbandry, agriculture, horticulture... and an old mantrap not less than a hundred year old. (It fetched £2 10 s. at the sale from an antique dealer, who considered it as cheap as he considered the inlaid walnut Queen Anne tallboy from the landing outside Job's bedroom dear at 120 guineas.)
Nor did Mr. MacLeod disdain to marshal and array a ton or so of ancient harness which he hauled out from a loft, all green and rotten, but still (as it proved) with its attraction for those who supply people in need of old leather for pulping... and re-pulping.
He found old whipstocks, rat traps, sheep-dip drums, ferret collars, flintlocks and muzzle loaders, porcelain eggs, martingales, currycombs, bullrings and flails; he amassed mouse gins, bird-scaring rattles that rattled not, dog muzzles, a ruined hay tedder, gap-toothed forks, spurs, spade blades and churns; he unearthed even a dozen bottles of elderberry wine concealed years ago by some forgotten pilferer, half a cider mill, four broken pumps, a piece of a winnowing machine, an unexpected nest of new-born kittens, many rolls of ancient wall paper, old stirrups, a pistol or two, and bound copy of Modern Society dated fifty years back.
Houndsdown was an old farm and it carried a lot of old stuff on it... as most old farms do.
But this is not a catalogue of the job lots; and the discoveries of the tireless MacLeod mayhap make hard reading, though there were times when Job hung over some trifle, half smiling, half otherwise. Things he remembered now he saw them again. For example, a pony bridle, with a few flakes of enamel still clinging to the headband.
"Mac, I remember the day my father gave me that bridle as if it were yesterday. It was for my black pony and I remember I thought the head band looked like a bit of jewelry!..."
"Aye, I mind it well... now, pit it in the sale!" commented Mac drily.
Or, again, "Where the devil do you rake up all these things?"
"Eh, just aboot..." Mac would wave a vague hand and once, hardening suddenly, he announced with almost frightful grimness, "Man, before I've finished it shall be as if hairds of ostriches and plagues of locusts and swar-rr-ms of white ants have swept over the land! What says the Scriptures? 'And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt and rested in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall there be such'... excepting auld Neil MacLeod. Let me alone, I say... I'm daein' my best for ye! No man shall glean profitably after me!"
So Job would leave him.
He, too, had plenty to do.
Most of the things in the house were going... but there were some that he packed for storage, swearing that these he would keep if need be till the verge of starvation.
There had been an Armsman at Houndsdown for three hundred years, some prosperous, some lean, and the old house was full of things that to-day are held cheap at twenty times their original cost.
Carefully, with a quiet, pallid, rather shaky but craftsome old gentleman, one Mr. Braddell, who attended to the furniture side of Tom Waller's extensive business, Job went over these. It was as if he arranged to sell the fingers off his hands... but he stifled his reluctances and presently was a little infected with Mac's fearsomely practical acceptance of the inevitable.
That was wise, for the mortgages which had accumulated during his father's declining years and his own early ones had been raised, more by chance than design, at periods when land values were high. Notably the last mortgage which Job had taken up a few months after the armistice when War profits were plentiful, money secured by land was easily obtained, and values were estimated with a pathetically liberal confidence. Many an English farmer achieved the dream of years when, towards the end of the Great War, he bought the freehold of his farm at a figure based too carelessly on produce values during the War; raised the bulk of the purchase money on the security of the farm itself, and a few years later discovered that he had half garotted himself with a millstone of high interest which the farm could not stand... the drop in land values having absorbed his carefully saved cash payment, and the farm now standing worth barely its mortgage.
Job knew that a bad sale would leave him still on the wrong side of the balance sheet, that a good sale would clear him, and that it would need a really lucky sale to produce a worth-while balance in his favor. He had thought he knew nearly enough the market value of everything on the farm when he took up the last mortgage... though the furniture-wise Mr. Braddell, who came to lot the best of the household goods, surprised him with some of the reserves he suggested. Thus:
"Morris and Lewis will buy those, Mr. Armsman," he said quite definitely, pointing to a set of six Queen Anne walnut chairs, "you ought to put a reserve of... h'm... a hundred and ten guineas on them."
"Do so," Job acquiesced, astonished. He had known those chairs all his life and they had suited him well enough. But that they were worth more than a sovereign a piece had never seriously occurred to him. And he had never known or cared whether they were Queen Anne or Queen Boadicea.
It was Mr. Braddell who advised the reserve of a hundred and twenty pounds on the tallboy before referred to.
Moreover, that seemingly sharp-set professor of furniture pointed out the almost pressing need to put a reserve of at least seventy-five pounds on a modest-looking table which Job had never thought much of.
"That little table?" he queried.
"Yes. It's a Chippendale tripod table with what is known as a pie-crust top. It'll fetch seventy."
"Will it, though?" said Job rather feebly... wondering what his mother, who always used to keep her work-basket on it, would have thought of that. She had always liked it, because she considered it a "pretty little table"... but he knew she had never associated it in her simple, sweet, housewifely mind with seventy good pounds.
Two other discoveries by the sinuously enquiring Mr. Braddell served to add enormously to Job's almost awed respect for him. One was to do with the old painting of a cottage about two feet by eighteen inches big that hung on the wall of the rather dimly lit landing.
This, Braddell hovered around and over for a long time, peering intently. He took it downstairs to the open light.
He seemed intrigued but dubious about this, asked Job's leave to take it away for a day and later returned it, advising a reserve of a hundred and fifty guineas.
"Why?" demanded Job.
"It's a Gainsborough... probably painted at the time he painted his 'Cottage by a Roadside.'"
"Oh, is that so?" said Job. "I... always liked it, in a way," he added defensively.
For a big wine glass with a bulbous stem and a domed foot that had the portrait of a serious-looking gentleman worked on the side of the glass Mr. Braddell also advocated a hundred guineas reserve. For years past Job had regarded that glass as an "odd" one and wished he either had a set of them or none. It was too big for wine, anyway.
"A hundred guineas?"
Mr. Braddell smiled elderly upon him so that Job's school days swung visibly nearer. "Yes... I think a hundred."
"Why?"
"It's Jacobean and the picture is a portrait of the Pretender."
And Job had ceased to wonder who the glassy gentleman was since the age of seven!
"Well, all right Let it go for a hundred," he said. His deep eyes twinkled, and he laughed suddenly.
"Braddell, old man, I've got an awful lot to learn, haven't I?" he confessed.
"It's not your line, Mr. Armsman," said Braddell with a species of sigh.
A thought came to Job as Mr. Braddell reverently replaced the glass in the corner cupboard which had sheltered it for fifty years.
"But look here... knowledge like yours is worth money, Braddell. You could deal in these things... pick 'em up cheap and sell 'em dear... and make no end of money? What in the world are you doing working in a country town for old Mr. Waller at so much a week?"
Mr. Braddell sighed a little, then spoke as man to man.
"Yes... I know, Mr. Armsman. I love the old things... antique things... craftsmen's work... and I understand 'em. But between ourselves I couldn't trust myself, I've tried it... and failed. You see, Mr. Armsman, I drink. Yes, I drink like a fish... that's ruin in a sale room with men as sharp as hawks around you. It's hereditary! Mr. Waller understands!" he explained—and, forthwith, yielding to some deep urge, made a point at the sideboard as staunch and steady as ever the great Drake made at a partridge covey cowering in the stubbles—and Drake was the finest pointer of all time.
Job hesitated... torn between hospitality and prudence.
"Right. Help yourself, old man, to what there is," he said at last.
But Braddell shut down the terrible, tigerish lust and took no more than a three-finger peg.
"Hereditary, is it?" said Job, with his simple tact, and joined him in a mild one. "Queer how it zigzags like lightning or a bursting shell, just takes one out of a crowd and doesn't touch the rest. I ought to be touched that way myself... for scores of hogsheads of port have been drunk in this house in the past Yet it means nothing to me—it's just the zigzag luck of things, Braddell... Never mind. It's like temper, vice... in horses. Never you mind, old chap. Do your best, eh?"
"For God's sake, Mr. Armsman, don't sympathize with me... old Bill Braddell... unless you want to see me make a fool of myself," said the furniture expert uncertainly. "It... it isn't done! At least, not by Mr. Waller. Discipline... rough stuff... that's the stuff for the likes o' me!" he mumbled, drained his glass and lo! was once more another man... discovering almost instantly the celebrated book of stamps.
This, tucked far back in a dusty corner in a decrepit chest of drawers in the lumber room, was a small mildewed book labelled Ledger... the ink which had obliterated this title had long since faded to mere ghosts of strokes... and on the flyleaf was written in a queer, old-fashioned calligraphy.
Job remembered the legend of William H. Armsman... a sickly youth whose tastes were gentle, indoor tastes. A pale boy who never sat in a saddle, handled a firearm, touched a fishing rod nor heard the hounds in full cry in his life. But he had collected stamps at a period when stamp-collecting was first boomed and had persisted in this hobby for twenty years. Nobody in that house of sportsmen and outdoor men and busy women had ever cared to investigate the value of William H. Armsman's Book of Stamps...
It fetched £1,790 at the sale (and landed a grateful check from Job straight into Braddell's pocket... merely en route, alas, to the bank account of Mine Host of The Rest and Be Thankful Inn at Milchester).
That was the best of the various "finds,"
THE few days intervening between the lotting and the sale flickered past and Job Armsman rested not at all.
More callers appeared at Houndsdown in that brief while than Job had received there in the five years that had withered away since his discharge from the army.
But only four of them mattered... and of these three did not seem to matter much. The exception of the four was, of course, Waverley... the other three were Marcus Bell with his friend one Sir Joseph Bernemann, and, very unexpectedly, Fred Calment.
Many visitors came ostensibly to condole with Job. It was very sad, they stated, to see the last of the Armsmans leave the old place, very sad indeed and it hurt them, but, well, these things had to be, and, since they had to be, was Job thinking of keeping that oil' grandfather clock, or would he care to have them take it off his hands in order to save it going for a song at the sale. Or that set of old Willow pattern... or the samplers... or the old rosewood coffer... or anything else that was worth more than they expected to pay for the self-denial of taking it off his hands...
"Why, damn it, Mac, some of these folk know what's in the house better than I do... they must have had their eyes on the things for years!" said Job, genuinely astonished. "One old woman actually mentioned and described a bit of china that I hadn't seen for years. Put away in a drawer, it was. She told me which drawer... and she was right. Why, you'd think they'd been creeping about the place at night with a flash light!"
Mac's face was never sourer than when he answered that where the carcass was there would the vultures congregate and gather zestfully together.
"An' we're the carcass, man!" he exclaimed. "Tell them to gae to the deevil! Your real friends will no' come bothering ye for anything these days!"
It was Waverley who corroborated that.
She came in one day to find Job just completing a little collection of small things which because he knew his mother had valued them (beyond all reason, it had seemed to him), he had put aside to give to Waverley...
"Waverley, would you have these little things, please," he had said simply, explaining why he did not want them to go into the sale.
She looked at them for a long time, before replying.
There was a tiny bit of Dresden; a funny little powder box in pink enamel with a metal rim, a tarnished mirror inside the lid, and some tiny people in old-fashioned costumes on the outside; some bits of yellowish lace very daintily made like spider's webs; a strip of Chinese embroidery that was a marvel of minute workmanship, and looked like a kind of jewel... a few little things like that, some not a bit valuable, some not even pretty, but all things which for some long forgotten association or whim or fancy, Job's mother had treasured... the things a woman collects.
"You want to give me these, Job?" asked Waverley, quietly.
"I don't know any one else I would like to have them as much as you," said Job.
She had picked up and was looking at the embroidery.
"I mustn't take these... I mean for my own... but, if you like, I will take care of them for you, Job... until..."
She stopped, her fingers fluttering about the silk.
"Why, Job... this is a little bag... look!"
It was—the opening almost concealed.
Waverley held it open, inverted the bag gently, and something yellow and shining fell out soft as a feather. But it was not a feather. It was a little coil of fine silky hair.
"Why, it's a curl," said Job.
Waverley's eyes flashed to the crisp, gray-tipped hair at his temples and her lips drooped a little.
"I expect that was yours when you were a little boy," she said. "Women... keep things like that, you know, Job."
"Mine!" Job was honestly amazed. "Me with hair that color!"
He touched the curl, curiously, and as gently as if he feared it was hot.
"Do you really think I had hair that color, Waverley? It's... like gold silk," he said naively, and glanced at the glass, with a queer little laugh. "Well, I've changed since then. Why, I'm going gray... I'd look odd if my hair hadn't changed color! A Shire horse-breeder with curls like that!... So you'll take the things, Waverley?"
"I will take care of them for you and they will always be ready for you to have back when you want them," she promised.
That was more than satisfactory. Job found himself wishing vaguely that he had the nerve to give her some of his mother's jewelry which for years now had been locked away in the bank, but he knew that it was not the time for that...
Waverley, riding about the downs, looked in quite a good deal... enough to complete Job's conviction that she was two different girls... one the Waverley he knew and worshipped, the other a girl in a petunia frock who was wonderful but much more of a stranger...
But, except when she was there, the days were depressing for Job, to whom it was made more plain at every hour that it was not merely a taproot he had in the soil but a thousand rootlets as well. And the process of snapping each one of these hurt astonishingly... but, as Mac, uprooting himself also, reminded him, it did not hurt half so much as it would have done if there had been no work to do.
"I don't know how the fair-rr-st Armsman found the farm," snarled Mac one day, "nor do ye. But I know well how the last one will leave it."
Job was more than in agreement with that It was a sort of passion with them to leave the place looking well. And they were slaving to do this. Except that he did two-and-a-half men's work himself, Mr. MacLeod at that period would have made a magnificent petty officer on board a slave galley. Just as many a woman, leaving the home she has made of a house rented from somebody else, values her self-respect and pride so much that she will work herself weary so that all shall be left spick and span and perfect behind her, so Job and Mac worked at Houndsdown.
Marcus Bell, riding up one day with a big, broad man on a magnificent weight-carrying hunter, used just that comparison.
"He's going to leave the place all fine and fit behind him. The mortgagee won't have much to complain of... and that's you, I understand."
Bell's companion nodded thoughtfully, looking about him with quick, dark eyes that missed very little. He said nothing. He seemed to be a mute sort of person. And that indeed was his reputation. Sir Joseph Bernemann was not much of a talker, but when he spoke he usually said something worth the labor of saying.
Marcus Bell looked rather curiously at the dark, heavy, sallow, expressionless face.
"Yes, this boy is cleaning up for you... but that's what one would expect from him... he's the quiet sort that plays the game clean through to the end. I... damn it all, Bernemann, I've got half a mind to see him through yet."
He spoke with a touch of impulsiveness in his voice, but there was no impulsiveness in his eyes.
Marcus Bell would never be impulsive again.
The deep eyes of the dark man twinkled faintly.
"Why? It's a dying business, this horse-breeding."
"But it's a live man," retorted Bell.
"Yes. I want to meet him,"
"You will, in a minute."
They rode on. Marcus said no more. After all Bernemann had only been in England a week, following three months in America... where it was known, his interest were vaster even than those he possessed in England.
He and Marcus Bell had known each other for many years, and their friendship was as close as friendship can be between a man like Bell and one who, like Sir Joseph, was so rich and possessed such immense and far-flung interests that he was almost always on the move. He was said to be, though he himself was not one who often said it, interested in oil throughout the world, in railways and land and lumber, as well as owning enormous holdings in big cinema concerns.
Several years before, he had bought outright the big estate and mansion a few miles west of Houndsdown, which for centuries had belonged to the Earls of Milchester—the ebbing tide of whose fortune had left the present Earl glad to take the difference between his debts and the value of his estate while the difference was on the right side. But, so far, Sir Joseph only lived at Milchester Castle a month or so in each year. The rest of his time was spent on his affairs throughout the world—mainly in America and South Africa.
Marcus Bell believed that he was in the process of "cleaning up" though Bernemann himself had never, said so.
It was his money which Job's solicitors had taken for Job's last mortgage.
Bernemann had seemed to be attracted by Bell's account of the Houndsdown horses, and their breeder, and had suggested that Marcus Bell should ride over with him one day, make him acquainted with Job and look over the horses.
That was natural enough... and now they were doing it.
Job, studying the printed auction catalogue indoors, saw them coming and went out to greet them.
Sir Joseph had intended spending half an hour there. He spent the whole afternoon, his inspection of the horses using up a good half of that.
"In their way, as attractive as any race-horses," he said.
They were going back to the house.
His eyes, deep set in the big brooding, sphinx-like face, turned to Job.
"That old stallion, Thor, is the finest draught-horse I've ever seen," he said flatly. "I'm sorry their day seems to be declining. It must have been an absorbing business breeding them."
"It was," agreed Job.
"You're sure that the thing can't be done at a profit, Mr. Armsman?"
Job did not hurry to answer, but he was explicit when he did.
"I am the first of the Armsmans that has failed to make a living profit at it for more than a hundred years, Sir Joseph," he said. "But I'm not ashamed of that. For I'm the first Armsman that found himself up against the motor tractor."
Bernemann nodded.
"Quite so."
He said very little more after that, though he lingered after tea, listening to Marcus Bell and Job.
When at last they rode away, Bell only waited till they were out of earshot of the house before asking Sir Joseph's opinion of Job... and the situation in which Job found himself.
There was no difficulty about the answer.
"Armsman's sound all through... But he's in a groove. The last of a line living three hundred years on the same place is bound to be in a groove. Look at the array of antique stuff that sweet-tempered old Scotchman was seeing to. That couldn't have accumulated on a keenly run place. Houndsdown wants a new broom that sweeps clean... your young friend is an old broom. He's encumbered, unconsciously, with traditions. It's like ivy round an oak. A change will startle him more than he thinks, and be of value to him. He'll profit by it in the long run."
"Well, I think you're wrong, Bernemann. If Job Armsman can't breed Shires at a profit no man can," declared Marcus Bell, as blunt as a man whose "old-age comforts are riveted to gilt-edged securities" can afford to be.
But Midas of Milchester Castle only shook his Heavy head, smiling faintly, and said, "That horse, Thor, is a noble beast. He's worthy of a permanent place on a painter's canvas."
Marcus nodded absently.
"Why on earth you can't take to breeding horses like that as a hobby instead of those spindle-legged man-traps for the race courses I can't see," he grumbled frankly.
"Maybe, I'll think it over," smiled Sir Joseph, non-committally, his heavy Hebraic features as composed and inscrutable as ever...
Job had seen them depart with as little excitement as he had seen them arrive. He liked both well enough but, as far as his daily bread was concerned, they meant nothing to him. He liked Sir Joseph because he was a man of few words and practically no gush. One apparently content to let a younger man kill his own snakes in his own way. (A young man can be very grateful for that dubious concession.)
But the visitor who looked in on him that evening was of a very different caliber from Sir Joseph Bernemann... being none other than the wholly unexpected Mr. Fred Calment, smart and smooth as silk.
"Happened to be passing by, Armsman, and looked in to congratulate you," he claimed as he entered.
"Congratulate me? What on?" asked Job gravely.
"Why, the sale you're going to have, man! They say down in the town that there are going to be some record prices touched at the Houndsdown sale!"
"They? Anybody that matters?" asked Job.
Calment laughed, a little loudly, Job thought
"Well, I hear old Tom Waller's one. And I happened to buy old Braddell, his furniture wallah, a drink in the town this afternoon. And that old soak confided to me that he planned to put on some reserves—and find the folk to pay 'em—that would stagger people, so, as I say, I congratulate you... Give me a drink, old man... Houndsdown style. I want to talk business to you."
Job moved to the sideboard... Houndsdown style. Right or wrong, no man had ever lacked for his particular pizen in that house for three centuries, and Calment was not much of a man to break a three-hundred-year run for...
So Calment helped himself, lit a cigarette, and spoke with a species of careless geniality.
"We haven't been what you'd call David and Jonathan friends for years," he said, lightly. "But now we're getting to be big boys and the old stuff, the old grudges, are old. Eh?"
"Oh, yes," Job agreed quietly. Calment nodded.
"D'you mind if I'm frank? But of course you don't. I've been turning things over in my mind. There's a lot of people about thinking you're down and out. Well, so you may be. But, personally. I believe you'll come out of the sale so much on the right side that you'll be surprised. Even if you came out owing money you might still be a winner—in the long run. You're slow but sure. What I mean—I'm quick, too quick to be always correct. You're slow—slow enough to be always sure. Well, now, just consider what sort of combination those two qualities would make, and how far they would go if they were combined! Don't hurry—think!"
Mr. Calment consulted first his tumbler, then his cigarette and waited. But Job, taking his advice, did nor hurry, and Calment could not wait long.
"You're on a dead horse, Armsman; I'm on a live one. Believe me, the engine can smash the draught horse... smash him. I've proved that around here, I think. It's the way of things. You know that already. But has it occurred to you that you might do worse than slip from the saddle of the dead one into the driving seat of the live one? For a consideration, of course."
He laughed, eyeing Job intently.
"I see, you don't quite get me. Well, I'll be plain about it. I'm getting all the truck transport, all the heavy hauling, all the farm tractor, and all the caterpillar work about here. It's getting more than one man's work to control it and I want another man, and preferably a straight, blunt, hard-headed man, to help me run it. He needn't be brilliant. Begin to see? I only know one man like that around here. I mean, there's only one man around here it would suit me to take in as partner in this business of mine." Calment finished his drink with a touch of drama, "That's you, Armsman. Of course, I'm not proposing to give you an interest. I'll want some money for it," he explained, laughing a little. "Not too much of course... not too little. We can settle that after the sale. You'll know where you stand better. You see, what I don't know about heavy transport in this district, you do... or it won't take you long to learn. It will pay us to pool what we know and there will be nothing in our way." Job thought for a little.
"You're suggesting that, provided I can put up the value of a half share in your business, we become partners in your Power and Transport Company?"
Calment nodded.
"That's it," he said lightly.
"The answer," said Job evenly, "is 'No.'"
"Eh?"
"No!"
Calment's eyelids flickered, and the spurious gayety in his voice had yielded to a cold smoothness when he spoke again.
"You mean that? You know what you're turning down? Why?"
"We couldn't work together," said Job.
"I question that," demurred Calment. "I could work with you. Do you mean you wouldn't work with me?"
"Yes."
"Why not?"
Job, facing him, leaned closer, his jaw thrust out starkly.
"Well, Calment, I'll tell you. I can't prove it all, but as we're talking privately that doesn't matter. The reasons why I wouldn't work with you are these. I don't like you; I know you don't like me; I believe it's the modest little couple of thousand or so of money I may have after squaring up which you want—and badly; and, finally, I think you're a crook!"
His jaw came out, stiffer and more starkly than ever.
"It's not usual up here to be so frank to a guest But I'm making an exception in your case, Calment," he explained.
Calment leaped up.
"But, damn it, Armsman, this is uncalled-for!"
His voice was a little shrill.. His face had changed too. The mask of geniality had sipped and his eyes were disappointed and malign.
"Prove that and I'll apologize," said Job.
"I will... and easily. Though I warn you it will sting! My dear man, do you think I care a Straw whether you come into my business or not?"
"You do. I believe you need the money... in spite of the front you carry around. And you must be pretty desperate to come to me of all men for it! Yet you must be making plenty, out of your machines. I suppose you throw it away faster than you get it."
Job's laugh was perfectly good-humored.
Calment collected himself.
"My good chap," he said deliberately, "the reason I came here to throw you a life belt was not because I care a hoot what becomes of you or your money... if any, as you suggest... but because I was asked to lend you a charitable hand by a mutual friend."
Job thought for a second or two, then stood up.
"A mutual friend?"
"Miss Bell."
"You say she asked you to throw me a life-belt!"
"Oh, perhaps not in so many words, But it was implied."
Job looked at the angry eyes searching him. He did not hurry to answer. After all, Waverley might have said enough to justify Calment's putting it that way. But, he believed it to be otherwise. He knew very well that Waverley did not mean it to be put as Calment had put it. Waverley would never have Called him "down and out"... Not even during that part of the week which was "entirely his own."
It wasn't true, anyway—he was not "down and out" yet.
This man hated him—had always hated him—and in a veiled, cat-like way, very difficult to take hold of, had never hesitated to show it, It had been easy enough, at odd moments, to do that, always in the presence of other folk, for Calment was the man who appeared to be prospering, Job the man who was certainly far from prospering. The man going up can always find an opportunity to flash out a cat claw at the man who is going down—provided he is the sort of feline fool to use his paltry chances.
Calment had always been very quick to snatch at a chance to show other folk his tremendous superiority to Job, and because he was quicker witted (though less sure witted) that the man he hated, his chances had been many.
But he had been careful, wisely, to avoid, as it were, clawing Job to the blood. Just a scratch through the outer skin—leaving it to fester. Never a clean-cut, deliberate, challenging wound—Mr. Calment was too discreet for that.
Job thought of these things, and was glad he had been frank with him.
"Implied, was it?" Job's quiet laugh was perfectly good-tempered. "Well, that's all right. I guess there are two ways of reading any implications made by Miss Bell... and one's your way, and the other's mine. I prefer mine, Calment."
His good humor died out, and his eyes hardened as he came close to his slick, sleek visitor.
"The way you put it to me, Calment, suggested, under the surface, in your usual cunning way, that the tone of Miss Bell's suggestion to you was one of pity and a touch of contempt—for me," continued Job, slowly, thinking carefully as he spoke. "You put it so because you wanted to hurt... to get another of your thorns into my hide, eh? That's all right—I can stand your pin pricks—and when you're ready, if you like, you can try the experiment of driving a pin a little deeper. Just as soon as you can screw your patent-leather courage up to that point... But there's this. You have implied that Miss Bell is so completely convinced that I am a fit subject for a charitable offer from you that she is entirely indifferent whether you put it decently or make a thorn of it You're a past master of that sort of thing. You've shown me that often enough—in the presence of other people, when it wasn't worth notice. But we happen to be alone... perfectly private—to-night... Now, I know Miss Bell well enough to say that her suggestion was inspired not by pity nor by a desire to influence your charity. The source of her inspiration was her natural kindness—generosity. You've twisted it into something else—just as cleverly as possible, Calment Let's have it right You said Miss Bell implied that you should throw me a life belt! You'll withdraw that before you leave this house, Calment!"
They looked at each other steadily through a long silence.
"Don't wriggle now—don't bluff—there's no audience and it's not necessary," said Job in his slow, level voice. "I am telling you that Miss Bell put to you, as her own idea, without any sort of implication of charity, pity or 'life belt' that it would be a sound idea for me to invest whatever surplus my sale brings me in your business and a sound idea for you to accept it! Am I right?" Calment weakened.
"Very well, have it your own way!" he said lightly.
"And you seized the opportunity of seeming to carry out her suggestion so that you could tell her so, later—but you couldn't resist putting it to me offensively."
"The offensiveness is your discovery!"
"You meant none?" Job followed him up tenaciously.
"No," said Calment, a little white, his eyes narrowing.
Job laughed.
"What a trimmer you are, Calment," he said. "It's quite true—you're not sterling. Just nickel plate."
His voice was quite even as he went on.
"You see why you and I wouldn't get on in partnership, now, don't you? I'm not much... but before I backed down to you that way you would have to knock me half senseless!"
Calment put on his hat.
"You're making a mountain of fuss over a triviality," he said. "You've been sitting here brooding too long—fancying things. You think I want to claw you? Good God, man, what do you matter to me?... I'll leave you to get on with your brooding."
His voice quivered with rage.
Job shook his heavy head.
"You've got a bitter tongue... a bitter tongue," he said thoughtfully as he led the way through the hall.
"When I'm insulted—yes—and a bitter memory as you will probably find!"
His face was pallid in the moonlight, his eyes were glaring and his voice was venomous.
"I'll make it my business to prove that to you, Armsman," he added.
"Better attend to your work," advised Job, placidly. "Hating's a profitless business—and the only dividend it ever pays is trouble."
Calment turned to his car without answering.
Job watched the red light disappear.
"Mustn't forget that chap will be for ever on the lookout for a chance at me—anyway he can," he told himself quietly as he went tranquilly indoors.
"WELL, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a lot o' work before us and not such a much of a lot o' time to do it in. Good wine needs no bush and the Houndsdown stock, alive and dead, needs no praise from me. You know it, most of you, as well as I do."
Old Tom Waller, looking the very picture of the prosperous and reliable old sportsman he was, beamed cheerfully at the crowd.
"We've all met before and we understand each other. All old friends here to-day, in fact It's your money I want—ha ha!—and we've got a wonderful fine day for it, to be sure. Everything sold here to-day will be warranted to be what it is. Can't say fairer than that Now then, Lot I. Quantity of old iron... wonderful useful lot of stuff. The old iron, gentlemen. Half-crown... no sixpences to-day, Peter... three... four... five shillings... six from Henry Rustiman... seven... come on, Henry... never saw a better lot of old iron in my... eight... nine... ten from you, Henry. Going at ten... Rustiman ten."
Tap.
"Lot 2. Ditto. 'Nother quantity of old iron!... Better lot, this. Ten from Henry... come on, gentlemen... eleven... twelve... huh! all done? thirteen... fourteen! It's going..."
Tap.
"Rustiman, fourteen shillings. Bargain, there.
"Lot 3. Ditto—furth' quantity old iron—gimme fourteen shillings again, Rusty!" And Mr. Waller was well away.
Mr. MacLeod, glaring in every direction at once, looked at the sky. Fourteen shillings for that antiquarian's nightmare of rubbish!
Truly, it was a fine day for a sale it that was an example of the prices people were going to pay for the Houndsdown stuff. Why, why, hadn't he had the courage of his convictions and put in that water tank without a bottom to it and a crack down the side—that ancient chaff cutter, with only the cutter missing! But greatly though Mr. MacLeod deplored that regrettable oversight he could not conceal the glitter of satisfaction in his eyes.
Mac had attended many farm sales—almost always, on the countryside, regarded as a species of festival by those not affected—and he could sense the atmosphere, the spirit and mood of those attending, very nearly as quickly as Waller himself.
People were buying to-day.
Many a ton of the old junk which usually forms the first lots in farm sales Mac had seen sold and the gallantry of Mr. Henry Rustiman, a local junk dealer, in paying fourteen shillings for that heap of stuff, thrilled the old Scot, less because of the absurdly high price than because the worthy Rustiman had set the pace, the fashion, the rate of exchange, as one may say, for that day.
