 | I Steadfast Falters |  |
1. I
Randolph Crosby's philosophy of life forbade his feeling or expressing emotion, except for the slender, fair-haired girl who stood beside him, and who had in a measure taken the place of the wife whose memory she perpetuated. Nevertheless, the sight of the thoroughbreds as they filed past the club enclosure, their jockeys perching like monkeys on their glossy backs, made the muscles of his throat contract a little.
Excitement was an almost forgotten sensation for this man who had won as many as seven races in a day with horses he had bred and trained himself. It gave him a pleasurable feeling that youth, with all its joys and enthusiasms, was not irrevocably gone.
"Steadfast looks in the pink of condition," remarked a tall man standing beside him, and sufficiently like him to proclaim their relationship.
George Crosby was tall and straight like his brother, with the erect, easy carriage for which the family had long been noted. It was in the expression of eye and mouth that the main points of difference lay. George's eyes were heavy, with thick lids which gave them a languid, rather tired look, and dark-blue shadows encircled them. His lips were full, and drooped a little at the corners.
Randolph's eyes, on the contrary, looked out of an impassive, almost cynical face with the cold, critical gaze of one who for half a century had lived hard and, at times, fast. In his desire to experience every sensation that life could offer, he might have followed paths that were shadowed and devious; but through it all he had carried a sense of responsibility to the code of his ancestors — "Play the game for all it's worth, but play it square!"
George, the younger of the brothers, maintained that Randolph's feeling in regard to family tradition was an obsession.
"Your Uncle Randolph's a bit dotty on the subject, Norman," he had remarked to his son one evening, in the confidence of an after-dinner chat, a slight sneer curling the corners of his lips. "Leans over backward when it comes to a point of what he calls honor. Personally, I don't see what difference it makes to the family tree."
Norman had replied ruefully:
"Wish I had a thousand dollars for each of the dusty old codgers! It would come close to getting me out of debt."
His father had eyed the dissipated young face sharply.
"Just the same, don't hit it up too hard, my son. The paternal exchequer has its limitations, you know, and your dad isn't too old to want some of the good things of life himself!"
And Norman had laughed, and said he wouldn't.
He was standing beside his father now, watching the horses with a strained look on his white face.
"Pat says he's in perfect shape," replied Randolph Crosby, in answer to his brother's remark.
His keen eyes softened as they lingered on the horse who hitherto had always carried his colors to victory.
"Are you backing him?" asked George, glancing at the card he held in his hand.
His brother nodded.
"Went in rather deep this time. It looks like such a sure thing. The odds are pretty heavy, and you have to plunge a bit to make it worth while."
He turned to listen to his daughter, who was calling his attention to one of the other horses.
"Dad!" said Norman in a low voice, from which he could not entirely exclude the excitement he evidently felt. "Steadfast isn't going to win!"
His father glanced at him quickly, his heavy eyes narrowing as he concentrated his attention on Norman's subdued tone.
"I've just left the stable," Norman went on; "and I tell you, Steadfast is not going to win!"
George Crosby scrutinized his son's face for a moment in silence. Then they moved quietly toward a thick-set man, with a diamond horseshoe pin in his vivid tie, who was standing on the outskirts of the crowd.
A short, faultlessly dressed man with a military carriage put his hand on Randolph Crosby's shoulder.
"Steadfast going to win, Rand?" he asked in a well-modulated voice.
Randolph Crosby lowered the glasses through which he had been following the string of horses as they moved'slowly up the stretch, and turned toward the speaker.
"Hope so, I'm sure, Tod," he answered.
Major Barry smiled at him affectionately.
"Advise my staking half my pay on him?" he asked.
Crosby smiled back at him half seriously.
"Betsy," he said, turning to his daughter, read your godfather a lecture. He's on the verge of succumbing to temptation!"
Elizabeth turned, her bright face illumined by the smile which Major Barry always said made you feel that all nature had suddenly burst into song, and shook her finger at him.
"Really," she exclaimed, "if you boys don't behave, I shall have to take you home! It's bad enough having one of my fathers plunging heavily; but if you both do, and Steadfast should lose, who is going to keep me supplied with gardenias?"
"Horrors!" Major Barry raised his eyebrows in exaggerated concern. "What a ghastly suggestion! I shall most certainly refrain!"
With a laugh, he walked away with his light, springy step.
Randolph Crosby raised his glasses to his eyes and fixed them on the shifting group of horses on the far side of the green oval. His hand was not as steady as usual as he readjusted the lenses, but it was in an even, perfectly controlled voice that he said "They're off!" as the barrier was sprung.
