Bag in hand, Mr. Dashwood made for the door. To reach the station by road would mean the risk of meeting Miss Grimshaw. By the Downs side, skirting the allotments and the Episcopalian chapel, ran a path that led indirectly to the station. This Mr. Dashwood took walking hurriedly, and arriving half an hour before the 1.10 to Victoria was due.
Crowsnest Station was not a happy waiting-place. Few railway stations really are. To a man in Mr. Dashwood's state of mind, however, it was not intolerable. Rose gardens, blue hills, or the music of Chopin would have been torture to him. Pictures illustrating the beauty of Rickman's boot polish and the virtues of Monkey Brand soap fitted his mood.
He arrived at Victoria shortly before three, and drove to his rooms at the Albany. It was a feature of Mr. Dashwood's peculiar position that, though heir to large sums of money, endowed with a reasonable income, and with plenty of credit at command, he was, at times, as destitute of ready cash as any member of the unemployed. Hatters, hosiers, tailors, and bootmakers were all at his command, but an unlimited credit for hats is of no use to you when your bank balance is overdrawn and boots fail to fill the void created by absence of money.
When he paid his cab off in Piccadilly he had only a few shillings left in his pocket. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, and the desolate prospect of a penniless Sunday lay before him, but left him unmoved. There is one good point about all big troubles—they eat up little ones.
* * * * *
This was Mr. Dashwood's letter to Miss Grimshaw, received and read by her on Monday morning:
"You must have thought me mad; but when you know all you will think differently. I hope to explain things when the business about the horse is over. Till then I will not see you or Mr. French. I cannot write more now, for my hands are tied."
Mr. French also received a letter, by the same post, which ran:
"My dear French:—When, at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, I agreed to come down to Drumgool House as your guest, you said to me frankly and plainly that, with regard to a certain young lady, you would give me 'a fair field and no favour'; you intimated that you yourself had ideas in that quarter, but that you would do nothing and say nothing till the lady herself had a full opportunity for deciding in her own mind—or at least for seeing more of us.
"I undertook not to rush things, and to do nothing underhand. Well, I have carried out my word. I have played the game. By no word or sign have I tried to take advantage of my position till Saturday, when my feelings overcame me, and I made a fool of myself. The agony of the thing is I can't explain to her my position. It's very hard, when a man has tried to act fair and square, to be landed in a beastly bog-hole like this.
"I only can explain when I ask her to be my wife—which, I tell you frankly, I am going to do, but not yet. I know how your plans and affairs are in a muddle till this race is over, and I propose to do nothing till then. Then, and only then, I will write to her, and I will tell you the day and hour I post the letter. I expect you to do to me as I have done to you, and not take advantage of your position.
"I will not see you till the event comes off, when I hope to see you at Epsom, and not only see you, but your colours first past the winning-post."
A youthful and straightforward letter, and sensible enough, considering the extraordinary circumstances of the case.