Whispered.
Hot in Brighton, very hot. The August sun reflected off white-chalk cliff and red-brick pavement, and the sea shining and sparkling like a sapphire; the statue of George the Fourth, in its robe of verdigris, looking on in blighted perspiration at the cabmen at its base, as though imploring a drink; the cabmen lolling undemonstratively on the boxes of their vehicles, not seeking for employment, and--partly by reason of the heat, but more, perhaps in consequence of the money received recently at the races--rather annoyed than otherwise when their services were called into requisition. For the Brighton races had just taken place, and the town, always so full, had been more crammed than ever. All the grand hotels had been filled with the upper ten thousand, who moved easily over from Chichester and Worthing and Bognor, where they had been staying for Goodwood, which immediately precedes Brighton; and all the lodgings had been taken by the betting-men and the turfites,--the "professionals," with whom the whole affair is the strictest matter of business, and to whom it is of no interest whether the race is run at Torquay or Wolverhampton, in blazing sunshine or pouring hailstorm, so long as the right thing "comes off," and they "land the winner."
It was all right for the bookmakers this time at Brighton: the favourites, against which so much money had been staked, had been beaten, and "dark" horses, scarcely heard of, and backed for nothing, had carried off the principal prizes. So it followed that most of the gentry of the betting-ring, instead of hurrying off to the scene of their next trials of fortune, finding themselves with plenty of money in their pockets, at a pleasant place in lovely weather, made up their minds to remain there during the intervening Saturday and Sunday, and to drop business so far as possible until the Monday morning, when they would speed away by the early express-trains.
So far as possible, but not entirely. It is impossible for them to drop business altogether even on this glorious Sunday afternoon, when the whole face of Nature is blandly smiling. See the broad blue bosom of the sea smooth and sparkling as glass, dotted here and there with white-sailed pleasure-boats; see far away, beyond the encircling belt of brick and stone, the broad shoulder of the bare and bushless downs, over which the fresh air careering comes away laden with the delicious scents of trodden turf and wild thyme and yellow gorse; see the brown beach, where under the lee of the fishing-smacks, or making a table of the large flukes of rusty anchors, sit groups of excursionists,--pallid Londoners, exulting in the unwonted luxury of escaping from the stony streets, and more excited by the brisk and revivifying sea air than by the contents of the stone bottle which stands in the midst of each group, and whose contents are so perpetually going round from hand to hand in the little footless glass; see the Esplanade thronged with its hundreds of foot passengers, its scores of flies and carriages; see the Stock Exchange in all its glory, and the children of Israel gorgeous in long ringlets, thunder-and-lightning neckties, and shot-silk parasols; and see the turf-men standing here and there in little knots, trying to be interested in the scenes passing around them, but ever and again turning to each other with some question of "odds," for some scrap of "intelligence."
The ring is strongly represented this Sunday afternoon on Brighton Parade, both in its highest and its lowest form. The short stout man in the greasy suit of black, with the satin waistcoat frayed round the pockets by the rubbing of his silver watch-guard, who is jotting down memoranda with a fat cedar-pencil in his betting-book, enters freely into conversation and is on an equality with the gentlemanly-looking man whose only visible "horseyness" is expressed in his tightly-cut trousers and his bird's-eye neckerchief with the horseshoe pin. Patrons of the turf, owners of racehorses, commission-agents, bookmakers, touts, tipsters, hangers-on of every kind to turf speculations and turf iniquities, are here at Brighton on this lovely Sunday afternoon.
There was one group, consisting of three people, planted on the Esplanade, just in front of the Old Ship Hotel, the three component members of which were recognised and saluted by nearly everyone who passed. One of them was a short square-built man, with keen eyes closely set and sunken, small red whiskers, and a sharp-pointed nose. He was dressed in black, with a wonderfully neatly-tied long white cravat, folded quite flat, with a dog's tooth set in gold for a pin; and he wore a low-crowned hat. The other two were young men, dressed in the best style of what is known as "horsey get-up." They had been talking and laughing ever since they had taken up their position, immediately after lunching at the hotel, out of which they had strolled with cigars in their mouths; and it was obvious that any respect which the elder man might receive was not paid to him on account of his age, but rather in acknowledgment of the caustic remarks with which he amused his companions. These remarks seemed at last to have come to an end. There had been a long silence, which was broken by the elder man asking,
"O, seen anything of Gore--Harvey Gore? Has he gone back, or what?"
"Don't know; haven't seen him since Thursday night," said the taller of the young men.
"Won a pot of money on the Cup," said the other sententiously; "regular hatful."
"What did his pal do?" asked the elder man. "Lloyd I mean. Did he pull through?"