The words were taken up by the people in the grand stand on the other side of the railing, and simultaneously the crowd rose to its feet.
"Steadfast leads! Steadfast leads!" came an exultant chorus of voices.
The horse had been a consistent winner ever since the season opened, and consequently was high in popular favor. His capture of the richest stake of the year was taken almost as a foregone conclusion, and a great crowd had turned out to see the race and to bring home its share of the proceeds.
The horses swept into the home-stretch with Steadfast well in the van. It looked as if the race was over, and Randolph Crosby was about to lower his glasses when he saw Steadfast falter.
It was only for a second. The boy on the horse's back tightened the rein, and then gave him his head; but in that second before Steadfast regained his stride, Pursuit, who had been playing second to him all the year, and now was following close on his heels, gained perceptibly. His nose crept up until it was outlined against Steadfast's quarter. Then it blotted out Pat's white leg, and then it reached the band on the bridle.
"What's wrong with Steadfast?"
The question flashed through Randolph Crosby's mind. Certainly there was a marked difference in his running. It was labored, forced, quite unlike the easy swing that had made him famous.
"Pursuit! Pursuit!"
The cry broke in upon him in an agony of apprehension as the horses swept by the grand stand. Pat was riding far forward,
"Give Steadfast the whip! The whip!" shouted the crowd in a frenzy of excitement; but Pat did not heed them, and the horses passed the judges' stand with Pursuit's nose a foot to the fore.
An angry tumult of disappointment surged over the crowd. Randolph Crosby's keen eyes were fixed on Pat's white face as he trotted back to the weighing-stand. As the jockey raised his whip, Crosby's breath escaped through his lips in a little sigh, as if insensibly he had been holding it in expectation of something, he did not know quite what.
The fair girl beside him turned her sweet, troubled face to him.
"Oh, father!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes limpid with sympathy. "I'm so sorry!"
"All in the day's work, Betsy!" he answered with an attempt at gaiety, looking fondly at her. "Can't always win! That would be monotonous. I think I'll go and speak to Pat; he looks a bit cut up."
He strolled off through the brightly colored groups scattered over the lawn. Elizabeth turned to the tall man beside her.
"Poor dad!" she said. "He is disappointed! He idolizes that horse, and I can see it has really hurt him to have him beaten."
"It's too bad! I am sorry!" returned Fairfax Cary, with a regretful glance at the erect gray head disappearing into the crowd. "Steadfast is a great horse, but — "
"You thought so, too!" exclaimed Elizabeth, with a quick glance at the clean-cut profile. "I didn't want to say anything to father, but" — she looked inquiringly into the gray eyes fixed intently on her face — it seemed to me — "
She stopped abruptly, and the delicate color slowly deepened in her cheeks.
"You're looking very lovely this afternoon," said Cary in a low voice. "I've been wanting to tell you so for two hours, but there's always such a crowd around you!"
Elizabeth laughed a little tremulously.
"What a relief it must be to get it off your mind at last!" she flashed back at him, with a look from under the broad brim of her hat that made the expression in his eyes deepen dangerously.
"It is," he assented seriously. "That's a perfectly new dimple you've developed just under your right eye. How dare you spring anything so distractingly — "
"Where's your father, Elizabeth?" asked a full voice at the girl's elbow.
Elizabeth turned quickly and looked into the handsome, carefully penciled face beside her, whose prominent eyes were staring disapprovingly at Cary's lean, brown countenance.
"Oh, Aunt Maude, is it you? Father went to the stables to speak to Pat. He knew the boy would be heart-broken. You remember Mr. Cary?"
She had introduced them numberless times before, but it always seemed to be necessary to repeat the formality. She had adopted the habit of doing it immediately, in order to take away as much strain as possible from a situation which was always difficult when the two were together.
Cary raised his hat with the quizzical look in his eyes that Elizabeth had learned to expect, and bowed with an almost imperceptible exaggeration of his usual courtly manner.
Mrs. Crosby acknowledged the salutation mechanically, her full eyes wandering indifferently past him.
"Pat's not the only one who is heartbroken," she retorted abruptly. "Practically every one was backing Steadfast, and I know several people who have been pretty hard hit." The thin line of her mouth hardened. She herself had lost more than she could afford on the race, and she was looking for some one on whom to lay the blame. "How about you, Mr. Cary?" she went on, the vaguest suggestion of a sneer in the throaty voice. "Or don't you ever bet?"
