Read Ebook: A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories by Howells William Dean

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Ebook has 765 lines and 55150 words, and 16 pages

Chapter. Page.

CLIQUOT.

Another jockey had been killed on the race-course. The utmost excitement prevailed. The magnificent animal which had caused the death reared and plunged in the hands of a groom, his foam-covered sides catching the dust from his flying heels. The crowd poured and surged from the stand, while the band still played. The two other horses were led away, one quiet enough, but the other, a black gelding, fretting and sidling through the throng.

Mr. Emory, the owner of the restless stallion, hurried down the steps of the grand stand. He was a tall blond, and wore a soft gray hat. He grew a shade paler as he saw the dead man raised from the ground by two hostlers, his broken neck dangling over the arm of one of them as they bore him through the gate.

"Poor fellow!" he muttered, "and he thought he could ride!"

He whispered a few words to his groom, then asked a policeman to clear a passage, that his horse might be led away, a thing not easily accomplished, as with trembling limbs and quivering nostrils the beautiful creature rose repeatedly in his tracks, while the man swung to and fro at his bit. At length, he sprang forward and rushed for the stable; breaking loose beyond the gate, he dashed madly into his stall, when the door was closed upon him, while the crowd yielded and swayed and dashed about, in that aimless, foolish, reckless way so often noticed under such circumstances.

Of course, there was the usual flutter and stir on the ladies' stand--a shutting of fans, a rustle of silk, and the starting forward of some excitable ones. Exclamations were heard of "How horrible!" "Oh! I wish I'd never come!" or, "We women have no business here!" while others thought, "I would not have missed it, dreadful though it is!"

The race was off--thousands of dollars staked and only one heat over. Which horse had won?

Now the police were busy, for the dead man's form and the maddened stallion no longer held the rabble at bay. Tongues began to wag fast and faster, and hot and hotter grew the discussions about the track and pool stands. Yells of the officials for the police to clear the sward for the next race filled the air, and, finally, when the judge tapped the bell and the crier announced that the race would come off the next day, a little order was restored and the band began to blow its loudest, as a couple of fillies trotted through the gate.

But the excitement was over; and before long the stand was half-empty, while the soft roll of carriage wheels passed again and again through the exit and the women were gone.

Neil Emory walked over to his stable and gave a few directions to his groom, who had succeeded in partially quieting his racer; then, turning, he hailed a handsome carriage which was awaiting him a few steps beyond the course. His companion and friend, Reginald Gray, was inside, and the two drove rapidly away.

Emory pulled his hat over his eyes and sank back, as if he had lost a regiment of friends.

"Hard lines," said Gray. "Two jockeys in six months."

"Yes," replied his companion, "and where on earth will I find another willing to risk his neck on that beast?"

"A few hundred dollars will find one."

"I doubt it," said Emory. "I will have to make it a few thousands."

"Well! considering the amount staked on the animal, you will have to make it a couple, I dare say."

They drove on in silence, the owner of the horse busy with his thoughts and unwilling to discuss a matter so close to his heart even with his best friend.

When they reached the city, Neil parted with his companion and went up to his rooms. His servant had lighted the gas and arranged his bath. He occupied a handsome suite of apartments, and his sitting-room was one of the prettiest in town, only the absence of the usual display of lovely women's photos distinguished Neil Emory's abode from all others. Perhaps in some far-away corner, veiled, was a picture, or, perhaps, only in his heart there existed such an image, though most people thought it but that of a rampant steed.

When he had finished his toilet, it was quite dark. Turning down the gas, he threw himself into a chair at the open window. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, wild and mad, surged through his brain.

Almost wealthy! Only a little while ago a comparatively poor man, alone in the world, well born, handsome and educated--but a little while since able to purchase a small but beautiful estate, situated a few miles from the city, sold at a bargain just as an unlooked for legacy from a distant relation enabled him to become the purchaser--but a little while ago so fortunate as to buy at auction a young thoroughbred stallion, which unexpectedly proved to be one of the greatest racers of the age, but was possessed of a disposition so unmanageable that but two men had been found able to ride him, and both of those had been killed. If he could but win this race, how much it would mean for him! Money he must have, come what might.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, rising and stretching forth his arms in the gloom, "Cliquot, Cliquot, my beautiful, win for me, win for me, or I perish!"

"They say," said one, "that he has offered an immdly, where it was going at all. The letters now never spoke of any term to it; they expressed rather the dogged patience of the time when it seemed as if there could be no end, and indicated that the country had settled into shape about it, and was pushing forward its other affairs as if the war did not exist. Mrs. Elmore felt that the America which she had left had ceased to be. The letters were almost less a pleasure than a pain, but she always tore them open, and read them with eager unhappiness. There were miserable intervals of days and even weeks when no letters came, and when the Reuter telegrams in the Gazette of Venice dribbled their vitriolic news of Northern disaster through a few words or lines, and Galignani's long columns were filled with the hostile exultation and prophecy of the London press.

