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BORN TO SORROW.

CHAP. XXIV.

THE FORLORN HOPE.

It has been remarked by some critic of extraordinary acumen that no novel or story of any kind is complete without either a horserace or a boat-race, and that it is as difficult to keep one of those sports out as it was for poor Mr. Dick to keep Charles I. out of his memorial. I do not, in the slightest degree wish that this story of mine should be considered a sporting story. It is my misfortune to have it 80, owing to the fact that a man whom I had hoped originally to make a sober family-man of, turned out a great sporting character, and destroyed all my newly-budding hopes.

The Derby Day has been so often described well, indifferently, badly-that I feel a very natural diffidence in putting my pen to it; still, as in it and its fortunes the ruin or success of Grantley were wrapped up, I must fain tread along the well-beaten track, and where I fail I am not too proud to refer my reader to the sporting column of the Times or Daily News (What a glorious harvest the penny-a-liners must reap on occasions like these! and how amusing it is to note the fidelity with which they note every occurrence in the day's course!); or, if these fail, let the reader walk into a print-shop and stand for an hour before Frith's picture. There he will see every light and shadow of this farrago of fun and misery, and excitement and villany. Let him begin carefully with the group of thimble-riggers in the extreme left; not failing to notice the youth who has had his pockets entirely cleared out at that amusing little game of "One small pea and three little thimbles," and that pretty touch of nature where the healthy honest country lass is trying to dissuade her Tummas from trying his hand at the enticing pastime towards which, half in irresolution half in fear, he seems inclined. Then let him take in the groups lunching on the drags, and the acrobat who, with agonised face, is calling to the half-starved little boy to come and tumble; while he, poor little elf, is gloating over the lunch which the footman is removing from a hamper. And thence, to the extreme right, where a solitary woman in a barouche is

pestered by a gipsy to have her fortune told, as if she did not know her fortune already. Alack! she well knows that the only fortune for such as her is to keep in the good graces of the man whom the world delicately calls her "protector;" to smile and look pretty to please him, while the canker-worm of conscience is eating into her very heart and hollowing her cheek with fear lest she be turned adrift upon the colder charity of the world and the streets. To a man who regards this wonderful picture with a philosopher's eye the story of the Derby Day will have been told-and sufficiently well told too.

In the present days of rail much of the humour and gaiety of the road to the Derby has vanished. People prefer even the momentary squash at the station to the perilous adventures along the road where the well-dressed and respectable are the sure mark for the reprobation and ill-natured remarks of the cad and costermonger. As this is inclined to prove rather an eventful Derby for the two favourites, " Peep o' Day," on which Grantley's fortunes rely, and "Athleta" seem to be exactly wellmatched-both magnificent horses, both ridden by very experienced jockeys, and both trained to the very highest pitch of perfection which it is possible a horse can reach, as the interest of the race is great; so London is beginning to thin early in the morning, and towards noon it will resemble the great Sahara for very loneliness-everybody who has time and means will have assembled on Epsom Downs. At the Club doors and the houses in Mayfair and Belgravia very spicy-looking drags, completely equipped, are standing, and servants busily employed in packing the various assortment of good things from Gunter's and Fortnum and Mason; swells of every description; army swells, with bronzed faces and great tawny moustaches; public office swells in all the dandyism of light zephyr overcoats and white hats with gossamer veils; and, I am sorry to say, even a few clerical swells, who cannot get over their college love of sporting and a horse, are to be seen making-up their books, lazily puffing at very large cigars, or mounting to the box-seat of the drags, and gathering the reins into their practised hands, while the gaily-rosetted horses fume and[prance

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Flashing past, too, bowl trim little equipages, with a charming air of wickedness about them two ladies generally, with a footman behind. One glance at them is quite enough to show that they come from the mysterious little villas near St. John's Wood and Brompton; and if a Roman chronicler had to mention their names, he would say something like Phryne or Laïs. Their get-up is irreproachable. Well-hung carriage, pair of grey ponies, untanned harness, and the ladies themselves resplendent in the latest eccentricities of Le Follet, gold-bespangled chignons shining under squares of tulle, called by courtesy bonnets, and in the hands of the driver a thing which is neither a whip nor parasol, but a compound of both.

