“That’s a pretty tidy sum,” said the old man; “not that the amount makes much difference while you are about it. It is just as easy to make twenty thousand pounds as twenty thousand pence, if you are on the right track. Now, I have been turning you two young chaps over in my mind, and the question is, what are you fit for that has got money in it? I should judge you,” turning to Alec, “to have a good loud voice!”
Without a word Alec stood up and gave a coo-ee like a steam whistle, a screech that could have been heard across the water at North Shore, and woke up the Domain sleepers like the sound of the last trump.
“That will do,” said the old man. “What a pair of bellows you must have! Now, the first thing you must do is to start in business.”
“But that will require capital, whatever we choose,” observed Huey.
“That is where you make the mistake, my lad. When a man starts in business with capital, the chances are ten to one he loses it. If a chap’s smart enough for business, he’s smart enough to start without capital. Now, money is made to be lost by the mug and picked up by the man of talent.”
“Then if no money is wanted, how do you start?”
“On credit, my lad, and the more you owe to the right people the safer you are. Who will help you when you are hard pushed? Your friend? Not a bit of it. Your creditors! Who will push your business, bring you customers, put you in the way of a good deal? Your creditors. No man ever failed for debt. It was for not owing enough! Why, half Sydney firms would be wound up to-morrow but for their wise foresight in owing too much. The creditors dare not face the loss, so they keep them going. As for the squatters in the country, from what I hear there is not one in a score could pay ten shillings in the pound, and they are as jolly as sand-boys and as happy as kings. Does the price of wool trouble them? Not much!”
“And is it wise to pay nobody?”
“No, that is a fool’s game! A small creditor is a small enemy, while a big creditor is a big friend. It’s the same with appropriating. Never take a few paltry pounds, you may get seven years. It is just as simple to start a rotten company and scoop thousands—just as easy and no risk; only fools can’t see it. And who gets in quod? The little fishes or the big ones? Why, the little fishes all the time? Why, the law is a net made so delicate that all the big sharks can break through; the only question is, will you be a man eaten or a man-eater?
“It’s all the foolishness and humbug we are taught while we are boys that spoils life for most men. They start out at a game they don’t understand, with the certainty they do. Mind you, I’m not saying things are not pretty well as they are, for if there were no mugs where would our turn come in?”
Huey felt at first a certain revolt and repugnance to the doctrines of Soft Sam, but little by little the feeling wore off. The calm certainty of the speaker, the evidence he had of the success of his plans, all told with force. How could he argue against success; he, who so far felt himself a failure? A thought came into his mind how One was in old time taken to a pinnacle of the Temple, and the kingdoms of the world shown to him—“All these will I give you if you will bow down and worship me.”
But he put the recollection aside as not suited to the affairs of practical life.
Alec, on his side, received all these new maxims like new milk.
To him they were as the keys of Heaven—self-evident propositions that he wondered had never struck him before.
“Well, what had we better start?”
“I think book-making would do to begin with,” said Sam, “you have got a good voice and plenty of muscle,” turning to Alec. “I think that’s about your dart.”
“But I know nothing of the business,” replied Alec, despondingly.
“There you go again! Did you think I expected you did? That’s another foolishness folks have got in their head, that you have to understand a thing before you try it. Does the clever miner know where the gold is when he sinks a shaft? Not a bit of it. Does the old hand that knows all the points strike it rich? Not a bit of it. It’s the mug that comes along and does not know pyrites from peas-pudding that hits the patch! I suppose you know a horse from a cow?”
“I should say so!” said Alec.
“Then that’s all you want to know to be a bookmaker. Directly you begin to know one horse from another you commence to be too clever; you are inclined to back your fancy on your own hook, and it’s very soon all up with you.”
“But don’t you have to make a book? Is there not some science or skill in taking the proper bets, or hedging, or something of that kind?”
“There is nothing in it that a baby can’t learn in five minutes. You back the field against the public all the time, and the public all finish by losing their money; you always finish by getting it.”
“But bow much shall I make? Shall I get £20,000?”
“No, I don’t say you will. I only said this was to commence with. You might make a thousand a year. Will that suit till I can put you on a lay for the other?”
Would it suit? A lad who had been earning so far a few shillings a week with the life of a working bullock! Would it suit? Was honey sweet in the mouth; was pleasure better than pain? Alec just closed with the offer right away, and had to get up and shake hands with Soft Sam on the strength of it.
“But I must warn you,” continued Sam, “that it is not all beer and skittles. It will be awkward if the favourites win the first few races, because you will have to cut and run, and your business is as good as done for in that line for the future. But there is no good meeting trouble half-way. I’ll see you launched when the game is pretty right. All the same, it is as well to be prepared for a belting.”
“I’m ready,” said Alec. “I can stand hard knocks with anybody.”
Huey had said nothing to all this. The possibility of being hunted as a blackleg was not tempting to him, so he turned a look on Soft Sam, which the old gentleman seemed to understand.
“I suppose now the hard knocks and the clearing racket are hardly in your line?”
“I can’t say they are,” answered Huey.
“So I thought. You want a gentlemanly occupation, without risk, no trouble to speak of, and bags full of profit?”
“That’s just about my complaint.”
“Then here’s the very thing? You must start as a turf prophet. You have been on a newspaper and can string words together, and that is what is wanted.”
“But I know no more about horses or who is likely to win than Cook’s statue over there.”
“No more does any other turf prophet. Do you think that even if they knew one certainty they would not go and pawn their shirts, make their pile, and retire to private life? Do you think these men are what they call philanthropists, who sell turf knowledge, equal to bank-notes, to the first comers, at five bob a head? Of course the public does—that Al copper-fastened fool, the public. You will have to learn the ‘pitch’—that’s easy. Always refer to the ‘stable,’ what the stable says, what the stable think. And when your tip loses, as it generally will, ‘Very sorry I could not tell you sooner. But at the last moment the stable decided to run him stiff. Could not get the money on. Ring was afraid of him. So they are saving him. Will be a dead bird for sure the next handicap, and I shall have the straight wire, you make no error.’ That’s about the total of it; of course you will vary it a bit, just for variety, ‘The stable has been forestalled; the owner is saving him for the Cup, and the stable did not know till the last moment. The jockey was got at.’ Or, supposing it’s a mare, then it was ‘one of her off days.’ The fact is, the game is too simple for a smart man. To an old fisherman it is like catching yellowtail.”