They had passed eighteen months of this sort of life in Venice when one day a letter dropped into it which sent a thousand ripples over its stagnant surface. Mrs. Elmore read it first to herself, with gasps and cries of pleasure and astonishment, which did not divert her husband from the perusal of some notes he had made the day before, and had brought to the breakfast-table with the intention of amusing her. When she flattened it out over his notes, and exacted his attention, he turned an unwilling and lack-lustre eye upon it; then he looked up at her.

"Did you expect she would come?" he asked, in ill-masked dismay.

"I don't suppose they had any idea of it at first. When Sue wrote me that Lily had been studying too hard, and had to be taken out of school, I said that I wished she could come over and pay us a visit. But I don't believe they dreamed of letting her--Sue says so--till the Mortons' coming seemed too good a chance to be lost. I am so glad of it, Owen! You know how much they have always done for me; and here is a chance now to pay a little of it back."

"What in the world shall we do with her?" he asked.

"Do? Everything! Why, Owen," she urged, with pathetic recognition of his coldness, "she is Susy Stevens's own sister!"

"Oh, yes--yes," he admitted.

"And it was Susy who brought us together!"

"Why, of course."

"And oughtn't you to be glad of the opportunity?"

"It will be a relief to you instead of a care. She's such a bright, intelligent girl that we can both sympathize with your work, and you won't have to go round with me all the time, and I can matronize her myself."

"I see, I see," Elmore replied, with scarcely abated seriousness. "Perhaps, if she is coming here for her health, she won't need much matronizing."

"Yes," said Elmore, "it's a fearful responsibility."

There are instances of the persistence of husbands in certain moods or points of view on which even wheedling has no effect. The wise woman perceives that in these cases she must trust entirely to the softening influences of time, and as much as possible she changes the subject; or if this is impossible she may hope something from presenting a still worse aspect of the affair. Mrs. Elmore said, in lifting the letter from the table: "If she sailed the 3d in the City of Timbuctoo, she will be at Queenstown on the 12th or 13th, and we shall have a letter from her by Wednesday saying when she will be at Genoa. That's as far as the Mortons can bring her, and there's where we must meet her."

"Meet her in Genoa! How?"

Elmore now tacitly abandoned himself to his fate. His wife continued: "I needn't take anything. Merely run on, and right back."

"When must we go?" he asked.

"I don't know yet; but we shall have a letter to-morrow. Don't worry on my account, Owen. Her coming won't be a bit of care to me. It will give me something to do and to think about, and it will be a pleasure all the time to know that it's for Susy Stevens. And I shall like the companionship."

Elmore looked at his wife in surprise, for it had not occurred to him before that with his company she could desire any other companionship. He desired none but hers, and when he was about his work he often thought of her. He supposed that at these moments she thought of him, and found society, as he did, in such thoughts. But he was not a jealous or exacting man, and he said nothing. His treatment of the approaching visit from Susy Stevens's sister had not been enthusiastic, but a spark had kindled his imagination, and it burned warmer and brighter as the days went by. He found a charm in the thought of having this fresh young life here in his charge, and of teaching the girl to live into the great and beautiful history of the city: there was still much of the school-master in him, and he intended to make her sojourn an education to her; and as a literary man he hoped for novel effects from her mind upon material which he was above all trying to set in a new light before himself.

When the time had arrived for them to go and meet Miss Mayhew at Genoa, he was more than reconciled to the necessity. But at the last moment, Mrs. Elmore had one of her old attacks. What these attacks were I find myself unable to specify, but as every lady has an old attack of some kind, I may safely leave their precise nature to conjecture. It is enough that they were of a nervous character, that they were accompanied with headache, and that they prostrated her for several days. During their continuance she required the active sympathy and constant presence of her husband, whose devotion was then exemplary, and brought up long arrears of indebtedness in that way.

"Well, what shall we do?" he asked, as he sank into a chair beside the lounge on which Mrs. Elmore lay, her eyes closed, and a slice of lemon placed on each of her throbbing temples with the effect of a new sort of blinders. "Shall I go alone for her?"

She gave his hand the kind of convulsive clutch that signified, "Impossible for you to leave me."

Mrs. Elmore responded with a clutch tantamount to "Horrors! How could you think of such a thing?"

Mrs. Elmore had applied a vividly thoughtful pressure to her husband's hand; she now released it in token of assent, and he rose.

"But don't be gone long," she whispered.

On his way to the caff? which Cazzi frequented, Elmore fell in with the consul.

"Why," cried the consul sympathetically, "if I could leave my post I'd go!"

"Oh, thank you!" cried Elmore eagerly, remembering his wife. "I couldn't think of letting you."

"Yes, it would set me up in my own eyes, and stop that infernal clatter inside about going over and taking a hand again."

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