The Queen's Cup, G. A. Henty [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

"Thank you," he replied, quietly. "I should have liked to have won, just this once, but all along I felt that the chances were against me, and that fortune would play me some trick or other."

"It was not fortune. Fortune had nothing to do with it," she said, indignantly. "You were beaten by a crime—by a mean, miserable crime—by the same sort of crime by which you were beaten before."

"I have no reason for supposing that there is any connection."

"Frank," she broke in, suddenly, and he started as for the first time for years she called him by his Christian name, "you are an old friend of ours, and you promised me that you would always be my friend. Do you think that it is right to be trying to throw dust into my eyes? Don't you think, on the contrary, that as a friend you should speak frankly to me?"

Frank was silent for a moment.

"On some subjects, yes, Bertha; on others, what has passed between us makes it very difficult for a man to know what he ought to do. But be assured that if I saw you make any fatal mistake, any mistake at least that I believed to be fatal, I should not hesitate, even if I knew that I should be misunderstood, and that I should forfeit your liking, by so doing. This is just one of the cases when I do not feel justified, as yet, in speaking. Carthew is not my friend, and you know it. If I had had no personal feud—for it has become that with him—I should be more at liberty to speak, but as it is I would rather remain silent. I tell you this now, that you may know, in case I ever do meddle in your affairs, how painful it is for me to do so, and how unwillingly I do it. At any rate, there is nothing whatever to connect the accident that took place today with him. The event is one of a series of successes that he has gained over me. It does not affect me much, for though I should have liked to have won today, I don't feel about such matters as I used to.

"You see, when a man has suffered one heavy defeat, he does not care about how minor skirmishes may go."

They walked up and down in silence for some time, then she said quietly:

"The music has stopped. I think, Frank, that I had better go in again. So you will take us tomorrow?"

"Certainly," he said.

He took her in to Lady Greendale, and then went off to the Osprey. He was feeling in higher spirits than he had done for some time, as he walked up and down the deck for an hour before turning in. It seemed to him that she might not after all accept Carthew, and that he would not be obliged to bring trouble upon her by telling the shameful story.

"It will be all the same, as far as I am concerned," he said to himself, "but I am sure that I could stand her marrying anyone else; which, of course, she will do before long, better than Carthew. I hear whispers that he was hard hit at Ascot, though he gives out that he won. Not that that matters much, but it is never a good lookout for a girl to marry a man who gambles, even though she be rich, and her friends take good care to settle her money upon herself. She evidently suspects that he is at the bottom of this trick, and she would hardly think so if she really cared for him. But if she does think so, I fancy that the winning of the Queen's Cup will cost him dearly.

"I wonder why she has apparently so set her mind on going out with us tomorrow."

Carthew enjoyed his triumph that evening, loudly expressed his indignation and regret at the scandalous affair to which he owed his victory, frankly said that he could hardly have hoped to win the Cup had it not been for that, and expressed his determination to add another hundred pounds to the reward offered by the club for the discovery of the author of the outrage. The men felt that it was hard on a fellow to win the Cup by the breakdown of an opponent in that way, and the ladies admired the sincere way in which he expressed his regrets. He was a good dancer, a good talker, and a handsome man; and as few of them knew Frank, they had no particular interest in his misfortune.

He danced only once with Bertha, who said:

"As the hero of the occasion, Mr. Carthew, you must be generous in your attentions and please everyone."

"I suppose I must obey you, Miss Greendale," he said, "but I had hoped to have had an opportunity of saying something particular to you tonight."

"Really?" she answered innocently. "Well, I shall be at home tomorrow morning, and if you come up about eleven you are sure to find me."

"Miss Greendale is at the other end of the garden, sir," the servant said, as he enquired for her the next morning. "She asked me to tell you if you called that she was there."

With considerable assurance of success, Carthew walked into the garden. She must know what he wanted to say to her, and he had of late felt sure that her answer would be favourable when the question was put. She was sitting on the same bench on which two days before she had heard George Lechmere's story.

"You know what I have come for, Miss Greendale," he began at once. "I think that you know how I feel towards you, and how deeply I love you. I have come to ask you to be my wife."

"Before I answer you, Mr. Carthew," she said, calmly, "I must ask you to listen to a story. It was told me here two days ago by a man named George Lechmere. Do you know him?"

"I seem to have heard his name, though I cannot say where," he replied, surprised at the coolness with which she spoke.

"He is a farmer's son, I believe, and he was an interested party, though not the chief actor of the story. The chief actor, I suppose I should say actress, was Martha Bennett. You know her?"