“But five shillings a tip won’t bring in much, I should think, unless the yellowtail you speak of are very numerous,” objected Huey.
“The five bobs, as you say, do not amount to much; hardly pay the advertising. The profit is another branch of the business. It stands to reason that the mugs who go to turf prophets are about the muggiest of mugs there are. This is what makes the business such a soft thing. Suppose a race is coming off with eleven horses entered and five of them possible winners; then to five different mugs you give five different ‘extra special’ tips, in consideration of which you are to stand in free for half the winnings. One mug wins and shares, and swears by you ever after, or at least till you have cleaned him out. As for the others, you smooth them down as per usual—horse could have done it easy, his time at private trials was seconds under, but stable was not on the job!”
“It seems to me that this kind of thing is what is called swindling?”
“You can call it that if you like,” said Soft Sam, smiling. “Most people call it business, and very good business too. There is only one thing you have to get to make a start.”
“And what is that?” asked Huey, with a tone of misgiving, as he remembered the diminished state of his finances.
“A name. The mugs like a good name. Let me think,” and the old gentleman paused. “Fred Archer was called the ‘Tinman,’ that will do as well as another, and it sounds ’cute. Now come along, lads, let’s make a start. We must have a fresh rig-out to begin with.”
With this the old man led the way, and in a few minutes conducted the young men to the interior of a tailoring establishment much patronized by the fancy. At the suggestion of Soft Sam an order was left for a complete outfit of the latest fashion in sporting garments. No payment was asked for; the presence of the old gentleman appearing to smooth all difficulties.
On leaving the shop Soft Sam said—
“You can pay them when you are in funds. The price will be pretty stiff, but after this they will always serve you on the same terms; and remember this, and paste it in your hat: If you have only one friend in the world let him be a tailor.”
The next week saw Alec fairly started on a Randwick tram, with an assistant recommended as clerk by Old Sam. As his pouch was devoid of any money but small silver, he had been provided by the provident old gentleman with a twenty pound note, good enough to look at, but not readily changeable at any bank. With this he was to bluff inquirers for their money if the first race went against him.
“No man,” said Old Sam, “will bustle you for his money if you ask him to change twenty quid. In the first place, it is not likely he has got change, and even if he has, he will be extra soft if he would care to do it on Randwick flat.”
The note, however, was not wanted, and was duly handed back. The day had been skilfully chosen. Alec returned to the Coffee Palace as proud as a hen with a new clutch, with £47 10s. in his pocket. This with childish pride he displayed to Huey.
“Better than wood-cutting, sonny!”
That week all the newspapers that would insert the advertisement on credit contained the following—
“THE TINMAN,
Pronounced by all the prince of turf prophets. The only man in the Colonies that gave three straight-out winners for the last Caulfield meeting; five firsts and two seconds for Randwick, and a record for the year never approached in turf history. We have as good as ever for future events.
“Try the Tinman; Tinman, the turf guide. Tinman is not lucky; Tinman acts on information. Agents all over the Colonies. Tinman is a moral. Why throw your money away on stiff ’uns when you can get the office for a crown, straight as a wire, from the Tinman.
Box ABC, G.P.O.”
The fruit of this “rot,” as Huey denominated the above par that he had inserted at the old man’s directions, astounded him. Letters with money rained on him—in small amounts, it is true; still it rained, and the shower was received as manna from Heaven.
* * * * *
During all these days, and long after prosperity had come to them, the two young men were nightly frequenters of the Golden Bar—partly to see the girl they were now both madly in love with, and partly to watch each other.
What was maddening to Huey was that he could make no claim to any special preference shown to himself. Bertha always received him pleasantly, and seemed to appreciate him and understand his point of view, as no other girl he had ever met had done; but the mischief of it was, that her manner to many other persons, Alec, for example, was equally gracious. Particularly to Alec, who was always full of small talk, arrant nonsense for the most part, that Huey disdained, even as he watched with jealous eyes the success of his rival.
Unfortunately for Huey, he was endowed with an imagination, and he saw Bertha not only as she was, a pretty, emotional, pleasure-loving girl, but also as an exalted personage, gifted with all those virtues and talents that formed his mute ideal. And to see her pandering in a public bar to the coarse jokes of fools was to him a mental torture. He did not for a moment doubt that they two were far superior to all about them, and as he recognized her superiority, so he felt in all justice she should recognize his.
Alec, on the contrary, had no imagination at all worth speaking of. To him Bertha was a fine girl, or, as he had learned to express it, “A damned fine girl;” and he said it and thought it in the same tone, as though he were speaking of a horse of great merit or a prize cow. His talk with her, and, for that matter, with every one else, was always on what Theosophists term the “material plane.” And if she responded freely it was perhaps because women of her nature have the art to appear sympathetic to every one they desire to please.
Between the two young men the person of Bertha was never mentioned; but there was a silent acknowledgment of rivalry, a silent determination on each side to have the prize, and a certainty with each that no hope was possible without a big bank balance.
“If I only had twenty thousand pounds I’d marry you to-morrow,” cried out Alec, in a half-jesting, half-serious tone to Bertha.
“If!” was all Bertha replied, as she smiled.
And Huey sat by and listened and ground his teeth, as he also wished that he had the like sum. But he did not blurt out his wishes in a coarse way like Alec—“Curse him!”
The first use Alec made of his freshly acquired income was to buy a rich bracelet and present it to Bertha. This she declined, but consented to go for a drive with him on the following Sunday.
Huey, for his part, put his savings in the bank as a nest-egg towards the twenty thousand pounds—not that he did not think a few thousands less than that amount would be sufficient.
On the following Sunday Huey was seated near to Lady Macquarie’s chair, talking to Soft Sam, when he was astounded to see amongst the traps and buggies doing the round Alec and Bertha in a sulky side by side. Alec gave a wave with his whip hand as he flashed past, but it was only Soft Sam that responded.
“That young fellow seems to be making the pace pretty hot,” said Sam.
“I knew the girl first,” was all Huey could answer.
“Then why didn’t you stick to her, man? A filly is always such an uncertain kind of animal. You want to yard and brand them on the jump, so to speak, when you have made up your mind to run them in. No man understands women till he has no further use of the information. There is not one in a hundred of them is any good till they are thoroughly broken in, and whether they are worth the trouble I very much doubt. Did you ever tell the girl you wanted her?”