Many there had seen old Tom work twice as hard to coax a clammy florin out of Mr. Rustiman for a better lot of junk at other sales. It was just the glamour of the Houndsdown name, the sunny day, the keen air, the big attendance, the pending solid lunch in the marquee set up in the paddock, the rumor of men waiting to buy heavily when the serious business began and old Tom would be fighting 'em for ten guinea increases instead of shilling ones from the junk division...
As Mr. Rustiman began so others continued.
Greatly to Waverley's amusement, her usually well-balanced papa caught the infection and began to buy things.
Whether it was because Marcus Bell found it a real pleasure to let himself go in competition with other bidders; or because it seemed to him that, although his purse was being butchered to make an auctioneer's holiday it was in a good cause; or because, after the years of cold, tense repression and tirelessly patient selection during his private war with the bookmakers, he found it joyous so to spread himself he hardly knew and certainly did not care.
But it is undeniable that old Tom Waller shot some of Mac's broken bijouterie into him before he realized what he was at. Thus, among other things, he speedily found himself the possessor of a broken and old-fashioned butter churn at nearly new price, and a few little things like that.
"But, daddy, why have you bought a churn?" asked Waverley, laughing.
"Hey? Churn? Oh, very useful things, churns, my dear. It's a very nice-looking one... when it's cleaned up."
"But it's broken and we haven't any cows..."
"Ah yes, true... true, my dear..."
"After all, if you are going to start making butter you will need a few cows..." said Sir Joseph Bernemann, his eyes twinkling.
"Naturally, haha! Must see about a cow or two certainly," agreed Marcus, eyeing Mr. Waller who had taken a bid... which Marcus had not made... for an ancient cheese press.
"... thirty-seven shillings... it's against you, Mr. Bell... thirty-eight... forty... two pounds only I'm bid... two pound..."
Tap.
"... Mr. Marcus Bell... two pound..."
"Why, the old pirate... I never said a word!" exploded Marcus. "The thing's in pieces."
"But you nodded, daddy, quite distinctly... didn't he, Sir Joseph?" Waverley's eyes were dancing.
"Oh, decidedly," perjured Bernemann, thoroughly enjoying himself. "After all, you will need a cheese press for using up the milk you don't make butter from if you have some cows," he consoled Marcus rather intricately.
"And even if he doesn't start a dairy the wooden parts will be useful for firewood," laughed Waverley. But Marcus did not care.
"All right. But I mustn't catch old Waller's eye again."
His eyelid flickered to Sir Joseph.
"Wait till this infant of mine gets among the furniture," he said quietly. "There are a lot of things she wants... and she means to have them if only to help rally round Job Armsman!"
He lighted a cigar.
"Perhaps I'd better curb my enthusiasm for MacLeod's bric-à-brac," he added. "For, judging by the dealers here, somebody is going to be hit hard for the furniture. There are some wonderful old 'bits' I believe... rather in your line, Bernemann, if you haven't already more than enough at the Castle, Let's go and look at them."
So they went up to the house, meeting Job on the way.
"Well, Job—depressing things, sales. But you've got the consolation of knowing that the prices are beginning to approximate to sheer robbery! That old pirate, Waller, is charging you for looking at him, to-day. He's just sold me a broken churn, a ruined cheese press and, I suspect, several other things I don't know about," said Marcus.
Job smiled. He, too, had bought at auctions.
"Old Tom certainly has set up a fast pace," he agreed.
"More power to him," said Marcus as they moved on.
"That boy is feeling it, Marcus—he raised a smile all right—but it's wrenching him about," observed Sir Joseph.
"Yes... I saw," agreed Marcus. "It's rough on him."
But the older man shook his head.
"I question that. It may seem rather rough, but it will do him a lot of good..."
He began to study the little Gainsborough...
But, as Marcus Bell had said, Job was finding it a rather dreary business this having to show a good front, to smile and even prove himself capable of making a quiet joke or two, while there bit continually deeper into him, like the steel-toothed worm of an augur, the realization that a whole host of familiar things he had never known he valued were dear to him. He had reserved a good many of the personal things that he would never attempt to do without—things he would have given to good friends rather than sell. The pair of hammerless ejectors for which his father had paid Lancaster a hundred and fifty guineas of his winnings over Diamond Jubilee's Derby—never yet had he seen a sweeter-handling pair of guns for all their twenty years of service; his saddle, old but sound and as good a friend as any man's armchair; the brace of old setters, growing slow now, but steady as doom; Rory, his all-round riding horse, who still could do almost everything but vote; things of that sort, which were part of his life. But he was discovering that many other things were very much part of his life, too—and it was less easy to watch them being sold with a studiously emotionless face than he had anticipated.
He was selling a pleasant memory with almost every lot.
And Waverley seemed to be avoiding him. Occasionally, as the day progressed, he would get a few words with her, but usually somebody would butt in.
It was true that if she did not openly avoid him, she did not try to make or to prolong meetings. But that was deliberate, for Waverley knew, or believed she knew, that you cannot continuously cheer with vocal condolence a man who is in the act of selling his possessions piecemeal.
She was there less out of curiosity than on business—the business of "rallying round" Job. She fancied that later on, when the indoor things were sold her indulgent daddy—although pre-warned and willing—was going to attach his signature to a check of dimensions which would surprise him. Waverley Chin-in-the-Air was proposing to let herself go on many of the beautiful old things round which the dealers were already hovering...
Although Tom Waller worked thoroughly, he worked fast, and there is not the quantity of implements and sundries on a stud farm which a big mixed farm would muster.
A big proportion of the young stock went to one buyer, Lewis, a stranger to most people there. He was a hard-faced capable-looking person, this one, and he bought carefully—but he had to pay some record prices for the two-and three-year-olds which fell to him.
Some of these figures were a little startling.
Job, standing with Bernemann and Marcus Bell muttered once or twice.
"What's the matter with the prices, Job?" asked Marcus, eyeing him. "You aren't kicking about it, are you?"
"No. But if I could have averaged prices like this—or prices fifteen per cent lower—I could have made a longer fight for it. And I don't know that buyer, either. He's a new man... to me."
"But apparently not to some of the other buyers," suggested Sir Joseph. "They're running him pretty viciously."
He laughed quietly.
"All the better for you, Armsman, my boy." Job shrugged. "Yes, there's that."
The horses came and went, bigger and yet bigger, more and yet more powerful, steadier, older.
The nervous drumming of the feet of the youngsters yielded to the deeper, more ponderous thudding of the huge hooves of the big ones.
And still the prices held, tending ever upwards, the stranger buying with a chill, ruthless steadiness that began to annoy some of the other buyers—men from the North who still had a use for real weight pullers.
Old Tom Waller's face was red and shining and the easy facetiousness with which he had jollied the bidders along at the start had disappeared. He had always been the best auctioneer in that part of the country, and he was showing it.
Job, watching tensely, his face set, had quite forgotten that a good many folk were watching him—some with friendly and congratulatory stares, others just curious.
But Job did not see these, for as his big ones thundered up, fresh from the hands of the toiling MacLeod, their hides gleaming like silk, heads up, nostrils wide, huge muscles bulging, veins standing out with excitement, braided and be-ribboned, there began to burn, like a little white-hot wire, into his consciousness, a crazy hunger. It was born of the arrival before the rostrum of a young roan four-year-old stallion, Houndsdown Littlejohn, who had always been a favourite of Job's. Of all his younger horses this one had shown the greatest promise, and Job had looked to him to repeat the triumphs of old Thor. He was a little nervous and the man in charge of him was kept busy until Littlejohn, staring about him, saw Job, recognized him, and passed him the time of day in a deep, friendly whinny, quite obviously saying:
"Why, hello, Job, what's all this, anyway? None o' these folk belong here—and they're making a riot of a row—it's all right I suppose, old man—heigh?"
The white-hot wire was sizzling very close to Job's heart He looked up at Tom Waller, then looked away quickly, fighting down an insane desire to buy him in. What was the sense of buying in now? This was a sale—and he was not expected to make a farce of it at the most critical moment...
"... and four 'underd and seventy I'm only bid... eighty... ninety... five 'underd guineas I'm bid for Houndsdown Littlejohn... five 'und... and ten... twenty... thirty... forty... fifty... five—fifty... five 'underd fifty guineas... I'm selling him... sixty... there's no reserve on this horse... he's going at... seventy... eighty... at five 'underd an' eighty guineas, this magnificent beast, Houndsdown Littlejohn... and a cheap horse, to be sure, at... ninety... six 'underd... he's going at six 'undered guineas only... at six 'undered worth eleven... goin'..." Tap! "... Lewis!"
Houndsdown Littlejohn went to the stranger and was retreated.
There were only three left—Gloriana, Vulcan and Thor, and of these it was Thor who, because of his sixteen years, was to be sold first.
Waller, developing some secret strategy, had wanted that—probably because he hoped that he could do better with Gloriana and Vulcan, younger horses, while the thrill he anticipated the handsome old stallion would create, still remained.
Job's face was quite white as Thor came up—with Mr. MacLeod himself, in charge.
Waller seemed suddenly to be speaking from a greater distance as he got to work.
"And here, gentlemen, is the Champion Shire Horse Of Great Britain—Houndsdown Thor! You all know this wonderful animal. Bid for on behalf of the late King Edward—bid for twice for his present Majesty, King George... I ain't goin' to praise this world-famous horse... for he stands before you, gentlemen! There's a hundredweight or two of his prizes inside the house... and his pedigree's before your eyes in the catalogue. Start him at a thousand guineas, somebody, and we'll settle down to it... A proud moment for me, let me tell you, gentlemen. I don't often sell a champion... and I don't call to mind that I've ever offered a champion of this quality in my life. Bred by the late Squire Armsman... best judge of a Shire horse in the world... and the old man's favorite... this gallant horse!... that right, Mr. MacLeod?... he told me so himself many a time. Who'll put him in at a thousand guineas... Houndsdown Thor... God bless my soul, gentlemen, what a perfect pictur' of a horse! Hey? Five 'underd I'm bid... very well... I'm bid five hundred... and ten... twenty..."
Job's hands, deep in his coat pockets, gripped hard. He had followed the figures near enough to guess himself well ahead by the time the sale finished—and all day long he'd been selling things he'd have given a lot to keep. Now, here was old Thor...
"What a perfect pictur' of a horse!" Tom Wallet had said, and that was true! Look at him there! And bony old MacLeod's face, wrung and bluey-white.
Mr. Waller was reeling off figures but all Job seemed to hear was...
"Bred by the late Squire Armsman... and the old man's favorite..."
It was all so damned true that it hurt to hear it again. Job remembered his father showing him Thor's points when Thor was a three-year-old and Job twelve...
"Six 'underd... and ten... twenty... I'm bid..."
"Oh... seven hundred!" a new voice slashed in on the bidding—and, most amazingly, it was the crisp, curt voice of Sir Joseph Bernemann.
"Taken a fancy to him, Marcus!" Job heard him say—and Bell's chuckled reply:
"Well, even a millionaire ought to be allowed the luxury of buying what he wants once in a way!"
The stranger, Lewis, was staring open-mouthed at Sir Joseph.
"Seven 'undered..."
"And fifty!" A fat, angry-looking man with a North-country accent hammered it out, glaring.
Something glowed inside Job. Haggling... yelling... snapping for old Thor, were they? Right! Well...!
"A thousand guineas!" said Job, wholly swamped in his purely personal feelings—and even a pauper ought to be allowed that luxury once in a way...
"Eh?... what's that?"
Old Waller was peering down.
"A thousand guineas, Tom!"
"You're buying him in?"
"I am!"
"But what ye goin'to do with..." Waller, his eyes on Job's face, checked himself and turned.
"... a thousand guineas I'm bid... any advance on a thousand guineas...?" Tap! "This horse's bought in, gentlemen!"
So, too, were Gloriana and Vulcan. There were one or two sharp bids for these, but Job followed his impulse blindly and blotted them out.
Back they went, MacLeod grinning ferociously at their heads, and a moment later Job followed them.
One or two people muttered, but old Waller hurried along to the furniture.
"He couldn't stand seeing the old horse go," said Marcus Bell slowly. "I can understand it... should feel that way myself."
"And I," agreed Sir Joseph Bernemann.
"Though what he's going to do with 'em I don't Know," continued Marcus.
"Nor I!" added Sir Joseph.
"Oh, but it was fine... fine! Job wasn't thinking of that He couldn't bear to part with them! I think he was splendid," said Waverley, her eyes shining, "and I'm going to tell him so."
She hurried away.
The crowd was moving towards the house.
"Spoilt his sale... I always said he was just a damned fool!" rasped some one to another passing Mr. Bell. It was Fred Calment's voice.
Marcus stared after him, his clear eyes thoughtful and hard.
BUT Calment's acrid and vindictive summing up was wrong... as most of these, when inspired by malice, are. Job Armsman had not spoiled his sale though, to keep the three horses, he had reduced its probable total by a useful four-figure sum.
And none of the subsequent lots sold any worse for Job's spurt of feeling. There were a good many folk at the sale who understood that sudden revolt... and these were of the better, more substantial kind, solid, well-established farmers who differed from the dealers in that they could realize how a man might reasonably be loth to part with horses which he had bred, watched and worked for from foalhood, and had grown to love. Nobody understood more clearly than these that it was bad business, but after that their next feeling was one of unspoken sympathy. Hardly a man of them but had his own favorites on his own farm... not many of these, perhaps, for the keeping of more than a very few favorites among his stock is a luxury which most British farmers have long been driven to deny themselves.
But they showed their fellow-feeling by not ungenerous though still practical bids during the closing stages of the sale. And the roving antique dealers who got anything at all only achieved it at prices which appeared to be a little disconcerting to those of them who came expecting bargains.
It was perhaps half past five when, the sale over, old Tom Waller came into the house and, in the crowded room in which Job had put all the furniture and things that he had reserved, refreshed himself with stern toll on a bottle of "that sherry I sold your father at Lord Longland's sale."
"Well, Job, I did pretty well for you, hey?" said the old chap, chuckling.
"Wonderful, Tom, wonderful. You never did better for a man in all your days," agreed Job.
"No more I did, no more I did. It'll be many a day before they've done talking about the prices at the Houndsdown sale. To be sure it will."
Waller poured himself another sherry and looked at Job with keen old eyes.
"And, figurin' rough and ready, how does it seem to bring you out, Job?" he asked.
Job looked at the scrap of paper on which he had noted some rough totals.
"You've got me clear with a trifle over, Tom. The farm will go to Sir Joseph and clears itself. And the stock clears me... leaving me a little better than a thousand for myself."
"And the three horses."
Job nodded, staring rather bleakly out of the window.
"Got any particular plans about the horses, Job?" Waller's tone was rather studiously casual. In his heart the good natured old chap felt that Job had made a bad mistake in giving way to his impulse, but he was not the man to rub it in. Job turned, facing him.
"Why, no, Tom, not a plan. At least, I hadn't an idea in my head when I bought them in except that I damned well couldn't stand by and let 'em go. It was a fool thing to do... nobody knows that better than I do. And if anybody had told be before the sale that I was going to do it I would have laughed at him... Still, I guess I'm like a lot of other men—not so hard as you've got to make yourself out to be these days."
Waller nodded. He understood that He had sold out too many people not to have realized that human nature is mighty close under the skin of most folk and always struggling more or less to get out, even though it is liable to get badly frostbitten the moment it exposes itself.
"Well, now, that's what I thought, Job, when you lashed out. And I've been turning it over in my mind, and I've got a bit of a plan that might suit you... until you've got time to turn round. But before I say anything about it, let's have it clear that you ain't repented of buying 'em in. It's not too late if you'd like to think again. I've got Lewis's word to enter all three of 'em up to him at any reasonable price you care to say. Speaking as a business man I'd be inclined to take the money, Job."
Job thought for a minute. Then his big chin came forward.
"And what sort of a comic weathercock would I look like if I did that, Tom? No, I can't swing and sway, back and forth, all the time. I'll keep 'em for a while, anyhow. Get hold of a few acres and a bit of a cottage and look round."
Old Waller nodded again.
"Yes, I was coming to that. I don't blame ye, Job. It ain't what I should call hard-headed business but... well, if there wasn't a few million jest such blockheaded, human sort of folk about I guess the hard ones would have to starve off each other. Anyhow you can afford to take it steady for a few months. And what I was coming to was this... there's that little place of mine, Windyshaw, up by the other end of the downs, forty acres o' grass and maybe ten arable, with the cottage and some buildin's. There's nobody in it but old Filton, my old bailiff, and a parcel o' heifers running there. I can accommodate them somewhere else for a bit, if you agree with me that it'd be a useful little place to settle in for a few months while you're sort of looking round. You could take that cider-sour old Scotchman along with you and the horses and sort of steady along for a bit We shan't quarrel for the sake of a pound or two of rent and... and... it looks to me as if it would be very suitable Job... very suitable indeed!" concluded the old chap rather lamely. He dived into his sherry again, watching Job, who did not hesitate.
"You know perfectly well, Tom, it will be a God-send to me," he declared. "And I'll take that offer without any more words."
Waller chuckled.
"Well, I guessed that's how it would be, Job. It certainly fits in very well. And I'll send word to old Filton to-night It ain't altogether Houndsdown, but it's not so bad a little box and it can't ruin you if it don't do any good. You must meet me over there to-morrow and we'll have a look at the stablin' before old MacLeod brings over the horses."
He rose.
"I'd ask you to come up to supper to-night, but Marcus Bell let fall that you're going to his place. And I'm bound to say I don't blame you, Job. For; she's a sweet, pretty little soul is Miss Waverley... and rides astoundin' well. Now, I'll just get out and see how my boys are getting the money in. Not that there'll be any trouble there, Job... there ain't a bad debt in the whole sale. I saw to that, depend upon it!"
He laughed comfortably and moved out to overlook the busy clerks and to swop time-honoured jokes with the buyers. A good sort, old Tom—better than he cared to make himself out to be. Shrewd, too, thought Job, staring through the window after him—too shrewd to sacrifice everything for the bank account Job had never forgotten the old auctioneer's philosophy, as he had once elucidated it, some years before.
"I'm after two things. One of 'em is enough money—and the other of 'em is the knowledge that nobody who knows me grudges me what I got And that's a full sized contract for any man, nowadays. Still, it can be done. I want to be able to walk down Milchester High Street and hear my friends say, 'Mornin' Tom' and mean it... instead of sayin' 'Good morning, Mr. Waller' and wishing they could turn round the minute I'd passed and plant the toe of their boot where they reckon it would do me most good. That means I won't be able to keep all I get... but I'll keep my share of it and a few real friends will be a fine substitute for the balance!"
Certainly the old chap practiced what he preached, and did it without being either too harsh or too easy to all and sundry.
His offer had been in the nature of a windfall to Job. Up at Windyshaw, he could settle in with old Mac and the horses without feeling any millstone round his neck, and move along quietly, until he could make a level-headed sort of decision about what he was going to do with his future.
"I'll work the horses a bit...it never yet hurt a good horse to do a little honest work, and Thor's and Vulcan's stud fees will break the back of the expenses," mused Job.
He made a rather absent-minded survey of the few things remaining to him, and, glancing at the clock, decided to take a last turn over the hill with the setters. It would be better than wandering about watching folk cart off the things they had just bought...
Up on the hill he ran into old Albery, the shepherd, with his dog, but now minus his flock.
The ancient one was standing, a lank, lonely figure, leaning on his long stick, staring across the downs towards the horizon—an old man, a very old man, long past the big passions and bitternesses of the routine of life. One could imagine him fretful and peevish indoors if his drop of soup were chilled or, late—but the big things could never quicken his pulse again.
Job, coming up behind him, smiled rather sadly at the still, stark figure black and motionless against the setting sun.
"You could tell him he'd inherited a million or that an earthquake had swallowed up London—and he'd just nod and purse up his eyes and go on staring at the sun," said Job truthfully.
But the old man's pale blue eyes were a little wistful as he turned at the soft sound of Job's foot on the springy turf.
"A bad job, John," said Job. "It looks... naked... to see you up here without your flock. Not that it will make any money difference to you... you'll come with me to Windyshaw. There'll be something to do... not sheep, perhaps... but something round about."
Old Albery said nothing to that for a moment It was as though he had not heard Job's promise that he should not be lacking enough work to assure him his regular wage.
"Ye'll not be long at Windyshaw," he said at last, his old eyes on the horizon. "Up here on the hill we learns to see further on than some of ye down on the fallows can see. And I sees ye back here at Houndsdown again afore long. You got no call to fret... you'm a-comin' back mebbe quicker than what you allows for... And I shall bide here on the hill., If so be I got no flock, why, so be it This ain't the first time I've walked the hill with nothin' but the old dog. I be abidin' here. No call to pay me for doing nothin', I shall manage... You'll be wantin' me before next lambing time. And I shall be here... on the hill... for mebbe a year or two yet."
There was the ghost of a smile behind the white beard.
"I belongs on the chalk, not on the fallows. I've lived my life on the chalk, and I shall die on it. Nothing will ever shift me... at my time of life. I'll be here to welcome ye back afore long... ye and that long, ranting swearin' old MacLeod o' yourn. And the fresh flock."
He peered at Job, then touched the tiny purplish bell of a late-flowering ochis at his feet.
"If so be you took her off the chalk hill and set her low down in the wringin' wet meadows she'd surely die, for she belongs to the open hill and the wind, like me," he rambled on.
"But you go across to Windyshaw, if you'm a mind to... 'tis a good little place. But mind what I tells ye and be cheerful, You'm coming back with a fine, new flock... and you'll find old Albery on the hill ready to take 'em over."
His all-but toothless mouth closed as he turned again to look out over the far landscape like a sailor staring across desolate and interminable leagues of sea.
Job understood. It had cost him so much to leave Houndsdown that he knew, none better, the sheer impossibility of this old man deliberately leaving the hill. He had spent his whole life on what he termed the chalk—correctly for the whole range of downland was under its three inch skin of soil, nothing but a deeply rooted mountain of chalk... and for him, to walk down the hillside to the rich and fertile low levels with no intention of returning would be equivalent to making an almost unbroken journey to the churchyard...
"Well, 'tidn't for me to gainsay ye, John. Do as you'm a mind to," said Job, unconsciously dropping into broad, south-country dialect he once had invariably used with the older "hands."
"But there's a place for ye up at Windyshaw whenever you'm a mind to come up... and what money you want..."
"Surely, surely," said old Albery, and laughed—a thin, fey sound. "But ye'll be back afore lambin' time. Tell that man MacLeod it was Albery said so..."
Job promised and so, with the old setters at his heels, turned and left him brooding on the hill of which he had long become as much a part as that minute and jewel-like flower, the ochis.
At the foot of the long slope Job looked back. The old chap had not moved, nor had the shaggy, grey dog at his feet.
But the sight of that lone and distant figure gave him just the stimulant he needed. He smiled a little as he remembered the old chap's favorite boast.
"Man and boy, winter and summer and all, I been outfacing the wind on Houndsdown Hill this seventy year!"
Now he was outfacing adversity—like Job himself.
"Well, if old John can 'outface' it for a hill of chalk, I ought to be able to do it for all Houndsdown and Waverley Bell, and I will!" he muttered, and went on to the house.
Most of the people had gone, though some were still loading 'lots' into vehicles. The caterer's men were already pulling down the canvas marquee in which lunch had been served, though at one end there was still a small group of horsey-looking men, gossiping over a final drink. The stealthy chill of a late summer evening was faintly perceptible, and the smell of bruised turf, of crushed grass, was over everything. Never again would Job Armsman catch that vivid odor without living this day over once more.
He heard a saw-edged voice jar out from the group at the now roofless end of the big tent.
"Ye puir, meeserable deevil, ye've no' haird the last o' the Houndsdown stock! Ou ay, we're sore reduced in quantity but, ye ken, the quality's left to carry on! Thor and Gloriana and Vulcan! And Ar-rr-rmsman!"
A red-faced old horse dealer among them laughed stridently.
"And yourself, Mac, you long, lean herrin'-gutted old son of a whip-lash!" he said. "They got it in for all of us horse folk... but all the same they better keep an eye on our heels, hey, Mac?"
Job turned into the bare, echoing old house, lighter hearted than when he had left it.
"They'd better keep an eye on our heels!" he found himself chuckling. It wasn't so much of a phrase, but somehow it sounded good to Job, just then.
DINNER with the Bells that evening was a vastly more pleasant affair for Job than it had been on the previous occasion.
Marcus Bell was tactfully kind, but Waverley was wonderful. It did not occur to Job that she had felt more than one pin prick of conscience on account of her sudden departure half-way through that last evening, nor that her eagerness to make up for it had been fanned by her genuine enthusiasm for Job's human, if unbusinesslike, plunge to save his last three horses.
Waverley Chin-in-the-Air could charm as well as she could ride and long before the lazily-leisured meal was over Job had forgotten temporarily that day's devastations.
It was Marcus Bell who, with a question, disentangled him from a fascinated effort to follow intelligently Waverley's description of the steps of one of the newest dances, the Python Writhe, or words to that effect, which she had volunteered to teach him anon.
Marcus asked what plans he had made about the horses he had bought in, and Job explained about the little farm, Windyshaw.
"You are going to live at that little place," cried Waverley, her eyes bright.
"Well, I'm renting it from Waller for a while," smiled Job. "I suppose it will seem small after the old place, but there's room for old MacLeod, the horses, a dog or two and me... and I won't have to worry about mortgages there, Waverley!"
"I'll come to tea, sometimes, Job," she promised. "I've always liked Windyshaw... ever since the day we went there nesting along the old yew hedge. Do you remember that, Job?"
Yes, Job remembered. It had been on one of their last days together before boarding school, a day strangely devoid of misunderstandings.
"You'll take the horses there... and carry on.
"For a time. I haven't figured it out closely, yet."
Marcus Bell spoke musingly.
"H'm. It's a good enough idea... for a time, as you say, Job. But there's no great future...
"Can you make just the three horses pay more than a trifle, Job? Over and above the expenses."
Job shook his head.
"Enough to give me time to look around and have a month or two of say eight-hour days instead of the fifteen-hour days Mac and I have been having for the last year or so. I shall work the horses too... if I can find anything for them to do."
"Work them! Horses of that class?"
Marcus Bell's eyebrows tightened.
But Job only laughed.
"Why should a little work hurt them, Mr. Bell, or a lot of work, either... in reason? My father... and a good many other breeders... proved that it does them more good than harm. Muscle looks as good as fat on a horse, no matter what his class is."
"But what work, my boy?"
"Anything I can get fit for them to do."
"Better realize on them while they're all right, surely, Job?" doubted Bell. But Waverley, listening, had been watching Job's face, and she broke in.
"But don't you see, daddy, what Job's difficulty is. He is like you only in another way. He can't back down immediately after buying them in at the sale... back down and tamely sell them. It would look... oh, so many of them would make a joke of it. It would look as if Job didn't know his own mind... or, if he knew it, did not have the courage of his convictions."
Marcus, who had been listening absently, spoke rather abruptly:
"Would you go so far as to let the horses haul timber, Job?"
"That would have to depend on a good many things, Mr. Bell. I would not take on anything blind... or with a closely figured time limit. I don't think I would be afraid for horses like my three."
He smiled a little.
"You mustn't forget that horses like Vulcan and Thor and Gloriana are bred to haul just as race horses are bred for speed... and, because they look so handsome when they are got up for show a good many people feel they shouldn't be put to slave. Perhaps you've never been to any of the weight-pulling contests?"
"Well, no," admitted Marcus.
"You would see some of the best of them pulling loads that would amaze you... weights that would burst the heart of many underbred horses to shift!"
Marcus nodded. He was not young enough to mind learning.
"Where a draught horse without any good blood in him—although he might still be a good honest horse—would be labouring hard, Mr. Bell—my three would be... be... strolling! That's true! Some day, I'll have a chance to prove that."
A tinge of color ran under the brown of his lean cheeks.
"And when they're trying, when they're really pulling, they're noble! I've seen them pulling hard... all three have won weight-pulling events... with plenty to spare. Particularly Vulcan. He's a glutton for a load!"
Job dropped his voice again,
"A little timber hauling won't ruin them, believe me, Mr. Bell!"
Marcus nodded.
"That's good. I think I can put a contract in your way... if you like," he promised. "Nothing very big... but bigger than nothing, anyway."
"That's perfectly splendid, daddy... and it's a promise," said Waverley quickly. "And now I'm going to show Job some dance steps... if the radio will condescend to make noises for us."
It seemed to Job that Houndsdown Thor would have acquired the trick of those "few steps" in less time and performed them more gracefully than he did, but Waverley was patient and if she laughed a little when he executed a few cat's cradles with his feet, Job could stand it.
So, if that day had opened about as cheerlessly for him as any day he had ever known, Waverley saw that it ended more gaily.
And when presently the radio closed down and Marcus Bell was permitted to appear once more on the map from which his daughter had temporarily deleted him, he brought news fresh from the telephone which, in his own room, he had apparently been consulting.
"Well, if you have made up your mind to use razors to sharpen pencils for a while, Job, I'd recommend you to run over and see Harrisons the timber people at Yeoborne to-morrow. They're felling little Warreners Wood and if you can quote a figure for them that's at all in line with Calment's figure for Big Warreners the hauling out is yours. Ask for old Henry Harrison."
Marcus lit a cigar watching Job, his shrewd eyes twinkling a little.
Job studied him a moment, thinking. Waverley watched them both.
It was quite evident of course, that Marcus had been pulling invisible strings on Job's behalf—but Job Armsman, ordinarily, was not the kind to become precipitately voluble because of that. He liked to think before he made his decisions—instead of after them.
"Harrisons are felling both woods, are they, Mr. Bell?"
"Yes. So I understand."
"And Calment has got the contract to haul the timber from the big wood? Why didn't they throw Little Warreners in with the contract for the big one and make it one job?"
Marcus shook his head.
"I couldn't say... but probably the big wood will call for all the tractors Calment can spare, and they're in a hurry to get the timber away."
That sounded feasible. The big wood contained an enormous amount of heavy oak. The timber in the little wood averaged perhaps a shade bigger and it was an uphill haul out. Still, there was nothing there that Job felt he need fear with his big three and one or two cheaper type draught horses he could pick up. There would be perhaps a hundred big butts to drag out—perhaps a thousand tons.
