Grey Timothy/Chapter 4
IV.—AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
From thence onward the conversation at one end of the table, and diagonally so far as Horace was concerned, ran in the direction of ‘atmosphere’, ‘feeling’, ‘line’, and ‘tone’.
Gladys listened with the shocked admiration one directs to the prisoner who, in the witness-box, details his long record of criminality.
Now and then she interposed a question with, it must be admitted, no other object than to trip up the earnest young man on her left.
“Have you ever studied art?” she asked sweetly.
He shot a reproachful glance in her direction.
“Not seriously,” he said, “though I have read a great deal on the subject.”
She remembered the two little books and was silenced.
Pinlow played no part in the conversation. He was a man who took his meals very seriously. He drank more than was usual, Gladys observed with apprehension. Lord Pinlow was inclined to sentiment under the genial influence of wine; he was also a little argumentative. They had reached the last course before Mammon, as represented by Mr Callander and his friend, co-mingled with art, and the talk ranged between the rubber boom and the Renaissance.
In the midst of a learned dissertation by Mr Willock upon Light Value, Pinlow half turned in his chair so that he faced Brian.
“I’ve met you somewhere, Pallard,” he said aggressively. “Now where was it? Racing, or at the Club?”
“I forget exactly,” said Brian carelessly, and would have switched off in the direction of pictures.
“Were you the man who owned Flying Fancy?” asked Pinlow.
“I had an interest in her,” replied the other shortly.
“Ah, I remember you put the yarn about that the filly was lame, and she won the Merchants’ Handicap. Rather clever!”
“Very,” said Brian dryly. “She went lame in the morning and was apparently all right in the afternoon. I ran her because she had been backed by the public and I wanted them to have a run for their money.”
“Yes, I know,” the tone of the big man was offensively sceptical. “I’m an old hand at the game, Pallard, my boy. She ran for your money too.”
Brian heaved an impatient sigh.
“I did not back her for a shilling,” he said shortly.
Gladys made a frantic attempt to lead the conversation back to less contentious paths, but Pinlow was persistent.
“You can do these things in Australia,” he said. “The stewards wink at them; but, take my advice, my friend, and don’t try the same game here.”
Brian’s face went suddenly white, then red again, and the lines at the corners of his eyes went straight, and he looked at his tormentor from under his bent brows.
“Lord Pinlow,” he said, “I could go back to Australia to-morrow and walk on to any course and be welcomed. Not every man who has stood on the members’ stand at Flemington could say the same.”
His straight glance was a challenge which Lord Pinlow did not accept. Instead, he laughed, and refilled his glass.
“Ah, well,” he said, “it is a curious world.”
With which indefinite observation he contented himself for the time being.
Brian turned and met the troubled eyes of the girl at his side with a smile.
“In forbidden territory,” he excused himself; “but it really wasn’t my fault. Anyway, let us to our muttons.”
But Pinlow had not finished. He chose the moment to discuss with Mr Callander the evils of racing. Scraps of the conversation floated down to the nervous girl who strove a little incoherently to prevent the conversation flagging.
“No honest man can make racing pay,” drawled the insistent voice. “… fools make money by sheer luck, rogues by sheer swindling … in a country where stewards can be got at, of course it is easy to avoid exposure …”
Mr Callander twisted uncomfortably in his chair. It did not lessen his discomfiture to realize that all Lord Pinlow said, he would at another time, and under happier circumstances, have most heartily endorsed.
Dinner was through none too soon, and with visible relief Mr Callander caught the eye of his daughter and rose. Gladys had no time to do anything else than award the young men at her side the briefest of sympathetic smiles, then she escaped to the drawing-room.
“We will have our coffee in the billiard-room,” said Mr Callander, and in twos and threes the party strolled off to that haven.
Pinlow came in with his host, last of all.
“I’d like you to be a little more gentle with my nephew, Pinlow,” said Mr Callander pleadingly. “After all, you know, he is my relative, and though I abominate his—er—eccentricity, I’ve got to—you understand.”
“Oh, he won’t hurt,” said the other with a laugh. “I’ve got quite an account to settle with that young gentleman.” He swaggered into the billiard-room just as Brian was taking an experimental shot.
“Do you play, Pallard?” he asked, and took up a cue.
“I play,” said Brian, and looked at him curiously. “I will play you a hundred up for a fiver.”
“No, thank you.”
Lord Pinlow laughed.