“No,” said Huey.
“Then why don’t you if you think that way? Any girl is to be had for the asking if you go the right way about it. Praise them up; you can’t put it on too thick. Keep at ’em all the time, and be as deaf as a post to all they say that does not suit you. And don’t you go away thinking this girl is different to other girls; that is where I have seen smarter chaps than you make the mistake. All girls are alike, as alike as two peas. Of course they vary outside, and have different styles with them, but the bed-rock, so to speak, is the same all the time. But if you take my advice, which I know you won’t—young fellows never do—you will just leave the girls alone for a year or two. They spoil more men for business, and get more of them into trouble, than anything else.”
And then the old man launched forth into reminiscences of all the promising men he had known go to the dogs after petticoats. But Huey did not attend, his mind was agitating wilds plans of what he should say and what he should do when he next met Alec and Bertha.
And the day for him was a horror, the park a desolation, and through the yellow of his eyes the whole world out of joint.
* * * * *
The two barmaids at the Golden Bar were taking things easily. It was a dull hour of the day for business, and Bertha’s turn off. They were pretty girls, these two barmaids, Sarah Jones (nom de guerre, Ruby), and Maria Simpson (nom de guerre, Florence), and they were well, even richly dressed, and, for their work, well-mannered.
For the Golden Bar was no common public-house or speculation in immorality, but a commercial undertaking for providing the best of everything in the best way at the best prices. And to choose the three prettiest barmaids he could find was part of the proprietor’s project.
Ruby was languidly polishing a glass that did not want it, on the off chance that the Boss should come in and find her doing nothing. Florence was similarly occupied.
“I’m getting about tired of this place,” said Ruby.
“So am I,” yawned Florence.
“It was not so bad before Bertha came; one could have a bit of fun and get a few presents. But she is downright mean. She grabs everybody.”
“That’s it. She grabs everybody, and what they see in her I can’t think. With her snub nose and fish eyes, and the airs she gives herself, one would fancy she was really what some of the chaps call her, ‘the Queen of Sydney.’ Now, there is that old squatter from Way-back, I had him as safe as possible till this creature came.”
“I know you had, dear, and I saw that same man offer her this morning a diamond ring worth fifty pounds if it was worth a penny. And she would not even take it.”
“I wish he would try me, I’d take it fast enough. But that is the way with that sly minx. She will not take things herself, and prevents others. Who is she, to put on airs? I suppose she is holding out to make a big haul.”
“I tell you what I think,” exclaimed Florence; “we are just wasting ourselves here, taking my lady’s leavings! We might as well be two old scarecrows for all the chance we get! And the way she makes up is something scandalous! Why, I’m sure half her figure comes away when she strips. A little powder, I don’t say, or a pull-back, but when it comes to getting inside a dressmaker’s dummy and walking about with that, I say it’s a fraud!”
“But men are so stupid. They just run after her because she looks at them out of her eyes with the look of a dying cat! Look at those two young sporting fellows that come here every night. Any one can see they are gone soft on her, and she had the cheek to go out driving with one of them yesterday.”
“You don’t say!”
“As bold as you please—that one they call Alec.”
“Well, I never!”
The talk was interrupted by the entrance of Bertha.
“Good-evening, my dear,” said Ruby; “how nicely your hair is arranged to-day. I wish you’d show me the way, there’s a love!”
Florrie came forward, also to inspect, and kissed Bertha as a darling to make her promise to teach the secret of the new coiffure.
“You are in luck, Bertha, going out for buggy rides. Not that that young Alec is much of a catch. I should look for something better if I were you.”
“My troubles!” said Bertha.
Soon the bar began to fill, and Alec came in with his shadow, Huey. Bertha greeted them both with a friendly nod, but the first opportunity Huey came to the bar and spoke to her some low angry words. His eyes fairly blazed. But Bertha merely tossed her head.
“I can mind my own business, and you had best mind yours. Thank you all the same, Mr. Gosper!”
Then Huey retired to a corner and sulked, while Bertha smiled on his rival and other customers with her uniform blandness.
If Soft Sam had been at his side he would have urged Huey to start a desperate flirtation with either Ruby or Florrie, and to have ignored Bertha for the time as one dead. But Huey had no cunning in maiden wiles and maiden fence, and was hit, palpably hit, at the first parade. But as days passed the cloud blew over, blew over so far that later on Huey himself drove Bertha down to Botany.
And so, in the mutual rivalry, honours were easy.
The races at Clarendon caused quite a flutter of excitement in the adjacent town of Windsor. As many as three men and a dog might be seen all at one time in its main street, for some of the visitors stop over-night in the town.
Old Sam and the two young men were of this number, and as after the day’s sport was over time hung heavily on their hands, it was natural they should sally out in quest of amusement—Alec and Huey to see old chums and gather a harvest of outspoken admiration for their talent and pluck, and Old Sam to cruise about in what appeared an aimless manner from hotel to store, to shoeing forge, and to wherever men congregated and he could hear and listen.
Some words casually spoken by a blacksmith appeared to interest him, for he sought out a bill referred to on a neighbouring hoarding, and having read it carefully, at once crossed over to a livery stable and ordered a trap to drive him to Dr. Glenlivet’s place. They were not long going to the house, which had auctioneer’s bills on the outside walls, and Old Sam briskly entered, and found many others at various parts of the house and grounds inspecting the place.
The caretaker inquired if there was anything in particular he wished to see, but the old gentleman shook his head.
“Just come to have a look round.”
A look round he did, from top to bottom of the house, as though he had thought of buying the lot, and it was only in a casual way that he strolled out to the stable and glanced at a mare in the stall.
“A rare fine horse that,” said the coachman.
“A vicious-looking brute?” replied Soft Sam; but a careful observer might have noted a look of satisfaction in his eyes as he returned to his trap, and to town.
That night when he met the young men his first words were, “I’ve found it for you at last, lads!”
“Found what?” they exclaimed together.
“The twenty thousand apiece you wanted—or have you changed your mind?”
The young men had not changed their minds, so drawing them into a private room, and carefully closing the door, he said—
“You must buy a mare that is to be sold to-morrow; it’s a Dr. Glenlivet’s horse, and there is a sale at his place. She is a thoroughbred from Hobartville; the doctor bought her for a sulky, like a fool, for she is a vicious brute, if ever I saw one, and smashed up his trap the first time of asking. Anyhow, she will go cheap, I think. She’s got a bad name hereabouts, and you must buy her.”
