Foe-Farrell | Page 8

up a tenner for me on St. Amant--but don't bother. Your book may want some arranging."
The way he said it impressed me, and I fairly shinned back to the Ring. I hadn't made my book on any reasoned conviction, you understand; for the horses had been playing at cat's-cradle all along, and as I went it broke on me that, after all, my faith in Gouvernant mainly rested on my knowing less of him than of the others--that I was really going with the crowd. But really I was running to back a superstition--my belief in Foe, who knew nothing about horse-racing and cared less.
Well, the race was run that year in a thunderstorm--a drencher; and if Foe was right, I guess that finished Gouvernant, who never looked like a winner. St. Amant romped home, with John o' Gaunt second, in the place he could be trusted for. Thanks to Foe I had saved myself more than a pony in three strenuous minutes, and he pocketed his few sovereigns and smiled.
That was also the day--June 1st, 1904--"Glorious First of June" as Jimmy Collingwood called it--that Foe first made Jimmy's acquaintance. Young Collingwood was a neighbour of mine, down in the country; an artless, irresponsible, engaging youth, of powerful build and as pretty an oarsman and as neat a waterman as you could watch. Eton and B.N.C. Oxford were his nursing mothers. His friends (including the dons) at this latter house of learning knew him as the Malefactor; it being a tradition that he poisoned an aunt or a grandparent annually, towards the close of May. He was attending the obsequies of one that afternoon on the edge of the hill, in a hansom, with a plate of foie gras on his knees and a bottle of champagne between his ankles. His cabby reclined on the turf with a bottle of Bass and the remains of a pigeon pie. His horse had its head in a nose-bag.
"Hallo, Jimmy!" I hailed, pausing before the pastoral scene. "Funeral bake-meats?"
"Hallo!" Jimmy answered, and shook his head very solemnly. "Sister-in-law this time. It had to be."
"Sister-in-law! Why you haven't one!"
"Course not," said Jimmy. "That's the whole trouble. Ain't I breaking it to you gently? . . . Case of angina pectoris, if you know what that means. It sounds like a pick-me-up--'try Angostura bitters to keep up your Pecker.' But it isn't. Angina--short 'i'; I know because I tried it on the Dean with a long one and he corrected me. He said that angina might be forgiven, for once, in a young man bereaved and labouring under strong emotion, but that if I apprehended its running in the family I had better get the quantity right. He also remarked rather pointedly that he hoped his memory was at fault and that my poor brother hadn't really lost his deceased wife's sister."
"Do you know where bad boys go?" I asked him.
"Silly question," said Jimmy, with his mouth full of foie gras. "Why, to the Derby, of course. Have something to eat."
I told him that we had lunched, introduced him to Foe as the Malefactor, and invited him to come back and dine with us at Prince's before catching the late train for Oxford. He answered that fate always smiled on him at these funerals, paid off his cabby, and joined us.
Our dinner that evening was a brilliant success; and we left it to drive to Paddington to see the boy off. He had dropped a few pounds over the Derby but made the most of it up by a plunge on the last race: "and what with your standing me a dinner, I'm all up on the day's working and that cheerful I could kiss the guard." He wasn't in the least drunk, either; but explained to me very lucidly, on my taxing him with his real offence--cutting Oxford for a day when, the Eights being a short week off, he should have been in strict training--that all the strength of the B.N.C. boat that year lying on stroke side (he rowed at "six"), one might look on a Peche Melba and a Corona almost in the light of a prescription. "Friend of my youth," he added--addressing me, "and"--addressing Foe--"prop, sole prop, of my declining years--as you love me, be cruel to be kind and restrain me when I show a disposition to kiss yon bearded guard."
As the tail of the train swung out of the station Foe said meditatively, "I like that boy," . . . And so it was. That autumn, when Jimmy Collingwood, having achieved a pass degree--"by means," as he put it, "only known to myself"--came up to share my chambers and read for the Bar, he and Foe struck up a warm affection. For once, moreover, Foe broke his habit