Volume I Part 45 (1/2)

”Where does Dr. Eccles live?”

”Sir Gilbert, sir?”

”Ay, if he be Sir Gilbert.”

”Merrion Square, sir,” said the man reproachfully, for he thought it rather hard to ignore one of the great celebrities of the land.

”Take this note to him, that I 'll write now, and if he be from home go to the other man,--what's his name?--Beattie.”

”Dr. Beattie is coming to dinner to-day, sir,” said the servant, thinking to facilitate matters.

”Just do as I tell you, my good fellow, and don't interrupt. If I am to take up my quarters here, you'll all of you have to change some of your present habits.” As he spoke, he dashed off a few hasty lines, addressing them to Sir Gilbert Eccles or Dr. Beattie. ”Ask if it's 'all right;' that will be sufficient reply; and now send me my bath.” As he proceeded with his dressing,--a very lengthy affair it always was,--he canva.s.sed with himself whether or not he ought to take the train and go down to the country with the doctor. Possibly few men in such circ.u.mstances would have given the matter a doubt. The poor fellow who had incurred the mishap had been, at his insistence, acting for him. Had it not been for Se well's pressing this task upon him, Trafford would at that moment have been hale and hearty. Sewell knew all this well; he read the event just as nineteen out of every twenty would have read it, but having done so, he proceeded to satisfy himself why all these reasonings should give way to weightier considerations.

First of all, it would not be quite convenient to let the old Judge know anything of these doings in the country. His strait-laced notions might revolt at races and betting-rings. It might not be perhaps decorous that a registrar of a high court should be the patron of such sports. These were prudential reasons, which he dilated on for some time. Then came some, others more sentimental. It was to a house of doctors and nurses and gloom and sorrow he should go back. All these were to him peculiarly distasteful. He should be tremendously ”bored” by it all, and being ”bored” was to him whatever was least tolerable in life. It was strange that there was one other reason stronger than all these,--a reason that really touched him in what was the nearest thing in his nature to heart.

He couldn't go back and look at the empty loose-box where his favorite horse once stood, and where he was never to stand more. Crescy the animal he was so proud of,--the horse he counted on for who knows what future triumphs,--the first steeplechase horse, he felt convinced, in Ireland, if not in the kingdom,--such strength, such power in the loins, such square joints, such courage, should he ever see united again? If there was anything in that man's nature that represented affection, he had it for this horse. He knew well to what advantage he looked when on his back,--he knew what admiration and envy it drew upon him to see him thus mounted. He had won him at billiards from a man who was half broken-hearted at parting with him, and who offered immense terms rather than lose him.

”He said I'd have no luck with him,” muttered Sewell, now in his misery,--”and, confound the fellow! he was right. No, I can't go back to look at his empty stall. It would half kill me.”

It was very real grief, all this; he was as thoroughly heart-sore as it was possible for him to be. He sorrowed for what nothing in his future life could replace to him; and this is a very deep sorrow.

Trafford's misfortune was so much the origin and cause of his own disaster that he actually thought of him with bitterness. The man who could make Crescy balk! What fate could be too hard for him?

Nor was he quite easy in his mind about that pa.s.sage in his wife's letter stating that men would not take their bets. Was this meant as reflecting upon him? Was it a censure on him for making Trafford ride a horse beneath his weight? ”They get up some stupid cry of that sort,”

muttered he, ”as if I am not the heaviest loser of all. I lost a horse that was worth a score of Traffords.”

When dressed, Sewell went down to the garden and lit his cigar. His sorrow had grown calmer, and he began to think that in the new life before him he should have had to give up horses and sport of every kind.

”I must make my book now on this old fellow, and get him to make me his heir. He cares little for his son, and he can be made to care just as little for his granddaughter. That's the only game open to me,--a dreary life it promises to be, but it's better than a jail.”

The great large wilderness of a garden, stretching away into an orchard at the end, was in itself a place to suggest sombre thoughts,--so silent and forsaken did it all appear. The fruit lay thick on the ground uncared for; the artichokes, grown to the height of shrubs, looked monsters of uncouthness; and even in the alleys flower-seeds had fallen and given birth to flowers, which struggled up through the gravel and hung their bright petals over the footway. There was in the neglect, the silence, the un-cared-for luxuriance of the place, all that could make a moody man moodier; and as he knocked off the great heads of the tall hollyhocks, he thought, and even said aloud, ”This is about as much amus.e.m.e.nt as such a spot offers.”

”Oh no, not so bad as that,” said a laughing voice; and Lucy peeped over a laurel-hedge with a rake in her hand, and seemed immensely amused at his discomfiture.

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”Where are you?--I mean, how is one to come near you?” said he, trying to laugh, but not successfully.

”Go round yonder by the fish-pond, and you 'll find a wicket. This is _my_ garden, and I till it myself.”

”So!” said he, entering a neat little enclosure, with beds of flowers and flowering shrubs, ”this is your garden?”

”Yes,--what do you think of it?”

”It's very pretty,--it 's very nice. I should like it larger, perhaps.”

”So would I; but, being my own gardener, I find it quite big enough.”

”Why doesn't the Chief give you a gardener?--he's rich enough, surely.”

”He never cared for gardening himself. Indeed, I think it is the wild confusion of foliage here that he likes. He said to me one day, 'In _my_ old garden a man loses himself in thought. In this trimly kept place one is ever occupied by the melon-frame or the forcing-house.'”