“But what for?”
“What for? Why, to win the Sydney Cup, or the Melbourne Cup for that matter. I have seen a worse-looking animal do it. She’s got the blood, and the cut of a clinker.”
The two sporting men assented at once, their confidence in Soft Sam’s judgment being unlimited, and it was agreed and understood that the two young men should jointly buy the mare, and have her trained and raced as the old man should direct.
When they met again the next night Alec gleefully told the old gentleman—
“I’ve bought the mare—got her for twenty quid; there was only one bid against me!”
“And what shall we do with her now?” said Huey.
“We?” interposed Alec. “Who said it was our horse? Did I not buy her and pay for her?”
“But you know it was agreed we should go shares!”
“Shares be blowed! What’s the good of half a horse to anybody? I bought her and paid for her. If you want a horse, buy one yourself!”
“You are a liar and a fraud!”
The response from Alec was a quick blow from the shoulder that knocked Huey down. Quickly jumping to his feet again, he rushed at Alec. It was a short smart fight, the old man sitting quietly by smoking and enjoying the mill, and no one at hand to interfere. It was finished by a knock-out blow from Alec that sent Huey dazed and stupid to the ground.
“Very well done!” said the old man. “With a little science you’d do inside the ropes. Now, you’d better shake hands and make it up.”
“I’m willing,” said Alec, holding out his hand with a patronizing smile.
“I’ll see you damned first!” was all Huey said, as he rose slowly to his feet with a look of concentrated hatred in his eyes. “It’s your turn now, but, mark you, mine will come!”
The old man expressed no surprise at the rupture, perhaps he had foreseen it. He would take no side in the quarrel. He knew that the struggle for a woman was at the bottom of the feud, and the dispute about the mare a mere spark that had lit a hidden train of animosity.
He advised Alec what to do with the horse. He was to run him at small meetings, and not to win even then more than he was obliged. To avoid suspicion he was even to run her in the first Cup Meeting itself as a stiff ’un unless the weights were lighter than could be hoped for.
“Get her trained away in the bush where none of the sports will notice her, and if I am not mistaken she will do the trick for you.”
Huey also came to Old Sam for sympathy and advice, and while the old man was not willing to say anything more of Alec than that he was a fool to fall out with an old pal, he was willing enough to help Huey.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, lad. There are more horses than one in this district. Windsor and Richmond are the cradle of the Australian turf, there are more good ones, of the right sort, knocking about here than in any other place in the Colonies. If your mind’s set on having a flutter I’ll spend a day or two looking round and see what I can do for you.”
It was a week later that Huey received a telegram to go to Windsor, and from there to Wilberforce, to meet Soft Sam. He went at once; and was taken straight away to see a black horse grazing in a paddock.
“He’s not as cheap as the other,” said Soft Sam, “and I can’t say I’m quite so sweet on him; but then he’s a horse, and say what you like, a horse carries money better than a filly. He has never been raced. I heard on the quiet that the owner believes he is not sound, and he thinks I am a softy who knows no better. But take my tip, that horse is as sound as a bell.”
So another bargain was made, another horse changed owners, only the matter was kept quiet, not even Alec hearing that Huey had a horse in training.
There was no pretence of outside civility between the two young men now. Bertha heard part of the story from both parties, but with neither would she take sides; only from that time forward she declined to drive out with either of them.
Alec was fast coming to the front in the business he had chosen, and was already talking of being proposed for Tattersall’s; but while his income rose, so did his spending. He had no thought of saving money, bit by bit, to make his pile. It must be done by some great coup, that was his only plan.
Huey also prospered, but his takings were never very great, and of this the larger part was put aside; for, despite the assurance of Soft Sam that the number of mugs was unlimited, Huey felt the time would come when they must run short.
The first time Alec entered the mare he had to name her, and as Bertha she ran almost last in a selling race at Rosehill; not quite last though, for there was a black horse behind her named, a queer name Alec thought, The Vengeance, and entered in a name new to the turf.
For it was Huey’s horse, and he had chosen a friend at Richmond as nominal owner.
And in the months that went by these two horses often met again, and once at Warwick Farm in a Birthday Handicap, in which the field was so moderate or so “stiff” that Bertha’s jockey, in spite of the order that she was only out for an airing, could not keep her back, she pushed to the front and made a dead heat of it with The Vengeance, who was being pulled hard at the post, and nearly got disqualified in consequence.
On the whole, the two young owners were highly satisfied with their investments. They knew from repeated trials that their animals were pounds and pounds better than the cattle they allowed week after week to beat them. At the same time, Sam warned them that there were several others, at the same game as themselves, all entered to get the weight lowered, all waiting for the one event of their lives, when their true form should be publicly shown—and their value as racers gone for ever.
Alec already counted his great coup as good as accomplished; if not this season, then certainly the next. The Sydney Cup should be his, and with it the hand of Bertha Summerhayes.
Huey heard him boast so one day to Soft Sam, and glared at him viciously as he walked away, muttering to himself—
“No, you traitor and bully! The Cup is not yours yet, nor Bertha either! The Vengeance is mine, and at any cost he shall be truly named?”
Huey Gosper talked bravely to himself, but he was well aware that, however closely he might have gauged the capabilities of The Vengeance, he had as yet never seen the mare Bertha in proper form, and ridden with the order, “Go for it.”
This uncertainty might upset all his plans. The truth of the matter he must know, and know he would.
Then his imagination began to evolve scheme after scheme to accomplish his object. He knew where the horse was quartered, over at Wigway’s, near the Pitt Town Common—an old acquaintance of Alec, and well-known to himself too, for had he not as a boy often gone over there in the season to pick oranges and play cricket with the young Wigways?
Clearly he could not go himself, or at any rate in his present personality, poking about the place. They would know him in a minute, and be on their guard with the mare. Alec would hear of his visit at once, and smell a rat. But who could he trust? He knew no one fit, and to be confided in, and then he remembered one of Soft Sam’s sayings—
“A man who takes pals in a job takes witnesses against him. What you can’t do on your own hook don’t do at all.”
And the possibility of disguising himself occurred to him. Truly, he knew nothing of that kind of thing, but there were people that did, and it should not take much skill to deceive the “cockatoos” out at Nelson.
