“I had always been noted in the Guards for my horses—so was Bridge. I know we got talking horses one day, and bets passed about the respective mettle of my favourite, Bridge’s, and another chap’s—young Gibbs, who also fancied himself as a judge of horse-flesh. Somehow a race was arranged, and we got our jockeys and each put a horse in training.
“I was mad, I think, for I took enormous bets on my MacIvor beating the other two hollow. I somehow felt that I must win, and then you see I could have recouped myself for my losses at cards, and started fair again; at least I thought I could—that sort of fair start isn’t worth much, really. The only kind of fair start that is any good is to set your face against temptation: that’s the kind she wanted.
“My people were at Nice just then. My mother had been ill. If they had been at home I could hardly have gone so far. But I was pretty desperate, and everybody knew it. That made things look all the blacker for me later on.... Two days before the race I got thrown, and broke my right arm. I was cut about the head too, and Lorry kept me in bed, though I was wild to be up and doing. Then, as I couldn’t go to the race, I did the idiotic act which ruined me, though I didn’t really get much worse than I deserved. I wrote to my jockey Duncombe, urging him to win the race at all costs, and promising him a heavy sum extra to his pay if he did.
“I remember one of the expressions that I used was ‘pull the show through somehow—anyhow!’
“It was a feverish, excited kind of scrawl, and, after I’d sent it, I got worse and didn’t know much about anything for the next week. Then Bridge came to see me, and what do you think he said?
“The bets had been far heaviest on us two, Gibbs wasn’t in it ... but it was he who pulled the race off, after all. Bridge’s horse had been hurt, and fell at the first fence; and then my jockey seemed to lose his head altogether, all the lookers-on said. Do you know why? No, you wouldn’t; but they did. Bridge was ready to kill his man, Grey, for not watching the horse carefully enough, and he split on my jockey Duncombe, whom he had seen lurking round the stable the night before the race. Duncombe, to save himself, told Bridge he had injured Bridge’s horse by my orders, and showed up the letter I had written him, as proof. Everything was against me, from the expressions I had used in it to the fact that it was written in what looked like a disguised hand and was unsigned. (Lorry came as I was finishing it, and I knew he would stop my writing, and threw it into an envelope without waiting to put any more.)
“Bridge didn’t make the letter public. He just bought it off the jockey and came to me. He absolutely refused to believe what I told him of my innocence, but offered to suppress the letter if I would pay him an appalling sum in hush-money. I told him to go to Jericho at first, but when I got up again, I realised how fishy it all looked for me, and how, if that letter were published, it would be taken as absolute proof of my guilt. I felt—I told you that I was and am a coward—that it would break my father’s heart, and I couldn’t bear—her—to think that I had done the thing. I went to the Jews, raised the sum upon a post-obit, and paid Bridge his hush-money. He told his brother-officers he was satisfied I had no hand in the laming of the horse, but he didn’t destroy the letter. He has it now, and at intervals blackmails me with a threat of publication if I won’t pay him for his silence. I have done so hitherto.
“That’s about all, Sydney. You see now why Bridge is here, and why I can’t do my duty by my tenants. That motor-smash was about the best thing that could happen to me, I suppose, and if I weren’t so abominably strong, I should have left a better Lisle than I am in possession some time ago.... If it weren’t for the old name that has been handed down pretty clean from father to son all along the line, I’d have let Bridge publish the letter long ago,” he added bitterly. “She wrote to me just after I had been fool enough to pay Bridge his hush-money. She must have heard the rumours against me and believed in them. She wrote, giving no reason, but saying all must be over between us. That was all—I think it was enough!”
A light dawned on Sydney, as she thought about another story she had heard not so very long ago. She knelt down beside him, and laid her hands on his.