“What, the good-looking, gipsy-like party?—no; you will surprise me if you tell me he’s a gentleman,” was the sarcastic reply.
“By no means,” returned D’Almayne, helping himself to Claret, and pushing the bottle to Lord Alfred; “but, although he would pass with less discriminating critics than ourselves, what I like about him is, that he never pretends to anything of the kind—he knows perfectly well his position, and the terms on which he gets admitted to society such as the present. His father is a great Yorkshire horse-breeder—a man who supplies half the London market, and exports largely into the bargain; there’s not a year in which old Tirrett does not turn over his ten or fifteen thousand pounds, and bag four or five of ’em clear profit by the end of it. This lad is his eldest son, and comes up to town every season with a lot of young horses; some are bought by the dealers, others, generally two or three of the best, he shows himself, and keeps back till he finds an opportunity of placing them to advantage. This is his third season in town; and from his manner and appearance, not to mention the chance of picking up first-rate horse from him, he has acquired a sort of standing among turf-men.”
“And this brief biography comes à propos to what?” inquired Lord Alfred, languidly, filling his glass.
“A propos to his handing me this bit of paper,” rejoined D’Almayne.
Lord Alfred unrolled the mysterious billet-doux; it ran as follows:—
“If your friend Lord A. C. has a fancy to enter a horse, I can show him one to-morrow no one in London has yet seen, or heard of; it can beat any animal that will be named to-night, I know; and, for its stamp, the figure is not a high one. If he likes the idea, let him name Don Pasquale.”
Lord Alfred pondered: during his life in London his money had been making itself wings, and using them also with alarming assiduity. For a peer, his father was not a rich man, and his own allowance, although enough for a gentleman to live upon carefully, was by no means calculated to withstand such reckless inroads as had lately been made upon it. As yet he was not in debt, and had a virtuous horror of becoming so; but to purchase a racehorse, with such a name as Don Pasquale—an animal with a reputation which would ensure its beating any horse likely to be entered by cavalry cornets, real live guardsmen, or captains of lancers, who had speared Carlist spies, was an idea equally fearful and fascinating, which, even the mystical information that (for such an unparalleled quadruped) the figure was not to be a high one, was unable to divest of its equal powers of terror and temptation. He glanced at the cornet and at the guardsmen; the cornet might be about his own standing, but he felt a proud consciousness that if the prejudices of his benighted country had allowed him to wear a moustache, he could have grown a much more imposing style of article. One guardsman was a noble adult, endowed by nature with unimpeachable black whiskers, and impregnable in the sang froid of three decimals; but the other, the fastest and punningest of the party, was a mere boy apparently his lordship’s junior by a year or more: yet this precocious young warrior talked of entering racehorses, and betting cool hundreds, as though such pursuits were analogous to playing marbles for stakes payable in the copper coinage sacred to the effigy of Britannia, of wave-ruling celebrity. And should he, the knowing man-about-town, the friend and favourite pupil of Horace D’Almayne, should he be deterred by prudential considerations which even that boy had the spirit to ignore and disregard?
D’Almayne’s eyes looked through him as if he had been made of plate-glass, perceived his hesitation and its cause, and hastened to put an end to it. “Have nothing to do with it, mon cher,” he said, sotto voce; “you’ve been spending money pretty fast lately, and we shall have your noble father cutting up rough, and refusing the supplies.”
“You seem to think I am a baby!” was Lord Alfred’s piqued reply, as he filled a large Claret-glass to the brim, having already partaken of that liquor and others freely; “you fancy I am to go through life in leading-strings; but you will learn better some of these days;” then, with a confidential nod to Phil Tirrett, which that accomplished young scoundrel acknowledged with a significant smile, he continued aloud, “Captain O’Brien, I am curious to test your assertion, and beg to enter a horse of mine, Don Pasquale, in order to discover whether Broth-of-a-boy can show him the way home, as that is a feat which I have yet to seek the animal able to perform.”
At this challenge, so boldly thrown down, everybody grew clamorous and excited, with the exception of Jack Beaupeep, who, for the delectation of himself and the younger guardsman, went through a pantomimic representation of first hanging himself, then, with a dessert-knife, severing his carotid artery,—regarding Lord Alfred the while with a smile of mock commiseration, as though to signify his conviction that the young nobleman was metaphorically performing a similar suicide operation on his own account. Horace D’Almayne, with a face indicative of deep concern, vainly endeavoured to dissuade Lord Alfred from having anything to do with horse-racing, which he described as a snare and a delusion, with such pathetic earnestness that his Lordship, bent on vindicating his enfranchisement from parental or morel leading-strings, even if he were necessitated to throw himself over a precipice in order to do so, became more than ever determined to have his own way. Accordingly, he made an appointment to meet the guardsman and Captain O’Brien on the following morning at the “Pandemonium,” and settle all the preliminaries of the race. This interesting and important matter being thus put properly in train, much “turf” conversation followed; and too much wine was drunk by the party generally, and Captain O’Brien in particular; until somebody suggesting that they had a longish drive before them, the meeting broke up, and D’Almayne retired with the head-waiter, to undergo that uncomfortable operation yclept “paying the bill.” As he did so, Tirrett drew Lord Alfred into a corner, and inquired in a low tone—