This was the motive that sent Huey to a theatrical costumier, well-known in the profession, who readily undertook to make such an entire change in his customer that he would not even recognize himself.
And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was more than satisfied.
* * * * *
Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway was drawing rails. His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he had an assurance that eternity was before him, and he had to put in time. He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at every step.
Farmer Wigway swore at the oxen in a fatherly way to wake them up occasionally to mundane affairs, and the procession moved on.
The noise of wheels made by a light trap could be heard coming along the ridge, and at once Farmer Wigway stopped to listen. Not that he was a very curious man, but buggies were rare in that part of the Common. None of the neighbours owned one, and the stopping to speculate as to who it might be “put in more time,” and so the end of life was served.
The sound of a trotting horse and light running wheels came nearer and nearer, along the ridge, through the ironbarks, then turned off down the spur into the box-tree flat that led to Farmer Wigway’s. On it came, and before Mr. Wigway had had half the necessary time to study the new development in all its bearings and possibilities, a buggy, driven by a middle-aged man with bushy whiskers, who had a lad seated by his side, pulled up before him.
“Is this the track to Catti Creek?”
“That depends,” answered Wigway, after giving the matter due consideration, “what part of the Creek you want.”
“I’m trying to hunt up some forfeited selections out that way. They tell me at the Lands Office there are several of them.”
“So there are, and much good may they do you! The country is very rough. I should leave that trap behind if I was you, and if you like, one of my boys shall go and show you the way.”
The stranger seemed to fall in with this proposal readily, for, leaving the lad and trap at the house, he soon set off under the guidance of young Mick Wigway. But, strange to say, though they had a map of the parish, and Mick knew every nook and corner of it, it was sundown before they got back, and the gentleman with the bushy whiskers had not seen half what he wanted to see.
He found no difficulty in arranging to stop the night, and that evening was given up to ’possum shooting, in which the stranger professed an almost childish delight.
“It appears to me,” said Farmer Wigway, as they trudged under the moonlit gum trees, “that I have seen you before, Mr. —?”
“Amos Clark;” interrupted the stranger.
“Well, Mr. Clark, somehow your face and voice are kind of familiar, yet I swear I never heard that name before. Yet, come to think of it, it takes heaps of people to make a world, and there’s lots of them must be like lots of others. Now, there’s that old cow of mine; old Jack Higgins, of Box Hill, has got the very spit of her, and if it wasn’t for the brand I’d swear the two beasts were the same animal!”
Mr. Amos Clark was up early the next morning, and seemed in no pressing hurry to start off on his land quest. Besides, Mick was not ready. He had to exercise a mare carefully locked up in a loose-box near the stable before he could start.
The old man and the bigger boys had gone off to work, so Mr. Clark and his young companion were alone in the yard with Mick while he saddled up. Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Clark should fall to criticizing the animal, and approach to pat it. But he was quickly warned by Mick to stand clear.
“She’s got the brute of a temper with strangers,” he said; “kicks all round. Father and I are the only ones in the place that dare come near her.”
“What’s the good of her, then? What do you keep her for—a vicious brute like that?”
“Oh, she’s not ours. A sporting cove down in Sydney owns her—Alec Booth, perhaps you’ve heard of him? He thinks a lot of her, and she can travel, my word!”
“Travel!” said Mr. Clark, with apparent contempt. “Travel! Why, my buggy horse would give her a length and a beating any day.”
“What will you bet?” cried young Mick, thoughtlessly.
“I’ll bet you a crown!” said Mr. Clark, who had carefully considered that that amount would be about the limit of the lad’s purse.
“Done!” cried Mick, forgetting, in the eagerness of sport and possible gain, the injunction of his father to secrecy, and, above all, as to over-riding the mare.
Quietly, and with dispatch, a fresh saddle was brought out, strapped on the black horse, and the lad who accompanied Mr. Clark put in the saddle. The two lads were so nearly of a weight that only a lucky chance or careful foresight could have paired them so equally.
The slip-rails were lowered, and at an easy pace the two riders, with Mr. Clark at their side, took their way to an open stretch of common ground.
Arrived there, Mick was for a race of once round the imaginary course. He feared now, even with that, he should sweat the mare and get into trouble. But the stranger insisted with scornful banter on three times round, which a critical observer might have noted would be as near as possible the distance of the Sydney Cup course.
But Mick knew nothing of this. He was easily over-persuaded. The chance of making a crown did not come every day, and he was sure of the race, so the horses stood in line. Mr. Clark was to be starter and judge, and an old dead stringy-bark the winning-post.
At the word Go, they went off to a level start, the black horse making the running. Clearly this was to be no cantering match, with a sprint at the finish. To the surprise of Mick, he had to send the mare along at a fast gallop to keep within a length of the black horse.
Once round, both horses sweating, the riders sitting quietly at their work, the black horse led by half a length; but Mr. Clark saw that the mare was only stopped from rushing to the front by the tight rein of young Mick, who evidently knew something of his business, and was not going to burst his mount thus early.
Twice round, the same order.
The third round was entered on; the pace, fast enough already, warmed up half-way home, and the lad on the black horse, as though following instructions, began to draw the whip, and his mount shot to the front like a bullet from a gun, leaving for a moment the mare by herself, but it was only for a moment. Mick gave her her head, and she came away like a bird. No whip for her! Mick knew full well that the only rider that had ever tried her with it had had his collar-bone broken.
The mare closed up rapidly. At the distance they were side by side again, the whip on the black horse going like a flail.
It was a touch-and-go, both horses were all out, there did not seem to be a pin to choose between them; and if the mare won by half a length, it might have been noted by a critical looker-on that the rider of the black horse had ceased work just as the post was neared.
Mick was proud of his victory, but overwhelmed with apprehension at the distressed and sweaty condition of the mare.
“I shall catch it if the old man sees her again to-day!” he exclaimed, as he pocketed his two half-crowns.
“You had best groom her down, and walk her about quietly,” said Amos Clark. “She’ll be as right as rain in an hour or two.”
Mr. Clark suddenly remembered that he had an engagement in Sydney that evening that must be kept, so that really he should not have time that day to go land-hunting and catch the down train. So retiring to the house he hastily took his leave of Mrs. Wigway and Mick, and jumping in the sulky, was quickly lost to sight on the track through the box flat.