"Not often, Mrs. Crosby," answered Cary calmly. "In the first place, I can't afford to lose; in the second, I don't follow the races closely enough to form an intelligent opinion on the relative merits of the horses."
Mrs. Crosby laughed a little unpleasantly.
"Then it is something besides the horses that brings you here?" she asked meaningly.
A slight flush spread over Cary's sensitive face, and the firm line of his chin stiffened.
"Oh, don't put me quite outside the pale," he answered lightly. "You know we Virginians love a good horse, and a race is an inspiring sight, even to one who has never been in a position to follow the sport — or
She returned his look with a smile that caused Mrs. Crosby to hunch her plump shoulders uncomfortably as she realized her mistake.
Fairfax Cary had left the family estate in the Shenandoah Valley ten years before, and had come to New York with little besides the clothes on his back, and practically nothing in them. He had met Randolph Crosby in the settlement of an estate against which Crosby had a claim. Struck by the young man's ability, Crosby had employed him in several minor cases of his own. Gradually social intercourse had developed from business relations, until Fairfax Cary became an acknowledged friend of the family, and was in frequent attendance on Elizabeth.
The intimacy had increased so fast that. Mrs. Crosby had undertaken to remonstrate with her brother-in-law one afternoon when he had dropped in to tea.
"Good Heavens, Maude!" he had retorted impatiently. "The girl isn't going to marry every man who takes her in to dinner!"
"No, Randolph," answered Mrs. Crosby in the long-suffering way that some women adopt when they feel that the men of their family are deliberately obtuse. "Of course not; but she's going to marry one of them, and you know how easy it is to make a mistake. A girl with Elizabeth's prospects is very attractive, especially to a man with none."
"I don't agree with you that Cary has no prospects. He's a very able chap, and as straight as a string."
Mrs. Crosby had raised her penciled eyebrows slightly.
"Perhaps," she agreed unwillingly, "from a man's standpoint, he may" — there was the faintest possible emphasis on the word — "be all that is desirable; but I'm sure, if Helen had lived, she would have agreed with me that Elizabeth is too rare a girl to be thrown away on an unknown."
A slight quiver had passed over Randolph Crosby's face at the mention of his wife's name. For a moment he was silent, then he said:
"Better not call Fairfax Cary an unknown in Virginia!"
Mrs. Crosby had shrugged her shoulders.
"Virginia is not New York. If you want Elizabeth to bury herself in the country, why, of course, I have nothing to say." She paused, then she added in a lowered voice: "You know I've always felt that I must take as far as I can her mother's place to Elizabeth, and I can't see her sacrifice herself without a word of protest. I love the girl as dearly as if she were the daughter who was denied to me."
She raised a lace-trimmed handkerchief and dabbed her eyes carefully.
"Awfully good of you, Maude, I'm sure," replied Crosby, uneasily moving his neatly incased foot. "But I don't think we need either of us worry about Elizabeth. She's as level-headed a young woman as I know, and when she makes up that mind of hers" — he looked whimsically at his sister-in-law, a smile, half of pride, half of helplessness, spreading over his face — "I don't think there's any power in heaven or on earth that will move her!"
Mrs. Crosby had spread out her plump, jeweled fingers and raised her eyebrows meaningly, indicating that at least she had done her duty, and the rest lay with him.
She turned now to greet her husband and son as they emerged from the throng about them. There was an intangible atmosphere of elation about them, and Norman's face was flushed.
"Too bad, Betty," he remarked in a rather thick voice to his cousin. "Beastly hard luck! Uncle Randolph's disappointed, I guess — what? Great race, though!"
He pushed back his straw hat from his damp forehead, and taking out his cigarette-case, offered it to Cary with a, hand that shook perceptibly. When Fairfax declined, he took out a cigarette, struck the end of it once or twice on the gold lid, lit it, and placed it between his loose lips.
"A lot of money changed hands," he remarked confidentially to Cary, his bloodshot eyes glistening.
The lines of the other man's face hardened, and unconsciously he drew himself up. Turning to Elizabeth, he asked, in an undertone that excluded the others, if she would care to go to the paddock.
Elizabeth glanced at him in quick gratitude, and after a few words of explanation to her aunt they moved away.
Randolph Crosby, in the mean time, had succeeded in making his way through the groups of well-dressed men and women who, eager to sympathize with him and hear his
"I tell ye it wa'n't no put-up game!" he was saying hotly to another boy, who sat on the bottom of an overturned pail. "I rode a straight race! What do ye take me fer, ye miserable tout?"
