"Don't know what you call 'little things,' Maitland," said Lord Ticehurst, twitted out of his usual reticence; "the One Thousand, and the Ascot Cup, with two of the best things at Stockbridge. That seems pretty good to me; but I suppose it's nothing to you. You never even won a donkey-race that I heard of."
"O yes, he did," said Gilbert Lloyd, who had come up to them unseen, and overheard the last remark; "O yes; Bobby won a donkey-race once, and he was so proud of it, he always takes the animal about with him. He's somewhere in the neighbourhood now, I'll swear!"
There was a shout of laughter at this remark from all the men standing round, which was increased to a roar as Mr. Stackborough, dressed most elaborately, was seen approaching the group. It was always said that Bobby Maitland had never been seen to lose his temper. At that instant he was within an ace of it; but he controlled himself with an effort, and said, "That's not bad, Lloyd; not at all bad, for you. When you order Lloyd's man's new livery, Etchingham, you must have a cap and bells added to it. 'Gad, you're like one of those great swells in the olden time, who used to keep a fool to amuse their friends!"
"Haw, haw! Maitland had him there!" shouted "Barrel" Moss, a fat, handsome Israelite, ex-gambling-house-keeper, now racehorse-proprietor and betting-man, admitted into the society of the highest patrons of the turf.
"What are you grinning at, Barrel?" retorted Gilbert. "You may thank your stars you did not live in the days of those 'great swells of the olden time.' Why, when Jews wouldn't pay, they used to pull their teeth out; and what would have become of you when you were posted in Teddington's year? Why you wouldn't have had a single grinder left!"
Once more the laugh was on Lloyd's side, and taking advantage of his triumph he pushed through the knot gathered round him, and, taking Lord Ticehurst by the arm, moved off towards the hotel. The colloquy between the two, as they walked along, was brief. His lordship was more than a little "out of sorts." His rejection by Miss Lambert yet rankled in his mind; his recent want of success on the turf upset and annoyed him. He was fidgety and fretful, and when Gilbert asked him what they should do, and where they should go to next, he confessed as much, and said that he did not care so long as he was "out of the whole d--d thing!" Such a state of mind rather coinciding with Gilbert Lloyd's own feelings at the time, that astute counsellor, instead of opposing his patron's unmistakable though oddly expressed views, fell in with them at once; declared that everything from British Dan to British Beersheba was barren, and suggested that they should go abroad for a month or two, lie fallow, and pick up health. Lord Ticehurst fully agreed with the idea of going abroad, but "would not have any of your touring;" he had had enough of Switzerland, thank you; and as for any of those dead-alive old cribs where fellows poked about among pictures and those kind of things, well, he would as soon cut his throat offhand! He did not mind going to Hombourg or Baden, or one of those places where there was something to be done, and plenty of people to be seen.
It was Gilbert's policy just at that time to keep his pupil in good-humour if possible, so that even if the notion of a visit to Baden had not happened to be agreeable to him, he would doubtless have suppressed his own feelings and assented with a good grace. But situated as he was, wanting a thorough change, and yet so ill at ease as to fear being left alone to his own resources in a dull place, the gaiety of a foreign watering-place was exactly what he would have chosen. So, two days after, the Morning Postrecorded that "the Earl of Ticehurst and Mr. Gilbert Lloyd passed through town yesterday en routefor Baden."
Men of middle age, who recollect Baden before the fatal facility of travel, or the invention of Mr. Cook and his excursionists, must look back with deep regret upon the pleasant days when comparatively few English people found their way along the newly-opened railway that crept along the bank of the Oos. The place was known, of course; but the difference between the visitors then and nowadays was as great as between the visitors to the gardens of Hampton Court on any ordinary fine day in early spring or on Easter Monday. The style of the company, despite the importing of many of the great British aristocracy who in former years never visited the place, but now find it much cheaper and more amusing than "entertaining" for partridge-shooting at home, has gradually been decaying; but since the establishment of the races it has received a large proportion of that very worst ingredient, the sporting-cad. When Lord Ticehurst and Lloyd arrived, the races were just about to take place, and there was a strong muster of the "professionals" of high and middle grade, the worst being kept away by the difficulty of obtaining means of transport from England, which is a mercy of which the Germans are not sufficiently aware to be properly thankful for. The lowest order of sporting-man is the lowest order of anything. If anyone wishes to be impressed with the depth of degradation to which the human species can be successfully reduced, he has only to go into the Strand on a day when some great "event" is coming off, and observe the persons gathered round the office of the great sporting-newspaper about four in the afternoon. He will see a crowd of men of all ages--wizened old creatures, big burly roughs, shambling knock-kneed hobbledehoys, in battered hats, in greasy, close-fitting caps, most of them shirt-collarless, but with belcher handkerchiefs twisted round their thick throats; many of them have the long, flat thieves' curl on the side of the face; nearly all have the hair cut close round the nape of the neck: costermongers, butchers, the scum and refuse of the population; dirty, half-starved, in clothes whose looped and windowed raggedness would be dear at half-a-crown for the whole lot. These be the gallant sporting-men, without the slightest knowledge of or care for sport, who, in order to enable them to bet their half-crowns on a race, empty tradesmen's tills, burst into our houses, and "put the hug" on us in the open street.
Of course this class was unrepresented in the great gathering at Baden; but there was a large influx of people who had never been seen there before. They filled the hotels and lodging-houses; they swaggered over the promenades; they lounged about the Kursaal, outraging the dignity of the officials by talking and laughing loudly; and they played at the tables, slapping their coins down with a ring, or motioning and calling to the grave croupiers "just to hook 'em that louy they'd left behind." They were a cause of great offence to Tommy Toshington, on whom Gilbert lighted on the morning after his arrival at the springs, where the old gentleman was holding a tumbler of very nasty water with a very shaky hand, and, in default of having anyone to talk to, was vainly endeavouring for the five-hundredth time to find out the meaning of some very tremendous frescoes in front of him.
"I've been in the habit of comin' to this place for an immense number of years, and thought I could go on till I died. Devilish comfortable quarters I've got at the Roossy, and nice amusin' place I've always found it; but I must give it up, by George! I can't stand the set of racin'-fellows that come here now, 'pon my soul I can't! God knows who they are, my good fellow. You, who go about to all these what-do-you-call-'em meetings, you may know some of 'em; but I, who only toddle down to the Derby and Ascot on Sumphington's drag, and get over to Goodwood when the Dook's good enough to ask me--I've never set eyes on any of 'em before."