Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 21

"He won't hurt himself at it, I fancy," Warton said with rather a snarl.

"From what I hear he has been rather a heavy winner."

"Well, somebody must win at cards, and I don't see why you should sneer at any one who happens to be fortunate, as if there was anything wrong about it," said Polly, resenting rather the tone of Warton's remark than the actual words.

"You're quite right; I am sure I don't wish to say anything against him, everybody seems to like him very well, and all I know is more or less in his favour," Warton answered, feeling somewhat ashamed of himself for having spoken rather unfairly about a man whom he disliked.

He did not quite make his peace though, and the visit did not seem likely to be a very happy one. After some time he began to talk about the races. Polly had worked the purse in which the stakes for "the ladies' prize" were to be given to the winner, and this was the secret of his being so anxious to gain it.

"You will be glad to hear your favourite, Lone Star, is very fit--I am going to gain that smart purse this year again, I hope," he said after some time.

"Are you sure you'll win? I don't think you will. Do you know, I shall make my bets the other way."

"Surely you're not going to bet against Lone Star?" Warton said, remembering how pleased she was at his success the year before and feeling a good deal hurt at her words.

"Sir Harry Ferriard tells me he is sure to win--he rides for Mr Lascelles, who has entered Induna."

"What! has that little--I mean has Lazarus entered Induna for the Ladies' Purse? why he told me he was not entering him for anything but the two big races. It's a shame, and a low trick of his," Warton said, remembering with anything but pleasure the bets he had just made.

"Sir Harry persuaded him to do it because he wanted a mount in the race.

I thought it very nice of him, considering he has won so many races in England, to wish to win our Purse here."

"Yes, and a speech he made about it too," struck in Mrs Short, smiling encouragingly at her daughter; "he said that he had never coveted any prize so much as the purse our Polly had worked, and that he had made Mr Lascelles promise that if he won he was to keep it. Ah! after all it's only the real t.i.tled cla.s.ses that can pay compliments with grace, as well I remember was the case in dear Uncle Sir Peter's time!"

"Well, after that I can hardly hope that you can wish me success, though I think you might have kept some kindly feeling for old Lone Star,"

Warton said as he got up to go.

"Well, you see, you don't ride yourself, and Mr Marshall rides for you, and he never speaks to a lady if he can help it, so you must allow me to wish Sir Harry to win," Polly said, as she shook hands with him.

"Of course you may wish who you like to win; and what's more, you will have what you wish for, for Lone Star won't have a chance against Induna," he said, as he left the house.

Polly watched him go through the garden, and listened to the tread of his feet as he walked away along the road. His very walk seemed to tell how angry and hurt he was. For a minute or two she felt a little guilty and sorry. After all she liked him a good deal. Though he was heavy and perhaps a little stupid, and at times by no means sweet-tempered, he was a good honest fellow and perfectly devoted to her. To tell the truth she had been upset by the attentions of her new admirer, Sir Harry. She was not more silly than most girls of her age, but she could not help thinking that the element of romance which was wanting in Joe Warton was present in the other. When she looked at Sir Harry's good-looking face she told herself that he could care a good deal more for a woman than Joe could. Then he had a t.i.tle and two or three places in England, and if she married him she would live in London and be in society, instead of living on the Diamond Fields, and that counted for a good deal with her, as it naturally would with a high-spirited girl who had plenty of ambition and wish to see the world. She knew that colonial girls had married Englishmen of family and gone home and held their own there, and she did not see why she could not do it.

Warton went round to his friend Marshall's house, and found him turning in.

When he told the latter what he had done about Lone Star, and what he had heard about Induna being entered by Mr Lazarus, or Lascelles, as that gentleman had taken to call himself since he had made money on the Diamond Fields, he got very little sympathy.

"You must have been a fool to have backed the mare before you knew the entries. Believed Lazarus would not enter Induna because he said he was not going to, why he would sell his brother to please his friend Sir Harry; besides, he is not above a robbery on his own account. And as for its not paying them to enter the horse, and to have to buy it in, why they can back it for a good bit. Probably Howlett was doing it for them when he laid you those bets," said Marshall.