nor the well-greased curl that charms the heart of the ladies of Houndsditch and Camberwell; nor the waistcoat (blue velveteen) with brass buttons, like the firmament with all the stars. And the much-suffering donkey gets to-day a holiday-not from blows and curses, but from the task of dragging along large heaps of vegetables, and drags along his master and his wife, with a small barrel of beer perchance wherewith to refresh the inner man.

and want to be off. Snobs, too, of every kind | gorgeous array-the hairy cap is not wanting, and description, who try to make up, after the style of the swell, and succeed in making but a very poor imitation of the "curled darlings," though they do look rather imposing in their "Nicholl's patent Derby paletôts," and their curly white hats and cheap jewellery. They cannot help, though, calling one another "Arry" and "Bill" and interchanging mutual witticisms in which the entire absence of the letter H is much more noticeable than anything in the shape of wit. They, too, are all smoking; and they, One continuous stream of life is pouring too, hold betting-books in their hands, in which through the road to Epsom Downs, and the they enter their little bets. But among all these passage is kept alive by the shouting of the men-swell and snob, gentle and simple-there vulgar, even now three-parts drunk; an occaseems to be one opinion, and that is, "Peep o'sional fracas at a turnpike, when the Jehus, Day' is safe to win: nothing can hope to touch simple and noble, do not see the payment of him, with Challoner on his back." toll in the same light as the toll-keeper; and variegated by the gay parterres of young ladies who line the walls of the "Ladies' Seminaries," and while they demurely pretend not to notice the admiration and openly-expressed compliments of the men on the drags, secretly wish that they could escape for the nonce from the stern thraldom of Pallas Athenè, in the shape of The Misses Crammem, and take share in the mad hurly-burly. And so, in the heat and the dust, in the mingled racket of fun and noise, the stream of life-Rag, Tag, and Bobtail-keep pouring on to the Downs; while, by the roadside, ragged Tatterdemalions rush by, screaming at the top of their voices, "C'reckt card of the race, gents! Dorling's c'reckt card!" and all the itinerant vagrants who have a mind to turn an honest or dishonest penny, as the case may be; Ethiopian minstrels, with faces that smell unpleasantly of lamp-black, and collars that stick up over their hats, and banjos and tambourines; vendors of penny ballads hoarsely shouting instalments from their chaste selec tions; thimble-riggers, with the table on their backs, and the thimbles and pea in their pockets; proprietors of the Wheel of Fortune," who illustrate the failings of that arrant jade in the truest colours, for, somehow, no one is ever tortunate except the proprietor of the wheel; acrobats, with their performing gear on their backs, on the "omnia mea mecum porto" principle, followed by their pale, wearied, draggletailed wives and hard-working children, who will be glad enough to snatch a little sleep when the Derby is played out; for they have been plodding along from untimeous hours of the morning, and they hardly know, poor little souls, whether they are asleep or awake, but that the mid-day sun is staring into their eyes; and, finally, our dear old time-honoured friend Punch, and his consort Judy, and the dog Toby; but, alas! no "prince of darkness;" for the Lord Chamberlain has discovered that he is no gentleman, and has ordered his instant dismissal from the drama of domestic life. As people are hung even now-a-days sometimes, the hangman is retained, but under protest; people don't care for John Ketch as they used.

"O bella età del' oro" when men can afford to make their sins and follies so expensive! As for the sin of the thing, and the consequences, 'tis a mere bagatelle entirely; the only consideration is, who shall do these things in the most gorgeous manner? It really is not a pleasant subject to touch upon, but it does sometimes move the bile, even of a moderately wicked man, to see the complaisant way in which the public prints notice these things: they speak of them in the tone of amused pity, in which one alludes to the harmless pranks of a funny child, instead of employing all their efforts to check the tide of advancing immorality. They will not see that, as surely as the wave of iniquity from the East swept over and sapped the rude, but honest foundations of Rome, so surely will this winking at and half-praise of the evil doings of the demi-monde, at Paris and elsewhere, sap the morals of the English, who are the greatest set of imitators under Heaven. If they even finished their praise in the words of the immortal Artemus, "This is rote sarcastical," they would do something to counteract the evil. But, as I said, it is ill trenching on this forbidden ground. We must keep our tongues within our teeth, and our pens innocent of ink, and indulge merely in the extremely vague hope that the performers in these brilliant vicious comedies will "'scape the burning."