"I'll take a look at Little Warreners to-morrow and go on to see Harrisons," he said at last, and thanked Marcus for the hint.
"I think it a splendid idea," declared Waverley. "Hunting will have started by the time they have begun hauling the trees and as you won't have to be there all day or every day, Job, you will have a chance to give Rory some work."
Job laughed a little.
"I ought to say I'm too poor to hunt nowadays," he suggested.
But Waverley would not have that.
"Oh, nobody's too poor to hunt—if they've got a horse," she declared.
Job tingled.
Calment might be her man for a motor run, or a few hours on a glassy dance floor but when it came to a wild gallop across country, hard after the hounds, on a good horse, with the grass pouring past, the hedges sliding under, and the hounds in full cry, it was to him, Job Armsman, that she turned for company as naturally as one drinks when thirsty. It was cheering bit of knowledge, that—especially as he knew that Waverley Bell, on Ripple, needed no man to look after her. If she said Job must come hunting with her it was because she liked having him rather than because she needed him. So much the better.
That was good enough news to finish the evening on, and Job acted accordingly.
"Well, that's a settled arrangement," he declared, glowing. VI f it's my last ride to hounds we go to the first meet together, Waverley.
They smiled at each other as they shook hands.
At the last moment Marcus Bell decided to stroll a little way with Job.
Marcus reverted to the matter of the timber hauling as they went down the drive in the moonlight.
"I think you're right to take that contract, if you can fix things with old Harrison," he said. "But don't take it unless you're sure you can handle it well, Job."
He thought for a moment.
"You see, there will be plenty of folk watching to see how your work compares with Calment's... if only out of curiosity. You've had the toughest day of your life to-day, Job. But you'll find that you've got one solid asset left. Your credit's good... about here, at least. And your credit's good because your reputation's good. That's the asset... your reputation. Did that ever strike you? You've been losing money the last few years... but you've been building up, probably without noticing, the one thing no man can ever buy over any counter, and that's a genuine reputation. You're straight; Nothing but the solid work of years can purchase the reputation of being dead straight. That's the price... solid years. But when you've got it... why, it's your own."
His hard eyes of clear steel gleamed in the moonlight, and a touch of feeling springing from some unguessable source, edged his voice.
"Your own... like a diamond dug in a desert. Liars can't lie it away from you, the envious can't rot it, the mean can't tarnish it. It's yours and, in the end, old man, it will come to be about the only thing you consider worth having. Some day you'll prize it more than the gold it is bound to attract to you sooner or later. Never mind the clever ones, the shifty customers... the winner of the race is not known till the race is over, and its too late then for losers to wish they'd run differently. This is a clever, shifty age, and the shifty sometimes seem to be getting over the ground faster than the steady goers. Never mind... keep steady. I know, Job. I ought to... I've been through it... I'm telling you all this because I fancy you've got a pretty hard row to hoe during the next year. But you're going to win out... and I wish you luck, my boy."
The ex-gambler stopped short.
"Well, I'll turn back here, I think," he said, paused a moment, then shook hands.
"Good-night!"
A couple of yards away he turned. "Oh, Job, my boy, did you ever do any trout fishing?"
Job admitted that he had.
"And when you had a three-pounder on fine tackle how did you play him?"
Job chuckled.
"Light."
"Of course. And he ran for the weeds and the snags and everywhere else, eh? But he came to you in the end. You'll find the modern girl has got a touch of the trout about her. But play her light, Job, and you'll steer her out of the weeds all right... with a little luck."
Marcus laughed and moved away through the moonlight But he had left Job plenty to think about.
IT was late but Job went the longer way round—for no better reason than because after the excitements of the day, he found it good to be alone in the cool air, endeavoring as he moved easily along, to sort out a rather confused medley of thoughts and plans and resolutions.
But he was not to sort out many plans during this solitary walk, for half way home he came upon yet another problem.
He was walking on the soft turf which bordered the road rather deeply where it ran through the heavy shadows cast by a belt of woodland, and as he swung round a bend in the road he came upon a man standing almost directly in his path. This one, his back to Job, was creeping forward, half crouching, stealing down, as it were, upon a motor which, with switched off head lamps and faint side lights, was drawn up at the roadside.
Job, accustomed, like most countrymen, to see well in the uncertain, chequered moonlight, recognized the car instantly.
It was Fred Calment's humpbacked 'Cruiser' Coupé! He stopped for a moment just as the creeping man ran forward to the car and tore open the side door.
"Edie!" he cried, in a low bitter voice. Job recognized it as that of one Evans, a roughrider employed by a big horse dealer in a village some miles from Houndsdown... a decent little man who with better luck at the start of his life might have been a successful jockey. Job knew him—he had done a little work on occasion at Houndsdown.
There was a faint, startled cry, and a girl stepped out of the coupe, speaking with a kind of angry reproach—she was saying something about "spying" and "dancing" and "mistrustful."
But Evans' voice rose above hers.
"But, Edie, you promised you wouldn't go to any more dances in his car this way! You said so when I promised I'd take you myself to any dance in Mil-chester you liked that we could get to. I... I been waiting up at your home all evening, Edie. I got off early... I would have taken you... we'd have caught the motor-bus and had a good time. This man's no good..."
Another figure stepped out of the car, and spoke acridly to the excited little roughrider. Calment.
"This won't do, Evans... this little lady has a perfect right to allow me to run her over in a perfectly friendly way to a hop at..."
"Ah, dry up! Don't come that on me... I know you, everybody knows you." Evans' voice was thin with a kind of ferocious contempt.
Job Armsman understood, for he knew them all. The girl, Edie, was engaged to Evans. She was the daughter of a small farmer living not more than a mile away, and she was one of the prettiest girls in the county. It happens that way more often than the society papers explain—photographically or otherwise. By some strange obscure alchemy of nature, this gift of delicate, ephemeral beauty quite frequently flowers to sheer perfection in the daughter of a frankly rough tiller of the soil, and his worn wife, long past their youthful charm, and, for a few years, the child need not fear comparison with the most delicately bred lady that ever shuddered at the sight, sound or odor of a farmyard.
Edie Cooper was one of these. Job had known her from childhood, and had admired her as long. But he knew, too, that she was as wholly devoid of real common sense as she was over equipped with a species of shallow worldly wisdom picked up in the village, which against a man with a luxurious car, plenty of plausibility, apparently dazzlingly well supplied with money, but devoid of principles or scruples, was about as much use as a paper shield against a Zulu assegai.
"Don't talk that way to me, Evans! I warn you!"
Evidently some word of the roughrider had bitten deep, for Calment's voice had risen—with an ugly undertone in it.
Evans was persuading the featherhead away from the car, talking over his shoulder. The girl was hanging back, unwillingly, arguing shrilly.
Then Calment lost his temper and swung forward. He thrust the little roughrider away with a force that sent him off his balance.
"Get in, Edie... this little ruffian's drunk. I'll ran you home in the..." he began but broke off and spun sharply to face the roughrider, who, half the size and weight of Calment, nevertheless came in swiftly. But the bigger man caught him as he came with a rather wild swing that took him at the side of the jaw and sent him reeling across the turf into the ditch.
The girl cried out, seemed to hang, hesitating, then, yielding to the urgency in Calment's voice, turned again to the car.
Job moved up.
Calment, standing clear for the girl to get in, started as Job dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder and wrenched him round.
"Ah, you thief!" said Job, his voice very quiet, but with a queer, electric, vibrant note underrunning it.
"Why, Armsman, what..."
"Quiet!"
Calment drew in a long breath, his face pallid in the moonlight, and for a few seconds they stared steadily at each other.
Then Job spoke, his eyes still on Calment.
"Edie, you had better think again and let Jack Evans take you home," he said quietly.
The girl, white-faced behind Calment's shoulder, murmured confusedly, but Job broke in.
"Edie, we're old acquaintances, and I've always admired you as much as I've respected you and your people... and Evans. Take advice from a man who has known you from the time you were a little thing in pinafores. You know me well enough to understand that I wouldn't give you bad advice. Let Jack Evans take you home... he's sound. This man is not."
"Oh, why be melodramatic over an ordinary everyday civility... you're early Victorian, Armsman," said Calment, his voice a little high. "Why on earth shouldn't this little soul accept a lift, to a simple dance, in a decent car for a change?"
Job ignored him.
"Ah, come on, Edie," urged the little roughrider, returning. "Listen to good advice. Mr. Armsman knows. He wouldn't interfere if everything was all right."
She yielded—either to the entreaty in Evans's voice, to the sincerity in Job's, or to her own deep instinct, maybe a little to all. She leaned into the dim interior of the car and pulled out her fur collar. As she did so there was a tinkle of breaking glass down by the clutch pedal.
Evidently a wine glass had been hastily set down when Evans first broke in on them.
Calment's eyes gleamed as he stepped back.
"You've made up your mind to go with Evans, Edie? Very well. You must have your own way... but there was no real reason why you need to run away..."
"Let her alone, Calment," said Job.
The girl hesitated a second longer, then gave a queer embarrassed little laugh, partly defiant, partly relieved.
"Oh, very well. What a fuss about nothing! Come on then, Jack. Good night."
They moved away through the moonlight, the girl talking fast and shrilly.
Job waited a moment, then walked to the door of the car and peered in. He saw exactly what he expected. By the broken glass,, lay a small bottle of champagne. It was uncorked and had been upset, spilling its contents over the floor-mat.
He turned back to Calment
"You stand by, don't you, Calment? Very quiet... saying nothing... allowing me to do just as I like. You're a fine safety player, Calment," said Job steadily, beating down the cold, dangerous anger in his heart—anger that was not wholly for the sake of the girl Edie.
"This comfortable car of yours, Calment! You aren't fit to own it! You don't know how to use it!"
Again he shut down the fierce anger uncoiling in his heart at the thought that Edie was not the only girl who enjoyed a night run in this apparently fascinating toy.
For a fortune Job Armsman could not have explained clearly a queer, indefinite feeling that somehow, in some vague way, Waverley had been cheapened. But he was conscious of it and it did nothing to tranquilize him.
"You're a wordy, cunning, plausible sort of animal, Calment, and I'm not going to discuss the thing with you. I'm going to give you certain instructions. I can't arrange to keep out of your clutches every pretty girl that hankers for this fly-by-night fun in your Cruiser Coupé... I wish I could... but..." his voice deepened and grew harsh at sight of the white, acid smile on Calment's face and at a peculiar gleam, almost triumphant, which burned in the man's eyes... "but listen to me! Keep Miss Bell out of this car by day or by night I am instructing you about this, you understand. You are to keep Miss Bell out of this car. Use any excuse you like. But I tell you now that if ever I see you driving her in it on any more of these night trips I'll manhandle you!"
He waited a second.
"Anything to say?"
Calment's smile widened; he even gave a kind of bow.
"Nothing... nothing at all... to you, Armsman!"
Job left him without further words.
"A good thing I came along, when I did," he told himself as he swung on towards Houndsdown. "Though why the smooth bounder should look so pleased, be so oily and polite about it, I don't see..."
Calment's smile had made him vaguely uneasy. And, as he wore down the rest of the distance from his empty house, his unease did not diminish.
The excitement within him died down and he was amazed to discover that he was tired... physically tired. And tired of thinking, too. He had been working desperately hard for many days, and some of his short nights recently had been sleepless. From peep of dawn that day till now at the edge of midnight he had been vibrant with repressed anxieties and excitements. Here was reaction.
He felt dimly in his mind that though what he had done a few minutes ago was only what any decent man would have done and said no more than any decent man who respected and loved Waverley Bell would have said, yet, somehow, in some blundering way he had made a mistake.
"I left that smiling devil something to seize hold of... somehow!" he feared audibly, over and over again. "But I wasn't going to have Waverley be one of a score of girls, for all I know, who might be taking these night runs with him—and his wine!" It was his last word before settling in on the camp bed in the reserved room for his last night at Houndsdown.
And for the life of him Job could not think what his mistake had been.
The problem haunted his sleep and was with him, unsolved, when he awoke next morning. But he need not have worried. The answer was coming to him quicker than he guessed.
JOB was at Little Warreners Wood with the dour MacLeod an hour after daylight next morning. There were a hundred oaks to be got out—big trees that, as butts, would average forty feet long by eight or nine feet girth, each panning out at perhaps two hundred and fifty cubic feet. A cubic foot of green English oak weighs round about a hundredweight so that, sawn twice, these big butts would average slightly under four tons to each of its three sections. Aided by an old woodman he had brought along from the village Job figured it out that, with a few additional horses to supplement his three big ones, he need not hesitate to take on the contract if he was not required to haul the logs at a quicker rate than two teams and two timber carriages could normally do the work.
Provided always that the weather held fair enough to give something like a good gripping surface for the great hooves.
"Ye'll allow for a goodish deal o' rain, Mister Armsman, and ye'll allow at the far end o' the slope for bad days when ye get to the sticks," advised the woodman. "It can be a mighty crool job hauling this yer big oak out to the hard road... though I'll own ye've got such horses for the job as I've never seed hauling out timber afore... and I've seed a many in my time. That great Thor looks as if he'd very near haul a stick on his own... goin' by looks... but you got to go a lot by luck in this work... and if you're figurin' on it, Mister Armsman, allow bold for a lot o' bad luck this time o' year."
So after a great deal of anxiety and consultation, much thought and minutely careful working out, Job arrived at his cost figure, and added a margin which, while it almost satisfied the dour MacLeod, convinced Job that the likelihood of his getting the contract was so extremely remote that to go over and see the timber merchant, old Harrison, was really a waste of time.
"Well, Mac, I begin to see why the cost of English oak puts it very nearly out of the reach of the ordinary timber user. If all the costs of getting it on the market are in proportion to the hauling cost, why, I wonder they trouble to cut the trees."
Old Mac agreed.
"Man, it's sinful... but ye'll not make a fortune even at the figger ye're quotin'. If the floor o' the wood gets wet and soft a wee ton log would hold Vulcan... eh, or Thor... like the anchor of a ship. It will be sore on the other horses!"
Evidently Mac intended to get the full value out of the lesser horses.
"Well, we'll see, Mac. You needn't heat yourself up with any idea that I'm going to ruin my horses... for anybody else's... for sake of saving the hire or purchase of another one or two," said Job, absently ran through his figures again, shut his book, and headed back to Houndsdown for breakfast It was the last meal he would eat there, for by the time he got back from Yeoborne Mac would have got the horses, gear and remaining furniture over to Windyshaw...
Job looked in on old Waller on the way to the station and horrified that veteran with his figures.
"Man, you're not greedy enough," said old Tom, "You'd kill your own horses and any you buy, too, before you'd drag out those butts at a profit with figures like that."
Job meekly added the percentage suggested by his old friend and wondered why British builders did not use gold for their carpentering in preference to oak. He said so.
"You don't have to wonder about the builders, my boy," explained Waller dryly. "They do their own wondering. The man you've got to wonder for is Job Armsman."
He ran an eye through the improved figures and nodded.
"Yes, you'll do nicely at the price, Job... if we get fair average weather. And it will about get the contract. No sane man would do it lower... unless, maybe 'tis Calment He could undercut you with his caterpillars, but he's got his work cut out for all his machines up at Big Warreners. You'll just about get the contract, I should say, and you'll do a little better than most because yours horses are good. A bad horse eats as much as a good one... and does but half the work. But, mind now, don't let that old razor, Harrison, shave you down a mite. He'll try..."
He did. He tried desperately. But Job was careful. And he got the contract at the figure he quoted.
But he came out from old Harrison's office into a thin drizzle of rain that was to prove the beginning of the wettest autumn and early winter known for a decade. Sill he felt fairly confident. He could buy what extra horses he needed, and behind these, staunch and steady, powerful and everlastingly courageous, were his big ones, Vulcan, Gloriana and old Thor. In his heart Job knew that they would see him through.
To those accustomed to the figures or quantities involved in the mighty lumber contracts that daily eat out the forests of the United States, Job's contract possibly would seem too puny for words, but, in its correct proportion, it was likely to prove as formidable to the man most concerned as the biggest of those colossal lumber deals to the perfectly equipped contractors handling it.
Job had undertaken to get out of Little Warreners Wood and haul seven miles about a thousand tons of felled green oak before the following March. To do this he had three magnificent horses, one reliable assistant, and a reserve in cash of somewhere round about a thousand pounds. He would have to hire or buy several more good horses, timber carriages and tackle and hire some men.
The felling and trimming would be done by Harrison's men.
And, deep down in the shadows of his mind, like a little live wire, was the ever present desire and determination to put up as creditable a performance in Little Warreners as Calment, mechanically hauling ten thousand tons, would put up in Big Warreners.
Still, it looked good enough. The figures had been well thought out, based on the old woodman's experience and Waller's knowledge and there was a generous margin for contingencies and a respectable margin for profit.
Nevertheless he was half regretting the undertaking before he reached Houndsdown. For he was a Shire breeder and a haulage contract was a new departure. He felt that he had fired a shot in the dark. But regret is not fear and Job was not commonly prone to fear anything in the nature of a fight.
He stifled his doubts as he sighted the old house. He was going back there some day if it took him a lifetime to get there—and this contract was the first step on the way. Not so much of a step, perhaps, but still a move.
"Better than standing still up at Windyshaw barely paying my way!" said Job, and swung on with a lighter heart.
He found that MacLeod had already cleared all his things and taken them over to Windyshaw and so he turned his back on the old place and headed for the new, his lean face tight, his jaw stuck out and his eyes like blue stones.
"I'm coming back..." he muttered as he headed over the downs. "Some day... just as old Albery said... I am coming right back here to the old house and the old acres with the cold money in my fists to pay for 'em... It's a long row I've got to hoe... but, with luck, it mayn't be quite so lonely, with Waverley living so close and not too proud to come up to Windyshaw sometimes. That won't be so bad... not so bad."
He topped a slight rise and checked there suddenly as he caught a distant drumming of hoofs that sounded familiar.
He turned, and his face lost much of its haggard grimness as he saw that it was Waverley herself galloping towards him.
"Oh, good! I'll ask her to wish me luck," he said, simple hearted as a boy, and waited.
But his smile faded even before she spoke. He needed no more than a glance to see that she was in no mood to wish him luck.
She reined up Ripple in a fashion which was so new and distasteful to that handsome favorite that he went up on his hind legs sparring at the air in fretful protest But Waverley steadied him mechanically, leaning down from the saddle to Job. Her eyes were bright with anger, her cheeks flushed, and the ring in her voice took Job back to a distant day when, for some long forgotten reason, she had chosen to be furiously angry with him and to explain the same to him with all the mercilessness of youth.
"What do you mean by issuing orders... orders!... to Mr. Calment that I am not to be permitted to ride in his car?" she stormed. "You must be mad. Or so anxious to insult Mr. Calment that you hadn't the slightest hesitation in insulting me at the same time. Do you think because you chanced to learn that he had given some little overworked girl of the village a lift home from some trifling dance that you have the least right to suggest that I am not fit to be trusted to drive just wherever I choose with him or any one else I care to call my friend? I promised to go hunting with you... but if you imagine that gives you any right to dictate what I shall do, or whom I shall know, or where I shall go you are mistaken. Nobody ever accused you of being excessively modern, but I certainly thought you were a little ahead of the wretched, mean-minded, nasty Victorian rubbish that even our grandmothers knew in their hearts was rubbish. I suppose it would surprise you to know that everywhere, all over the world, girls go driving in motors with their friends... even to those dreadful and wicked things called dances!... quite as a matter of course, and even the narrowest-minded people are beginning to suspect the truth that the girls are just as safe as if they were sitting at home knitting socks with a chaperone on one side and a Victorian spinster aunt on the other side, I thought we were going to be friends... but I can tell you this, I don't intend to be friends with a man who hasn't a slightly better opinion of me than you have!"
She was so angry that it seemed as if she could not trust herself to say any more. So angry that there was not a flicker of regret or reluctance to hurt the gaunt, bare-headed, white-faced man, staring dumbly past her, taking her verbal scourging without a sound or movement of protest She had stopped to draw a quick gasping breath, evidently intending to go on, but she thought better of it and so pulled her horse round, unconsciously spurring him with such sharpness that he started away with a wild bound that almost unseated her, fine rider though she was.
Job Armsman stood absolutely motionless, staring half dazedly after her until she was out of sight.
He had not spoken or attempted to speak. Waverley had not given him a chance. It had been as swift as a sword thrust... and almost as effective.
Calment evidently had made a point of getting his version of the midnight encounter to Waverley quickly—and poisonously.
For a long time Job stood staring dully across the downs... but he was not thinking clearly and he was half afraid to try.
Ever since Waverley had come back to Hareshill he had written himself down as being too old-fashioned and he had determined to bring himself more up to date, more in line with other folk of his own age. Waverley was going to help him do that. She had told him so in a half-joking, half-serious way, more than once.
Waverley had been about the world and understood things while he had lived all his life on the farm, except for the War years when he had spent almost all his time with men in wholly abnormal conditions, where shells were more plentiful than women. His years in the line had taught him nothing at all about women.
From that glorious hour when she had breakfasted with him he had been humbly her slave, and her lightest pronouncement upon any matter outside of his own business of the horses, had been absolute gospel to him.
"She knows... I don't It's wonderful that she's willing to take the trouble to put me right I must seem just a country oaf to her," would about express Job's general idea of the position.
And now, riding up like a white flame, she had informed him that he was something worse than narrow; that he was utterly impossible as a friend, hopelessly Victorian, out of date, and was guilty of measuring her by the standards of his own mean mind. With words that pierced like lean pin-pointed bullets she had conveyed to him that he had misjudged Calment and grossly insulted her.
He saw—now it was too late—that his vague uneasiness had been justified. To have threatened Calment, as he had, implied of course a lack of faith in Waverley herself, and that was what Calment had realized the instant Job had made his threat All that was easy to see now.
Waverly believed Calment to be straight Job knew he was not...
He turned miserably to continue his way to Windyshaw; there were grey clouds packing in the sky overhead, and cold grey veils of thick drizzle dropping down to hint of heavy rains coming, but he did not notice these things.
He had lost Waverley—and he had banked on her, on having her smile, her gay gossip and encouragement, through the lean days that were coming. That was pretty bad—pretty bad.
Once, high up on the summit of the downs, he stopped.
"But, damn it, I saw the champagne with my own eyes!" he protested aloud in the mist. "Sitting there all cosy in that damned car, lights out, wine open, Calment and that beautiful little fool, Edie... I mayn't know about women, but I do know about men like Calment!"
His face tightened, so that it looked drawn, starved, and he went on down the hill.
"Shall do no good by cursing it all," he reminded himself as he went "But if luck goes in streaks, as Tom Waller says, Til be glad to get to the end of this streak."
A blob of rain spattered on his cheek, and he remembered suddenly what rain meant to him. He had now a personal, a desperate interest in every drop of rain that went to soften the floors of Little Warreners Wood. But even that could only distract his mind from Waverley Bell for a second. His thoughts swung back to her like a wheeling hawk.
"I only wanted her to be safe," he muttered. "I'd give my right arm to keep her safe. And neither she nor any other girl with her tastes is safe with a man like Calment... They may think they are, but they've never heard that kind of man talking with his friends late at night as I have. But she wouldn't let me speak!... Still, we'll see."
He said no more between that spot and Windyshaw.
But his coming to the new home was not that of one who came with good omens lightening his steps.
And as he passed through the gates the world was grey with rain... pouring down with a settled and insistent denseness that seemed to hint it would last for ever.
Somewhere, close at hand, he heard old Thor whinny at the sound of his footsteps, and MacLeod, his face bleak and bewrinkled, came, apparently from nowhere, through the rain to utter the prelude to a whole book full of bitter lamentations about the state of the stables, the impossibility of any horses upon earth hauling timber in such weather, and so forth.
But Job shook his head and made a queer gesture with his hands, as though repelling him.
"For God's sake, Mac, not just now," he muttered. "I've got all I want for the next hour or two."
The dour face of the old Scot changed suddenly. "Eh, laddie... it's no' so bad... on the whole... I'm thinking. Ye'll understand that it's not exactly Houndsdown, but it's no' so bad for all that... Man, ye're soaked through! Ye need yer dinner and a wee drop of whusky."
He followed Job into the house, his eye lurid, but his complaints unuttered.
From an obscure shelter among the farm buildings emerged an ancient white-bearded one, with a wet sack slung cape-wise over his shoulders—old Albery, come down off "the chalk" for an hour or two, to lend a hand. And Job's housekeeper turned from a red-hot kitchener to beam on him as he came in.
"If you'd been a minute later, Mr. Job, the dinner would have been spoiled! This is the dreadfullest oven I ever saw in all my born days!"
Job looked round at them—old Mac, old Albery, old Mrs. Carter. Not one of them but would have been comfortably pensioned long ago by any other Armsman but him. And outside, in stables that, for all old Tom Waller's good intent, were hovels compared with those back at home were Gloriana, Vulcan the weight-puller, and old Houndsdown Thor.
A slow tormented grin loosened Job's lips for a moment.
"Well, I'm afraid it isn't quite what we've been used to," he said slowly. "But... we'll see about that... And, anyway, there's not one of us that isn't among friends here."
He paused a moment.
"I owe you... a good deal..." he went on, speaking with a certain difficulty. "But so far the Armsmans have usually paid what they owed. We'll see."
A hard note ran into his voice.
"Mac, I've got that contract So now we're up against it!"
The MacLeod turned bloodshot eyes upon him.
"Man, we shall take the wee contract in our stride!" he declared... and his voice was as soft as a circular saw snarling through wet oak.
THEY were working on the horses in the grey dawn that followed, when the light from the stable door was blocked momentarily by the figure of a man.
"What d'ye want?" snapped MacLeod. "Mr. Armsman."
"Yon's Mr. Ar-rr-msman," snarled Mac. Job came out from Vulcan's stall to see Evans, the roughrider.
For a moment Job feared the little man was going to speak of the midnight episode with Calment, but Evans's first words made it clear that he had nothing to say about that.
"You'll be looking for men to work in Little Warreners at timber carting, Mr. Armsman, they tell me and... I'm looking for a job. Have you got room for me, Mr. Armsman?"
Job thought for a moment. Evans was almost as small as a lightweight jockey, but looking at the man's expression, Job knew he would bring to the work something more than most paid men include in their services.
"I have," said Job. "If you like to come on at the regular wage, with no haggling about overtime. I'll give you a bonus for your overtime at the end of the job out of the profits... if there are any. But you'll have to leave that to me... and there may be no profits. Is that any use to you?"
Evans slid off his coat, took a brush and stepped into Gloriana's stall.
"What you say is good enough for me, Mr. Armsman," he said briefly, and got to work.
Job said no more. But as he turned again to Vulcan he was aware of a faint lightening within his mind... a pale ray like the narrow line of glittering light that one sees at times edging a heavy cloud.
Outside, the steel-hued rods of rain poured down, smooth and dense, with a dull, hissing sound, intolerably depressing. But to Job Armsman, for the moment, that monotonous and melancholy sound was not enough to drown an inner voice that was saying, in a tone of remote triumph... "Well, that's six of us... three horses and three men... who will stay with this job to its finish!"
He got three more good horses, carefully picked, though by reason of the price, not of the stamp which had been bred at Houndsdown. Two timber carriages and the necessary tackle were easily found and, by the end of the week another useful man, a dark, solitary, morose person named Straker who, like Evans, came of his own accord to Job. He had the reputation of being a mute moody customer, unsociable living alone, fond of reading, and a good man with horses. He had thrown up a comfortable place on a neighboring farm to come into the timber hauling contract with Job, nobody knew why... But a little later, Job learned from MacLeod that his mother had been kind, in some long-forgotten way, to the silent Straker's young wife, who had died within a year of her marriage.
"As a family sows, laddie, so it reaps. Here's a kindness come home to roost after twenty years. That glowering deevil Straker will work for ye nigh as well as ye'll work for yourself. He's never forgotten yon far off civeelity your mother showed his wee wife before she was took."
Mac was right. He could have said much the same about himself without straining the truth...
They tackled the first butts in Little Warreners within a week of the Houndsdown sale... and from the first it was an ugly job, and a bitter fight.
The first log called for five horses to drag it from its bed of rain-soaked leaf mould—hundreds of years accumulation of it, soft as pulp and desperately deep—and that was the easiest log of them all, lying level with the lane along which it was to be hauled to the main road for its seven mile trip to the saws.
Once on the main road Gloriana and one of the lesser horses made nothing of it But their legs, stained to their chests, told what they had been asked to do to get it on to the road...
Job and MacLeod, once the first two loads were away, stared thoughtfully down the gentle slope at the base of which the last butts would be awaiting them.
A furlong away to their right the booming clamor of Calment's caterpillars snaking the butts out of Big Warreners seemed almost continuous, and it was with that sound in their ears that they exchanged a grim glance.
Old Mac's eyes softened a little as he noted the strained expression in Job's.
"Eh, laddie, it's an unkind surface for heavy hoofs... and the luck has set against us like a polar-rr wind. But for all that we'll have the last lone tree out o' this if we have to steal Lewis's five-year-olds out o' the Houndsdown stables and work 'em here in the moonlight!"
The grim old eyes began to gleam coldly with a hard, stubborn, half-fanatical glare.
"We shall do it, I'm tellin' ye! Old MacLeod! Just as we should do it if the butts were rooted in hell, d'ye see?"
Job nodded, and went off. It was already plain enough that long before they got to the foot of the slope they would be needing eight horses to a log.
He tried Lewis at Houndsdown for a couple of the old stock but Lewis was not selling. No money would tempt him—not even the fantastic—and Job Armsman was not in a position to offer anything remotely approaching fantastic prices.
It was four days before he found a pair up to the slavery that was coming—and on the fifth day he was locked to his bed with an attack of influenza that seemed to turn his bones to pulp, his muscles to tape, and even, for a day or two, threatened to grip and tear to pieces with lean and dreadful hands, his reason...
Ten days later he got out again, gaunt as a winter wolf, but fortunately free from those after effects which sometimes wreck a man for months.
Tom Waller had dropped in to see him a couple of times. It was Waller who told him that Waverley Bell and her father were in London for a few weeks.
And once, unexpectedly, on the afternoon after his attack, Sir Joseph Bernemann, out riding, had looked in—in quite a casual way, Job gathered—expressed his sympathy on account of the weather and ridden away again...
Down at Little Warreners they had done better than Job had dared to hope, though one of the new purchases had strained a fetlock badly enough to put him permanently out of harness for this contract.