"Do you think we have any chance? I should like to beat that fellow Ferriard."

"Chance! devil a bit; no race is a certainty till the jockey is weighed in, and it's all right. But this goes pretty near one."

Warton went off greatly irritated with himself, and very much cut up and pained about Polly Short's treatment of him. When he got back to his house he sat for some time in a chair outside his house, smoking and thinking over the unpleasant events of the evening. He had half gone to sleep when he was woke up by hearing the voices of two men, who were pa.s.sing along the road on the side of the reed fence round his garden.

"Waste my time, do you say? don't see it--why we haven't done badly to-night, or this week either; and one can't be always at business.

What's life without sentiment, my dear Bill?"

"All right, we ain't done so bad to-night, only it's a bit rilin' when one sees a chance of getting up a bit of Poker or Loo to find that you're hanging after that girl and out of the way."

The first speaker spoke in the tones of an educated man and a gentleman.

The second voice was a loud, gruff one, and seemed to belong to some one in a lower grade of society.

Joe Warton somehow thought he knew both voices, so he got up and looked over the fence. He found that the men had parted company; one had turned down a road and was out of sight; the other he could see. He was a heavily built man over six feet high, and Warton recognised him as a man called McNeil, who had not been long in Kimberley. He was rather a rough sort of fellow, who had knocked about the world a good deal. He professed to have come out to look at the mines, and report on them for a syndicate of capitalists at home. He was a good deal at the club, though some members thought him rather a doubtful character. The queer thing was, that Joe could not help suspecting that he had recognised in the other voice that of Ferriard. He remembered that Ferriard, though he was friendly enough to most men, had been rather standoffish to McNeil, and professed some surprise at meeting a man like him in a club, though he had afterwards played cards with him on several occasions, as they both seemed to have a keen taste for play. Yet if Warton's suspicions were right, the two men seemed to be on the most confidential footing. After all he was not sure. He had no reason to suspect that Ferriard was not perfectly _bona fide_ and straight, and because he disliked the man and was jealous of him, he ought to be all the more careful not to spread injurious reports about him. It was no business of his, and he would not mix himself up in it, he thought, as he undressed and went to bed.

When the day of the races came, Joe Warton's chances of winning the Ladies' Purse did not look any more hopeful than they were when the entries were published; nor had he managed to hedge any of the money he had put on Lone Star.

The public considered that it was a certainty for Induna, and it was generally thought that Mr Lascelles had been somewhat greedy and unsportsmanlike in entering his horse for the minor event, instead of trying to win one of the big ones. However, Mr Lascelles had joined his forces with some other owners, and had settled to take a share in the stakes they might win, instead of opposing them with Induna, one of the fastest horses ever bred in the colony, and one which several good judges thought might at the weights have a chance of beating the imported horses in the two princ.i.p.al handicaps. Men grumbled and said that the races were being made a cut and dried affair of, but Mr Lascelles did not care, so long as he was backed up by his friend Ferriard, about whom he swaggered and boasted more and more every day.

He liked to think that Ferriard was going to ride for him. The race would be reported in the home papers, and there would be a crop of paragraphs about it, and the world in general would learn that Sir Harry Ferriard had sported his, Mr Lascelles, colours.

If Joe Warton's chances of winning the race looked hopeless, his chances of winning what he cared a great deal more about, namely Polly Short's affections, seemed to be almost as small. Their quarrel had grown more serious during the last few days. The Kimberley Race Ball had taken place, and Joe had attended it. He had not asked Polly to dance with him, and though he was an awkward dancer enough, generally managing to get her more or less torn and in trouble, she was none the less inclined to be angry with him for taking so little notice of her. At the same time Ferriard's attentions had been very marked, and people were canva.s.sing her chances of becoming Lady Ferriard. A good many of her friends laughed at the idea of his being such a fool as to bring home a bride from the Diamond Fields, but they did not know as much as Polly did, as she sat on the grand stand watching the horses entered for the Ladies' Purse. The day before Ferriard had asked her to marry him, but his proposal had been a somewhat strange one. He had just received a cablegram he said, which made it necessary for him to put off his trip up country and start for England almost at once, and he wanted her to marry him in a week's time and go home with him. Now that she had to make up her mind she felt half afraid. It had come so suddenly. Though she felt certain that Ferriard was in love with her, she felt somehow that she was doubtful whether she did not like her old lover best.

