“Who the devil have you got there, Pelham?” said Lord Chester.
“A person,” said I, “who picked me up at Paris, and insists on the right of treasure trove to claim me in England. But will you let me ask, in my turn, whom that cheerful mansion we have just left, belongs to?”
“To a Mr. Dawson, whose father was a gentleman farmer who bred horses, a very respectable person, for I made one or two excellent bargains with him. The son was always on the turf, and contracted the worst of its habits. He bears but a very indifferent character, and will probably become a complete blackleg. He married, a short time since, a woman of some fortune, and I suppose it is her taste which has so altered and modernized his house. Come, gentlemen, we are on even ground, shall we trot?”
We proceeded but a few yards before we were again stopped by a precipitous ascent, and as Lord Chester was then earnestly engaged in praising his horse to one of the cavalcade, I had time to remark the spot. At the foot of the hill we were about slowly to ascend, was a broad, uninclosed patch of waste land; a heron, flapping its enormous wings as it rose, directed my attention to a pool overgrown with rushes, and half-sheltered on one side by a decayed tree, which, if one might judge from the breadth and hollowness of its trunk, had been a refuge to the wild bird, and a shelter to the wild cattle, at a time when such were the only intruders upon its hospitality; and when the country, for miles and leagues round, was honoured by as little of man’s care and cultivation as was at present the rank waste which still nourished its gnarled and venerable roots. There was something remarkably singular and grotesque in the shape and sinuosity of its naked and spectral branches: two of exceeding length stretched themselves forth, in the very semblance of arms held out in the attitude of supplication; and the bend of the trunk over the desolate pond, the form of the hoary and blasted summit, and the hollow trunk, half riven asunder in the shape of limbs, seemed to favour the gigantic deception. You might have imagined it an antediluvian transformation, or a daughter of the Titan race, preserving in her metamorphosis her attitude of entreaty to the merciless Olympian.
This was the only tree visible; for a turn of the road and the unevenness of the ground, completely veiled the house we had passed, and the few low firs and sycamores which made its only plantations. The sullen pool—its ghost-like guardian—the dreary heath around, the rude features of the country beyond, and the apparent absence of all human habitation, conspired to make a scene of the most dispiriting and striking desolation. I know not how to account for it, but as I gazed around in silence, the whole place appeared to grow over my mind, as one which I had seen, though dimly and drearily, before; and a nameless and unaccountable presentiment of fear and evil sunk like ice into my heart. We ascended the hill, and the rest of the road being of a kind better adapted to expedition, we mended our pace and soon arrived at the goal of our journey.
The race-ground had its customary compliment of knaves and fools—the dupers and the duped. Poor Lady Chester, who had proceeded to the ground by the high road (for the way we had chosen was inaccessible to those who ride in chariots, and whose charioteers are set up in high places,) was driving to and fro, the very picture of cold and discomfort; and the few solitary carriages which honoured the course, looked as miserable as if they were witnessing the funeral of their owner’s persons, rather than the peril of their characters and purses.
As we rode along to the betting-post, Sir John Tyrrell passed us: Lord Chester accosted him familiarly, and the baronet joined us. He had been an old votary of the turf in his younger days, and he still preserved all his ancient predilection in its favour.
It seemed that Chester had not met him for many years, and after a short and characteristic conversation of “God bless me, how long since I saw you!—d—d good horse you’re on—you look thin—admirable condition—what have you been doing?—grand action—a’n’t we behind hand?—famous fore-hand—recollect old Queensberry?—hot in the mouth—gone to the devil—what are the odds?” Lord Chester asked Tyrrell to go home with us. The invitation was readily accepted.
“With impotence of will
We wheel, tho’ ghastly shadows interpose
Round us, and round each other.”—Shelley.
Now, then, arose the noise, the clatter, the swearing, the lying, the perjury, the cheating, the crowd, the bustle, the hurry, the rush, the heat, the ardour, the impatience, the hope, the terror, the rapture, the agony of the race. Directly the first heat was over, one asked me one thing, one bellowed another; I fled to Lord Chester, he did not heed me. I took refuge with the marchioness; she was as sullen as an east wind could make her. Lady Harriett would talk of nothing but the horses: Sir Lionel would not talk at all. I was in the lowest pit of despondency, and the devils that kept me there were as blue as Lady Chester’s nose. Silent, sad, sorrowful, and sulky, I rode away from the crowd, and moralized on its vicious propensities. One grows marvellously honest when the species of cheating before us is not suited to one’s self. Fortunately, my better angel reminded me, that about the distance of three miles from the course lived an old college friend, blessed, since we had met, with a parsonage and a wife. I knew his tastes too well to imagine that any allurement of an equestrian nature could have seduced him from the ease of his library and the dignity of his books; and hoping, therefore, that I should find him at home, I turned my horse’s head in an opposite direction, and rejoiced at the idea of my escape, bade adieu to the course.