Mac had planned the work on the cheerful assumption that worse and yet worse weather was to come, and he had managed to intimidate the fellers into working where he needed the trees down instead of following their own plan. Working on these lines, MacLeod had already got out some of the worst and biggest butts from the foot of the slope. And the loyal old tough had gone one better than that He had cut out delivery of the butts to the seven miles distant saws, and had concentrated on getting the ugly ones up to the level of the main road.
Job, staring at the heartening array of muddy butts already lying along the lane side awaiting the easy haul to Yeoborne, looked anxious.
"But what did old Harrison have to say about that? He was set on our getting the timber to the saws just as fast as we could? The contract called for it."
Mac looked at him curiously.
"Ou aye, but I went across to see the old deevil and told him that he could look to Calment to feed his saws from Big Warreners for a while. 'Man!' I said, 'what's the good o' Calment if you don't make use of him. Moreover, by the end o' the winter, Little Warreners will be a swamp and waur d'ye think we'll be if we leave the worst of the butts in an altogether impossible poseetion. Man, can't ye realize that Ar-rr-rrmsman is putting on to this job of hauling your meeserable timber horses that are more suitable to haul gold! For your own good ye just leave it to Ar-rr-rmsman and me and don't interfere. Just let Calment feed your saws till we're ready to haul your butts.' So I persuaded the melancholy old deevil."
Job grinned faintly as he pictured Mac dropping in on old Mr. Harrison and "persuading" him. It was many a year since the timber merchant had come into close personal touch with the actual workers. His business now was big enough to call for him in the office at the heart of things... and the arguments of the stark, grisly-bearded, acrid-voiced, bloodshot-eyed, stubborn MacLeod, utterly fearless and wholly devoid of blandishment, probably had seemed sufficiently forceful to extract Harrison's acquiescence, if only for sake of peace and quietness.
"It was good advice ye gave, laddie, ill as ye were."
"What d'ye mean, Mac? I never advised you to go to Harrison on a point that affected the deliveries demanded by the contract."
MacLeod twisted his mouth into half a smile, half a sneer.
"Aye, I thought ye were off yur head at the time. But ye did. The third night ye were down. Ye were a wee bit ramblin'... and maybe I put the words into yer mouth. I was no sure that ye were exactly clear... for times ye called me 'Mac,' and times ye called me 'Waverley dear' and times ye called me just plain 'damnyeh'! But I acted accordin' to the best o' my abeelities and judgment."
The old man gestured the point out of existence.
"An' there's this to tell ye, too. The hor-rr-se Vulcan is nothing short of meeraculous. Ye owe more to him than ye'll ever pay. Ye know, as I did, that he had never yet been tried out to his limit before. Well, now he has. An' man, there is no such another weight puller in this country. Ye'll see to-day with your own eyes. In for-rr-ty-seven years I have no seen anither such a glutton to haul! It's thanks to Vulcan that I've been able to keep old Thor a wee bit in reserve for the work to come at the bottom of the hill. Ye'll see! But for the rain we could have laughed at the timber!"
It was not quite so cheery as all that, but Job knew that Mac very gladly would have strangled Truth herself for the sake of giving him good news. And, anyway, it was far better, in actual fact, than Job had dared to anticipate.
But the worst was to come and the weather was consistently appalling.
Other irritations cropped up as the rain-veiled days went by—small things but enough to make hard work go harder.
At the beginning Calment's men, busy close by in Big Warreners, had been friendly enough. They would stroll across during the lunch hour and have a word or two with Mac and Evans and the mute Straker.
There were several of the older school who knew more about horses than the caterpillar tractors Calment was using, and though their eyes and common sense had long since taught them that a ten-ton caterpillar was incomparably more suitable for the work than the best horses, nevertheless these simple-minded, conservative old-timers had a real love and admiration for a first-class horse—and particularly for a Houndsdown horse. For Thor and Gloriana and Vulcan were more like old neighbors to these.
Yet after a while these older men gave up coming to take an Irishman's holiday, within the lunch-hour limit at the rival wood.
But certain of the younger and more irresponsible were careful to make a point of drifting across—and they speedily made it clear to Mac and his men that they came in no friendly spirit.
Beginning with a certain facetiousness at the slowness of the work these wits had developed their comments to the stage of rough irony, then to humorous contempt, and finally to ridicule.
"Ye'll understand that the puir irresponsible deevils don't care themselves. Somebody's behind them... encouraging them. Doubtless it would be Calment... for he hates ye, man, like rat poison," explained Mac glowering.
But Job was dubious.
"Calment's hardly fool enough to encourage his men at such a childish business as that," he said.
MacLeod spat—as emphatically as impolitely.
"When a man hates another man as Calment hates ye, any weapon that helps to hurt is a good weapon to him! Man, I tell ye I've seen a brace o' Calment's roughs linger twenty minutes over their lunch hour just for the joy of being comic when the hor-rr-ses were laborin' And come back next day. Would any foreman on airth stand for that... if he hadn't been told to... by his boss!"
"But it's so damned small!" demurred Job.
"Verra likely. And is Calment a big man... or is he a small... a small, mean-spirited..." and here Mac launched into wholly uncharted seas of Anglo-Scotch profanity that startled Job but also convinced him.
"Man," raved Mac, "ye're a but a bit boy with a clean heart and decent manners and ye havena yet learned it's the sma' things that hurt. But Calment knows it."
He broke off and moved away down the slope in response to a hail from Evans.
Job, hunched in a heavy overcoat, still shaken from his ten days on the sick list, sat shivering on a felled tree and watched.
Down at the foot of the slope they had got a big log on skids and were about to drag the mass up the soft slope.
Mac had all seven of the horses on and even so it was not so easy for the leaders stamped deep into the sodden mould and those behind went deeper yet, so that they had to use a big percentage of their energy in wrenching their legs free from the clinging stuff.
But they came on, tearing the dead weight behind them with a grim and dogged willingness that warmed the veins of their haggard owner; curved up over the hill-brow with great necks bending, haunches straining, veins standing out, their eyes bright with courage—a fine sight, even thrilling.
Again Job was conscious of that faint but stimulating glow at his heart. It was impossible to sit there and believe that with men and horses like these he could fail to win through—rain or no rain...
So for the next three weeks, in ugly, depressing, sunless weather, Job and his little crowd fought the oak butts in Little Warreners—and the bad days came more and more frequently. More than once they had to lay off entirely for several days on end.
But the great ten ton American caterpillars rooting and bellowing like distant mastodons in Big Warreners yielded to the appalling weather about as much as sperm whales yield to a rough sea.
Since Calment had suffered no qualms about allowing his men to air their wit at Mac's expense, Job had no hesitation in strolling over to the big wood one day and studying Calment's methods.
Job was not the type of man to allow prejudice or dislike to blind him to an unfriend's abilities and—like many others of the neighborhood, new to the later model caterpillars, he had been impressed by the regularity with which the tractors Calment used for the main road haul made the trip to the saws, each booming past twice a day with anything from fifteen to twenty solid tons of oak behind it.
Job, standing on the neutral ground between the woods, looked on quietly.
Calment was using only three caterpillars for the work—one to haul out the butts on skids, two to haul to the saws. They were sixty horse-power tractors, comparatively new, and they sent eighty tons a day to the saws, apparently without effort. It was said that Calment was putting on two more of the amazing machines immediately.
Job turned back to his horses, feeling guilty because his common-sense would not deny that Calment's way was right. The caterpillars made the work look like play.
But that was no more than just another spur.
DAY by day of that grey October, Job and his men fought through the torment of labor at the lower end of the slope. He had hoped at the beginning of that rain-veiled month to get through the contract with something of a profit but within a fortnight his hope of that was gone and by the end of the month he knew that nothing could prevent a loss that would probably devour the bulk of his remaining assets.
It was with the newly-bought horses that Job suffered most. He had selected them with the keen and niggard anxiety of a struggling diamond dealer getting together an important parcel of stones, but that availed him nothing when the best of the new horses drove a foreleg deep into a long deserted rabbit hole, filled with rotten leaves, half mossed over, with a sill of flinty stone, as they were easing a big butt obliquely down hill to a better position from which to start the uphill rush. The weight of the slewing log and the full power of the team caught the horse—and only the poor brute's scream of pain drowned the shocking sound of the great cannon-bone breaking. He had to be shot.
Job set his jaw, sold his hunter Rory and bought another big horse—a beautiful seven-year-old almost up to the Houndsdown standard. This horse was perfect when Job passed him—but, unseen, unsuspected, unsuspectable, he must have had the seeds of disease in him for he was on the sick list in a week.
Years before some woodman had dropped an iron wedge in Little Warreners and, edge upwards, it had been buried by the drift of leaves, slowly rusting to a fang of rotten iron. It was this thing which cut the frog of another horse's hoof as clean as a bayonet point.
The team had worked round about this hidden danger all day—and might have worked around it for centuries without setting a hoof on it at just that deadly angle. But it was fated that Job's horses should find it...
"Well, that's the way it goes, Mac," said Job, rather lifelessly. "Better congratulate ourselves it wasn't Vulcan. There's nobody to blame... nobody And it might have been old Thor!"
MacLeod looked at him, his face livid, his eyes alight in his head, his lips seeming to form a rough square about his mouth. He said nothing for a few minutes. If he had made a sound it must have been a scream of sheer fury.
But he only stared at Job for a long time—strangely, as though he hated him—and when he spoke it was in a high, thin, heady, almost falsetto voice, remotely sweet—quite unlike any voice Job had ever heard from him before.
"Man, ye have the most remarkable control over your human passions, don't ye think?"
Job flushed, for Mac had contrived to infuse a lancet offensiveness into his new and rather dreadful voice. But he saw that the old man was almost fey, wrought up to danger point, and it steadied him. He went over and dropped his hand on MacLeod's shoulder.
"That's all right, old man. We're seeing this through together... and the day we both lose our heads, Mac, is the day we break. I'll squeal fast enough when we break... not yet, though!"
For a moment Mac's face was rigid, then suddenly it relaxed.
"Eh, laddie, ye're right I doubt I'm getting old!" he said in his natural voice and hurried to the injured horse. Job saw that his earth-stained hands, scarred in a dozen places, were trembling.
And this was the moment that one of Calment's men chose to shout over the boundary:
"Hey, Scotty, another breakdown? Will ye have the loan of a caterpillar to haul out your timber and your horses too?"
It was an old gibe, but it had never been darted across at quite such a moment as this.
Mac turned with a snarl. The blood hummed in Job's head as he turned, striding to the hedge, but the humorist, sensing trouble, and keen-eyed enough to perceive that it was coming to him at a considerable speed, left for his own place at an even faster gait.
Job attended to the injured horse and the work went on. The setters went at a high figure to one who had long coveted them, to help with the cost of another horse. Job was getting as close to the edge of the brink as a man must who sells his dogs to help carry on...
It was at six o'clock on the following night old Tom Waller called at Windyshaw.
"Well, you've made yourself snug in here, I'll say that," he declared, glancing at the big wood fire and the wreck of the meal which Job and MacLeod had left on the kitchen table. (Job ate in the kitchen these days. There was not time for any dining-room ceremony.)
"And it's astonishing the way you've got all the worst butts up over the brow o' Little Warreners, Job... folks are talking about it!" he continued in his breezy, hearty style.
Then, without giving him time to answer Waller hurried on, staring at Job's clothes—those he had been working in all day.
"But, surely to glory, Job, you haven't forgotten what day 'tis... or night, mebbe I ought to say. Why..." he turned to Mac, "bless my soul, the man's forgot!"
He stared sternly at Job.
"It's the night o' the Agricultural Society's Dinner at the Club, Job! You don't mean to tell me you were planning not to turn out for it?"
His pleasant old eyes twinkled, as he spoke, for nobody knew better than he that Job had not intended going. It was solely because of that the old chap had taken the trouble to come all this way out to Windyshaw.
"You'd never be the first Armsman to leave his chair empty at the Agricultural Dinner, Job!" he said mildly.
For a second it hovered on the younger man's lips to say that the dinner was for farmers—not for semi-bankrupt timber-hauliers—but he choked back that particular bitterness unuttered. It was a feeble thing to say and it could only hurt old Tom Waller. What was the sense of hurting one of the best friends he ever had—perhaps, bar the dour MacLeod, the very best.
Job stood up.
"Why, no, Tom... no. I... had forgotten about it, that's all. We've had a poorish day or two at the wood and... it must have slipped out of my mind! You sit down here, and have a look at a drop of that sherry from Lord Longlands..." he grinned, in spite of himself... "still some of that left to offer a friend, Tom... and I'll be getting into something a trifle more fashionable than this kit!"
The old auctioneer looked at him with shrewd eyes, all puckered up, and there was real affection in his voice as he agreed.
"Why, thank ye, Job, so I will... just a glass, then, just a glass."
He could guess as near as most that the dinner would hardly be a pleasant function for Job. For many years before an Armsman had been at the dinner, representing, as one might say, Houndsdown's thousand acres, and the Houndsdown stud—a famous name. An Armsman of Houndsdown had a right—and a duty—to attend the Agricultural Dinner if ever a man had.
Only, to-night he was just "Armsman of Windyshaw," thirty acres pasture and ten arable.
But Job realized now that a vacant chair would be far more staringly conspicuous than a chair occupied by an Armsman—as it had been for half a century past—and he set out the bottle for old Waller and went to change his clothes without too much bitterness.
He wasted no time and within twenty minutes they were going through a watery moonlight down the narrow lane leading from the house to the road.
They came out into the full glare of the powerful headlight of a car that was just slowing at the foot of the lane.
"Here's Marcus Bell—sharp on time," said Waller.
"Who?"
"Marcus Bell. They got back from London yesterday," explained old Tom casually. "He's going to run us over to Milchester to-night. I had a cup of tea at their place this afternoon and when I came on to you it was on the understanding that Marcus picked us up here in half an hour's time."
Waller chuckled.
"I estimated you wouldn't be intending to go to the dinner... unless somebody looked you up. You being kind of sensitive like most folk your age," he added.
"How is Marcus?" asked Job rather stiffly.
"Oh, she's much the same, Job," said old Tom, with a ghost of a chuckle, "just as pretty a picture as ever... though I thought she was lookin' just a mite peaky. And perhaps a little quieter than usual. London made her tired, no doubt."
Before Job could explain—if he wanted to—that he had enquired about Marcus Bell, not, as Weller seemed or feigned to believe, Waverley, the car pulled up and Marcus greeted them.
"Well, Tom, you managed to drag this hermit out of his shell, then? How are you, Job?"
There was something rather cheering in the firm grip of Marcus's hand.
They got in, old Tom insisting on taking the back seat of the comfortable saloon.
Marcus was driving and so Job settled down by him.
"They tell me you're having a pretty bad time up at Little Warreners, Job?" said Marcus presently.
"Bad enough," agreed Job. "There's nothing impossible wants doing up there... but we've been unlucky with the horses."
"So I hear, so I hear. The big ones are all right, I hope."
"Better than ever they were."
"You'll still come out the right side of the contract, though?"
Job laughed grimly.
"The last chance of any profit went weeks ago. I'm just fighting now to keep my loss down enough to have a trifle left when it's all over."
Marcus Bell's face was expressionless in the light from the dash lamp as he answered.
"That's tough... that's damned tough. I wish I'd never put you in touch with the contract You... I suppose you couldn't drop it? I'd try to fix up something for you if you cared. I've no doubt old Harrison could be persuaded to call it off."
Job stiffened.
"And let Calment finish the job with his tractors, Mr. Bell... and for ever after I'd have him and his friends being humorous at the way he had to clear up after me and the Houndsdown horses... on a job we weren't capable of doing!" he said harshly. "Mr. Bell, I'll put my last penny and my last ounce of strength into Little Warreners before I'd back down and hand over to Calment!... I'm that kind of damned fool, I suppose. If Calment was a friend of mine I'd go and ask him to lend me a hand with the worst of the logs, just as readily as I would come and ask you for a drink if I were thirsty near your house. But I'd ask nothing from a man who hates me... and a man I despise."
"Naturally, Job. Stupid of me not to have understood that. I'm that way myself," said Marcus mildly.
"So am I... and none the worse for it in sixty years!" bawled old Waller from the back.
They ran on for a mile in silence. Then Marcus spoke again.
"But—what sort of a trout fisherman do you call yourself nowadays, old man?" he asked, with an easy laugh that, as it was intended to, took all the sting out of the enquiry. "The... line broke, didn't it I've never heard how or why. I'd be more than a little interested to hear... if you cared to explain."
"I was just clumsy," said Job quietly. "Were you?"
Marcus pondered, easing down the car a little.
"Plenty of time," he said. "Job, she's told me that you and she don't hit it off just exactly... but nothing more than that. I'm not asking you to tell me if you'd prefer to say nothing but... I'd be obliged if you'd care to let me have the facts."
His voice was very level with a sort of even chillness in it But Job sensed how badly he wanted to get at the cause of the split between Waverley and himself; and he understood too that Marcus had no objection to Job's speaking of the thing before old Tom Waller... perhaps, even, pursuing some deep and obscure motive, preferred it.
So, quietly, as Marcus's big six-cylinder saloon went sliding softly through the wavering moonlight, Job explained the midnight affair with Calment and his own impulsively clumsy attempt to deal with what had seemed to him a problem which required dealing with.
Marcus listened to the end without comment, without movement, and after Job had finished speaking he sat, staring straight ahead, for so long without speaking that old Waller's politeness was strained to breaking point.
"And damme, boy, you were in the right and Marcus's girl was in the wrong. You were straight... and if you were clumsy (can't see it, myself!) what does a nice, sweet, healthy little soul like Waverley Bell know about men like Calment, hey? Nothing! Damn all... as the boys used to say in the sodgerin' days. She thinks she knows! And she doesn't He's a..."
Waller pulled up suddenly, and started again more quietly.
"Hey, Marcus, let me tell you this... an old friend can speak plain, I s'pose? That little girl in the village... don't know her name, don't want to... ain't by any means the only one that's taken an evenin' run in Calment's car. I get about the country and I meet folk. And folk gossip. Half the gossip's lies all right... but some ain't. And Job Armsman ain't the only man, by several, that will manhandle Calment next time they see girls they respect gallivantin' off in that car of his! No, sir! And I know... I'm a valuer, and I value folk in and out of their farms like a doctor values 'em in and out of their beds. And doctors and valuers learn how to get right close to the truth!"
Old Tom seemed to be worked up, for he went on.
"I got no girl of my own, Marcus... wish I had, give most anything for a little high-stepper like Miss Waverley... but, now we're sort of on the subject, I'll tell you that before any girl of mine rode to London and back of a night for sake of a dance in a hotel with Calment, I'd... I'd... send her to bed without her supper."
It was a perfectly awful anti-climax. But it had been a tolerably good climax in old Tom's youth.
"It would worry Waverley terribly to send her to bed without any supper," said Marcus, with a kind of affectionate irony. "But I understand what you mean and I'm obliged to you, Tom, for your frankness. And to you, Job... There are times a man misses his... children's mother," he went on musingly, his voice cold and soft and slow and almost uncannily silky...
"They're a real problem, you know... these modern children... girls. Pretty as you like... with their bobbed hair and their cool, casual impudence, their air of knowing it all, and their real capacity for doing things. And they really do know quite a lot. But they don't know the Devil-in-Wait that lies back, far back, behind the minds of some men... eh? Of most men, would you say? Or am I bitter!"
It was as though the ex-gambler were talking to himself.
"You can't smack them and put them to bed... You can only watch them. And if you watch too long what are you going to read in their big eyes one of these fine mornings?" said Marcus in that uncannily silky voice. "Oh, yes... certainly it's a problem!..."
They were running into Milchester and Marcus sat up a little straighter.
"You were right, of course, Job. You were clumsy, too... not that that matters... for by the time you're experienced enough to be skilful in these things, maybe you'll have ceased to care much. I'm much obliged to you... and I'll do what I can to put it right for you... and I'll make things plain to Mr. Calment."
There was a quiet, almost purring note in Marcus Bell's voice.
He gently braked the car to a smooth standstill outside the Club—at which the dinner was being held.
"I'll just run the car round into the garage and meet you in the lounge. We're in good time!" he said.
The car stole forward, making way for others coming up behind.
Job and Tom Waller eyed the sparkle of the rear light
"That's a thoroughly dangerous man to make an enemy of, my boy! Calment can't afford it. Marcus, he lies in wait as cold as the blade of a knife. Known him from a boy, Job... Always been a leetle more afraid of him than of any other man, not that I claim to be particular afraid of anybody. But Lord help the man who harms his girl Waverley. She was out dancing nearly every night in London... mostly with Calment, and Marcus is setting up with his ears pricked," muttered the old chap. "But me, I'd as soon come between a roe-doe that's guarded by a tiger... a tiger and..." his shrewd old eyes flickered to the lean, clean, heavy-jawed face of Job Armsman, "and a half-starved bloodhound!... And these'll follow the man they want to the doorsteps of hell, I believe!"
"What was that, Tom?"
"Eh? Oh, nothing. Come on in! Marcus'll meet us in the lounge."
But the old auctioneer lingered a moment to watch another car give up its occupants at that moment.
It was a big-hooded Arrowhead seven-seater tourer, belonging to one Everest, a friend of Calment.
Calment was prominent among the crowd that poured out of it, most of them swaggering in dinner jackets.
It was not the custom to dress for the Agricultural Society's dinner—but Calment's crowd had to be just a little different a little more dashing—as befitted gentlemen quite accustomed to "going on" from one function to another.
Old Waller, both hands jammed deep in his pockets, watched them pass in, quite evidently intending to enjoy themselves.
He turned to Job, glowering.
"Nice little bunch, there, hey?" he growled. "Not a fault to find with most of 'em except they can't think of enought ways to spend the money their fathers earned for them... But there's one or two of the crafty ones there, too... including Master Calment Well, come on in."
BEFORE he had been at the dinner ten minutes, Job Armsman was glad old Waller had conspired with Marcus Bell to drag him out of his retreat at Windyshaw to join them all. It is characteristic of the genuine farmer the world over that he loves an occasional festival, provided it is plentifully spread, and most of those present were there to enjoy themselves. They did that. Whether they advanced the cause of post-War English agriculture is doubtful: but they speedily made plain that there was still a very considerable extent of sheer, personal heartiness surviving the shocks, alarms and depressions of the times.
It warmed Job—even excited him a little—to realize what a number of good friends he appeared to possess in this big crowd of men.
He had retired to his lair at Windyshaw, after selling up, in much the spirit of a wounded grizzly, dumbly resentful, ready to fight all-comers, mistrusting the world.
But, it seemed, the world—in a local sense—had been keeping much closer tabs on him than he had expected. There were many who, red and radiant from their formidable efforts over their plates, called out congratulations to him on the fine work his horses were putting in on the heavy slavery at Little Warreners.
Sir Joseph Bernemann, in the chair, caught his eye and raised his glass to him with his quiet equable smile; and Tom Waller, sitting on one side of him, together with Marcus Bell on the other, appeared to be in far too enthusiastically a festive mood to give Job much chance of indulging in what had become his favourite pastime, namely, worrying about weights and cubic feet, surfaces and horses and haulage.
It was—for its first part—one of the evenings a man, looking back, marvels that he could ever have seriously planned to miss.
Down at the end of one of the long tables Calment and his crowd made merry.
It was not until an hour after the cloth had been cleared, the more formal speeches finished, the company thinned out a little, that Job began to catch above the talk the first of certain insidious, verbal-barbed arrows with which Calment commenced to treat him. The first of these Job noticed was no more than an observation about the marvellous ease with which the tractors could deal with timber and a sarcastic expression of amazement that any one still existed old-fashioned enough to use horses for the work., Calment's friends greeted that with rather a noisy chorus of approval. Most of them would have approved anything by that time.
Job heard it—as he was meant to do—but went on talking to his neighbors. It was nothing to have to answer, anyway.
Calment was sitting with his back to Job.
But bit by bit, cunningly slipped in among general observations, Calment's comments became more cutting. He was a past master of that sort of side attack—even as Job had told him. In vino veritas—plus a little. Possibly Calment had been a trifle enthusiastic with the champagne, for he was normally a shade too slick to overstep that narrow limit at which generalities cease to be wholly generalities and become personalities, Though certainly he would have risked more to plant a deep barb in his enemy's spirit than he would have risked for anything else in the world. Calment was a fighter—in his way. Only it was not much of a way.
The gibes grew more pointed, a little louder, and their reception by the satellites a little more boisterous. One or two of the things Calment said were really witty. He was doing some rather startlingly effective work at Big Warreners with the tractors. Caterpillars had never seriously been tried out in the country before and, to his credit, he had really shown folk what the powerful machines could do. But the man could not triumph gracefully. And as he hated Job Armsman, so he hated horses—for the same reason. He was half afraid of them.
Job sat tight. Just as he had not desired to be the first Armsman to default at the yearly dinner—so he was determined if possible not to be the first Armsman to "start something" at the same function...
But Calment was being audibly clever about the casualties among the horses he had bought; about the clumsiness of MacLeod and Straker with the timber.
Job began to notice side glances from his neighbors...
"Take no notice, boy... the man's had too much wine and he's trying to pick a quarrel! D'ye hear me now, Job?" muttered old Waller, once, an anxious eye on Armsman's jutting chin and grim, down-drooping lip corners...
"... they tread in rabbit holes and snap their shins! Now, a caterpillar tractor never treads in a rabbit hole!"
They were laughing at it as if it were really funny.
"Well now, what about making a move, hey, Job?" suggested Waller, earnestly.
Marcus Bell was staring down at his wine glass, and neither he nor Job appeared to have heard the old man. But Calment had—and he speeded up. Men were talking when he began his next sentence but before he had said a dozen words one of those odd silences occurred when everybody seems to have come to an end of his sentence at the same moment And Calment finished his comment, speaking alone...
"... a sentimental fool. Misusing willing horses for his own profit to do the work of big machines. The man's a plain fool! Why, my mechanics only to-day offered to drag his timber and his horses and his men too out of their own mud... sheer compassion. Prize horses though they are. Any one of my caterpillars would break their hearts..."
Job Armsman moved sharply.
"Set down, Job!" said Waller loudly anxious.
"No, Tom. Had all I can stand!"
Job stood up, half turned, reached across and beat a heavy hand on the sleek black-coated shoulder of the man behind him.
"Calment! Stand up!"
His voice was menacing.
Calment turned like a cat at the first hint of danger, and the confidence in his eyes faded to unease as he saw Job's face.
"Only half the men in this room heard your joke, Calment!" said Job, rather slowly. "And as I was the subject of it I consider I'm entitled to ask you to repeat it so that everybody can get the full benefit of your wit!"
Calment shrugged, glancing about him.
"Is this necessary?" he said.
"Nunno... nunno..." began old Tom Waller, reaching up for Job's arm. It was Marcus Bell who leaned across Job and checked Waller's arm.
"I am telling you it is!" said Job, with a queer, taut softness in his voice. An ugly softness.
"Possibly. But I do not agree with you, Armsman," said Calment.
"You will repeat it or you will apologize and withdraw it, Calment," said Job with a queer, quiet exaltation in his voice. There were only two men in the room as far as he was concerned—Calment and himself.
His anger jetted like a little spurt of steam.
"Man, I mean it!" he said.
The satellites looked at his face and carefully looked away again.
But Calment kept his nerve.
"I see. You are angry, Armsman," he said. "Well, I agree that you are entitled to be angry. I spoke of your horses and their... and your... work in Little Warrener's wood. I compared horses unfavourably with caterpillar tractors. Well... I think I was right. I still think I am right... But it seems that I have hurt your feelings. Very well, Armsman. I do not come to a function like this with the intention of hurting the feelings of any one of my fellow guests. So I apoligize... because I have hurt you!... Now, let me explain that when I compared your horses with my tractors I did not know that you were present I believed you had gone. If I had realized that you were still present I should not have spoken as I did. Does that satisfy you?"
His eyes ran confidently round the room, resting on Sir Joseph Bernemann, the chairman.
"No!" said Job. "It does not satisfy me... Why you sleek hound, you are lying... and most of the men in the room know it, none better than you know it yourself. You knew I was here—that I could hear—and you aimed it at me! Now, listen!"
There was a dry hollow boom in his deep-chested voice and every man in the room listened.
"You said that I misused my horses for my own profit down in that muddy hell at Little Warrener's! I! And I'm Armsman of Houndsdown. For four hundred years, son after father, Armsmans have bred horses up at Houndsdown... and you're the first to suggest that one of us has misused the fine beasts they worked for, planned for, slaved for—and ruined themselves for, as I know very well I have... There's not a decent man in this room will believe it! Those horses... Vulcan, the mare Gloriana, and Thor... are finer animals than you... or I... and I'd as soon misuse my wife for profit... if I had one... as I'd hurt one of those horses... or one of those half-breeds that have worked well for me in that wood!... You boast your tractors will each haul its twenty-five tons to the saws at Yeoborne! But because I would never think of asking a pair of my horses to do that do you think it's because I don't believe they are capable of it?" Job's voice was rising, and Calment shrugged again, glancing about him,... He was quick to seize this side issue.
"You seriously suggest that a pair of your horses could haul twenty-five tons from Little Warrener's to Yeoborne, Armsman?"
He laughed.
"Man, they couldn't start it! And if they could start it they'd lay down on it in less than a furlong on the level! Why, Armsman, you're excited! I'll bet you a level thousand, play or pay, that your best pair of horses won't draw your twenty-five tons a furlong on the level road!"
The cold, confident, infuriatingly superior tone stung like acid... but nevertheless Job hesitated. Twenty-five tons!
"Bet him, Job!" said Marcus Bell quietly.
"No, no!" Several men... friends of Job... protested anxiously.
"If you believe they can do it, bet him, Job. I'm backing you!" came the chill, quiet voice of Marcus again.
"I'll take that, Calment," said Job. "It's a bet!" Marcus Bell stood up, like a spring snapping straight.
"A bet, gentlemen! Mr. Calment lays Mr. Armsman a level thousand pounds, play or pay, that he cannot produce a pair of horses that will haul a load of twenty-five tons one furlong on a strictly level road in good condition. That right, Calment?"
"Perfectly."
"Right, Job?"
"Quite right!"
"Good! Put up your money!"
They were calling it impossible all round the room.