Carthew stepped back as if he had received a sudden blow. His face paled, and he gave a short gasp.

"I see you know her," she went on. "She was a poor creature, I fancy, and her story is one that has often been told before. She threw away the love of an honest man, and trusted herself to a villain. He betrayed the trust, took her away to America and then cast her off, and she went home to die. Her destroyer did not altogether escape punishment. He was attacked and pelted by her father and his friends in the market place at Chippenham. You see, it all happened in my neighbourhood, and the villain, not daring to show his face in the county again, disposed of his estate."

"You don't believe this infamous lie?" Carthew said hoarsely.

"How do you know that it is an infamous lie, Mr. Carthew? I have mentioned no names. I have simply told you the story of a hapless girl, whom you once knew. Your face is the best witness that I can require of its truth. Thank God I heard it in time. Had it not been for that I might have been fool enough to have given you the answer you wanted, for I own that I liked you. I am sure now that I did not love you, for had I done so, I should not have believed this tale; or if I had believed it, it would have crushed me. But I liked you. I found you pleasanter than other men, and I even fancied that I loved you. Had I not known this story, I might have married you, and been the most miserable woman alive, for a man who could play the villain to a hapless girl, who could stoop to so mean and dastardly an action as to cripple a rival yacht, is a creature so mean, so detestable, that wretched indeed would be the fate of the woman that married him.

"Do not contradict it, sir," she said, rising from her seat now with her face ablaze with indignation. "I was watching you. I had heard that story, and had heard another story of how the boat of an antagonist of yours at Henley had been crippled before a race, and I watched you from the time I came on board. I saw that you were strangely confident; I saw how you were watching for something; I saw the flash of triumph in your face when that something happened; and I was absolutely certain that the same base manoeuvre that had won you your heat at Henley had been repeated in your race for the Queen's Cup.

"I don't think, sir, you will want any more specific answer to your question."

"You will repent this," he panted, his face distorted by a raging disappointment. "I do not contradict your statements. It would be beneath me to do so; but some day you may have cause to regret having made them."

"I may tell you," she said, as she turned, "that it is not my intention to make public the knowledge that I gained of your conduct yesterday. I have no proof save my own absolute conviction, and the knowledge that I have of your past."

He did not look round, but walked at a rapid pace down the garden. Half an hour later the Phantom's anchor was got up, and she sailed for Southampton Water. Beyond giving the necessary order to get under way, Carthew did not speak a word until she anchored off the pier, then he went ashore at once and took the next train for town, sending off a telegram before starting.

When he got home he asked the servant briefly if Mr. Conking had come.

"Yes, sir. He is waiting for you in the dining room."

"Well, Carthew, how have things gone off? I see by the papers this morning that you won the Cup, and also that the Osprey's bobstay burst at the right time, and that a great sensation had been caused by the discovery that there had been foul play.

"Why, what is the matter with you? You look as black as a thundercloud."

"And no wonder. I won the race, but I have lost the girl."

"The deuce you have. Why, I thought that you felt quite certain of that."

"So I did; and it would have come off all right if some infernal fellow had not turned up, and told her about an old affair of mine that I thought buried and forgotten three or four years ago; and it took me so aback that, as she said, my face was the best evidence of the truth of the story. More than that, she declared that she knew that I was at the bottom of the Osprey's business. However, she has no evidence about that; but the other story did the business for me, and the game is all up in that quarter. There never was such bad luck. She as much as told me that, if I had proposed to her before she had heard the story, she would have said yes."

"No chance of her changing her mind?"

"Not a scrap."

"It is an awkward affair for you."

"Horribly awkward. Yes, I have only got fifteen thousand left, and unless things go right at Goodwood I shall be cleaned right out. I calculated that everything would be set right if I married this girl. Things have gone badly of late."

"Yes, your luck has been something awful. It did seem that with the pains that we took, and the way I cleared the ground for you by bribing jockeys and so on, we ought to have made pots of money. Of course, we did pull off some good things, but others we looked on as safe, and went in for heavily, all turned out wrong."

"Well, there will be nothing for me but to get across the Channel unless, as I say, things go right at Goodwood."

"I should not be nervous about it, for unless there is some dark horse I feel sure that your Rosney has got the race in hand."

"Yes, I feel sure of that, too. We have kept him well back all the season, and never let him even get a place. It ought to be a certainty."

Then they sat some time smoking in silence.

"By gad, I have half a mind to carry her off," Carthew broke out, suddenly. "It is the only way that I can see