He turned threateningly toward the other. The sneer that met him seemed to drive away his last vestige of self-control. Shaking his fist in the other boy's face, his little figure trembling with rage, Pat shouted:
"Ye're a low-mouthed, dirty, snivelin' liar, an' ye know ye're lyin' — " He stopped abruptly as his eyes fell on his employer.
"Well, Pat," remarked Mr. Crosby quietly, watching with a half smile his jockey's tormentor as he slipped hastily away, what's it all about?"
The boy struggled vainly to regain his self-control.
"The miserable, rotten little kike — "
"Yes, yes," broke in Mr. Crosby coolly. "Leave all that out!"
Pat raised his working face and looked full into the dark eyes that somehow seemed to have lost their cynical expression.
"He said I pulled Steadfast!" he exclaimed. "Said I lost on purpose!"
He turned away abruptly and laid his hand, as if to steady himself, on the horse's deep-breathing side.
"The dirty hound!" he muttered under his breath. "An' me with every cart-wheel I could scrape together on the hoss! If he knowed what that race meant to me!"
Again Pat stopped, his voice trembling.
"Ye don't risk what ye've been workin' fer since ye wuz a kid, scrimpin' an' screwin' so as ye kin hev a place ter put yer sister where she'll be safe from that" — his eyes glanced significantly to the paddock, where flashily dressed men loitered about the horses, discoursing on their points to the painted women who accompanied them — It unless ye've got a dead-sure thing. It ain't no fault o' mine that Steadfast didn't win that race — ye know that, don't ye, Mr. Crosby?"
He drove his hands into the pockets of his breeches and looked appealingly into the older man's face. Mr. Crosby nodded.
"Why did Steadfast lose, Pat?" he asked gravely.
Pat shifted his position uneasily.
"I dunno, sir — I swear I don't. The hoss wuz goin' like a bunch o' machinery, an' I thought I had the race won; an' then all ter once I feels him give, sudden like, just like somethin' inside him had broke down. I done my best, but he'd lost his spring, an' I knowed then he couldn't win; but what the matter wuz — " The boy shook his head despondently. "Did ye hear the crowd yellin' at me to give him the whip? Steadfast! Can ye beat that? Lot they know about hosses!" Pat's voice was brimming with scorn as he ran his hand over the animal's glossy neck. "Why, it would ha' broke his heart!"
The horse turned his head and, fastening his great, velvety eyes on the boy, laid his muzzle on Pat's shoulder. The boy hid his face quickly in the horse's mane, but not in time to prevent Crosby's seeing the pitifully quivering chin. For a moment all that broke the silence was the stamping of the other horses in their stalls and the far-off throb of the band.
"Pat!" said Mr. Crosby at last. "Come here, my lad — I want to ask you a question." They drew a little apart until they were quite alone. "Could any one have got at Steadfast?"
The question was almost inaudible, but the jockey's sharp ears caught it, and he shook his head in vehement denial.
"I ain't lef' him day or night, Mr. Crosby," he answered quickly. "I even slep' In the stall — an' when I had ter go and change me togs I lef' Mr. Norman an' Molly with him. Surely he couldn't ha' been no safer?"
The lad looked interrogatively at his employer. Mr. Crosby shook his head, and after telling Pat not to worry any more about the race, and giving him some instructions for the following day, he walked back toward the clubhouse.
As he passed the paddock a short, stocky man in a check suit came toward him. His deep-set eyes brightened as they caught sight of Randolph Crosby, and he stretched out a thick, muscular hand adorned with a large cameo ring.
"How-do, Mr. Crosby? How are you?" he asked, taking an enormous unlighted cigar out of his mouth. "What was wrong with Steadfast?"
His keen black eyes, under their shaggy eyebrows, fixed themselves penetratingly on Crosby's face.
Randolph Crosby raised his eyebrows.
"Nothing, Tutney, as far as I know. I've just been talking to Pat. He says the horse was in perfect shape until the middle of the race; then he seemed to crumple up. I can't understand it."
Tutney replaced the cigar in his mouth, and twisted it around and around with his tongue. The expression on his immovable face never changed.
"Were you backin' him?" he asked bluntly,
Crosby nodded.
"That race cost me quite a lot of money," he replied quietly. " The odds were heavy, and it was a good purse."
Tutney grunted.
"Thought they were wrong!"
"What do you mean?"
The stocky man shifted his weight from one white-gaitered foot to the other and gave the cigar another twist.