Twenty-five tons—on the road! Impossible! What was the matter with Job Armsman? Nobody knew better than he that the thing was crazy.
"Put up your money, gentlemen! I suggest that Mr. Worrall be stake-holder!"
Marcus was pushing the thing with a strange and hungry intentness.
Mr. Worrall, manager of the local bank, a guest by virtue of his position, nodded his assent.
"Checks will do!"
Calment's friends enthusiastically pulled him down. Somebody produced a check book on the local bank, and instantly two forms were available.
These Marcus collected.
"Both on your bank, Mr. Worrall!" he said, passing them.
There was a scarcely noticeable hesitation on the part of the banker, but it did not escape the icily smiling Marcus Bell.
He tapped the table sharply with his glass and the growing murmur of expostulation and argument stilled for a moment.
"A bet," said Marcus, "is a bet And stakes are stakes. These checks, as a matter of form, should be guaranteed... or certified."
A fair, flushed youth—Everest—by Calment spoke hurriedly.
"I'll guarantee Mr. Calment's," he said. "For that—and a thousand on top of it!"
Marcus faced him, smiling, but old Tom Waller heaved round like a red-faced bear, half laughing, half angry.
"Right you are, Mr. Everest I'll guarantee Job Armsman's for the like... two thousand pounds!" he bawled.
("Damned old fool," he added half inaudibly, "the horses'll never do it.")
Something seemed to rap sharply at Job's heart—inspiration or madness. He still had the horses—worth perhaps two thousand. He might as well sink or swim with them.
"Come on, Calment... you too, Everest," he jarred. "I'll raise that check two thousand!"
Calment snapped it like a wolf, the fair-haired boy, Everest, backing him, and several others called on the two for a share of the bet.
Old Tom snorted, glaring round.
"Call it five thousand... eh?... man or mouse... and I'm in it for two thousand! Come on, some of you!"
His extra thousand was snapped up at once. Clearly there was not a man of that wine-lit crowd who believed the horses could do it
Job glared about him, hesitant He believed Vulcan and Gloriana could just do it though Thor was perhaps a shade too old. He was excited... and roused. Now, if only he possessed the money he would have backed his big beauties to any amount—win or lose, sink or swim.
But he was not the only one excited. It was the wrong end of the dinner for coolness. From all points of the room, men—all good judges of heavy draught horses—were offering to increase Calment's check or to bet on the side.
But old Tom had all he cared about—and Job had used his last pound. They sensed that instantly at Calment's table and were quick to use it.
"Another thousand, Armsman... come along," laughed the fair boy, and Calment's gibe was ready on the heels of that offer.
"No, Everest... two thousand! Come along, Armsman!"
Job was mute, gulping. He hadn't the money.
Then Marcus stood up again, half turning, so that he faced the whole room! his hard eyes were gleaming like blue jewels, but his face was perfectly composed and his voice as cool and quiet as if he were in his own home, chatting to Waverley.
"That appears to make the wager five thousand pounds a side, gentlemen," said Marcus evenly. "And now, just for the fun of the thing, suppose we have a real bet! I am prepared to back Armsman of Houndsdown—to guarantee his check—for a further twenty thousand pounds! Take it as you wish, gentlemen—split it as you like it! I'm backing Armsman!"
Perhaps he was. He said so. But he was looking far beyond the stakes. He was gambling for Waverley's sake—for Waverley's happiness.
He steadied them for a moment. But—twenty-five tons for a furlong on an ordinary tar-bound road! Impossible!
Calment and his friends came back at him, shot by shot, for fifteen thousand of the money, and the rest was taken bit by eager bit by the rest of the company. There may have been a hundred and fifty men there and many were well-to-do.
Between them they absorbed even Marcus Bell's cold-blooded bet—and, wildly excited, some of the crowd round Calment began to call for more.
"Not tired already?" they said. "Come along... Job... come on, Tom... come along, Mr. Bell!" they laughed, confident and eager, "Come on, Job... sink or swim!"
The fair-haired boy Everest had not long before inherited much more money than was good for him and leaned forward eagerly.
"Come on, Armsman! Another thousand!"
"On Vulcan and Gloriana!" added Calment, with his acid laugh, "not to mention Houndsdown Thor!"
Marcus flashed up again. But he was forestalled.
A quiet, quiet voice, tranquil, suave, gentle, dangerous, broke in from the head of the table.
"Surely, gentlemen, enough is already at stake upon this event... Yet, if Mr. Calment or any of his friends are still unsatisfied, I shall be glad to accommodate them. I am prepared to back the horses to do what Mr. Job Armsman has bet they can do... up to any amount not exceeding one hundred thousand pounds!"
It was Sir Joseph Bernemann, with a financial sledge-hammer in each hand.
Something in the events of the last few moments must have stirred him though he gave no sign of that.
But human nature is human nature the world over and the millions that spoke in the quiet equable voice of this master of millions steadied them all. Marcus Bell had flashed into the thing like a fighting sword-fish—but Bernemann came in slow, immensely powerful, mighty, like a sperm whale. Young Everest stared, with his mouth open. Calment glared, and the eyes of the company wavered from Sir Joseph to Job and back again, as it dawned upon them all that here, publicly, in less than five minutes three men, all sound as steel or rock, had stated that they were prepared to back Job Armsman's opinion for a total of a hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds!
Marcus was staring at Sir Joseph with a queer, quizzical smile. But it was only Marcus, of all there, who knew how greatly the big horses had moved Sir Joseph's interest.
But Bernemann avoided his friend's eye.
There were no takers of the colossal bet.
"Nothing doing?" asked Marcus pleasantly, looking about him. "No? Well, now we know where we are!"
He went across to Mr. Worrall to supervise the alterations and initiallings of the checks.
MR. NEIL MACLEOD—unlike Job—had never felt the faintest sort of inclination to miss the Agricultural Society's Dinner. For more years than he cared to think about he had attended that dinner and attended it thoroughly—in the steward's room, with certain other privileged cronies.
And, near midnight, it was to that comfortable retreat that an excited waiter passed on the news of the big bet upstairs.
Mac, who had just dined along the stage of comparatively mellow benignity was on the point of drinking the health of the select little company present, when he overheard the terms of the bet as gabbled by the waiter. His glass of whiskey—with a little water—was halfway to his lips, and, for the first time in his life, he was observed to halt his glass, and return it to the table. "What?"
It flicked across to the door like a bullet. The steward turned to the bristling Scot "Some gentlemen upstairs—Sir Joseph, Mr. Armsman, Mr. Bell and Mr. Waller—have backed two of Mr. Armsman's horses to pull twenty-five tons for a furlong on the level road, Mac!... John says there's twenty-five thousand on it already... and Sir Joseph offered another hundred thousand on the horses with no takers!"
MacLeod stood up, slowly, his beard bristling, and his eyes reddening. He went completely sober as he rose.
"Twenty-five tons, man!"
The burning eyes fixed the waiter.
"Man, ye're utterly demented!"
But John, an ancient waiter, very wise, only smiled.
"That's the bet, Mr. MacLeod! They..."
"Twenty-five tons a furlong on the road! It's a hall o' lunatics ye have above! Houndsdown hor-rr-ses are no' mammoths! Mr. Armsman would no' make such a hysterical bet in this world! It's no' possible. Man, your ears deceived ye. To start twenty-five tons on granite... more agin the dynamometer... but not to haul twenty-five tons a furlong on the road! Job knows better!"
There was a remote entreaty in the strained voice.
The old waiter shrugged.
"That's what it was! And Mr. Calment and his friends... nearly everybody in the room bet him like a flash!"
"Twenty thousand! Man, ye're ineevitably wrong or deaf. Mr. Armsman has na the money."
"No... perhaps not. But Mr. Bell and Mr. Waller have and they backed the horses because Mr. Armsman said they could do it! And the others took it and asked for more—nasty like—and Sir Joseph stepped in and smashed the smiles off their faces by offering to back Mr. Armsman's opinion for a hundred thousand! I... I never seen the like in my life!"
MacLeod stiffened at the name of Calment, thought a moment, then asked in an oddly subdued voice:
"Tell me now, laddie, was Mr. Armsman maybe a wee bit excited by his wine! Not necessarily drunk, but... wrought upon!"
"He was as sober as a judge!" declared old John.
Mac sat down suddenly, drained his glass and stared at the faces of those about him.
"I'm fearin' it's true!" he muttered.
"They're breaking up—coming downstairs now," said the steward.
Mac rose, seized his hat and coat like a man in a dream and left the room without a word.
"Ah well, he would always seem an uncivil devil to anybody who didn't know him," said a wrinkled, weatherbeaten man—the huntsman to the local fox-hounds. "And a bet like that is enough to strain every nerve in any man's system! This will be the end of Mr. Armsman—if it's true."
Mac, disdaining any more diplomatic exit than via the Members' entrance caught Job on the curb outside, talking to Sir Joseph Bernemann, Marcus and old Tom Waller.
Utterly ignoring everybody crowding out, and offensively liberal with his elbows, the MacLeod caught Job's arm, and for a second looked steadily into the strained eyes that were turned on him.
"Eh, laddie, what's this they're tellin' me? What have ye now condemned the hor-rr-ses to do?" he asked quietly.
Job's eyes were hard and his voice, too, as he quietly told the terms of the bet.
The loyal old tough stared back at him steadily—both men so worn and haggard that they looked half starved. There was nobody in that crowd who knew as much about pedigree heavy draught horses as they—and the men about them craned to hear MacLeod's reply.
"Vulcan and Thor might just have done it—if Thor had been five years younger!" said Mac slowly. His face was white. "Yet—ye have endured much from the man Calment—and there was no need to endure more. I would have done just that in your poseetion laddie!... But, man, I wish ye had no' done it! I wish ye had no' done it!"
He was clawing his dingy beard.
They might have been alone for all the heed they gave to the listening crowd about them.
Job's face was drawn and strained as he spoke.
"Vulcan and Gloriana can do it—if we look after them."
Mac nodded.
"Yes. That's the truth of it—but they'll no' have one ounce—no' one wee ounce to spare!..." The red eyes gleamed again.
"Ye understand, Armsman, I'm no' blamin' ye. I'd have done the same in your place. But... it's well nigh a matter o' life and death for the hor-rr-ses ye select... and, man, I'd sooner ye'd have made it a matter of life and death for me!... But ye'll win!"
He glared round at the circle of listeners as though he were only now aware of their presence, and strode away muttering...
Marcus Bell drove Job home.
That evening Marcus had put twenty thousand on the knees of the gods but for all the anxiety he displayed concerning the money it might have been a few orange pips.
Before they were well clear of the town he had made it quite evident to Job that he was tranquilly certain the horses would pull the load, and, in spite of his big stake, he seemed to prefer discussing things which appeared almost trivial compared with the tremendous test to which the horses were now committed, or, as Mac had bitterly put it, "condemned" to undergo.
For example, Marcus was clearly interested in that momentary shadow of hesitation which had darkened Calment's face at the suggestion that the checks should be guaranteed.
"I am used to noticing the expressions of a man's face when he's risking money, Job... and I would make a big bet... another... that Master Calment is badly overdrawn at his bank and was none too confident how Worrall would take the idea of the check. Worrall knows. It was all right the moment that wild young plunger Everest backed him. Calment lit up from the minute Everest came in. You know, Job, I'd risk a trifle that in spite of his bluff and his clothes and cars, Calment's got nothing behind him. He should have—but he spends rather faster than he makes. We shall see. That's why I preferred to get the big bets put up in the form of two checks—yours and Calment's—each guaranteed by the participators in the bets. We shall get our winnings that way."
Job nodded.
"I see. I wonder about that, Mr. Bell. I don't mind saying... to you... that my check wouldn't have been good for the thousand paid over the counter to-morrow. I would have had to make arrangements—if you had not stood by."
Marcus did not seem surprised.
"Never mind that, Job. That check'll be taken care of. What interests me is the notion that Calment's a man of straw... behind his facade."
He laughed quietly, his hard eyes on the road before him.
"They were all against you, technically—and all in sympathy with you, personally. Plenty of men bet against your horses to-night who would be delighted to see you win—until they risked their money. Old Waller hit out like the good old sportsman he is. And my little venture got them going... eh? But Sir Joseph caught them fair and square over their note cases. He's a quiet, dangerous customer, Bernemann... most of these big men are."
Job nodded, perplexed.
"I never was so amazed in my life as when he offered that enormous bet," he confessed. "I fancy he was a bit surprised to see how they wolfed your bet, and decided to line up beside you—just to cool them down."
Marcus glanced at him rather queerly.
"To line up beside me!" he echoed. "No, Bernemann is a good chap, but he's far too clever and self-disciplined a business man to line up beside a friend to the extent of risking a heavy sum on a bet on the sheer impulse of the moment. If he ever wanted to help me financially—and I needed it—he would do it by some bit of cool, cast-iron figure-juggling that would make a cold certainty of it. No, he wasn't thinking of me, or you, when he dropped that hundred thousand pound bomb to-night D'you know what made him do it?"
"I certainly don't. For it's far from a certainty—no good pretending anything else," said Job.
Marcus chuckled.
"Bernemann broke in because Calment irritated him," he explained.
"How?"
"Don't you remember Calment's sneer? 'Come on, Armsman... another thousand! On Vulcan and Gloriana—not to mention Houndsdown Thor!'... That's what jarred Bernemann. For he's got an admiration for those big horses of yours—particularly old Thor—that seems to me almost extravagant, He respects them more than he respects a good many men. He's told me so. He's got a fine stud of race horses—but he's never really cared much about them. They never made anything like the appeal to him that your big ones made!"
"And he'd risk a hundred thousand on them like that?" marvelled Job.
"Why shouldn't he? He's probably worth fifteen millions. And a rich man is usually ready to pay for his fancies."
"Well, there are worse fancies than a good Shire horse," said Job.
Marcus nodded and they drove on to Windyshaw Lane in silence.
STRIDING through the patchwork of moonshine and shadow that overlaid the lane from the main road to Windyshaw, Job Armsman found himself lighter hearted than he had been for many weeks.
He knew better than any one, except perhaps the MacLeod, exactly the fearful demand which the colossal task to which he had "condemned" them would make on two of his remaining horses, and though the practical common-sense which the events and vicissitudes of the past few years had driven into him warned him that the trial before the noble beasts was extreme, nevertheless there lay deep in his heart a conviction that they would triumph over it.
But, warmer, more cordial even than that conviction, was the knowledge that he had seen and heard three men, good, sound men, line up beside him that evening, and on no more than the strength of his opinion offer to back him in cold blood to the extent of a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
Waller, Marcus Bell and Sir Joseph Bernemann, betting on his opinion, had thrust their money, like a hedge of bayonets, into the teeth of a hundred men, many of them keen judges, whose opinions differed from his, Job Armsman's.
Job glowed as he realized what this meant
They were willing to back him because they believed in his judgment—because they saw something in him which seemed to them to make his judgment worth backing—even though he had failed to hold Houndsdown, failed to tear a profit out of Little Warreners, failed to hold Waverley, failed every way!
He must not let these men down—anything, everything he could do but that Vulcan and Gloriana must pull that terrible load.
But could they?
Twenty-five tons for a level furlong on a tar-bound road!
Job would have staked his life that they could exercise a pull against the dynamometer which would equal, theoretically, the starting of a load of forty tons, perhaps more.
But that was a vastly different matter from actually hauling a wheeled truck laden with the sheer brute weight of twenty-five tons of metal, for the eighth of a mile over a newly-laid road of rolled in granite bound with tar.
Four tons each—continuously hauled over stone setts—was the minimum which Liverpool buyers expected from the big Shires they bought so carefully.
But here was a demand for twelve and a half tons each over a softer surface than stone. It sounded impossible.
But—Gloriana was honest and immensely above the average, and Vulcan was just a ton of muscle and desperate bull courage, whose extreme hauling power had never been measured. That it was enormous, Job knew.
"If any two horses in the country can do it, they can," muttered Job. "But—if old Thor were six years younger—it would be Vulcan and Thor I'd choose!"
He paused a moment in the moonlight, listening, for the thousandth time, to the subdued whinny of the old horse as he caught the sound of Job's footsteps.
Then, slowly, he moved on to the house.
It was perhaps an hour later when Mac came in.
The old man was cold sober and seemed a little subdued—less aggressive than usual.
"Ah weel, laddie," he said, as he turned from the door to the fire, "ye've put your fate in the melting-pot the night—your ain, the hor-rr-ses, and mine and all."
He stared into the fire.
"Man, I'd have done the same—and I would have gi'ed a year's pay to see Mr. Bell and Sir Joseph lash out with the thousands. Mr. Bell's bet must have flicked into Calment's face like a swir-rr-l of hail—and then Sir Joseph cam' doon like an avalanche!... But it's a verra terrible task ye set the hor-rr-ses... terrible..."
He moved out of the living room, mumbling something about "records." Job heard his heavy boots thudding up the stairs to his room. He was back at once, carefully handling a small packet of worn and crumpled newspaper cuttings.
"Man, we'll refresh our memories wi' what's been done in the past."
He pored over the strips, muttering and clawing at his beard.
"D'ye mind this, laddie... the horse Umber at the Royal Agricultural Hall..." he said and began to read from a thumbed cutting... "Umber, the eight-year-old brown gelding belonging to the Liverpool Corporation on Monday pulled eighteen and a half tons over granite setts some yards before the leading horse of the team added its own strength... Umber was in the wagon shafts, his leader being Vesuvius, another fine brown gelding..."
Job nodded.
"Yes... two rare good horses. I saw it... I was there."
Mac took no notice, but continued to read, peering intently at the words as though he sought to find between the lines some magic talisman with which to help the Houndsdown pair.
"... they started with the wagon heaped with fifty-six pound weights totalling fourteen tons, the vehicle itself weighing two and a half tons... the team pulled the load with ease... d'ye mark that, laddie!... two more tons were added making eighteen and a half tons in all and the two men on the wagon. Again the two horses moved the load—a prodigious pull but the animals were not allowed to go further... Aye!"
Job nodded, his eyes brightening a little.
"I would always back Houndsdown Vulcan to out-pull Umber," he said.
Mac agreed, fumbling at another slip.
"At Wembley, one horse in flat shoes pulled fourteen tons," he read. "And horses shod with toe-pieces and caulkins pulled varying weights from sixteen to twenty-nine tons the latter being the limit of weight recorded by the dynamometer... but each day with comparative ease three of the horses pulled from twenty to twenty-four tons each... and two selected horses on every day very easily pulled the full record of twenty-nine tons!"
It was not new to either of them, being from a long familiar report provided to the press by the secretary of the Shire Horse Society, but there was something heartening about the re-reading of that list of tremendous pulls.
That their horses could equal, in like conditions, anything in that list of records, both of them were confident. But the conditions under which Vulcan and Gloriana would work were vastly more difficult—they had not merely to start their load, they had to haul it the eighth of a mile on a level stretch of ordinary highway.
The thrashed it over for a couple of hours, minutely, tirelessly, and it was with a little more confidence that they finished.
"I think we'll win, laddie!" declared Mac, "and I..." he broke off listening intently.
"Man, did ye hear anything?"
Job had not... but he was at the door instantly flung it back, and ran out heading to the stable.
The door was wide... yawning... a black oblong in the moonlight. There was a movement by the corn bin in the corner, and Job jumped for a dark shadow that seemed strange in that corner.
His fingers closed on the shoulders of a man. Job slid his big hands to the throat of this one, and forced him back over the corn bin, with the savage strength that, backed by the sudden spurt of furious anxiety, might have dislocated the spine of the prowler, had he not let himself go lax and flaccid before Job's attack.
"What are you after here?"
MacLeod, who had grabbed the oil lamp from the table, and borne it flaming and smoking across the yard, leaned past Job, holding the lamp low and peering close.
"Eh, but it's Noddy White, Job. Let him up, the puir, feckless deevil—and we'll talk wi' him!"
He set down the lamp, darted into the stalls of the uneasy horses, and ran his hands through the mangers.
These were all clean and bare and dry.
Mac bent his haggard face over, sniffing like a hound, and he drew a breath of relief.
There was no sign that anything had been given the horses since they had eaten their evening feed of oats.
Mac came out from the stalls, and listened grimly to Job's questioning of the captive—a ragged, white-faced, undersized, wizened creature with terrified eyes and a loose-lipped meaningless grin.
"Why, Noddy, who sent you here to-night?" asked Job—quietly, for the man was clearly scared to the point of speechlessness.
There was no answer but the poor devil began to do what served well enough for speech.
With trembling, dirty hands, and glancing corner wise at Job, he took handful after handful of oats from his pockets and dropped them back into the bin from which he had stolen them.
Job looked at Mac, who was grinning with sheer relief. Like every one else in the district, both of them knew Noddy White, the local half-wit Almost every village possesses one of these. Noddy was just intelligent enough to be safe from the attention of the authorities, and he was capable of doing simple odd jobs for small pay. He lived in a small, dilapidated cottage, a little isolated from the village, to which lonely habitation he had gravitated as wood chips drift to still water—and from this retreat he Came forth daily to wander about much like a stray dog. He was usually ready to grin cheerfully at one, but he never seemed happy or unhappy. He liked to bask in the sun, but he did not appear to mind rain; he was always ready to eat but did not complain greatly when he was hungry; he was never seen in new clothes but was rarely without sufficient covering. He was neither a practiced nor persistent thief. He could saw wood, clean pig styes, and so forth but he was quite likely to tire with his task two-thirds done and slink rather furtively away without collecting his pay... In the "good old days" when men were hanged for stealing a spoon, and transported for stealing a turnip from a field, his kind were hanged by the thousand, but nowadays they do not come to much harm. People understand about them and are usually easy with them. Nobody interferes with them —and they interfere very little with people. They are as widely different from the professional tramp as from the regular respectable workman...
Noddy White was one of these, and Job had seen him about for years.
"Why, Noddy," said Job quietly, "were you taking the corn for your fowls?"
Noddy presently made it plain that he was taking the oats for himself. Probably he would have hashed them up into a half-cooked mess of porridge on the following morning.
It was perfectly clear that he had not entered the stables with any intention of hurting the horses on which so much depended.
And Job, abetted by Mr. MacLeod, who knew something about poverty himself, relented the instant he realized this.
"Well, old man, there's no call to be so scared... nobody wants to hurt you. But if you're that hungry... we'll see if we can't manage something better than the oats," declared Job, and led the way to the house, where he prowled around the pantry rather devastatingly.
"They tell me that oats and rough, coarse food are mighty good for you against all sorts of highly modern diseases, Noddy, and maybe they're right But here's a bit of cold beef that'll help out, all the same... and some cheese. And a bit of butter, Noddy. And here's a loaf... I'll soon be hunting mighty busy for my loaves myself if those big beauties of mine fail me, Noddy, old man. There now, that'll make a tidy parcel... if we put in that bit of pie. Good pie that, Noddy. Better find a bag."
He found it and filled it
Noddy's eyes gleamed as he took it mumbled his idea of violent gratitude, and disappeared.
"If the hor-rrses come to any harm between now and the hauling it'll be at the hands of some cleverer scoundrel than yon poor deevil," muttered Mac, peering after him.
Job nodded.
But, nevertheless, the alarm had aroused them... and thereafter they took it in turns to sleep in the loft over the stable so that it would be an adept prowler who could attempt to get at the horses or their food without discovery.
MARCUS BELL had advised overnight that Job should stop using his Big Three for the timber hauling at Little Warreners for fear of accidents and he had promised to get in touch with old Harrison and arrange things.
Job no longer minded abandoning that contract for now there was so much money depending on the fitness of the horses that the utmost sum to come in from the timber hauling would only look like small change against the big bets. And he was glad, for sake of the horses themselves, to have a solid excuse to spare them from wasting themselves unprofitably at Little Warreners.
He had cheerfully left it to Marcus... and Marcus lost no time about it, for, by nine o'clock next morning, he was at Windyshaw with the news that the contract had been cancelled.
"Old Harrison had heard about the bet already and wasn't surprised when I called him up this morning," said Marcus. "In fact, I believe the old chap was a good deal more interested in the bets than the timber. He's one of the old brigade you know... can't accommodate himself to the idea that a pair of good horses is far behind a good tractor for hauling. He's wrong, of course, and knows it... but he's like a good many others... too old to be enthusiastic about the change from the old style to the new. Like you, old man..." Marcus laughed... "and Waller and me... eh, and Bernemann. Why, the old chap asked for fifty pounds of my bet And I let him have it. And that reminds me, Job, I want to talk to you about figures. Let's go into them."
It was with every indication of keen enjoyment that Marcus Bell, a cigar between his teeth, settled down at the table with a betting book before him.
"Never expected to have another bet in my life, Job... and this comes like a tonic to me. Born gambler, I suppose, eh? Well, never mind. I'm going to make this a flutter that Milchester will remember a long time... Now, I make it that you're in on the total of £25,000 for £3,000, Tom Waller for £2,000 and I'm standing £20,000. Now I want you to take another two thousand... making up your bet to a level five thousand."
Job shook his head.
"I haven't got the money," he said bluntly. "My three thousand will use up every penny I can get or realize, including the value of the horses... and everything bar the clothes I'm wearing. It's not that I haven't faith in the horses—it's just that if anything happened so that they lost—I wouldn't be able to pay more than £3,000 and that would be a struggle."
"That's all right, Job, I understand. But I'm standing by... if we lost I'll provide the further £2,000 and you can pay me when you like. But I want you to win £5,000. So I'm writing you down for the extra £2,000... ad you can rest easy that it will be taken care of."
Job thought a moment, then nodded.
"All right... as long as you understand that it might be a long debt if things go wrong."
"Good. Now I'm going down to the Club to put the fear of God into some of their hearts," said Marcus, in extraordinarily good spirits.
Job stared a little.
"Don't forget that—to my mind—it's not a certainty, Mr. Bell," he reminded the plunger. "I think the horses can just about do it—so does Mac—but there's lots of room for a slip."
"Yes, I know. There always is—but I've got an inspiration about this and I am playing it just as heavy as I can."
His bright steely eyes softened a little as he noted the real anxiety on Job's face.
"Don't worry, my boy... even if it's a dead loss it won't undermine me. I know how to take care of myself. But that dashing little crowd round Calment were out to humiliate you—and all who backed your opinion—last night. And when we're attacked we're liable to defend ourselves. There'll be some humiliation flying about before the event's settled... but I've got an instinct that says it won't roost on us!... We'll see. How are the horses?"
"As fit as ever they were. We might screw them up a notch or two yet, but practically speaking, they're fit to pull for their lives at a minute's notice."
"Which two are you using?"
"Vulcan and Gloriana."
"Not Thor?" Marcus seemed a little surprised, and Job explained.
"I'm not quite sure about the old horse," he said. "There would be his sixteen years helping to weigh down the tons on the truck if I put him in... and he might crack at the last minute. It's a question of age, Mr. Bell. He'd pull till he dropped... but those sixteen years might make just the bit of difference. It's Anno Domini that beats the best man and the best horse and the best everything else in the world. Gloriana is safest."
Marcus nodded.
"Right! So be it I wanted to know as a matter of personal interest, that was all. I'm going on to the Club to fix up conditions. The bet calls only for 'a pair' of your horses... not for any particular ones. You know the course I suggested last night—a level furlong on the main road from Penford Corner. It's dead flat for a full mile from that corner—and within the next week the roadmenders will finish work on it It will have been newly metalled, tar-bound and steam-rolled till it's like a sheet of iron."
Job nodded.
"Yes that will do. There's no better bit of surface about here. The horses will be shod Liverpool style with toe-pieces and caulkins. There's no stipulation about that?"
"No. Shoe 'em how you like, Job. And the weight of the truck counts as part of the twenty-five tons! I clinched that last night in return for their 'play or pay' stipulation."
Job brightened a little.
"You've got a cool head, Mr. Bell. Mac and I were doubtful about what had been fixed up about that It will make a difference... a big difference. As much as two tons."
A red flush ran into his lean brown cheeks.
"That two tons might make all the difference in the world," he declared.
Marcus smiled, drew out some papers and showed him the thing in scrawled writing, signed by Everest and Calment.
"No getting away from that," he said, "Not that they will want to... they're pretty confident."
He rose.
"Well, I'll be off. Milchester is going to be an excited little town for the next week. Don't forget it's play or pay. If anything happened to the horses to prevent them from starting we pay."
He moved to the door.
Job opened his mouth, shut it, hesitated, then spoke. "What did Waverley think about the bet?" he asked presently.
"She wouldn't say," explained Marcus, turning back. "I've an idea that she thinks the horses can't do it. But she was pretty quiet about it. Thinking it over probably. She doesn't know much about draught-horses. She hasn't asked for a share in the bet... at least not in ours," he added.
Job's face hardened again.
"You think she's going to back the other side, Mr. Bell?" he asked.
Marcus shook his head.
"I don't know yet She's standing pat so far—but she'll never be able to keep out of it We'll see in a day or two. You'll find that pretty well everybody in the district will have a stake on the thing. We shall know more in a few days."
He hesitated a moment.
"There's one thing, Job... if Waverley has a little flutter she will be putting her money on the man. She will be backing either you or Calment... your opinions. And... I'm just as keen and curious as you are to see which she decides to back. Still... we'll know before long."
Job walked with him to his car. MacLeod appeared rather unexpectedly at Job's elbow as Marcus drove off.
The Scot was grinning... a thin, tight-lipped grin like a scar across his face, and his eyes were glittering.
"Man, I was listening to every word and, ye ken, that truck weight gone is a millstone off my neck! The hor-rr-ses will do it, Armsman... and I'll ask ye to pit my money on them with your own... here... take it... twenty-seven pounds."
He thrust a bunch of shabby treasury notes at Job.
But Job pushed them away.
"Why, Mac, you're on five hundred of my share already," he said. Mac stared.
"What way d'ye mean, laddie?"
"Why, man, if the horses win you draw five hundred of Calment's money for yourself."
"An' if they dinna win?"
"You lose nothing."
Mac pondered that, glaring under his shaggy brows. "Lose nothin'! Eh, I see... because you'll be payin' the loss!"
He pulled at his beard.
"Eh, laddie, ye're an Armsman. Ye've remembered old Mac. Ah weel."
He stared towards the stable, his finger irresolute about the stringy hair at his chin and throat.