* * * * *
Mr. Clark, as he drove quietly towards Richmond and the stable of his own horse, had much matter for reflection, so that he hardly said a word to his young companion all the way.
Clearly they were a match-pair for speed as nearly as one could choose. The mare was not in full training, it was true; neither was the black horse, and it was a fair inference that what would improve one would improve the other. His lad said he might have won by a head, and he believed he might, but what was that to stake fortune and the only girl in the world on? He might win, of course, always provided they had the same weight; and then, again, a mare was likely to get a better show with the handicapper. Still, he might win.
But then again he might lose; there was no kind of certainty. And he quite agreed with Soft Sam, that it was only mugs that trusted to chance at racing.
No, a chance it should not be. He swore to himself that by hook or by crook, when the great event arrived, the danger of The Vengeance being beaten should not come from the mare Bertha. But how to prevent it?
A dark thought crossed his mind, and not only crossed, but stopped and dwelt there till it had assumed a definite form and shape, and with an inward putting away of all the remonstrance of his better feeling, he resolved—
“I will do it; all’s fair with a scoundrel like him.”
Ruby and Florence, of the Golden Bar, were as pleased as a dog who has found a bone when they overheard Bertha promise a middle-aged, benevolent-looking gentleman, who was a casual frequenter of the house, to go out with him the next day in a boat on the Parramatta River. The next day was Bertha’s day off.
“Well, I never! As though she could not find some one better than that to spark her about! She has got a funny taste, certainly! Some of the boys will be surprised to hear of it!” said Ruby.
“Why, I believe he is only a poor devil of a phrenologist; keeps an office in a back street near George Street—a sort of crank, that has not got a pound to bless himself with!” added Florrie.
“Is that what he is? I thought he was not up to much. Always a small English beer, and never shouts for a soul. What Bertha can see in him I can’t tell. Now you mark my words, with all her cleverness and airs and graces, she will go and make a fool of herself with some poor wretch who has to work for his living!”
And so the two went on, licking this little bone of scandal from all possible points.
On the next day a small rowing boat was well off Cockatoo Island before the lug-sail that had so far been hoisted was taken down, and Professor Norris took up the sculls, Bertha, the old companion of his travels, steering in the stern.
“And how is your book getting on, Pro—the book that was to do so much?”
“I had to send it to London; there is not demand enough out here, they told me, for that kind of work, to make its publication profitable. I dare say they are right, so I sent it on to London; but that takes time, and I have had no answer yet.”
“I’m afraid you will never be a rich man, Pro.”
“I’m not afraid, I’m sure of it, unless an unforeseen accident should put it in my way. I will not pay the price. And he who will not pay cannot expect to have.”
“What price do you mean?”
“I will not sell my soul for the wealth of this life. Hard work will not get it, industry will not get it—nothing but the subjection of the whole mind and intelligence to money-grubbing, to besting your competitors, to out-lying your fellow-liars, to taking every advantage that the credulity or ignorance of your fellow-creatures may give you, and a remorseless selfishness—that is the price for the lottery ticket of life, which even then has more blanks than prizes.”
“And do you always mean to be poor, then?” said Bertha, not much surprised at the Professor’s statement, for she had heard him in the same strain before.
“Yes, poverty in cash will be mine, and I am coming day by day to think more and more that it is better so. The truth is not to be learned or kept in a mind from which the howling wolf of necessity is not present to sound for ever the cry of anguish, pain, and affliction. Not from a spring mattress but the hard ground man rises with his eyes widely opened to the true realities of life. But it is not about myself I wish to speak, but you, Bertha. You have had your wish. You are in Sydney, surrounded day after day by a crowd of admirers. Is it what your fancy painted it?”
“No, Pro, I can’t say it is. I am getting sick of it, in spite of the fine dresses and the fine place. I always feel ashamed of myself when you come in the bar. Other men are not like you. Oh, how I wish I was rich!”
“And what then, Bertha?”
“Why the Golden Bar might take care of itself. I would travel to Europe and see London and Paris—above all, Paris! It’s all very well for you, a man who has seen all you care to see, to not mind being poor, but with a woman it is different. A new suit does not trouble you. If you look an old fright nobody notices it; and even if you live in a pokey little house you do not have to clean it, cook the meals in it, and do your own washing in the dirty little back yard. The world is full of beautiful things, nice things, and I want to have my share. What is the good of being so virtuous in a hurry? Why be too good, and better than other people? It makes you look peculiar and odd, and they don’t like it. If the world’s all wrong, then I will be wrong too; at any rate, I shall have plenty of company. Of course there’s a medium in all things. I don’t say it’s right to do what is wicked to get money. Still money will do so much, smooth so much, that it seems to me just foolishness to say I don’t want it.”
The boat glided on over the rippling water, past the low shores of Drummoyne, past the terraced hills of Hunter’s Hill, with its houses half hidden by creepers, its lawns overshadowed by the green foliaged garden trees, on, till the wide stretch of water came that led to The Brothers.
An Italian sky overhead, a warm lusciousness in the air, and with it all only the splash of the green water against the rocky banks, and the measured beat of the sculls in the rowlocks, as they kept a gentle time.
The Professor spoke again—
“I know I cannot make you see as I see, my dear. Perhaps it is best. We have all to learn the use of our own eyes, and no strange spectacles will help us. Yet there are things which I think you can see, and one is the degradation of a great number of the frequenters of the Golden Bar. I have not been often, or stopped long, for the sight and sound of most of these men was repulsive to me. Hear what they say, what they talk about, think about. Is it not betting? or perhaps sharping, for what other name will describe the effort to obtain what you have not earned? And their faces, in spite of their fine clothes, show their lives—the puffy cheek of wrong living, the thick, drooping eyelids of sensuality and cunning, the projecting faces that look out from their shirt collars like an animal waiting to spring on its prey.
“All these and fifty other signs are stamped on the crowd. And it is not as if they were always so. They were, no doubt, as other men till they associated themselves together to hunt with the devil. I noticed particularly that young fellow, Gosper, we first saw in Windsor, and I had a talk with him yesterday. A few months only have changed the man. There is a talent fit for the highest work cast in the mud. With no aim now but self-interest, self-gratification, to get money, to circumvent fools—that is, his fellow-creatures-to outsharp the sharper. He could not understand, as I wish you to do, that Innocence itself cannot mix with muck and remain unspotted.