“Don’t play for money, I suppose; really you racing men”
Brian swung round, a little smile on his face.
“We racing men,” he mocked; “aren’t you a racing man?”
“Not exactly,” said Pinlow, knocking the ash off his cigar.
“If by ‘not exactly’ you mean that you race under an assumed name,” said Brian, “I take you.”
“My assumed name, as you call it,” retorted his lordship, growing red, “is registered and it is quite permissible.”
“Quite,” said the other.
He had turned to the table and was playing losing hazards off the red.
“I heard you saying something about venal stewards to my uncle.” Brian put down his cue to face Lord Pinlow. “Did you tell him that I am steward of a little meeting outside Sydney?”
“I gave him no information about you that all the world doesn’t know,” snarled the other.
“Did you tell him that, as steward, I had you before me for pulling a horse; and that, because you were a visitor and we didn’t want a scandal, we did not warn you off.”
“You’re a liar!” said Pinlow hoarsely.
Brian laughed, and then suddenly:
“We will adjourn this discussion till another day,” he said, for the billiard-room door had opened to admit Gladys.
But Pinlow in his rage was in no mood for adjournment.
“I was exonerated,” he cried, striking the edge of the table; “d’ye hear? You hadn’t that much evidence against me.”
Brian shrugged his shoulders.
“We warned off the jockey on the same evidence which exonerated you,” he said.
“Stop!”
It was Mr Callander. He had been an agitated spectator of the scene between the two men. Now, as a cumulative sense of outrage grew on him, his indignation got the better of his nervousness. It was monstrous! Here, in his house, was a man, forbidden to cross his threshold; a horse-racing, probably a card-sharping rascal, a—a …
“You have gone too far, Mr Pallard,” he said, his voice trembling. “You have broken your word; you promised not to speak of horse-racing under my roof”
“Father!”
Gladys, aghast at the injustice of the reproof, interrupted him.
“Gladys will keep quiet,” said Mr Callander, now worked to a white heat of wrath, “or she will leave the room.” He turned to Brian: “Having made this promise, sir, you pick a quarrel over a vulgar horse-race with a guest, an honoured guest of mine!”
He walked to the door and opened it dramatically.
“My man will see to the packing of your bag,” he said. “There is a train back to London which I hope you will catch.”
There was no smile on Brian’s face now; he looked a little white and drawn, and the girl’s heart throbbed painfully.
“Very good,” he said. He put his cue back in the rack, and dusted his hands. “I’ve no right to complain, because I invited myself down,” he went on; “but I must confess I thought you would keep wholesome society.”
He walked over to where Pinlow stood smiling.
“Pinlow,” he said, “the Courts are immensely jealous of the honour of men like you, so if you care to sue me for slander you can.”
“That is a matter on which I shall take advice, Pallard,” said the other.
“I haven’t slandered you yet,” said Brian. “I say now, that you are”
He saw the girl’s imploring look and checked himself. With a little bow he strode from the room, up the stairs to his apartment. It did not take him long to change and pack; he did not even trouble to ring for the man.
With his valise in his hand he came down the stairs to find the girl waiting.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said, and laid her hand on his arm.
For answer he took the fingers that rested on his sleeve and kissed them.
“Au revoir, little cousin,” he said, and passed out into the night.
He left the grounds by the front—it was too dark to negotiate the wall—and walked along the unlit lane that led to the village.
Half-way down the hill he heard his name called and looked back, putting his suit-case carefully on one side of the road, for he recognized the voice.
It was Pinlow.
“Look here, Pallard,” he said fiercely, as he came up; “I’ve got a word to say to you: if ever you speak to me, or of me again, as you did to-night, I’ll break every bone in your infernal body.”
Brian said nothing for a moment, then:
“Pinlow”—his voice was very soft—“when you left Melbourne you took somebody with you.”
“That’s no business of yours, damn you!”
“You took the nicest and weakest woman in Australia, the wife of my dearest friend. Wait a bit—you left her stranded in California. You killed her, and you ruined her husband.”
There was no mistaking the menace in his voice, and Pinlow sprang forward, striking wildly. But the man who faced him was a master of the art. He parried the blows in the darkness.
“That’s for her,” he said, and his right fist went thudding to the man’s heart. He staggered back and left his face unguarded. Brian’s left swung under and caught him on the point of the jaw.
“That’s for me,” he said, “to go on with.”
He went back to London that evening irretrievably damned in the eyes of his relatives, but supremely happy.