"Thank ye, Armsman," he said at last. "The money... why, ye ken, that's nothin' to me. At my age... what's a few hundred pounds. I'll always worked for ye, Job, for my keep and..." he shook a rueful head... "and a wee drop o' whiskey. But I'm glad ye thocht of putting that money on for me... for, God knows, laddie, ye can ill afford it. It pays me over and over for onnything I've tried to do for the Armsmans of Houndsdown. I'll no' forget that... As a man sows he reaps. And I'm satisfied with my harvest..."
He turned to Job again, and spoke in a different voice.
"But, ye ken, I'm bound to have my own bet wi' this man Calment—for it's a personal thing."
Again he thrust his savings on Job.
"Match that against twenty-seven pounds o' Calment's money for me, laddie, for my ain personal satisfaction... And leave me to get on wi' my work!"
Job took the money and Mac slouched off towards the stables. But a few yards away he turned.
"I heard... every word. And it's yourself she'll be backing... unless the puir soul is utterly demented!" he added—but he added it inaudibly.
As Job turned to the stables a familiar sound, the quick stamp of hooves along the grass-grown edges of the lane drew him back to the gate.
His heart leaped as Waverley Bell rained in Ripple and stooped a little in her saddle to face him.
She was looking brilliant—either from the nervous excitement of facing him again, or from her morning ride in that keen autumn air or from both.
"Job, is it really true, as daddy says, that you and he and Mr. Waller have backed your horses for twenty-five thousand pounds to pull a weight which Mr. Calment thinks is impossible?" she asked bluntly.
"Quite true, Waverley," said Job, gravely.
"And do you seriously believe that they can pull that tremendous load? I have been riding for hours and every one I have seen thinks it is quite impossible."
She was studying his face with a curious intentness, and suddenly she spoke very earnestly.
"Job, I wouldn't urge daddy to alter a thing for he Knows better than any one how to guard himself, but I would be sorry... truly... to see you make a... a doubtful wager with Mr. Calment. I didn't mean ever to speak to you again but don't make any bet that... that... if you lost... would matter seriously to you. Can the horses possibly win for you?"
"We think so here, Waverley."
Her face clouded.
"But nobody else does... oh, nobody! Hardly anybody! I... I met Mr. Calment and Mr. Everest as I was riding off the downs just now and they were laughing at the idea!... Job, I am sure they will win your money and just laugh at you."
Job looked at her and he winced a little as he realized how lovely she was—and how obviously she believed him to be an object for pity and one sorely in need of warning. It was quite clear to him that she was so sorry for him that she was quite prepared to forget her quarrel with him in order to warn him against a man she evidently believed infinitely cleverer and far more competent than he. She meant well—she was trying to help him, indeed she was so over anxious to do so that she hardly attempted to avoid unconsciously stabbing at his personal pride even as she tried to help him.
But Job was holding himself with desperate anxiety on the curb. He nodded.
"Waverley," he said. "I can see very well that you don't believe in... in... my side of the bet But think for just a moment. I have had a lot to do with my Shires and I understand them as well as if they were children of mine... better perhaps... and old MacLeod understands them even better than I do. And we both believe that they can do what we have backed them to do. Why, your father, Sir Joseph Bernemann and Tom Waller offered to bet something like a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds on my unsupported opinion about it last night! What value is there in the opinion of a man like Calment or a young spendthrift like Everest? If Calment offered to bet me money that one of his tractors would pull a certain weight I would not be foolish enough to bet against him. I should just say to myself that he knew and that I was uncertain and so leave it alone..."
"Yes, yes, but tractors are machines, Job... things you can measure... and horses aren't And everybody... farmers... skilled men... men who understand horses are betting against you. They are laughing about it everywhere!"
Job nodded. "Let them laugh. They understand horses of a kind—of a good enough kind—but mine are pure bred Houndsdown horses... the very pick and pride of them all... champions, Waverley! And it's not a question of the weight... why, there's no doubt, not a shadow of doubt, that any two of them could register almost double the weight on a dynamometer test! It's only a question of road surface and distance! And Mac and I are satisfied that they can do it."
Waverley hesitated.
Then, leaning forward again, she explained.
"Still, Job, several men... farmers, men who know... have told me only this morning that you were caught in a... a sort of trap..., and that you were in danger of being fleeced... just because you are so loyal to your big horses! They say... everywhere... that Mr. Calment is... is doing it just to make you look... small."
"Well, we shall see. But we think here... that we shall win."
Waverley lost patience.
"Oh, 'think'... you 'think' they can. But you don't know, you daren't say you know, and you will lose and be laughed at... and you will deserve it! They are so much more... more adroit... than you!"
Job flushed at her tone.
She seemed obsessed by the cleverness of Calment—Convinced of the absolute ease with which a man like Calment could trap him, triumph over him and blot him out. Quite obviously she did not believe in him—and she was talking to him like a mother talking to a wayward, dunderheaded child. "So much more adroit!" She said that to him... about draught horses... to him who knew every mood and muscle bone and vein, of his Big Three.
Well, she always had considered him a bit of a fool—and he had allowed her to think so. Yes, always...
There blazed in on Job's mind a sudden illumination—an inspiration that he was wrong and weak to let her do this. She knew next to nothing about the big draught horses and she seemed incapable of assimilating the idea that he, Job Armsman, might reasonably be expected to know as much about his own horses as a flash, quick-witted, plausible devil like Calment. Why? Was it really possible that she was in love with the man?
Anyway, her pity for him, personally, had become, or if he let her continue so, would become perilously near contempt.
There was no good in letting it go on this way. He had gleaned his knowledge of the big horses by long and hard and bitter experience; she had caught a scrap of unreliable information here and there from folk who spoke in their ignorance, and that was the pitiful total of her knowledge. And here she was talking to him as a nurse talks to a rather foolish child in the nursery... and girls were talking that way to men the world over... and men were listening because their fair critics were so lovely...
Something flamed up in Job, and his hands gripped hard on the rail of the five-barred gate between them.
"No!" he said, rather loudly. "It's not fair and I'll be damned if I'll stand it... even from you, Waverley, lovely as you are. You don't know what you're talking about though you think you do... Come now, what do you really know that is real knowledge!... You've come to me and parroted an opinion that you've let another man impose on you—and he's even more ignorant of the subject than you are. I say that my horses can do a thing and—for once, I'll say it!—I know more about them than any man in the South of England, except MacLeod, because I've worked like a dog to learn it. But because I can't tell you so quite so brilliantly as your patent-leather Calment, you assume at once that I'm a fool and he's a wise man. And neither of you know a thing—not a thing about it... If you believe in Calment's opinion, why go and back him—your own daddy will bet you. But for God's sake, stop coming here to pity and to patronize me! I've had enough. I worship you. You could have wiped your boots on me. But I'd sooner you left me alone now, if you don't mind. I'm old-fashioned. I don't know enough, I'm not shiny enough, I can't talk slick enough and I can't dance well enough to make my opinion of any importance to you! You can call it my fault and gallop away. But you don't know where you're heading! Not half of you girls do. You're the prettiest thing in Christendom—but you're also the most senseless and certainly the most conceited. I'm through, Waverley. You think you know it all—and, bar the surface fluff and patter and the pretty tricks, you know nothing. You can't work and you sidestep all the difficult things and gloss it over with a joke and a bit of smart slang! Without your daddies or your husbands to put you into settings like diamonds what would you be—and what could you do? Pretty fair professional dancing partners! Nothing better, Waverley, for all your cleverness and up-to-dateness. And you have the impudence to come and lecture poor devils like me! What you need, my girl, is a little hard work..."
"That's enough!"
Waverley, scarlet, leaned low from her saddle.
"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!" she said, sibilant with fury. "Your misfortunes or your jealousy of a better man have affected your mind! I came here to help you out of your foolish bet—and you rave about... about... dancing! Perhaps it will interest you to know that I am going, yet again, to a dance in town with Mr. Calment and Mr. Everest to-night!"
She said it to hurt—but Job was past pin-pricks.
She threw out her hand in a gesture of anger and contempt, tore her horse round and galloped away.
For a long time Job stared down the lane after her, then turned to the house.
"Well, that's that!" he said. "I'm through... I'm nobody's doormat... not even Waverley's." He did not feel about it as he had felt on the downs after their first quarrel.
At least, he had told her the truth, as he conceived it—and if she ever paused to think it over it could do her no harm, if it did her no good. He had gone a lot further than he had intended. He would never have believed he had the nerve to tell her frankly what he thought, and he knew that he had passed far beyond the bounds of ordinary politeness. But now he had been roused to plain speaking, he was glad he had spoken frankly—and even though he had clearly lost her for ever he would not have taken back a word he had said.
She had every conceivable think she could desire, anyway—and to listen to a few words of truth now and then was not so much to pay for it...
Job gripped his big fists as he strode back to the horses.
She thought him a fool and told him so, but she was only ignorant.
And she had conveyed it to him once too often. Let her go.
She was as lovely a thing as he had ever seen—and he wanted her as he had never wanted anything in his life. But she seemed incapable of realizing that he, too, had made himself worth while. What did his sweat, his patience, his restraint, anguish and sheer brute labor seem to count with her? At the end of it all he was uncouth—a fool of the furrows.
Then let her go. What was she worth, anyway?
She was not for him—until she could learn to respect a man who could work—and that, it seemed, she would never learn.
If a man could dance the... the... tango... the fox-trot... any jazz-named dance... and could smile and bow and curvet, glide and caracole, he was an oracle... to her! But if he could only work... till the soil, grow things, breed horses, tend stock, labor from morn till night on plain, primal tasks he was out of date, old-fashioned, feeble... to her.
Oh, let her go—beauty and all. Why, a bare-armed, steady-eyed, sturdy girl, busy with poultry and calves and a garden of vegetables, content at evening with an hour with a radio, would be better for him—and his like...
Yes. Let her go... Beauty and all. Beauty and all. For, in spite of her sheer charm, she was a woman of no consequence.
Scowling, Job went back to the house, striding long and loosely like an animal.
FOR a furlong from Penfold Corner the roadway lay as flat as the surface of a lake at dead calm, and at the time the bet was made the road menders were entering on the last week's work required for repairing that mile stretch.
The exact furlong stipulated by Marcus Bell on behalf of Job Armsman, and agreed to by the other side, ran from Penfold Corner to a spot ten yards past another fixed mark known as Fairmore's Culvert—a small drain carrying an outflow of water from the woodland on the left, under the road, and away down a slight slope.
Within three days of the bet practically every adult for miles around had a personal interest in the affair, for the news of the coming event spread over the countryside like fire across dry heather and hardly a man in the district failed to back his opinion.
It was an agricultural county, intensely conservative, and although, inevitable as doom, the American tractor was wedging its way in and in, nevertheless they were few and far between who had not some personal interest and latent liking for the horses. By the strength, endurance and docility of the big, patient draught beasts they, and generation upon generation behind them had lived and often prospered and any event in which horses were involved was irresistibly bound to appeal to them.
But the tide of popular opinion, and the weight of the popular purse was against Job Armsman and for Calment.
It was considered, with few exceptions that the horses had been set an impossible task. The trend of market day opinion at Milchester proved that...
"Two horses haul twenty-five ton from Penfold Corner to Fairmore's Culvert!" bellowed a red-faced old farmer to a friend, in the ring standing round a pen of sheep, about to be auctioned. "Why, man alive, it's a sheer impossibility. I ruined my old mare two year ago by putting up two ton o' hay behind her to pull from my lower field up to the yard! And two into twenty-five is twelve and a half! It ain't possible! Can't think where Job Armsman's senses was... man must be crazy. I'll bet any man ten pounds they'll never do it... nor come nigh doing it."
He stared round the ring.
Nobody took the bet
"Coom now, I'll bet two ten pound notes to one against the horses!"
Old Tom Waller was stepping up to the rostrum to deal with the sheep and he caught the offer.
"Hey! Hey! What's that, Henry? You offerin' two to one against the horses?"
"Surely I am, Mr. Waller."
"I'll have that with you, damme!" bawled Waller.
"Twenty pound to ten. Write it down in your book, Henry."
The lookers-on laughed but Henry booked the bet, well satisfied.
"Ye're on a loser, Mr. Waller," volunteered somebody.
Old Tom glared.
"Say it with money, Peter."
Peter said it five pounds' worth. Bets and discussions flew about for the next quarter of an hour, Tom Waller taking his full share of both, until one rather urgently touched his elbow, muttering, and indicating the sheep.
"Eh?" said Waller. "Oh, yes, to be sure... the sheep. Forgot about them!"
He tapped the desk.
"Come on, gentlemen, business before pleasure... what for these tegs? Nice lookin' lot. What am I bid for these very likely lookin' tegs?"
So it went throughout the day. By late afternoon, it was possible for a man to get three to one against the horses. But a great deal of money went on the knees of the gods for, somehow, takers of these odds were always popping up, rather unexpectedly.
The "hard" division seemed to have entrenched themselves pretty solidly behind Job's opinion. They moved about through the crowd, quiet, purposeful, with plenty of money in their pockets, and they usually bobbed up at the last moment to take a three to one chance. But these were quiet men, few and far between, who did their commerce as unobtrusively as a poacher's lurcher turns a hare to the netted gapway in a lone field at midnight.
Armsman's opinion went with these...
Waverley Bell was one who helped all the odds against the horses. That was at a Ladies' Golf Competition on the day after market day.
The bets cropped up during the function of tea in the Club House—and, to Waverley's amazement, there were present more than one who said frankly that Job Armsman might prove to be a bad man to bet against Waverley, still bitter from Job's frankness, viciously offered to be four to one against his horses, and, though most of those present were of her opinion, she found that evening that she had bet a hundred pounds to twenty-five against him.
It was with a sense of triumph, at the time, that she saw herself wear down his supporters—but when, dressing for dinner that evening, she reflected upon the type of woman which had backed Job she felt her spirits hesitate a little. She checked in her dressing, staring at herself in the glass, as she enumerated these. One of Job's champions had been Lady Mary Merrowby whose whole interests, except for an occasional game of golf, seemed to be enlocked in the herd of Friesian cows which she ran on her own farm—very profitably, it was said. She was quite obviously near-ing middle age and she had never been lovely in the sense that—the mirror frankly admitted it—Waverley was. Another was the daughter of old Doctor Clinton, long retired, Doris Clinton, whose life seemed to be devoted to the proper running of the Milchester Cottage Hospital. And another was Miss Stark, the local representative of the Fresh Air Fund, who notoriously-sacrificed her every summer to handling the troops of pale, stunted and over-precocious slum children sent, by public subscription to a newspaper fund, from the dense towns, for a holiday spell of country life. And one or two more of similar tastes. These were the women who had quietly accepted the bets against the horses of Job Armsman which she, Waverley Bell, had so gaily and confidently offered.
Waverley thought them over. Lady Mary, Doris Clinton, Miss Stark... all unmarried, none of them pretty, but each doing something. Calm, equable, steady women—not one of them pretty but—but somehow the sort of people to whom one in trouble would instinctively turn.
And they backed Job Armsman...
Suddenly, staring at her big-eyed apparition in the long glass, half undressed, delicate, dainty, adorable, Waverley stiffened as a thought transfixed her mind.
Those women—admittedly sane, balanced, capable—any one of them would have been glad to call a man like Job Armsman her husband—even proud.
Job Armsman!... Poor old Job!
That was why they had bet on him—backed him with their money! Women who never bet on commonplace things—but who had been goaded, by her, into supporting a man they secretly admired.
Lady Mary, Doris Clinton, Miss Stark!
Plain as pikestaffs—except perhaps Doris Clinton—but they were women whom every one respected.
Couldn't do a thing—except perhaps drive their prehistoric Fords quite capably—but still, real, worthwhile women.
And—Waverley's mind or intuition repeated it—any one of these would have married a man like Job, gratefully.
There must be something about Job which she had missed—overlooked!
Waverley, in gossamer silk, stared in her glass and wondered.
And, in the silence of her room, her heart spoke honestly to her.
Big tears sprang to Waverley's blue eyes. She winked them away.
"After all, Job is a man although he is so rude!"
Waverley heard her daddy's step on the stairs, impulsively slipped on a kimono and went out.
Marcus Bell, going up to change into his evening things, received her in his arms.
"Why, Waverley...?"
"Oh, daddy, daddy, I'm afraid I've been an awful little fool!"
"Why, baby, what is it, what is it? Old daddy's here!"
But Waverley broke away.
"Oh, nothing, daddy... I'm just somehow silly to-night!"
She vanished into her room.
Marcus hesitated, then went on, seeming to smile. "Ha!" he said presently, in his dressing room. "Let her cry. Do her a world of good... Yes, let her cry!"
He was very pale and his hand shook.
"Had another scrap with Job," he muttered. "Well, let her cry!... A little useful discipline!"
For Marcus was notoriously a hard man, cold and self-controlled. But it would have been easier to tie with his trembling hands his black bow if he had been hard and cold enough to remember to put on a collar to tie it round.
Still—she was all he had—and nobody saw how it hurt him, so what did it matter?
DURING the week preceding the big test, MacLeod, sullen and irritable as an old Airedale with the earache, and Job, quiet, reserved and eternally patient, worked wonders with the horses. They were fed with almost exquisite nicety and precision, exercised incessantly, groomed with even greater care than a high-tipper in a Turkish bath, and watched not less anxiously than a cow watches her calf. Curious women, and men, peeking about Windyshaw came away with virulent reports about the Scot's idea of civility; and press photographers, journeying from London, with their accustomed speed came to the conclusion that it was hardly worth while trying to do business unless Armsman were about They couldn't do a thing with Mr. MacLeod—except photograph him ugly, which they did copiously and with a skill amounting to genius.
Certain hungry-eyed persons, very insidious, penetrating and strangely non-receptive to hints, oozed into Windyshaw. These were reporters, for the big test had been swept into the press. There was a day's war—intense and savage—between these and the glaring MacLeod. Then Job intervened and told them as much as he thought good for them. He had the horses, Thor included, paraded for the photographers—and was amazed to learn next day that they were betting freely about the event in the London clubs, and that the whole country was interested.
He had a queer mail two days later—for the reporters had done their work well. He received cash offers for the horses—provided they won—which astonished him; harness-makers' circulars; letters from farriers offering to shoe the horses free; communications from veterinary surgeons, horse-breeders, farmers, and, of course, money lenders. Several book makers offered to lay him startling odds against his horses; and there were scores of threats from large numbers of indignant people all signing themselves "Lover of Animals" and none of whom appeared ever to have heard of a weight-pulling test in their lives.
Job thrust them all aside.
Nothing mattered now at Windyshaw but the horses...
Marcus Bell was frequently in and out, and he said nothing of Waverley—who never came. Tom Waller drifted up several times, and bawled encouragement, and old Albery, the shepherd came down from his wind-swept isolation on the chalk to utter obscure prophecies, which, on the whole, they judged were intended to be favorable.
Once, Sir Joseph Bernemann rode up, quiet, heavy, inscrutable, and spent half an hour at the stables talking with Job about the horses. He admired Vulcan and Gloriana but it was quite obviously old Thor who was his favorite.
He threw away his cigar and went into Thor's stall like a man used to going into stalls and talked to the old horse.
Thor was accustomed to being fussed over. He had learned to accept that as his due so long before that nowadays he rarely gave much indication that he was aware that a stranger was patting him and praising him. He knew that they came and went and were seen no more. And so he was usually civil without being demonstrative or very much interested.
For some reason he took to Bernemann... let him see that he enjoyed the quiet praise; asked, bending his fine head down to a pocket, for an apple; and when Sir Joseph left the stall the big horse turned to watch him out, whinnying.
"He's taken to you, Sir Joseph," said Job.
"Why, Armsman, it looks so. And that's a thing none of my race horses ever did," confided Bernemann, and nodded towards Thor.
"That's because you know what I think of you, Thor, old man, isn't it?" he added.
They moved out.
"I'd be glad if you'd promise me first offer of Thor if ever you contemplate parting with him," said Bernemann as they crossed to his riding horse.
Job promised that readily enough.
"Thanks..."
Sir Joseph seemed, for once, to hesitate. Then he Spoke.
"By the way, Armsman, I'd like to say that I'd give a good deal to see your horses pull off this event." He stood pondering.
"Our friend, Marcus Bell, came in on the thing like a man with a bayonet in each hand... and he stands to win a big sum of money over the horses... % Although I... tun... made my offer to participate, there were no takers, at the time, and I haven't a sou on the affair. Still, I'm not much at betting... But what about yourself, Armsman? Have you got all you want on the horses? If not... if money is too tight to allow you to pile all you'd wish to have on them, I'd like you to remember that I should feel well pleased to... Dr... stand by... It's no secret that our glossy young friend Calment does not particularly care for you... and, I gather, it's just possible that he and his friends may try to achieve a little cheap applause by a public offer to bet with you on 'the course' so to put it."
The dark, unreadable eyes of the big financier, were steady on Job.
"Just remember, my boy, that if any... gayeties of that description take place, Bernemann is... standing by."
The heavy eyes were suddenly cold and implacable.
"Bet them, Armsman, remember! If they try that bet them blind! I will foot the bill if we lose and... let me say it without offence, my boy... I will go halves if we win. Don't get on your dignity, because of that... the fancy of an old rich man who can never be so interested again in anything as he is in those big, honest, beautiful horses of yours!... Bet them, mind,... bet them blind and dumb... to any amount... just as long as you honestly feel there's a chance of winning!"
He smiled faintly at Job as he mounted the big, seventeen-hand bay gelding he rode—a weight-carrying hunter that would have been cheap at four hundred guineas.
"They're what we sometimes call on the other side of the Atlantic 'four-flushers!' So—remember, boy— blind and dumb!"
And so he rode off.
Mr. MacLeod made another silent appearance form around a nearby corner as Job watched the big man ride away. He had been listening—for those were the days when the MacLeod listened, peeped, pried, and spied completely without shame. Mac's idea was wholly to the effect that he was a species of archangel (in whiskers) who stood with a flaming vocabulary between the horses and the rest of the world.
"I was listenin', ye ken, and man, ye've a powerful friend in Sir Joseph Bernemann. It's no' yourself he admires... it's the hor-rr-ses... notably Houndsdown Thor! Ye owe a lot to Houndsdown Thor, laddie... although he's not been chosen to represent ye in the contest!"
"I know it," said Job. "But, Mac, couldn't you manage to be a little less like a detective these few days! Man alive, you're always round the corner, listening in! Don't I have the right to talk to any one?"
MacLeod dropped a lean hand on his employer's shoulder.
"Laddie, it is for yourself I'm spyin' and... and... I'll no listen in the times ye talk to little Miss Bell!"
"But, Mac, she'll never come!"
"Then, laddie, fetch her!" snarled Mac and headed for the stables, either failing to see or ignoring the quiver of Job's face.
"Fetch her!" said Job incredulously. "I would like to see any man fetch Waverley Bell against her will!"
They were both tired men...
That was the day before the event, and it was Mac's night to sleep in the stable.
IT was on that same night that Marcus Bell, alone with Waverley after dinner, looked across over his second glass of port, his eyes twinkling, and asked, with careful casualness, if it was true that Waverley was betting against the horses.
"I heard... somebody or other said it... that you had bet four to one against them, my dear. No business of mine, of course, but if you don't mind old daddy giving you a tip it's just a shade over the odds, Waverley!"
Waverley's lips tightened. But her cheeks went pink.
"Well, daddy, so I did. At the Golf Club." Marcus sipped his port.
"It's no business of mine, my dear. But... I wouldn't go beyond three to one against Job if you don't mind my giving you a tip. It...Dr... looks vindictive... and there's no point in throwing your allowance away, after all."
Waverley considered that.
"Oh, well, I don't care. It wasn't the money. But Job was rude to me... really rude and... and uncouth! It was only because I was angry that I bet against him at all." Marcus shrugged.
"Yes, I guessed so. That's how it goes. What does it matter, after all... Who took your bets?" he added. He knew perfectly well, in spite of his extremely well-feigned air of curiosity.
"Oh, Lady Mary, Doris Clinton, Miss Stark and one or two others!"
Marcus said nothing to that But it was a significant silence.
"I am sorry Job offended you, though... Not like Job, either. Probably a bit nervy just along now."
Waverley's eyes were unusually bright "Well, I don't think even nerves excuse him for telling me I was ignorant and conceited, daddy!" Marcus opened his eyes.
"Job said that! Why, what were you discussing?"
"Oh... the horses... the bets. I was only warning him that Mr. Calment and his friends were clever enough to make them dangerous to bet against."
"But 'ignorant' is a blunt word. I can't understand. Did you say something about the horses?"
"Only that they couldn't pull that load... as everybody else was saying."
Marcus gave... or feigned... a sigh of relief.
"Oh, I see, now, my dear. Job only meant that you were ignorant about Shire horses. Which, compared with him, you are, of course... so am I and most other folks. I don't think I'd let that hurt me much if I were you."
Waverley's color deepened.
"If that had been all he said, I wouldn't... but it wasn't all. He upset me, daddy. He wasn't fair."
Pink, very bright-eyed, she began to talk faster.
"He... he bullied me! He said I went there to patronize him, and said he wished I'd stop it! He said I wiped my boots on him. He said I was an ordinary modern girl who knew nothing but how to look nice and dance and do pretty tricks and was no use to do anything except to be a professional dancing partner! He said I would side-step difficult things and gloss it over with a bit of smart slang. He said I was one of those girls that, without their fathers or their husbands to put them into settings, would be helpless and... could do nothing!"
Marcus seemed to reflect on that... but it was only hesitation because he hated to hurt the lovely little soul facing him.
"Well, my dear," he said at last, rather slowly, "isn't there... in a way... a sort of grain of truth in that... And God knows I don't say that to hurt you!"
Waverley stiffened.
"But... daddy..." the protest died away as she realized that Marcus was looking at her very gravely and steadily.
"Job put it too baldly. But here, talking it over between ourselves, just old daddy and his little girl, it comes to me that I should find it rather difficult to throw that back in his teeth with unshakeable proofs that he was wrong. What could I tell him, Waverley? What would you want me to tell him?"
She knew now that Marcus was taking a chance to urge her to discipline herself.
"No, daddy... it's not what I would want you to say that matters... it's what you could honestly say... Tell me that, please!"
Marcus nodded.
"I could say that you were courageous... but that your courage had never been aimed at anything more difficult than riding a fairly high-spirited horse or taking a stiff jump in the hunting-field! I could say that you were not afraid of work... but that you had never tackled any! I could say that you have a fine musical talent... but that you never seriously applied yourself to developing it! I could say that you were as capable as Lady Mary... if you chose to be; as tireless and patient as Doris Clinton if you cared to interest yourself in such things as hospitals; or as self-sacrificing as Miss Stark if you felt inclined to help face any self-imposed duty similar to hers!" explained Marcus, driving himself at it. "That would be fair... and true, wouldn't it?"
Waverley dropped her cigarette into an ash tray and stood up sharply.
"But that... all that... sounds as if... as if...
"As if you had a daddy that didn't deserve you! A daddy that hates the thought that you might never be anything more than a modern butterfly but hasn't the courage to take away your toys even for a few minutes of every day!... It's my fault, Waverley."
"Both our faults, daddy... I am going to think it over."
She stopped at his chair.
"Good night, daddy..." she said, quietly, then burst out impulsively. "But, after all, do you agree with Job that what I need is a little hard work!"
Marcus smiled.
"That's a thing I've heard my mother say to my sisters many a time... over thirty years ago! And she was not a hard woman... Anyway, it never does much harm to think these things out, does it?"
That was that Waverley meant to do.
Her daddy had been carefully frank and she was conscious of no anger against him... though he had, in his quiet way, seemed to agree with almost everything Job had said.
But there was an enormous difference between listening to one's daddy and... Job Armsman.
"He hasn't made so much of a success of things himself that he can afford to go about lecturing other people..." she told herself... "especially people who perhaps don't need to make a success as badly as he does."
"Thanks to her daddy... not to herself!" said a still small voice within her.
That still, small voice proved to be in something of a conversational and argumentative mood to-night, but at the end of two hours it had achieved nothing for Job—except an increased determination to abandon him to the folly of his old-fashioned ways.
"Neither of them was really fair but I can forgive daddy. But never Job Armsman! And I will make that quite plain to him..."
A thought came into her mind like a blade.
It would never have occurred to her if she had not been so hurt and angry.
She would let him see quite plainly that she had definitely decided there was no possibility of any renewal of their friendship... she would return him the little parcel of things she was keeping for him... that ridiculous curl of his.
She glanced out of the window, and saw that it was almost as light as day under a splendid moon.
Then she looked at the clock. It was past eleven. Late for an unkindly, temper-inspired mission that would have been better postponed, but Waverley was troubled, nineteen, impulsive, flushed, angry, unsettled, hurt, and—well accustomed to having her own way.
She sat down and scribbled a short note, then took' the little parcel from a drawer, opened it and looked curiously at the intrinsically trivial things that Job valued because his mother had treasured them.
She opened the case and shook out the silky, yellow curl, staring at it a little strangely.
Who would have thought the little boy with hair like that could possibly have grown up into a grim, hard, bitter man who could insult a girl who only meant well to him?
She shook her head, rather irritably, put back the absurd curl and changed her shoes...
It would be pleasant in the cool moonlight after all the emotions and surprises of the evening. She need only stroll up to Windyshaw, leave the parcel and note on the doorstep inside the little porch and come away.
A few minutes later she came out, perfectly silent, through the French windows of the drawing-room. Avoiding the graveled drive for fear that Marcus, in his den, might hear her setting forth to deliver this last subtle blow over the heart of the man who had been guilty of telling her the plain truth, she stole like a little lovely ghost across the wide lawn.
A breeze wandering through the silver night, laid soft, cool gentle fingers on the flushed cheeks, the hot forehead, and rather miraculously seemed gradually to curb her spirit of enterprise. Nineteen is an age of strange moods, of deep depressions, soaring exaltations, bewilderments, fancies, follies and alarms.
Before she was half way to Windyshaw Waverley's mood had changed a dozen times. Her hot anger against Job was fading—she feared. But she went on...
There was a long halt at the shabby gate leading into Windyshaw.
But there was more than a streak of Marcus Bell's tough tenacity in his daughter and, after a little, she went through the gate, and up the narrow, lane-like approach to the house.
She had to pass the stables—lying back a little way on her right hand—to reach the farmhouse.
In the shadows of a few trees on the left of the yard she paused, conscious of new hesitations.