As she watched old Lone Star being saddled, and saw Joe Warton looking glum and out of spirits, she experienced a feeling of something like remorse. After all old friends were surest, she thought.

Lone Star had not many supporters. The old mare had won a good many races on the Diamond Fields, and his owner was one of the most popular men there. Little Lazarus might just as well have run Induna in one of the other races, and left the Ladies' Purse for Lone Star, and one or two others, who would have had a fair chance. But there is no sentiment about betting, and the bookmakers' cry of "Odds bar one, eight to one bar one, ten to one bar one!" met with very few responses. One or two men took the odds to a few sovereigns on the off-chance. People on the Diamond Fields are as a rule great believers in the off-chance. Still Joe Warton himself said he did not think he could win, and he advised his friends to leave it alone.

"Beg your pardon, sir, but will you let me have a look through your race-gla.s.ses for a second?" said a grey-haired, elderly-looking man, whom Joe never remembered having seen before, and who had just bustled into the grand stand, just as the horses were going down to the starting-post. "That black is the horse Sir Harry Ferriard rides, isn't it? blue and yellow cap? Thank you, sir, I've seen what I want," he added, with rather a satisfied air, as he gave the gla.s.ses back again to Warton.

"That's the horse which will win," Joe said, as he took the gla.s.ses.

"So they all seem to think, but maybe it isn't one of Sir Harry's lucky days," the grey-haired man answered, as he bustled away, and Warton saw him in a second or two afterwards speaking rather earnestly to an inspector of police, who was in the ring. Whatever the grey-haired man had to say, seemed to surprise the latter a good deal.

"All right, in the weighing-room after the race. It will be done neatly and quietly, and no fuss; and a very pretty little bit of business it will be," the grey-haired man said, as he bustled away, and he seemed to leave the inspector with something to do, for the latter at once went and spoke to one of the mounted men.

Joe Warton was Wondering who the grey-haired man was, when he noticed that after he had spoken to the inspector he pa.s.sed closed to McNeil, the man whom he had recognised the night before outside his garden. The latter seemed also, so Warton thought, to be a good deal interested in the grey-haired man. In fact, he would have wagered, from the expression of his face, that he recognised the stranger.

However, Joe Warton did not bother himself any more about them, for just then there was a cry of "They're off!" He was not long in suspense.

"Induna wins!" was shouted out before the horses had got a furlong.

"Lone Star is coming up--No, it's no good, she can't catch Induna,"

Warton said, as he put his gla.s.ses back in their case, for the race was practically over.

Polly Short looked at the race and felt that she was sorry, and that she would give a good deal to see old Lone Star win and that Joe should have the purse she had worked, though she supposed he would not care much for it now.

It was about as tame a race as could be seen, but as the winner pa.s.sed the post, followed by Lone Star, a somewhat startling incident occurred.

The grey-haired man who had borrowed Warton's gla.s.s, had not gone up to the stand; McNeil also had stopped below and stood just behind him.

Suddenly he sprang forward, seized the grey-haired man under his two arms and lifted him clean up into the air, at the same time shouting in a voice that could be heard all over the course,--

"Jim! Slim Jim! ride like h.e.l.l! look here! Old Sharp has come out after you!"

"Hullo! what's the matter with Sir Harry? he don't seem to be able to stop the horse. Why, he's going round twice--no he ain't! Where the deuce is he going?" said Mr Lascelles, as he saw his horse shoot out from a canter into a gallop, and dash past the paddock at a racing pace.

"Well, that's a rum way to finish a race! I suppose it's what they do at the club meeting where he rides at home. But I don't see the sense of it."

Mr Lascelles' astonishment increased considerably as he saw a mounted policeman set off in hot pursuit of the winner.

"He's gone mad! He can't stop the horse! He's got a sunstroke! He don't know where the winning-post is!" were the opinions shouted out by the lookers-on.

"What price against the peeler?" called out some one in the ring. To which there was an answering yell of "Any odds!"