“We are, and more particularly a woman, largely formed by those about us. Every low word and brutal jest in that place makes its record on you, even though it only dulls your sense of decency. You learn to respect yourself less. Is it not so, Bertha?”
Bertha had tears in her eyes.
“You are right, Pro, you are always right. I will leave the horrid place at once, or at least very shortly, for I have to give three months’ notice. I have felt what you said lots of times, though I never thought out just what it was. They are a low lot, and that’s the truth—the men that come to the bar. They say things there before me they would not dare to say to their sisters, and that shows what they really think of me in spite of all their compliments. Yes, Pro, I’ll give notice to-night, and if the worst comes to the worst we can go on the road again.”
When the weights were published for the Sydney Cup, Alec Booth rushed with the paper at full tilt to Soft Sam—
“What do you think of it? Is it good enough? Look, she’s almost at the bottom of the list!”
Soft Sam was in no hurry to answer. He read over the names of the horses nominated carefully, paused awhile, and then said—
“It’s as good as you could hope. You must accept, of course, and you may send her for it when you know better what you have to run against.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Sam. She’s pounds better than anything on the list.”
“Of the horses you know, yes; but you don’t suppose you are the only owner who has nursed his mount? There may be half-a-dozen in that list as good as Bertha, and as lightly weighted. She’s no horse of a century, remember; only a second-rater, and only valuable while she is thought to be a third or fourth-rater. Take it easy, my lad, and don’t put the money in your pocket till the cheque is cashed.”
Alec’s enthusiasm was considerably damped by these reflections; but he was confident all the same, and anxiously waited to know the acceptances.
More leisurely in his movements, Huey also called on the old man for his opinion as to his own prospects, for it was a curious feature of the quarrel of these two young men, that both confided in Soft Sam, and to both he was equally impartial—keeping the secrets of each from the other, and declining to join either party in the feud.
“The Vengeance is well treated—the same weight as Bertha—and it should, bar accidents, be a match for the pair of them; and you are a couple of fools, I say so again, as I said before, to cut each other’s throats. You’ll end by making a mess of it, the pair of you. Why not save The Vengeance for another race—there are plenty of them—and not give him away on the off-chance of being first, when later on you might make a certainty of it? And I tell you what’s more, if she wasn’t a mare I’d back Bertha to beat your black horse any three times out of five. He is a good ’un, I allow; but, mark my words, she’s a fair demon if she takes the fancy to come in first. Don’t be a fool; think it over. Money’s the thing; damn sentiment!”
Huey said he would think it over, but after he had gone the old man shook his head.
“A lot of thinking he’ll do; he has made up his mind, I can see, and he means to run The Vengeance to spite Alec. Fool, fool! I thought he had a better head. But there, what can you expect when there is a woman in the case? Another pair of good men gone wrong. Really, there is no encouragement for a man of experience to teach these chaps; even when they hold the cards they throw the game away. Oh, if I could only find a young fellow without sentiment or this conscientious humbug, what I could make of him!”
* * * * *
When the acceptances were out, the problem as to who ought to win the Sydney Cup was much simplified to Alec. The names of a number of horses he was doubtful about were missing. The top weights he held safe; what they could do was well known. It was only amongst outsiders like his own horse that he feared dangerous opposition. One of these was The Vengeance, but he held that horse cheap by having seen it often run in races with Bertha, and never show any form worth speaking of. But there were two or three others he must inquire about before he gave the word Go!
He did inquire, and with pretty satisfactory result, but he could get no definite encouragement from Soft Sam. The old man had no doubt The Vengeance in his mind, and while he would not have dreamt of giving Huey away, he yet urged Alec not to make too sure, and at any rate to back Bertha for a place. But the young man was now full of confidence, and once he had got his money on, made no secret amongst his intimates that Bertha was to be “on the job.” Huey was quick to hear of it, and he smiled a bitter smile, like a man who tasted in advance his enemies’ discomfiture.
* * * * *
Jack Vandy’s stable at Randwick was not a fashionable stable. It did not turn out winners by the score, or make an occasional sweep of the board at a big meeting; but if an impartial critic had examined the material Old Jack had had to deal with in his time, and the results, the verdict would not have been unfavourable.
A small trainer cannot choose his horses, and if a lot of dunderheads like to buy scrubbers, and send them to him to train, he can hardly afford to send them away, yet the subsequent failure of these beasts to do any good for themselves or owners helps to spoil the reputation of the trainer. Yet, as we have said, when good fortune had given him a good thing he had made the best of it.
And no horse could be better wound up to time than when Jack Vandy turned the key. This was the man recommended by Soft Sam when Alec inquired for a Sydney trainer, and to him, after due arrangement, Bertha was transferred. He looked her over critically, had her cantered up and down to watch her stride, and then turned to Alec, rubbing his hands.
“She’ll do!”
“What for?”
“Anything you like if you give me the time. She’s a clinker, or I am getting blind. It’s a real pleasure to train a horse like that now, after the blessed lot of cab hacks I get brought here. You’d hardly believe it, but I have men come here and want me to train horses you would be ashamed to put in a hearse at a funeral. And then they wonder they don’t win, and take the horse away to another trainer till they are full up, and then say we are all a lot of sharks.”
“I want her ready for the Cup,” said Alec. “At the weight I think she may do.”
“The time is short, but I will do my best.”
“Do you think she will be fit?”
“Make your mind easy.”
This is how it came about that Huey read in the Referee that Alexander Booth’s filly Bertha was now under the care of the well-known trainer John Vandy, of Randwick.
One afternoon the middle-aged man with bushy whiskers emerged from Huey’s lodgings, and walking to Elizabeth Street, took the tram to Randwick. And he was about that horsey suburb that night and several following nights, frequenting bars and billiard-rooms, listening to the talk, and being taken down at pool as a new chum.
The ears of the bushy-whiskered man were always quick to catch any reference to the Vandy stable, and one night from a groom in a garrulous state of drunkenness, and at the trumpery cost of supplying him with beer, he gained a most minute list of all and every particular of that racing interior. It was a tedious job to a casual listener, this long rambling statement of the hostler, and he would not answer leading questions, but dilated at length about horses at the stable who years ago had lost races they should have won, because his advice was not followed, and won races they might very well have lost, owing to a quiet tip given by him to the boss.