Job had hurt her—but if she did what she had come here to do she was going to hurt him far more and, she was beginning to acknowledge, with less justification. Was that worth while?
To put these little things his mother had cherished and which he valued because of that on his step and leave them there with that edged note she had scribbled in the mood of angry dismay which had sprung from the talk with her father—wasn't that a bit petty? Darting a claw at a man when he wasn't looking...
Waverley threw up her head suddenly. No. She would not do this. It was too small—mean. Anything she had to say to Job or do to him she would do face to face or not at all.
Her decision made, she instantly marvelled that she could have contemplated doing it.
"Temper—nothing but temper!" she whispered in the shadows. "I... I deserve to be whipped... like a spoilt child..."
She stopped short with a little cold thrill, staring intently across the moonlit yard.
A man had just come out of the stable, and halted outside the door, seeming to listen.
Job? No, Job was taller. MacLeod? No, MacLeod was taller still and this man had no beard. Waverley saw that as he lifted his head to stare up at the unlighted windows of the farmhouse. She watched.
The man moved quickly from the stable door and walking on soft soles that made no sound came out into the rough road skirting the yard.
He was much nearer Waverley now. He waited there peering about, listening.
For a long time he poised there, furtive, alert, suspicious.
It was as though, in the stable, he had heard some faint sound—perhaps even the light touch of her shoes on the road—and had stolen out to see what had caused that sound. Waverley, very still in the shadows, thought quickly. Neither Job nor MacLeod would come from the stable in that stealthy and furtive way.
But how was it that this man or any man could enter and leave the stable as he wished on this night of all nights—when it was all-important that the horses should be in perfect condition for next day's desperate task? She remembered her father saying that, wisely, either Job or MacLeod spent the night in the stables, in case of accidents. A condition of the big bet had been 'play or pay'—and Waverley knew that if the horses never came to the starting line the bets on them would still have to be paid.
A cold finger touched her heart Something must have happened to the watcher that night...
The prowler, his suspicious apparently lulled, turned on his soundness soles and began to glide back to the stable.
Waverley did not hesitate.
She ran out towards the man. It was not likely that she could detain him—but there was a chance that she might see him closely enough to recognize him.
She was able to halve the short distance between them, on tiptoe, before he heard her and turned like a startled animal.
She heard his quick intake of breath, saw for a second his face full in the moonlight, then with a quickness only possible to a man prepared and strung up for just such a contingency, he ran into the roadway without a word and disappeared.
Waverley picked up a big stone, hurried across the yard and pitched it through a bedroom window.
"Job! Job!"
Almost instantly Job was at the window.
"Come down! There's something wrong!" Waverley called up and went quickly back to the stables.
It was quite dark below but the loft above was dimly lit by the glow from a hurricane lantern, and some one was breathing heavily there.
Even as she set foot on the fixed ladder leading up to the loft Job, half dressed, came in.
She turned to face the white blaze from his electric torch.
"Why, Waverley, what is it?"
"A man came out of the stable and ran away when I moved. I will explain—but see if the horses are all right!" she told him breathlessly.
He went into the stalls.
All the horses were standing up.
Thor and Gloriana seemed all right but Vulcan, the big roan, was not quite so placid as usual. He was very wide awake to-night, inclined to stare and start and his eyes and ears were a trifle uneasy. Job's lips tightened.
"Fetch the lamp down from the loft," he said—so curtly that it was quite clear he had momentarily forgotten it was Waverley with him. He was peering over Vulcan and began to talk softly to him, petting him.
"Why, old man, what's this... what's the matter... eh?"
He was running his hand over the huge body, smoothly, soothingly.
Rather meekly Waverley climbed the steps to the loft, and brought down the lamp.
Job took it.
"Is MacLeod there?" he said in a hard voice that was new to Waverley—different in some subtle way from that in which he had lectured her.
"Yes. He... he's asleep or unconscious, I think!"
Job glanced at Vulcan, hesitated, then hung the lamp to a hook high up on the wall.
As he brought his hand down a mark on the side of his right forefinger caught his eye.
He thrust it into the ray from the electric torch.
A thin, brownish smear ran right across the inside of his palm.
He stared at it for a moment, with a sort of raging horror in his eyes.
"Why, Job... what is it?"
"Blood!" said Job. "Vulcan's!"
He turned back into the stall, and the white eye of the torch went peering, peering over every inch of the upper body of the big horse.
It was a little uncanny to Waverley, standing there in that shabby, dimly-lit stable, in her evening frock and fur coat, watching the tall, dark figure of Armsman, his keen, craggy face close down to the white spot of bright light slowly traversing the silky hide of Vulcan. It was silent too—except for the heavy breathing of MacLeod. The horses were quiet—with, Waverley thought, a queer intent air of waiting for something.
It came quickly enough.
Waverley saw the disc of light hesitate and halt just forward of the great near side shoulder.
Job's face came partly into the light as he peered close, rubbing lightly with his finger. Then she saw him thrust that forefinger into the ray of light—and, even from where she stood, outside the stall, she could see that the finger tip was dark with that brown stain which Job had said was blood.
"Oh, what is it?" she asked.
Job patted Vulcan.
"Poor old chap!" he said quietly, and came out of the stall.
"They've got at him. Doped... that's drugged. With a hypodermic syringe! The blood... only a bead or two... comes from the puncture!"
His voice sounded odd. He had not raised it but it seemed to come from deeper down in his chest and held a dry hollow vibrant note—like something roaring with anger or pain under its breath.
Waverley was aware of a new sensation. This was a Job Armsman she had never known—and one of whom she felt, deep in her secret heart, she could be afraid.
Her face was white as they stared at each other,
"But that's dreadful," she said, nervously. "What are you going to dot?"
Job's brows were drawn together.
"We'll see. Vulcan will be useless tomorrow. The old horse will have to go for it, after all... Thor!" At the sound of his name Thor turned a great head, staring with luminous eyes.
JOB went the ladder and climbed into the loft Half-magnetized, Waverley followed him and by his side looked down at the fully-dressed form of MacLeod, He lay upon, a rough mattress with a couple of old Army blankets half covering him, dead asleep.
By the side of the mattress was a whiskey bottle, a quarter full, and a thick tumbler.
There was nothing to say, and for her part Waverley was conscious of only one feeling—that of real, even poignant regret that this should have happened to MacLeod—Mac—who was capable of sacrificing his remaining years of life for the horses, but, it seemed, was not capable of sacrificing his—thirst.
She peered close at Job, wondering anxiously what he would do.
Vaguely she knew that there were men, many men, who in Job's position would have lost control of themselves and savagely have kicked the sleeping man awake; or roused him with bitter curses to a volley of insulting reproaches.
She waited, dimly aware that she was trembling a little.
But Job was big natured.
He looked for a long time in silence at the old man, then, in almost exactly the tones he had used in Vulcan's stall, he said... "Poor old Mac!... To come a cropper like this!... Eh? Mac... of all men... on a night like this!"
He turned to Waverley.
"He's an old man... and dead tired... worn out I oughtn't to have let him watch to-night But he was so keen... glad it was his turn. I could see at supper that he was dog tired but if I had suggested taking his place it would have hurt his stubborn pride... cut him up—he would have been insulted..."
He broke off, stooped to the bottle, picked it up, and smelt at it.
"Hold the torch, Waverley."
Fascinated she watched him trickle out a little of the whiskey and taste it.
He poured away the dregs in the glass and the bottle and put them down again. "Drugged! Drugged—heavily enough to poison a man!" he said. "Can't blame Mac for that!" He caught her arm. His grip hurt but Waverley understood that he did not realize he was hurting.
"Waverley, remember that, will you, please. Remember that I tasted that whiskey and said at once that it was drugged!"
"Yes, Job."
But she knew that it was not—knew that Job's voice had completely lacked conviction—that the only drug which had overcome MacLeod was his own sheer weariness which he had endeavored to overcome with stimulant—the deceptive stuff that lets a man down even while it deludes him into believing that it is holding him up.
No—Job Armsman was not a convincing liar—whatever else he might be.
Standing there, in that dim loft, Waverley considered Job, with a palpitant mind.
She knew that to-night an event had happened which in all probability meant sheer stark ruin to him. Tomorrow, a few minutes useless struggle would end with Job stripped of everything—penniless, humiliated, beaten, down and out. And she understood that he too, knew that.
And yet out of some deep well of understanding, human sympathy, great kindliness, and eternal patience, he could forgive the man whose failing would fling him down to this abyss. Not only forgive him—but because he was old, and sincere, and would suffer far more from his failure than anyone else possibly could do, Job Armsman, to save him that, was willing to lie for him—this old man who had spent so many years of his life in honest service to the Armsmans of Houndsdown.
For that was the sort of man Job was.
The thought of a little parcel, lying in the shadows of the trees across the yard, touched Waverley's mind like a white-hot wire and she felt herself blushing in the dimness—a painful, burning blush that hurt.
She touched Job's arm.
"Is there anything I can do, please?" she asked, her voice sounding queerly subdued. "If I can be of any good, Job, I would be glad to stay... but if you don't need me I... I think I will go now. Perhaps I could telephone for the vet to come out."
Job nodded.
"I'm afraid no vet can help Vulcan much. Still... if you will, Waverley. I don't think either of the others were touched... it was Vulcan the scoundrel was after."
"No... but he meant making sure, Job. You must watch all the time now. The man was going back into the stable again when I disturbed him..."
Job's eyes burned.
"He meant to get them all! Then, if it hadn't been for you, Waverley, all three of the horses would have been drugged."
He stood up, a new thought in his mind.
"But, Waverley... how came you to be here at midnight?"
Her eyes fell, and her voice was confused and a little tremulous as she explained.
"Oh, I... I was restless... unsettled. I couldn't sleep and the moon was so bright... so I came for a walk... Oh, I must go now. I'll tell daddy and he will come or send somebody to help you watch for the rest of the night... And, Job, I do wish you luck to-morrow. I hope with all my heart that you will win!"
She turned and was gone, dreading that he would follow and offer to accompany her. But he did not—dared not—and it was with a wild surge of relief that she found, under the trees, her parcel, and hurried home.
Marcus Bell was just leaving his den to go upstairs when he heard faintly the click of the latch of the drawing-room French window.
He stopped, crossed the hall, threw open the door, and switched on the light.
Waverley, hugging a small parcel, was just entering.
"Why, Waverley!"
She came across to him, her eyes wide and bright, flushed, trembling, excited.
"Oh, daddy, Vulcan's drugged... and Job and I are friends again!"
She was panting and half crying, and she clung to her parcel as if she feared Marcus was going to take it away from her.
Marcus saw that she was overwrought and he spoke quietly.
"Job and you are friends again... well, that's good. I'm glad of that, my dear. But let's take it quietly... just quietly."
The cool, even voice steadied her and quickly, clearly, she told him all that had happened.
Marcus took the news of Vulcan's certain elimination with his usual perfect self-control.
Indeed, he was smiling a little when she had finished. He was quite willing for her to see that, in spite of the big sum he had at stake, he was more interested in her news that she and Job were friends again.
"I think I see now, my dear," he summed up. "You were still so angry with Job that you went to do something to show him that you had finished with him forever... but, instead of doing that, as things went, so far from punishing him, you did him a service that still gives him a chance of a big triumph to-morrow! That's what it amounts to, Waverley. If you had not gone there to-night certainly two... if not all three... of the horses would have been got at And you did a courageous thing, my dear, when you ran out at that man alone..." his face hardened at the thought of the risk she had taken... "for a man who was scoundrel enough to dope those horses was scoundrel enough to have used violence to you... and finished his work. Yes, it was a plucky thing to do... and you can honestly tell yourself that it more than cancels the blow you were aiming at Job."
"But, daddy, I had quite decided not to return the things in that... that anonymous sort of way before I saw the man leave the stable."
Marcus patted her shoulder.
"So much the better... ever so much. Some day, you can tell Job that... Now, you had better get some sleep and I'll ring up the vet and run over to Windyshaw myself. We mustn't take any chances with only two horses left."
So she kissed him and obediently went off to her room—quietly, oddly subdued but happier than she had been for days.
A thought came to her as she began to slip off her things.
"Neither Job nor daddy asked if I recognized the prowler though they both knew it was bright moonlight! It was odd they should forget that!"
And, truly, it would have been odd if they had forgotten it But neither of them had.
Both men had guessed the prowler to be Calment, or some bribed creature of Calment But she had always held Calment up as a pattern to Job—had thought or persuaded herself that she thought him a very perfect, brilliant and capable gentleman.
Like Job, her daddy had seen at once that there was no need at present to put a question to her which might humiliate her to answer.
Job, even in the midst of his new and pressing trouble, had been only too glad to spare her.
And her daddy, who knew more of the matter than Job, realized that she well deserved to be spared it For she had fought her private battle against the worst side of her nature and won it before ever she had saved the horses. She was a good girl, and courageous, and Marcus, despite the money jeopardized by the doping of Vulcan, was light-hearted as he entered on his share of that night's activities.
Moreover, Calment could be dealt with later...
"Yes... a good girl, a brave girl, and under all the modern jazz thrills and fancies, as sound as her mother before her!" said Marcus as he went striding along the lane a little later. "And J learn something to-night, too," he added. "In the future, I guess I won't be quite so hasty to judge these modern children entirely by the flag they choose to fly! No."
He laughed quietly in the moonlight
"Must drive that home to old Tom Waller, too!"
GREY dawn stole into the stable at Windyshaw to discover three men talking low in the waning light of a hurricane lantern, hooked high up on the wall, their eyes on the three horses.
Thor and Gloriana were up, but Vulcan lay in his stall, slumped, drowsy, like a horse no more than half conscious.
Hardaway, the vet, glanced over his shoulder at the phantom light oozing through the dull window, and turned up his coat collar preparatory to leaving.
"Well, you see how it is... there's nothing you want to know from me, Job," he said. "Day after tomorrow he will pull as well as ever he pulled... but to-day he couldn't pull a perambulator. Believe me, they took care to shoot a full dose into him while they were at it!... Gloriana and Thor are as fit as they ever were in their lives. You've got to rely on the mare and old Thor to-day, Job... for Vulcan will be no better than a dead horse for the next twenty-four hours..."
"Man... what way d'ye say...?"
It was a croak from the loft They looked up. A grey, lamentable face was peering down on them.
Marcus Bell glanced up, nudged the veterinary surgeon, and together they left the stable. Both knew MacLeod, both understood him and it was no desire of either man to be present while Job—who had let him sleep it out—explained the traffic of the past Slight to him.
"Laddie, what's wrong wi' Vulcan? Look at him? Why did ye no wake me?"
MacLeod came scrambling down in a furious haste.
"He's drugged, Mac—just as you've been drugged yourself!" said Job, steadily.
That bewildered the old man for a second but it bit home as he realized that it was dawn.
His mouth fell open and his eyes were horrified as he checked by Vulcan's stall and stared at Job.
"Drugged!... Ye mean, I've slept on my watch the whole of this night! Tell me, laddie."
His breath came dry and harsh as he demanded the answer that his swiftly-clearing wits told him was inevitable.
He had seen at a glance that Vulcan would feel no harness that day.
"Mac, old man, you had a drink of whiskey last night just to help you keep wide awake all night?"
"I did... I did. One... maybe two or more..."
"The whiskey was drugged Mac, it was doped heavy enough to poison a man," said Job. "You're not to blame!"
But Mac's voice was working wryly.
"Not to blame, you say," he mumbled. "Eh, ye'd say that... ye always were a compassionate deevil, Armsman... God, what shall I do?"
It was a wail, and his thin old face twisted and puckered as he looked at Vulcan.
Job saw how it was with him and acted quickly. He gripped the bony shoulder deliberately with his full strength, and spoke slowly with all the sheer harshness he could import into his voice.
"Now, stop that, pull yourself together and listen to me, you... damned... old... fool!... I need you to-day more than any Armsman ever needed you! I want the best out of you to-day and, by God, MacLeod, I'm going to get it! Is that clear? Do you understand? To-morrow you can be as sick and sentimental and sorry as you like, but there's no time for the soft stuff to-day, Mac!"
His heart smote him as he glared into the eyes of misery staring at him, but he did not weaken.
"Listen again!" he rasped. "I tell you, you were drugged last night... through no fault of your own; and Vulcan was doped... through no fault of yours or mine! We've got to face it. The mare is fit to pull for her life and so is the old horse. Look at 'em! But they'll need you and they'll need me... all we can do or tell them to help them out!"
He had been acting at first—trying to be insulting for a tonic to MacLeod—but now something of the grim and bitterly sincere longing to make good which had steeled him for months past, made itself heard in his deep voice.
"Mac, Mac, we've got to win with Gloriana and the old horse and we've got to tell them somehow that they can do it! Help me, Mac!"
He thrilled at the red glare that his words and the anguish plain on his haggard face suddenly lit in the eyes of the old Scot. He drove it home.
"Man, do you want to see me—and yourself—Armsman and old MacLeod at Calment's feet? For it's only a miracle that will keep us from that to-day!" His voice jarred through the stables, so that the horses turned to stare at him, seeming to wonder where this stranger that spoke was hidden.
"Forget the night... and help me, Mac!"
Mac's answer came like a snarl.
"Forget the nicht! Eh, it's a bonny, bonny nicht to forget!... I'll forget it... in my grave!... But I'll no' remember it to-day!... Dinna shout any more, laddie. Ye're the whitest man I ever knew... but dinna shout at me any more. I'm no soft now. I'm... steady again, laddie."
His grim old face set like steel.
He went softly into Vulcan's stall and examined him, muttering gently to the horse.
Vulcan's eyes opened drowsily and closed again.
"Hardaway guarantees he'll be all right in a couple of days. But now he's like a man chloroformed," explained Job. "The only physic for him is time."
MacLeod nodded dourly, came out and looked Gloriana over.
His face brightened a little and he fondled her for a moment, then went to Thor, wound a bony hand in the great cascade of mane, drew close to the fine, aristocratic, blood-like head of the black stallion, and—spoke with him.
Ever after, it seemed to Job Armsman that those long, tense, poignant seconds were part of some strange dream. It was impossible that they could be real. For MacLeod spoke to the horse as though he were no longer a horse but a human—even as the mahouts of India talk to their elephants.
"Thor!" said MacLeod, "Houndsdown Thor! Champion Houndsdown Thor!... Listen to old MacLeod!... First prize yearling at the Royal! First two-year-old at the Royal! First three-year-old at the Royal!"
It was coming on a rising note, with a careful and measured beat of a chant.
"First prize at the Great Yor-rr-rkshire!"
"Fir-rr-st at the Royal Lancashire! First at Peterborough! Again and again... Never beaten. The champion Shire Stallion of Great Britain! Houndsdown Thor!... Bid for on behalf of the late King Edward! Bid for twice for his present Majesty, King George!"
He was repeating from Waller's advocacy as faithfully as a gramophone now. Mac, who could not have learned one line of a formal recitation for his life!... And it seemed that the horse understood for he stiffened, became rigid, and appeared to enlarge in stature; his head went up and his small, fine ears came forward.
"All nothing to what ye must do the day, Houndsdown Thor—for Armsman! MacLeod! Job! Mac!"
Thor quivered at the sound of the familiar words.
"Thor!... For-rr-ty-seven years! There's for-rr-ty-seven years of my life... there's all I know or ever learned... aye, there's the last drop of my heart's blood in ye, Champion Houndsdown Thor!"
Mac's voice came like a sob. Job listened, like a man enchanted... for MacLeod was well-nigh fey. He went on, with a note of entreaty in his voice...
"Champion, we're down, low down in the dust!... They that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock!... low down and humbled in the dust. Lift us up the day, Houndsdown Thor!..."
To any one but Job it might have sounded like a delirium... but again, as of old, Thor's nose came pressing close, gentle, reassuring, even as though he understood each word wrung from this lonely and embittered old man...
A clash from the yard outside shattered the spell, and Job peered through the window. A man in a leather apron had just dropped a grimy wooden tray of tools to the ground and was talking to Marcus Bell.
"Here's the farrier, Mac! What about Thor's shoes?"
"Ye may leave that to me, Armsman... go and eat and freshen yerself, laddie. Ye've had no rest... and I've slept, God forgive me, I've slept well the night."
Job went.
IT had been one of the stipulations made by Marcus Bell, whom Job had been glad to leave in charge of the conditions of the bet, that the test took place at twelve o'clock.
("If the weather is going to be anything like respectable for us that will give the sun or the wind time to dry the dampness from the morning mist off the road?" Marcus Bell had said. "A small point, considering that the horses will have heels and toe pieces, anyway... but still we may as well get all we can in our favor.")
Anything even slightly out of the ordinary run of daily life on the quiet countryside, particularly a sporting event, will attract its spectators, but even so, Job was amazed at the size of the crowd that had collected when he reached the starting point at ten o'clock.
It seemed as if half the county had come to see the bets decided.
The fields on each side of the road at Penfold Corner were full of people and parked cars. An enterprising caterer from Milchester had taken the opportunity of turning a more or less honest penny, and the tent he had erected in one of the fields was crowded. Many of these had made an early start in the chill morning, coming from a considerable distance, and they were glad of the caterer. That the caterer was glad of them was evidenced very quickly by a sudden sharp rise in the price per cup of tea and coffee at about nine-thirty. Beside the tent, to greet the farmers, were the inevitable barrels. He belongs to a highly conservative class, the English farmer, and the beer of his ancestors must ever be in evidence at any event he cares to grace with his presence or sustain with his approval.
But though so many had come there, clearly in much the same spirit as they went to the races, or steeplechases or an agricultural show or a meet of the hounds, the affair to Job was of a vastly different character. As he put it to some friends, Shire-horse breeders who had come from distant counties to see the event, and were staying for a night with Lewis at Houndsdown, "It's no holiday to me. I'm asking two of my best horses to do something that will call for all they've got—and there's too much money on it to make me comfortable."
The experts agreed.
"It's a lot to ask of any horses," they said, gravely non-committal.
"Well, if any horses in the world'll do it, Houndsdown Thor and Gloriana will," broke in the robust voice of old Tom Waller, who had been busy about for the past two hours.
The listeners agreed—almost reluctantly—with that, too, and drifted away to lay a few more pounds on the horses. It was, as it always had been, easier to find people laying against them than backing them.
Within a few minutes of Job's arrival the mutually approved referee drove up with a big party. This was a lean little horsey-looking man rather like a prosperous stud-groom in appearance—Lord Boldrewood, who lived for horses. He dropped out of his car at the gate and shook hands all round. He had known Houndsdown and Houndsdown folk all his life.
"Well, gentlemen, we've got a glorious day for it," he said briskly. "How are the horses, Job. At their best, I hope. Morning, Bernemann... morning, Bell, morning, Waller... better be seeing about the weights, hey?"
He was not a man much given to blandishment or to wasting time, and all his life had been devoted to affairs of the kind.
Calment's party were around the low heavy truck standing at the white line painted across the road, and they turned all very bright and optimistic, as the others approached.
Young Everest, Calment's chief backer, may have been a spendthrift but he was not too far from being a sportsman.
He greeted them, gaily enough.
"Good morning, gentlemen... here we are... a grand day and a perfect road. Hope the horses are all right, Job. It's going to be a sight worth seeing, at all events, though..." he added boyishly, "how the devil any two horses on earth can shift that accumulation of old iron, I can't conceive!"
Calment's voice chimed in.
"It looks a lot. Still, may the best man win!"
His eyes were on Job.
Job said nothing. Marcus Bell's face was expressionless. On the edge of the crowd somebody laughed, a dry sound with a touch of contempt in it That was Hardaway, the vet, the only other there who knew what had happened in the night.
"You look tired, Calment," said Marcus evenly.
The hot glitter in the man's eyes intensified a little, but he answered easily:
"Yes. Dancing too late last night, I'm afraid."
It was evident that he had provided his alibi.
Job turned to the mound of weights.
It looked appallingly huge and solid. Was it possible that anything on earth could haul that—anything but machinery of the caliber of those bellowing ten-ton tractors that could haul it continuously.
He threw the creeping doubt out of his mind, braced up and turned to the referee.
"I'll examine the truck, Lord Boldrewood."
"Certainly, Armsman."
Boldrewood went through his examination with him.
Job had it jacked up and tried the lubrication of the wheels, went carefully over the iron tyres—the trifling resistance of an unevenly shrunk on tyre, for example, might make all the difference. The rising tide of sound from the chattering crowd, the sharp exchange of voices from those still betting, the flurry of motors backing into parking position, all seemed to recede as he concentrated on his examination.
He forgot the crowd—forgot everything—but the fact that he was betting against a formidably unscrupulous opponent—a man who had shown that he would hesitate at nothing to make it impossible for Job to win.
He spent a long time around that truck, intent, taut, eager—it was Tom Waller who said afterwards that Job nosed around the truck like a hungry bloodhound hunting for trouble.
But at last he stood back.
"I'm satisfied with the truck," he stated tersely. Calment stepped forward for his scrutiny of the vehicle.
Unlike Job, he was perfectly conscious of the eyes of the crowd, and gratified by them.
He was a graceful, good-looking blackguard, easy, jaunty, extremely well-dressed and got up for the occasion—almost too well. His examination consisted of any easy stroll round the truck, with a cigarette, darting a theatrical glance here and there at a wheel or an axle. Then he stood back.
"Quite satisfied!"
"Well, load up."
Half a dozen lusty volunteers who had been waiting in readiness, came forward, and began to pile on the mass of weights.
Marcus and Job checked them as they went on.
It was Sir Joseph Bernemann who strolled out of the crowd around the truck and moved quietly away over the "track" to Fairmore's Culvert.
The steam roller had only left the chosen furlong two days before and to the keen eyes of Bernemann the road looked perfect Dry, hard, level, not so glassy as asphalt nor slippery as stone setts, it would afford a good grip for properly-shod hoofs and still hold up under the crushing bite of the iron-bound wheels.
Sir Joseph nodded gently.
"If they lose it won't be because of the road," he told himself.
A good many people were walking over the road, studying it curiously, but the last fifty yards of it Sir Joseph had to himself except for one person sitting on the rails spanning the culvert. Five yards beyond the culvert another broad white line was painted across the road.
A hundred yards further on the road-repair gang's engine, carts and tools stood idle—for the men, naturally, had given themselves the morning off and were with the crowd at the starting point.
Sir Joseph checked at the culvert, looking closely at the road, then stepped to the side and stooped to get a closer idea of the contour. "Unless I'm mistaken there's a slight rise there!"
He frowned.
"I suppose Marcus and Armsman know this... For it's at the ugly end of a haul like this," he muttered.
"Yes sir, that's the place'll give 'em a nut to crack!" came a voice from the rails.
Bernemann looked up at the speaker... a weird, undersized, ragged, starved-looking nondescript.
Sir Joseph had seen him about, even heard his name. He picked him out from a memory that never failed. White—White was the name. Noddy, wasn't it? Yes, Noddy White—said to be a half-wit But there was nothing half-witted about that pat comment of his—"that's the place'll give 'em a nut to crack!"
He nodded to this abject's voluntary information.
"Yes, you're right there... Dr... Noddy!" he said, gave him a compassionate shilling and turned back.
Behind him came Noddy's voice... parrotlike...
"Yessir... thank'ee, sir... that's the place'll give 'em a nut to crack!"
The vague quality of mechanical repetition in the voice of the half wit was caught by the keen, acute mind of Bernemann. A man of vast interests, cosmopolitan, widely experienced in men and affairs, he understood that remote hint of the parrot. He had heard it before many times, from many men—and clever men. In the conduct of his far-flung and complex affairs it had often been his experience to talk with—and listen to—men who, for all their cleverness, were no more than mouthpieces, highly trained parrots, uttering lessons carefully and patiently taught them by more dangerous men, unseen, behind them.
And he knew, none better, that sometimes it is how a man says a thing rather than what he says which is important He paused, then turned again and went back to Noddy White.
He added a half-crown to the shilling he had already bestowed, and, quietly, without haste, even with a kindly gentleness slowly got into friendly conversation with the half-wit.
They appeared to get on famously.
After a while Sir Joseph strolled away again—this time in the direction of the deserted scene of the road-mender's operations.
Noddy strolled along with him. They seemed excellent friends—the millionaire and Mr. White...
When, presently, Sir Joseph, quietly enjoying a cigar came back to the starting-point, the crowd had redoubled and already lined the course on each side for a considerable distance.
The men had almost completed loading. The sight of the iron piled truck was startling, and they were laying three to one against the horses freely.
Even old Tom Waller's face was grave, though occasionally he turned to bark over his shoulder his acceptance of another bet offered half in jest, half in earnest, by some friend of his.
But the weight of the money, as ever, was heavily against Job.
People were getting a little excited. Twice, Sir Joseph saw Marcus Bell snap up and enter fairly big bets.
He saw Lewis—of Houndsdown—suddenly scowl, seem to lose patience, and accept three hundred pounds to one hundred from a burly and notoriously well-to-do dairy farmer, who was rather noisily a strong supporter of Calment and Co.
"Good for you, Lewis," shouted the layer of the odds, laughing. "I'll lay it again! Lewis... will you double that!"
But Lewis shook his head.
"Come on, old man!"
A finer voice, clear, cool, without a tremor, answered him.
"I will take you, Mr. Parton, if you like. Three hundred to one hundred!"
"It's a bet, Miss Waverley!"
The crowd laughed a little.
Pink, but quite cool, and very much Miss Chin-in-the-Air, Waverley entered it in a neat little book. Then she smiled across to the financially energetic one.
"Will you double that, Mr. Parton?" she challenged him.
Parton hesitated and the crowd laughed delightedly.
He laid it again—with less enthusiasm—and Waverley closed her book with the air of one well content.
"Well, at any rate, I've wiped out my folly at the Golf Club," she murmured.
"Folly, child?" asked Boldrewood, who, standing next to her, overheard.
"Why, you see, I was foolish enough to bet a little against the horses the other day, Lord Boldrewood."
"Um-m! I see," he said, following her glance across to where Job and her father stood checking the weights. He caught too the darting glance Calment shot at her.
"Um-m!" repeated Lord Boldrewood non-committally.
A little in the background Sir Joseph Bernemann smoked his cigar, quietly, saying nothing at all.
Then a ripple ran through the crowd—and a murmur that grew to a shout:
"The horses!"
MACLEOD, with Straker and Evans, was bringing them by a side road to Penfold Corner—old Mr. Albery of the chalk, and his dog, trailing close behind.
