She was late, too! That fellow Riggs – for he had left the car to bring her down, and had come by train himself – would have got punctured, of course; he was always getting punctured if there was any reason why he shouldn’t. And for the next half-hour Soames fidgeted about so that he was deep in nothing in his picture gallery at the very top of the house and did not hear the car arrive. Fleur’s voice roused him from thoughts of her.
‘Hallo!’ he said, peering down the stairs, ‘where have you sprung from? I expected you an hour ago.’
‘Yes, dear, we had to get some things on the way. How lovely it all looks! Kit’s in the garden.’
‘Ah!’ said Soames, descending. ‘Did you get a rest yester –’ and he pulled up in front of her.
She bent her face forward for a kiss, and her eyes looked beyond him. Soames put his lips on the edge of her cheek-bone. She was away somewhere! And, as his lips mumbled her soft skin slightly, he thought: ‘She’s not thinking of me – why should she? She’s young!’
PART TWO
Chapter One
SON OF SLEEPING DOVE
WHETHER or not the character of Englishmen in general is based on chalk, it is undeniably present in the systems of our jockeys and trainers. Living for the most part on downs, drinking a good deal of water, and concerned with the joints of horses, they are almost professionally calcareous, and at times distinguished by bony noses and chins.
The chin of Greenwater, the retired jockey in charge of Val Dartie’s stable, projected, as if in years of race-riding it had been bent on prolonging the efforts of his mounts and catching the judge’s eye. His thin, commanding nose dominated a mask of brown skin and bone, his narrow brown eyes glowed slightly, his hair was smooth and brushed back; he was five feet seven inches in height, and long seasons, during which he had been afraid to eat, had laid a look of austerity over such natural liveliness, as may be observed in – say – a water-wagtail. A married man with two children, he was endeared to his family by the taciturnity of one who had been intimate with horses for thirty-five years. In his leisure hours he played the piccolo. No one in England was more reliable.
Val, who had picked him up on his retirement from the pigskin in 1921, thought him an even better judge of men than of horses, incapable of trusting them farther man he could see them, and that not very far. Just now it was particularly necessary to trust no one, for there was in the stable a two-year–old colt, Rondavel, by Kaffir out of Sleeping Dove, of whom so much was expected, that nothing whatever had been said about him. On the Monday of Ascot week Val was the more surprised, then, to hear his trainer remark:
‘Mr Dartie, there was a son of a gun watching the gallop this morning.’
‘The deuce there was!’
‘Someone’s been talking. When they come watching a little stable like this – something’s up. If you take my advice, you’ll send the colt to Ascot and let him run his chance on Thursday – won’t do him any harm to smell a racecourse. We can ease him after, and bring him again for Goodwood.’
Aware of his trainer’s conviction that the English race-horse, no less than the English man, liked a light preparation nowadays, Val answered:
‘Afraid of overdoing him?’
‘Well, he’s fit now, and that’s a fact. I had Sinnet shake him up this morning, and he just left ’em all standing. Fit to run for his life, he is; wish you’d been there.’
‘Oho!’ said Val, unlatching the door of the box. ‘Well, my beauty?’
The Sleeping Dove colt turned his head, regarding his owner with a certain lustrous philosophy. A dark grey, with one white heel and a star, he stood glistening from his morning toilet. A good one! The straight hocks and ranginess of St Simon crosses in his background! Scope, and a rare shoulder for coming down a hill. Not exactly what you’d call a ‘picture’ – his lines didn’t quite ‘flow’, but great character. Intelligent as a dog, and game as an otter! Val looked back at his trainer’s intent face.
‘All right, Greenwater. I’ll tell the missus – we’ll go in force. Who can you get to ride at such short notice?’
‘Young Lamb.’
‘Ah!’ said Val, with a grin; ‘you’ve got it all cut and dried, I see.’
Only on his way back to the house did he recollect a possible ‘hole in the ballot’ of secrecy…. Three days after the General Strike collapsed, before Holly and young Jon and his wife had returned, he had been smoking a second pipe over his accounts, when the maid had announced:
‘A gentleman to see you, sir.’