But the bushy-whiskered man was not impatient. He listened to it all, with an occasional interjection, and when at eleven o’clock the landlord turned them out, he started to walk back to Sydney, disdaining a conveyance, for he had much to think about, and the walk helped him.
“This John Vandy seems to be a straight goer,” said the bushy-whiskered man to himself, as he strode along, “and as proud as a peacock of his new charge. He hopes to make a pot out of her himself, so it’s hardly worth bothering with him. And he is too careful, curse him, to make it worth while fixing it up with a stable hand. He or his son feed and groom the mare themselves, and she is always under lock and key when not at exercise. Added to which, she is a vile-tempered brute for a stranger to go near at any time, so I must look in another direction. The light weight will not give them much choice in the way of a jockey. Only a lad can ride at that, and, of course, it will be a lad that Vandy knows and has employed before. He would not be likely to trust this great coup to a stranger if one he knew was to his hand. Proceeding so far, I have only to refer to the horses racing from this stable at or about this weight, and if I find one name more often mentioned than another I’ve got the article sought for.”
Next morning Huey was busy looking up the racing records in a file of the Referee. The search appeared to give him satisfaction, for he metaphorically patted himself on the back as he muttered, “Jack Butt’s the lad, not a doubt of it. Let me only find him and have five minutes’ plain English on the quiet, and the trick is done.”
Another interview by the bushy-whiskered man who, needless to say, was Huey himself with the beer-imbibing groom at Randwick, and he learned all he sought about Jack Butt.
“Yes, Jack Butt was in the stable—one of the boss’s apprentices—a stuck-up prig of a fellow—no good at the work at all, but was the best light-weight they had, so got a mount now and then—a lad with no spunk in him, a regular milksop, going to Sunday-school and all that kind of cat-lap. Why, I heard him ask Old Jack to-day for a day off to-morrow, so that he could go to one of these religious picnics they hold down the harbour.”
“And did the boss let him go?”
“Let him go? Of course he did. He thinks a lot of that lad, which is more than I do. Them white-livered chickens don’t agree with me.”
* * * * *
The committee of the Sons and Daughters of the Holy Brotherhood had chartered that commodious ferry steamer the Lord Nelson for an excursion to Middle Harbour, and the Sons and Daughters were invited to combine a day’s sea-air and virtue for the modest sum of eighteenpence.
When Huey stepped on board this craft at Circular Quay, arrayed in his bushy whiskers, a long black coat and white tie, he found the steamer crammed. Evidently the Sons and Daughters had rolled up in strong force, and brought their parents with them. And each and every one was decorated with a pink rosette, as though, having assumed a virtue, they wished to put a brand on it, so that the error should not be fallen into by the unregenerate of classing them with common people.
Amidst this concourse it took Huey some little time to find what he sought, but a pale young man, very thin and lanky, met his eye, seated in the bow. Huey turned his steps thither, and by a little bit of manoeuvring managed to place himself as though by chance next to the lad.
Jack Butt was the first to speak—
“Isn’t this beautiful, sir? To see all these Holy Brothers and Sisters coming out to enjoy themselves? I think everybody ought to be a Holy Brother, don’t you?”
Huey did. He even went so far as to buy a pink rosette of an obliging female close at hand and pin it on his coat, amidst general approval.
“I wish I could always be with the Brothers,” continued Butt, when they were well out in mid-harbour. “I am in a hateful business.”
“What is that?” asked Huey.
“My father bound me to a horse-trainer, and I’m a jockey; but my time is nearly up, and I want to leave it. So does mother want me; but what am I to do? Even if I tried to stop at my business I am growing too fast, and shall soon be too heavy, though I starve myself.”
“That is very sad,” responded Huey. “And what would you like to be?”
“Oh! I should like to go into the ministry; it’s such a beautiful life! No work to do, and eat as much as you like! There is nothing like it! I often wonder, don’t you, sir, that everybody isn’t a parson. So respectable and comfortable a life. But there’s the expense.”
“What expense?” said Huey, his eyes sparkling in spite of him.
“One has to go to college and study, and do nothing for two or three years but learn out of books, and that wants money, you know, sir.”
“How much?”
“Perhaps two or three hundred pounds; I don’t know exactly.”
“But don’t you earn money at your trade. I thought jockeys were well paid.”
“The fees, you mean? They are good enough. Only you see that as I am still serving my time, Mr. Vandy takes all the fees, and I only get my wages.”
“That is a shame,” said Huey.
“Yes, it’s very wrong; very unchristian, I often think.”
“Did you not say your master’s name was Vandy?”
“Yes.
“Jack Vandy, of Randwick, the trainer?”
“Yes, that’s his name, and where he lives.”
“And you have a mare in the stable named Bertha entered for the Sydney Cup?”
“Yes, we have; a vicious, bad-tempered brute, and I know, for I have to ride her every day.”
“That’s very singular,” mused Huey aloud. “I was only thinking of that mare this morning, and what a pity it would be if she should win.”
“Why a pity, sir?”
“Why, don’t you know her owner is a bookmaker? Alec Booth he is called, and he is not only that, which is bad enough, but he is an outrageous Freethinker, and has promised all his winnings in this race to build them a new hall.”
“How dreadful! Has he really?”
Allowing a little time for the full gravity of this statement to duly soak into the young man, Huey continued—
“I am not a very rich man myself, but I would rather lose £200 than this should take place. Think of the hundreds of poor souls who may be lost for ever!”
“Two hundred pounds!” repeated Butt slowly, “two hundred pounds! Would you really?”
“If I was sure it would serve a good cause, I would do so cheerfully.”
“Do you think my joining the ministry would be a good cause?”
“Nothing could be more worthy, and I take such an interest in your pious wish, that I will go further. If Bertha should happen to lose the Cup, which, of course, she is likely to, with so many horses running, I shall be so pleased that I will give you that £200, and, perhaps, a little more, if required for your studies. For I love to help young men, Christian young men, of course.”
Jack Butt surveyed his companion with a certain doubt. Though not a smart lad, he had not been several years at Randwick for nothing. This was very much like an offer to pull the horse, and that would be wicked. But he reflected, would it not be more wicked to aid this Freethinker in his horrible design? Had he not frequently pulled horses by the order of his master, and might he not pull one for such a good cause as his own entrance into the ministry? His mother would be so pleased, and he could eat what he liked. But a cautious scruple of prudence occurred to him.