"It's Houndsdown Thor and Gloriana!" shouted a man from the edge of the crowd. They craned to see. Almost every one there had expected the weight-puller Vulcan for the rumor that Job considered Thor too old had long before spread and the decision had been generally approved.
But it was the old horse which was the popular one of the two. There was not a soul for miles around who did not know the old champion. For years, he had been going out, north, south, east, west, meeting all-comers, picked horses from everywhere, challenging the pride and cream of the Shire horse world, and time after time he had returned triumphant with fresh trophies, new records, more honor for Houndsdown, his breeder and exhibitor, more reflected glory for the village.
And if a few lines appeared between the brows of some of the more knowing backers of Job they were erased by the reflection that at least Thor would give them a run for their money. He was unbeaten—and McLeod was wont to claim that the great stallion knew it as well as his owner.
The monstrous load of iron would go over the line or Thor would break his heart. They knew that There was no limit to Thor's courage—his only enemy was Anno Domini—the remorseless years.
They came on, turned out of the lane and passed through the crowd.
Mac, his face grey and bleak and sour, walked with Thor. It was characteristic of the acrid pride of the old Scot that he walked by the old horse without a finger on him or any part of his harness, Thor had been too long accustomed implicitly to obey every word to render any guidance necessary. And, doubtless, Mac thought people might as well see that Job saw, with a sort of shock, that Mac carried a whip-then realized that the lash was wound round the stock, and smiled. A whip to Houndsdown Thor!
He had left the preliminary handling of the horses to Mac who had thought fit to present them undecorated. Their manes were natural, lacking any of the careful plaiting with interwoven ribbon. They came to the work, unadorned, like the workers they were.
But they shone with the dappled, satin gleam that only horses at the very zenith of condition can show, and they were full of pride and courage, strength and fire.
Both were gentle horses, docile, sweet-tempered, but they sensed the keen excitement in the air and their fine ears were cocked, their eyes bright and enquiring, their nostrils a little blown.
Job saw Thor at once and spoke softly to him, as was his way.
Job took a last look at the trim of the colossal load and moved to them.
"All right, Mac?"
"Aye! Fit to pull for their lives!"
Job looked carefully at their shoes—he had done that twice before as well as watching them shod—but to-day he was sacrificing nothing for lack of a little care.
"All right, Armsman?" asked the referee. "Yes."
"Put them in!"
Voluntary stewards were stringing out down the course, keeping back the people—and now it was the f aint-hearted's five minutes. Those that had delayed making their bets became alive to the fact that if they intended to have a stake it must be now or never. They woke up—and the clamor grew to a roar.
The blood began to sing a keen and vibrant song in Waverley's brain as she watched Job and the stone-faced MacLeod busy with buckles and chains. She knew that the result of this tremendous test meant more to Job than even he guessed—for Marcus had dropped certain hints to the effect that a win might mean Job's return to Houndsdown—among other things.
And it seemed that other people sensed or guessed at this for there were many shouting good wishes and encouragement to Job.
"They'll do it for ye, boy—I know it—hey, damme, it's just come to me like an electric shock!" bawled the voice of old Tom Waller, high above the din of the crowd.
"Houn'sdown Thor for iver," yelled a wild Irish voice from somewhere. "Sure, they'll walk away wid it for a half-crown wid anny man—and I've got but two shillin's!"
Calment, not content with his already huge stakes, flung an excited offer of fifteen hundred to five at Job, and Bernemann close behind said, "Take that, my boy."
"It's a bet, Calment." Bernemann's lips moved. "Double it," he said.
A sudden sharp consciousness of the sheer impregnable power of his backer, thrilled Job. "Have it again, Calment?" Calment glared.
"Double, if you like, Armsman!"
"I'll take that, three thousand to one," said Job, his voice edged and jarring.
"And again!" said Midas, coldly, at his elbow. "Two to one would do."
But Calment was full up. He had gone his limit in every way. He shook his head, smiling... but his smile was a grin and his eyes were full of malice and hatred.
Everest lounged forward.
"If you really want some more, Armsman," he called, "I'll bet you a level five thousand."
"No," said Sir Joseph Bernemann in his quiet voice at Job's shoulder.
"No, thanks, Everest," declined Job, blindly obeying.
The boy stepped back, satisfied with his apparent triumph, and Lord Boldrewood glanced at his watch.
"Ready? It's half a minute to time."
Straker, the morose, and MacLeod were standing one each side of Gloriana in the shafts, with Evans and Job each side of Thor, the leading horse. That was mainly in case of accidents... from interested parties.
"Thirty seconds," said Boldrewood warningly.
The roar died down for a little.
A few white handkerchiefs fluttered... Out of the corner of her eye Waverley saw that two of these were waved by Lady Mary Merrowby and Miss Stark. But she had no time for waving handkerchiefs. She had seen Truth in the last twenty-four hours—courage, patience and love in Job Armsman's eyes by the light of a dull lamp in a dim stable; and cunning, malice, cruelty and greed in the eyes of the patent-leather man, Calment, clear and plain in the silver blue moonlight flooding Windyshaw stable-yard!
Her soul was in the chains beside the big horses—side by side with the soul of Armsman.
"Oh, please let them win," prayed Waverley, under her breath, her inner vision dazzled by the dream of success dazed by the nightmare deserts of failure...
"Go!" said Lord Boldrewood sharply.
Job spoke to Thor, Mac to Gloriana... and the grand beasts pressed themselves into their collars against the twenty-five ton load. Down went their heads, the muscles balled and knotted under their hides, the veins leaped into relief—and the all-but solid mass of iron shook, the squat powerful wheels quivered.
"Thor!"
"Glor-rr-iana!"
Slowly, with an inert and terrible heaviness, the reluctant wheels seemed to yield, to bow down, to turn.
The load was moving—inch by inch.
The big hoofs, spiked at toe and heels ground and bit into the hard, newly rolled road, and the great necks bent as the horses fought the solid weight behind.
The white line receded slowly, slowly, and the black gap of roadway between the truck and the line widened, with a dreadful deliberation, but always widened...
"Thor... Thor!"
Job's voice was low but the old horse understood.
Mac was encouraging the mare with strange wild sounds...
The truck was rolling steadily now, with a deep dull note, and it seemed that the fierce labor of the big horses was a little, a very little, eased.
Their breath came sharp like plumy jets of fading steam on the keen air, and the thud of their hoofs was steady.
But "never again," swore Job, his eyes on the swelling neck of Thor, his senses recording painfully each deadly foot of strain and desperate effort...
"Half way! ... Armsman wins! Thor! Thor! Come on, Thor!"
A fat and purple man, bellowing furiously, kept pace with Job. But from first till last Job never recognized this one as old Waller.
Mac was talking to the mare as though to a favorite child of his.
"So... so... my dear... my darling... pull! Ah, good mare! Gloriana! Houndsdown Gloriana!... Pull!"
The wheels rolled—as remorseless in their moving as they had seemed to be when motionless.
The long lines of people swayed in and out.
"Keep back! Back!" shouted the stewards. "Keep off the crown o' the road... Keep off! Damn you, sir, keep back!" Job heard one snarl savagely at a helpless encroacher, thrust forward by those behind him.
But the wheels were slowly devouring the level yards.
"Come on, Houndsdown! Houndsdown! Fifty yards! Only fifty yards! Come on! Only...!"
It bit into Job's mind like something with a barbed point that both horses were weakening in the shadow of the juggernaut they dragged. Great patches of sweat leaped out on their hides, and both horses were breathing like horses about to suffocate.
But still their hoofs tramped heavy and measured as the blows of great hammers.
"Thor, old man! Thor!"
It seemed to Job Armsman that the old horse's next breath was blended with a groan.
But still the wheels rolled...
"Twenty-five yards, Job, and ye're home!" screamed a man's voice, high and shrill with excitement...
"Twenty yards!..."
But the horses were falling away and that high altar of iron slowed and slowed... "Fifteen!"
"Thor! Thor! Thor! Houndsdown Thor!"
The gallantry of the old horse fighting the biggest fight he had ever known, and never again could know, eclipsed, in the public mind, the bitter struggle of the mare.
But Mac saw.
"Ah Gloriana... my dear... into it, good mare... pull!" he crooned, livid but desperately controlling every nerve he had.
"Fifteen yards! By God, boy, these few feet!"
Thor! Thor! Thor!
The crowd was tolling it—like a great bell.
But the wheels slowed—slowed.
The voice of the indomitable Marcus rose clear, like a bugle over a barrack square.
"Calment! A level five thousand they smash you!"
Calment feigned not to hear.
Then they were at the foot of the gentle rise which only Sir Joseph Bernemann had seen, and the progress of the iron mass was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible.
"All in..."
The wheels were hardly turning now.
"Thor! Thor! Thor!" bellowed the crowd, believing it impossible that they could fail twenty short feet from the white line of victory.
But MacLeod knew. Like Job he had seen or sensed the all-but invisible rise.
Even as Job reached the limit of endurance to watch the horses he loved struggle against the fearful weight, the MacLeod, with a last cry to the fading Gloriana, ran forward, shaking free the heavy whip lash coiled about the stock.
If the wheels stopped they would never start again... for the trivial rise was like a mountain against them.
"Thor! Houndsdown Thor! Champion Houndsdown Thor! Pull!" screamed Mac, like a man demented.
"Thor!... for all!"
The whip hissed in the air and cracked on the silky black hide of the great stallion with the nerve-racking crack of revolver shots. Once... twice... thrice... with all his strength... MacLeod poured the lash into the only living thing in the world that really mattered to him—and one of the few horses in the world who had never before felt the keen burning stroke of the whip.
"Thor!" implored Mac, his discordant voice shrill and quivering.
At the blows the great horse flung himself forward with a dreadful sound, half snort, half groan, and it seemed to those who were nearest that, in his last despairing pull, he tore the whole load and the fading Gloriana as well, past the culvert, clean over the broad white line and two yards beyond it.
"God Almighty, he's over! Done it! Armsman wins!"
It was victory.
But the roar died out suddenly as Thor flung up his head, high above that of Job, running round to caress him, and shot a spout of scarlet breath from his wide nostrils.
Blood!... Armsman was caught in the red cascade and stood back drenched.
The old horse had burst a blood vessel. The handsome head sank low, streaming a dreadful scarlet stream.
It was the price of victory.
For a few seconds there was no sound near the truck of iron but the hoarse breathing of the horses, the splash of pouring blood—and the dry terrible sound of the tearless grief of MacLeod. He was like a man frenzied.
A passionless voice, icily impartial, rose.
"I declare that the horses Houndsdown Gloriana and Champion Houndsdown Thor have hauled a certified weight of twenty-five tons for a measured distance of one furlong over the ordinary highway," said Lord Boldrewood. "If any one wishes to lodge any objection it must be raised now!"
But there were no objections.
He would have been a bold, or desperate man who lodged any objection then.
Everest came forward, a gallant loser.
"I congratulate you, Armsman!... The grand old horse... eh?... he held the honor of Houndsdown like a high banner, today!... Hate losing, Armsman, old man, but it was right that you should have won!"
He glanced at Job's face and merged quietly into the crowd.
Tom Waller billowed forward.
"Job, Job, I'd be glad if it had never happened—win or lose." He wrung Job's hand, making way for Marcus Bell, who said nothing at all, only looked with his steady eyes of bright steel intently at Job, patted his arm and moved away.
Waverley never came to congratulate him at all—for Waverley was making her pretty eyes red all alone down behind the steam roller.
Mac and the other men—including Mr. Albery, his face as white above his snowy beard as his beloved chalk—moved the horses off the road into a side-cut through the woodland.
Hardaway the vet was anxiously with them.
Job ignored the hands offered him, the pouring congratulations, and all stained and soaked with the blood of Houndsdown Thor as he was, turned his back on all where they surged before the inert hill of iron at which old Houndsdown Thor had made his sacrifice, and went to them.
As he approached he saw that Hardaway was turning from Thor to a lanky figure with a grey strained face in which two huge eyes seemed to burn with a ruby light—a figure that muttered continuously.
"Why, Mac, what's this you're raving about... sooner flog your own child if you had one! Killed Houndsdown Thor, you say! Man, you must be stark crazy! You weakening on it! MacLeod of Houndsdown! Man, haven't you ever seen a horse break a blood-vessel before? It's but a minor vein. Look at the flow with your own eyes, if you don't believe me. Give the horse a good, long rest and a little care and he'll be charging around the paddock like a two-year-old long before you've spent your winnings!"
He shouted his news at them all like an irritated schoolmaster to a parcel of children, but that was only because he, too, had been moved more than he felt was professional. It seemed to occur to nobody but old Mr. Albery the shepherd that Hardaway was almost as passionately glad to give the information as they were to receive it.
But then Mr. Albery lived ever in a lofty, serene and eternal tranquility, high up among the snows of extreme old age—and it was he, the only man present steady enough to do it, who summed up.
"You'm all excited men, excited nigh to th' tears of childer an' young things. Houndsdown Thor has no more than done his duty as a good horse is bound to do, and a good man... and a good man."
His faded blue eyes stared past them, beyond them.
"Seventy years, man and boy, winter and summer and all, I've outfaced the wind on Houndsdown hill, and I have learned that from the sun and the wind on the upland and the blue sky over all... a good horse, or a good man, can only do his duty according to his strength and his understanding... and that is the beginning and the end of all I ever learned."
The old shepherd ceased, walked over to Thor, solemnly smoothed the great, sweat-stained, blood-spattered neck, passed on to Gloriana, patted her, and walked slowly away, his ancient sheep dog moving stiffly at his heels.
"And that, if I ever heard it in my life, is Truth!" said Sir Joseph Bernemann quietly to Marcus Bell.
Job was by Thor, whispering. The flow of blood was slackening fast, and the old horse seemed to sense that all was well.
He lifted his splendid head and made a queer, choked snuffling sound as though he tried to whinny as usual at the touch of Job's hand.
Then Mac pushed forward.
"Laddie, now leave him to me. His courage is no' less than ever it was... and I'm even deeper in his debt than yerself. Moreover... do ye no' see that ye're needed elsewhere?"
He jerked a smeary thumb towards the deserted site of the roadmender's operations.
A slim, graceful little figure was standing there witH a white handkerchief fancying herself unseen.
SO, and at that price, light enough, after all, to pay for happiness—the streak of black luck in the life of Job Armsman ended.
If he had needed any further evidence of this after those few minutes with Waverley Bell it was amply provided at dinner that night with Marcus Bell, Sir Joseph Bernemann and old Waller.
Yet at the end of that meal, Job was the only one who appeared to believe that he really did not care to linger over the port with the others. But that no doubt was because a headier stimulant awaited him in the drawing-room or out on the moonlit lawn.
They let him go, and drew close round the table—Waverley's father, Waverley's godfather, and, as Mr. Waller breezily styled himself (not to be left out in the cold) Waverley's gran'father!
Marcus took from a drawer some papers and his betting book and set them before him.
"It was a great slaughter—they thought they had us cold!" he chuckled, thought of something and faced Bernemann.
"I've been intending to ask you, Joseph... why did you bar Job from taking that five thousand that Everest offered to bet at the last moment?"
The lips of the big man relaxed a little, and he moved his cigar.
"Why... it wouldn't have been straight. I'll explain. Everest's a young fool, rather influenced by Calment, but he's a gentleman and straight You see, I learned from a young friend of mine, Mr... Dr... Noddy White, of a device by which Master Calment fancied he had made himself doubly safe. That rise in the road... which came within a fraction of losing the bet and killing old Thor was... manufactured. Normally the road is as flat over that small culvert as elsewhere in the measured furlong. But, as you may have noticed, the broken granite for the new road was hauled by Calment's tractors... a contract with the County Council no doubt... and he probably found it easy to bribe the foreman of the road gang to drop and spread a slightly greater thickness of road metal at the culvert than was necessary... enough to make that apparently trifling rise which matters so much to horses with twenty-five tons behind them. Oh, he's a slick young man, is Master Calment... much too slick. But Noddy was lying in the bracken of the woodland just off the road some days ago ('watching' a pheasant, he says probably with a large catapult and a big lead bullet) when Calment took the foreman aside, a little way into the wood, made the arrangement with that foreman, and paid his bribe. Noddy heard it all... and one phrase stuck in his poor dim mind: 'That's the place'll be a nut for 'em, to crack!'
"I got it from Noddy while you were checking on the load... And it meant this—if the horses won, all bets on them of course were fairly won. But if they lost no bets need have been paid, for a protest... with proof... to Boldrewood would have resulted in his rightly declaring all bets off. So Job was on velvet. He did not know it but he could have bet Mr. Calment a million with absolute safety. He could receive if he won... but he need not have paid if he lost. That's why I urged him to bet Calment all Calment would stand. For Calment deserved it... caught in his own trap. But I couldn't let other folk, neighbors and straight, honest sporting folk bet against him. Their bets were bona fide and it would have been unfair to let them throw their money away. But with Calment it was different... he thought he was betting on a certainty which he had made a certainty. So I told Job to help himself... as he did."
They stared, then grinned.
"I begin... dimly, like Noddy White... to see why you have made something of a success in life!" said Marcus.
Sir Joseph smiled.
"One makes the most of one's opportunities," he explained mildly.
Marcus turned to his figures.
"Well, all's well that ends well," he said. "It was a good gamble. The check at the Club amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds. That will be met... it's signed by Calment, guaranteed by Everest (a big proportion of it was taken up by sound men betting against us that night) and it is certified by the bank. How they and their supporters proportion their loss, is their trouble, not ours. Of that twenty-five thousand, Job draws five thousand, and you, Tom, two thousand. That right? Good. That covers the betting on the night of the dinner. I win another two thousand two hundred and eighty on various bets I've made since the dinner and Job took four thousand five hundred against the horses to-day direct from Calment I doubt if he'll ever see that! Calment will default!"
Old Waller nodded vigorously.
"Eh, you're right there, Marcus. He bolted this afternoon... owing thousands! But the place is well rid of him... cheap at the price."
Marcus smiled.
"Still, you get yours, Tom, out of the check. And you earned it for you gave us all a lead at the Club that night."
Old Waller refilled his glass, chuckling.
"And so," concluded Marcus, "Job has won a sure five thousand. And I've won twenty thousand two-hundred and eighty. Call it twenty-three thousand all told!"
He faced Bernemann.
"How much of that do you want for Houndsdown and all the stock your man Lewis bought at the sale? You'll sell that back, won't you? I want to buy it for Waverley and Job... and I'll settle the balance on them jointly, plus ten thousand, the day they're married! Waverley's going to be the wife of the soundest man I ever met and she's escaped the shiftiest and I want to see them well started in his old home, Joseph."
Sir Joseph Bernemann seemed a shade disconcerted.
"You knew Lewis was acting for me all the while?"
Marcus laughed affectionately.
"Who didn't? Did you think it was a secret? Lord, man, everybody but Job knows it!"
"Urn... do they? Oh!" Bernemann rubbed his chin. "I suppose I'm getting easy to see through, I've done pretty well... held my own, you may say, in New York and London and a few other places... but I see, now I've fallen among farmers, I shall have to watch my step."
He laughed, continuing.
"Well, Marcus, as you say, Houndsdown's mine and those horses there are mine. Now, Waverley's my god-daughter and I don't remember that I've ever given her much beyond a silver mug nearly twenty years ago. She's turned out sterling metal, and Job Armsman is sword steel... well tempered. I like them both, and I've nobody... I want to help them, too. So you'll allow me, Marcus, to settle Houndsdown on them and give a half share of the stock to Job. The other half share I shall keep. You can settle the whole of your winnings on them. And Job can throw his Big Three into the partnership and he and I will carry on with the Shire horse breeding (not because we shall hope to compete with the tractors for that's impossible... they'll sweep the world, those mechanical slaves, which is as it should be) but because we love the grand beasts, and because I believe, with Job, that there will always be room for the best of them. I'll say now that I'd be prouder of breeding a horse like old Thor than a Derby winner! Don't ask why... it's my humor, as Shylock said... You understand, Marcus, that I should never have allowed the mortgage to worry him or watched him sell up in the first place if I hadn't liked him too well to leave him in a groove. He needed a jar. He wanted shaking up and tempering... and he's been tempered. A jar—a jolt like that—was the only thing needed to put Job Armsman on the road to success. For, make no mistake about it, my friends, Houndsdown is going to be a worth-while enterprise. The Shire horse will endure for our time and Job's and Job's children. For short hauling, for the farms. Farms run small in England and the land is served by little lanes that, half the year, are hardly better than ditches... impassable to any light tractors. And the big caterpillars are too expensive for the average English farmer. In countries where farms run really big, it's another matter. But these great honest horses have used these lanes for centuries... and it will be many a year before a quiet but steady demand for them dies out. The natural farm worker, too, will never be a mechanic—an economically possible mechanic—capable of handling inexpensive tractors of the type which the small farmer can afford—the two things do not go together. A good mechanic will not stay on the soil... in the rural quietness. He will go to the towns. And there are other reasons... but I needn't go through the list to-night. I've consulted experts... one in particular, and the best of all the experts. Common Sense, his name is."
He smiled, continuing in his quiet, measured voice.
"Hitherto Job has been hampered because quite unconsciously he has run his business shackled with traditions—with old uneconomic customs. They will have to go."
He sighed, shaking his head a little ruefully.
"Times change... and the present times are hard upon old traditions. The older one grows the more one regrets them. For many of them were patiently built up on a basis of wisdom and experience... Yet many traditions in many businesses will have to be forgotten in the present age if those businesses are going to hold their own against the rising flood of world competition by newer but apter concerns!... Never mind all that... just be sure that Waverley is not marrying a man who is likely to fall short of success. I... Bernemann... guarantee that!"
Marcus nodded.
"True. As far as I am able to judge, that's true. It sounds real... and practical," he agreed. Old Tom breezed in, red from his port. "True! True! Haven't I always said the same! Sir Joseph's right! Dammy, come to think of it I could name some traditions in my own business that do my balance sheet no good! Hay? Well, now, there's another thing I want to say now... speaking, you may say, as little Miss Waverley's temporary gran'father and a friend of Job and his father before him... I'm a winner of nearly three thousand pounds all told, out of which I'm going to give 'em on their weeding day a hunter apiece. And hunters they'll be proud to ride. And mebbe if I do that I'll not be damned well ashamed to look the horse that won the money for me in the face next time I see him."
Marcus, as nearly excited as he ever had been, thrust the decanter urgently upon each of his guests.
"And that goes too, Tom! Fill up then and I'll give you a toast."
They were willing.
And so, standing gravely, they drank to Gloriana, the mare, and the old champion... Houndsdown Thor...
WAVERLEY and Job were not called in for the toast which was just as well for, strictly, they were not immediately available.
They had strolled up to Windyshaw to see how Thor and Vulcan were getting on... for this seemed to them to be on the whole rather more attractive than discussing absurd things like money and port and so forth in the dining-room.
They heard voices in the stables as they approached. Mr. MacLeod, who had been tirelessly on watch over the horses for the past eight hours, was talking to Hardaway who had looked in to keep himself satisfied.
"Aye, I think you're right, man... he'll do, now, with proper care and attention, which ye can rely on his gettin'. Vulcan is improving every minute and the mare is none the worse for her fight. Ye may say 'All's well'."
"I do," replied Hardaway. "And now I suppose Job will buy back Houndsdown, marry Miss Waverley, and live happy ever after."
Mac reflected.
"Aweel, mebbe you're right. He will try to get Houndsdown back, and Miss Waverley and he will certainly get married. But, man, whether they live happy ever after is another matter, ye ken... They've got a bonny chance of it... but it's in their own hands and heads and hearts. If Miss Waverley will learn to think maybe a little less about her own play and a little more about Job's work... and if Job'll learn to think a little less of his own work and a little more of Waverley's play... why I'm not saying that maybe they'll have as much happiness as is good for them," declared Mac cautiously, and, after a pause, added, modestly, "But, anyway, old MacLeod will be around and about for a few years yet to see them well started... and Houndsdown Thor will be there to help."
Waverley pressed Job's hand and they moved away.
She was extraordinarily touched. Job knew that from the way in which her fingers were closed on his.
Under the trees—the trees in whose shadow she had once placed a parcel—she stopped.
"Oh, Job—we must learn that by heart. All of it. Everything that MacLeod said... Oh, I have never heard anything so wise as that. Can you remember it all? Oh, it doesn't matter. I can!"
She was holding more tightly than ever to his hand.
"'But, man, whether they will live happy ever after is another matter, ye ken!'" she said, with a peculiar soft tenseness, and drew a long breath.
"'They've got a bonny chance of it...'" quoted Job, slowly. "'But it's in their own hands and heads and hearts!'"
"Yes, yes! Oh, let me go on... please let me go on!" whispered Waverley, and continued:
"'If Miss Waverley will learn to think maybe a little less about her own play and a little more about Job's work...' Oh, Job, I will... I will..."
He drew her close.
"Don't worry, don't let it hurt, my dear!" he said, and went on in his deep voice...
"And if Job will learn to think a little less of his own work and a little more of Waverley's play..." he was stooping now, holding her closer, closer than ever, and he could feel her trembling in his arms.
"Why... why... I'm not denying..."
Their faces were close, and their lips were close, and there were tears in Waverley's wide eyes... but she joined in with Job, so that it was like two children praying together in the moon-chequered shadows under the elms.
"'... not... denying... that they'll have as much happiness as is good for them!'"
"Oh, if only we do!" sighed Waverley, and half turned in his arms.
"I... I suppose this is what they call being in love," she went on. "Though I didn't know that... somehow... it seemed to hurt so much I want to cry, Job... and that's not very amusing, is it?... It's all because of the way I treated you."
She drew his head down, half whispering.
"Job, I have so much to say... and somehow it is all apologies. I have been so sorry all along. All along... from the moment you asked me if I would take care of that curl that your mother saved from the time you were a little boy. When we quarrelled... perhaps you didn't think to yourself that I was sorry at all... When I went off to the Lorraine that night! You would be making a great mistake if you thought that while you sat and chatted with daddy I had forgotten you and was just flying along those long shadowy roads laughing with Freddy Calment. For it wasn't like that, you know. All the time... nearly every minute of the time... I saw you looking at me... your brown face, all thin and haggard, and your eyes, your eyes... tragic and tired and somehow pitiful and somehow grim. I thought of you, Job... your eyes. Let me have my way to-night, Job, and don't speak... don't say a word."
He was hers—she had entirely taken possession of him, and he was content.
Her voice continued, like a thread of silver in the misty moonlight:
"Freddy Calment loved to make the exhaust of his car roar and roar behind the great, glaring lights, and it always sounded so fierce... so formidable. But all the time I knew that anybody could do that sort of thing. Playing... only just playing... like a boy. And always, Job, always my thoughts came back to you, cold and grim and restrained, moving among the great horses, working... working hard... as a man must, I suppose..."
He had not known that one could hold a girl closer... yet she was closer.
"Freddy Calment seemed always to have so much money... to think nothing of having so much... and to... to... throw it away. And you seemed to have nothing... not to be able to get what a man like he seemed to be able to get so easily... with a snap of the fingers. Do you think I never thought of you and MacLeod and the horses and the great trunks of the trees down in Little Warreners Wood? I thought of you there, Job, only you never knew, and when I came up to you on the downs... about riding at night in Mr. Calment's car... I was a fool, Job... a fool to be... as I was, I knew that you were right and that I was wrong... so I scolded... tried to bully you... just as it was when I came up to you about the betting. If I had not gone away that second time I would have cried. You looked like a little boy... your lips fell open and I saw your teeth... until you became angry and shouted at me. I bet against you... and I shall always be sorry and ashamed because of that... I was a fool. But, all the same, I know this and it is true, that to-day when the horses were pulling so desperately for you, I was pulling, too... in my heart. It was the most painful, terrible thing and when MacLeod ran forward with that dreadful whip for Thor it hurt me in my heart as much as it hurt Thor and something broke in me for you just as the blood vessel broke in Thor... only Thor shed blood for you and I shed only tears... There! I don't want to say any more now, Job. I have told you everything... except just that the reason why I happened to be near the stables last night was because I was going to leave the parcel of your mother's things and your curl on your step. But I repented. It was only silly anger. I don't think I could ever have done it And I know I shall never be angry in that kind of way again. I don't want to say any more. Everything is strange and enchanted to-night But I do love you, Job, and I see how it is bound to be between us. Sometimes I shall be afraid of you... and sometimes I shall just laugh at you and do as I like... and sometimes you will seem to me to be just that little boy who had golden curls and who looks at you with puzzled wistful eyes—but I shall always love you, Job, and I hope that you will be happy with me for I will try hard... Job stopped her then.
"Why, Waverley, Waverley, you are talking as if you have been always in the wrong... and angry all the time. But you haven't And if you had it would only have been what I deserved. I was stubborn and harsh and bitter—against everything almost —just because the times were changing and I was not clever enough to adapt myself to the new times. That was all... But I have learned a lot in the last few months and I have seen so much since my talk with Sir Joseph. He understood the important, vital side of my business better than I did. And he understood me... and MacLeod... better than we understood ourselves. We were in a groove and somehow between them all... old Thor, Sir Joseph, your father, Waller,... and you, Waverley, you most of all... have... have pulled me... and Mac, too... out of the groove. It will be all right now... and Houndsdown will be all right, too I realize that... that many cobwebs had accumulated up at Houndsdown and in my mind, as well..."
"No, no, it was not so bad as that..." protested Waverley.
"I'm afraid it was, Waverley... but what does that matter, now? They have all been swept away... and if it hurt a little to do that... it's all over now, and everything is like new again... like new, Waverley."
She drew a long breath, turning in his arms, and looked up at him. Her eyes shone no more with tears. But they were bright with love.
"Everything like new again," she echoed. "And we will never let it grow old... never. Just as long as we love each other nothing in our whole lives can ever grow old... nothing."
That had never occurred to Job before—but coming so from her lips to him in his mood he was able to see that it was the sheer truth—something to seize hold upon, cling to and for ever retain.
"As long as we love each other nothing in our lives can ever grow old!" he repeated, and laughed with a quiet content "Well, that shouldn't be difficult, my dear... to love each other!"
"No... no!" agreed Waverley, as confidently. They kissed again, as though to seal that understanding, and then, hand in hand through the enchanted moonlight, went back to her father's house where she would wait until Job could make ready his own house for her.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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