"Oh, just some remarks I overheard. Crowd's pretty sore — always is when it loses!"
"What did you hear?" said Crosby, looking sharply at the other.
Tutney hesitated, and Crosby repeated his question in a quiet, cold voice.
"Why, they were sayin," the man began, lowering his voice, "that the Crosbys had won a lot of money on the race."
Crosby stared incredulously at the stolid face.
"Are they saying that?" he asked in an undertone, as if speaking to himself.
Tutney scrutinized the cold, impassive face sharply. He took the cigar out of his mouth.
"Mr. Crosby," he said at last, "you and I have known each other for ten years — eleven, to be exact — haven't we?"
Crosby inclined his head.
"And we've had a good many deals together of one kind or another." Again Tutney waited for the other man's assent. "And in that time, in spite of the fact that there were plenty of chances for shady practise, I want to go on record as sayin' you're the squarest man I ever met, bar none!"
He turned abruptly away, as if ashamed of the emotion that had crept into his voice. Randolph Crosby's keen eyes softened.
"Thank you, Tutney," he said quietly. "That means a great deal, coming from you."
He stretched out his hand, and Tutney grasped it firmly.
"Good-by, Mr. Crosby," he said huskily. He cleared his throat loudly. "I'm off to South Africa to-morrow. Got to look after things there a bit. Let me know if at any time I can be of service to you."
Crosby thanked him again, and his eyes followed Tutney with an expression almost of tenderness as the stocky man disappeared into the crowd. Then he resumed his walk toward the club enclosure. Unconsciously his shoulders had straightened and his head gone up.
At the entrance he saw the Porter Chadwicks, who, with the Crosbys, had lunched at the clubhouse before the races. Chadwick glanced in Randolph Crosby's direction and said something in an undertone to his wife, and they passed quickly through the wicket.
A quiet smile played around the corners of Crosby's thin lips, but the tired, cynical look in his eyes deepened. He stepped into the enclosure and almost ran into the arms of Griswold Peyton, who had been a classmate of his at Harvard, and was one of his most intimate friends. Peyton started violently and turned scarlet.
"Too — too bad — about the — race, old man!" he stammered. "Must speak to — to — Mrs. Phillips. See you again!"
He fled precipitately. A slight frown contracted Crosby's straight brows, and his lips tightened. He walked to where Elizabeth and Cary stood a little apart.
"Are you ready to go?" he asked his daughter. "I don't want to hurry you, but as the races are over — "
"Quite ready," answered Elizabeth.
She smiled joyously at her father, and her voice seemed brimming with the silver purity of the hermit-thrush. She put her hand through his arm, and they turned to leave the enclosure.
"Oh, Betsy!" A dark, vivacious face appeared at her shoulder. "I was so afraid you would leave before I had a chance to speak to you!" The speaker put out her hand to Randolph Crosby. "So sorry about the race!"
"Thank you, Trixie"; and Crosby's hand closed warmly over hers.
"Beatrix! Beatrix! Come here at once!"
The words came almost in a wail from a small, much-corseted woman in a purple crepe de Chine, heavily trimmed with Cluny lace. An expression of anguish shone through the powder on her horrified face.
"She only calls me that on occasions of great urgency!" laughed Trixie. "I shall have to go; but remember, Betsy — you're coming to me at Lawrence for a long visit this summer. I won't be put off again!"
She pressed Elizabeth's hand, and with a nod to the men flew off to rejoin her mother.
"Mrs. Hunnewell seems rather upset," remarked Elizabeth wonderingly.
"Very much so," replied her father grimly. They started toward the exit. "Why, Humphrey!" he exclaimed, and then stopped.
A tall, fine-looking man with iron-gray hair and mustache looked at him coldly and passed without speaking.
Randolph Crosby's face whitened. With muscles so tense that they showed like cords through the skin, he walked to the waiting automobile. He stood back for Elizabeth to enter; then he got in and dropped down beside her.
"Coming, Fairfax?" he asked in a voice strangely unlike his own. "No? Well, drop in soon. All right, Foster — home, then!"
He settled back in his corner.
When the parlor-maid went into the library of the Crosbys' apartment the next morning and pulled up the shade, the sun fell full on the figure of Randolph Crosby, sunk deep in his big armchair. His head was turned a little to one side, as if trying to catch a sound that eluded him, and over his lips hovered the faint shadow of a smile, not cynical or sarcastic, but as if the pettiness of life and its sordid estimates had passed him by forever, and he had found again the one who had always understood.
| I Steadfast Falters | |