It was a risky drive with restive beasts along that cliff with so slight a railing, and the archives of the town told how one Sir Rumble Thornton had gone over with his curricle and pair on to the shingle below, to be killed with his horses. But Cora Dean and her mother thought only of making a show, and the well-bred little ponies seemed to be kept thoroughly in hand by their mistress, though they were fretting and champing their bits and sending flakes of foam all over their satin coats.
“I’m getting used to it now, Cora, my dear,” panted the old woman. “I don’t feel so squirmy inside, and as if I should be obliged to go home for a drop of brandy. Humph! I wish you wouldn’t bow to him.”
“Why not? He’s our neighbour,” said Cora tartly, as Richard Linnell took off his hat. “He’s the most thorough gentleman in this town.”
“P’raps he is, but I don’t think anything of such gentlemen as he is – now Betsy, do a’ done. Don’t drive like that. I was getting used to it, but now you’ve made my pore ’art fly up into my mouth.”
A sharp snatch at the reins had made the ponies rear up, and Richard Linnell, who was looking after them, started to go to Cora’s help, but a cut of the whip sent the two ponies on again, and the carriage spun along, past the wide opening to the pier, down which Richard Linnell turned to think out how he might get over the prejudice he knew that Mr Denville had against him, and to wonder why Claire had grown so cold and strange.
“I am getting well used to it now, Betsy,” said Mrs Dean, as they drove right along the London road for a mile or two; “but, I say, hadn’t you better turn their heads now? Let’s get back on the cliff, where they can see us. I hate these fields and hedges. Let’s go back by the other road, down by Lord Carboro’s house, and through the street down to the pier.”
“Very well,” said Cora shortly; and she turned the ponies, and took the upper road.
Now, it so happened that after a short promenade Lord Carboro’ had found out that it was going to rain, by a double barometer which he carried in his boots.
“Confound these corns!” he grumbled. “Ah, Barclay,” he cried to a thick-set man whom he met at that moment, “collecting your dues? It’s going to rain.”
“Yes, my lord. My corns shoot horribly.”
“So do mine; doosid bad. I’m going to get the carriage and have a drive. Can’t walk.”
He nodded and went back to his handsome house and grounds, contenting himself with sitting down in the lodge portico while the gardener’s wife ordered the carriage to be got ready.
“It isn’t handsome, but it suits me,” his lordship used to say, “and it’s comfortable. If I can’t have things as I like with my money, and at my time of life, why it’s doosid strange.”
So he waited till a groom brought the carriage down the drive, and then looked at it as it came.
“Don’t do to go wooing in,” he said, with a chuckle, as he got in and took the reins; and certainly it did not look like the chariot of love, for it was a little, low basket carriage, big enough to hold one, and shaped very much like a bath-chair. It was drawn by a very large, grey, well-clipped donkey with enormous ears, quite an aristocrat of his race, with his well-filled skin and carefully blackened harness.
“Thankye, John. Thankye, Mrs Roberts,” said his lordship, as he shook the reins. “Go on, Balaam.”
Balaam went deliberately on, and just as they were going out of the great iron gates, and his lordship was indulging in a pinch of snuff, there was the rattle of wheels to his right, and Cora Dean came along with her ponies at a smart trot, her mother looking like an over-blown peony by her side.
“Juno, by Jove!” said his lordship, preparing to raise his hat.
But just then – it was a matter of moments – Balaam stood stock still, drew his great flap ears forward and pointed them at the ponies, and staring hard, lifted his tail, and, showing his teeth, uttered with outstretched neck a most discordant roaring —Hee-haw – Hee-haw!
Cora’s ponies stopped short, trembling and snorting. Then, with a jerk that threatened to snap the harness, and as if moved by the same impulse, they plunged forward and tore down the road that, a hundred yards further on, became busy street, and went down at a sharp angle right for the pier.
“Betsy!” shouted Mrs Dean.
Cora sat firm as a rock, and caught up the second rein to pull heavily on the curb, when —snap! – the rein parted at the buckle, and with only the regular snaffle rein to check the headlong gallop, the driver dragged in vain.
The road became street almost like a flash; the street with its busy shops seemed to rush by the carriage; a bath-chair at a shop door, fortunately empty, was caught, in spite of Cora’s efforts to guide the ponies, and smashed to atoms, the flying pieces and the noise maddening the ponies in their headlong race.
It was a steep descent, too, and with such bits even a man’s arm could not have restrained the fiery little animals as they tore on straight for the sea.
“By Jove!” panted Lord Carboro’, jumping out of his little carriage, and, forgetful of all infirmities, he began to run; “they’ll be over the cliff. No, by all that’s horrible, they’ll go right down the pier!”
Volume One – Chapter Seventeen.
Miss Dean’s Ponies
Richard Linnell was very blind as he walked down the pier, stopping here and there to lay his hand upon the slight rail, and watch the changing colours on the sea, which was here one dazzling sheen of silver, there stained with shade after shade of glorious blue, borrowed from the sky, which was as smiling now as it was tearful but a few days back, when it was clouded over with gloom.
Then he gazed wistfully at a mackerel boat that could not get in for want of wind, and lay with its mast describing arcs on the ether, while its brown sails kept filling out and flapping, and then hanging empty from the spars.
It was a glorious day; one that should have filled all young and buoyant hearts with hope, but Richard Linnell’s was not buoyant, for it felt heavy as lead.
He told himself that he loved Claire Denville truly a man could love; and time back she had been ready to respond to his bows; her eyes, too, had seemed to look brightly upon him; but since that dreadful night when he had been deluded into making one of the half-tipsy party gathered beneath her window, and had played that serenade, all had been changed.
It was horrible! Such a night as that, when, judging from what he could glean, the agony and trouble of father and daughter must have been unbearable. And yet he had been there like some contemptible street musician playing beneath her window, and she must know it was he.
That white hand that opened the window and waved them away was not hers, though, but old Denville’s, and that was the only relief he found.
He was very blind, or he would have seen more than one pair of eyes brighten as he sauntered down the pier, and more than one fan flutter as he drew near, and its owner prepare to return his bow while he passed on with his eyes mentally closed.
He was very blind, for he did not see one of the attractive ladies, nor one of those who tried to be attractive as he dawdled on, thinking of the face that appeared, somehow, among the flowers at Claire Denville’s window; then of pretty little blossom-like May Burnett, who people said was so light and frivolous.
Then he asked himself why he was frittering away his life in Saltinville with his father instead of taking to some manly career, and making for himself a name.
“Because I’m chained,” he said, half aloud, as he returned a couple of salutes from Sir Harry Payne and Sir Matthew Bray – rather coldly given, condescending salutations that brought a curl of contempt to his lip.
These gentlemen were near the end of the pier, and he passed them, and went on to look out to sea on the other