Even to the lowest depths the excitement of the Derby Day is penetrating. Costermongers, on this auspicions morn, attire themselves in

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On they stream, in a pink-coloured picturesque line, haughty impassive swells; knowing Turf

men, to whom the day is big with importance; pitiful little snobs, to whom the Derby is a mere holiday; and earnest-eyed toil-stained show-people, to whom the Derby is a day of harder work than usual, and who care not a fraction whether brown wins or black-and-allblack, provided they do good business.

Laïs and Phryne, bent upon spreading their golden nets and winning many pairs of delicious new gloves; and plenty of England's bonnie daughters, who are good and pure and bright as the summer day, whose eyes reflect the blue sky, whose smiles seem to cast a dim reflection on the weary women who toil heavily by the carriages of their more favoured sisters-still streaming on under the burning sun-all alike upon the road, while in the Grand Stand groups of anxious men are standing waiting the event, and crowds of frantic betting-men yell out the odds in every imaginable dialect; while in the paddock the smooth sleek graceful horses are being carefully saddled, and the wiry boyish jockeys are donning their gay colours, for it is now on the stroke of noon, and before two hours have passed another Derby will have been lost and won.

Some unimportant races have to be run before the important event, but they do not excite much interest in the motley crowd who are thronging into the Downs; much about the same as a trifling boat-race between public schools or Thames watermen does at Henley, before the great struggle between a couple of Oxford and Cambridge eights. But the day wears on, and a subdued murmur runs along the line of drags; and amidst the crowds who are amusing themselves, more suo, on the course, policemen are seen actively forming a line, and keeping the people inside the rope-enclosures; the unfortunate dog which is essential to a Derby is being chased off the course; the frantic crowd of betting-men get lulled into something like quiet for a moment, and the whisper runs among the people:

"Here they come, doing their canter."

And, suddenly, round the corner the long line of lithe graceful horses sweep, in a slow striding canter, with the colours of the jockeys changing like the tints of a kaleidoscope as the procession streams by. Complimentary greetings are freely heard as a splendid thoroughbred racer, ridden by a well-known figure, in black and red colours, sweeps by.

his seat.

"There's Peep o' Day. He is the boy to do the trick. Challoner is just beginning to feel He is holding him in now. Perhaps he won't find it so easy to do it when they get off and away."

The excitement of the betting-men and "welchers" breaks out all the more furiously from the momentary check, and agents from Birmingham and Manchester roar themselves hoarse, and the monotonous cry is heard above

all:

"I'll back the field," "I'll take you,"

"Did you say you would take the odds against Mr. Sanger's filly?"

And a hundred other offers, which the bettingmen make notes of in little pocket-books. And Captain Grantley, all this time, is in close confabulation with the owner of Peep o' Day, a stout burly old nobleman, whose name on the Turf is a proverb for success, and with a wiry cunning old man who has trained the Derby favourite.

To hear them, one would not have the slightest doubt of their sanguine hopes of success. "You told Challoner to hold him in till the finish, Powell," said Peep o' Day's owner.

"Ay, ay, my Lord; never fear!" chuckled the astute old trainer: "We have made that ere little business all right, and last night as ever was, a small chap we had got to watch Athleta taking his gallop, said that he was short in the stride, and looked pumped at the end of it. We shall pull it off, my Lord, safe as houses."

"That's all right," said his master. "Now, Grantley, come and get some lunch. I see my people up there on my drag. Don't look so | glum, man; you heard what John Powell said.

Grantley certainly did not look as happy as a bridegroom. Times were getting too troublous with him for him to wear an unruffled face and keep up a gallant heart. Long experience had taught him that nothing was safe on this earth, except perhaps the safe durance which the Children of Promise would keep him in, if things turned out badly. Still he was obliged to keep up appearances though his all was at stake; he was obliged to talk and laugh with the merry luncheon-party on his friend's drag; he was obliged to eat and drink and make merry, and bet many pairs of gloves with the ladies: it was a penalty that the task-mistress, Society, exacted from him.

Lunch over, the first bell which summons the horses into position is heard, and one simultaneous throb rushes through the heart of all present. The idle spectators on the Downs, who have been amusing themselves with the innocent pastime of "Aunt Sally," or listening to the rackety concert of the Ethiopian Minstrels, or taking in supplies of animal comfort in the booths, all rush with one accord to any coign of vantage whence a good view may be obtained. Betting-men close their pocket-books and adjust their glasses with as much decision as Wellington at Waterloo, when the Guards rose to their feet. Grantley rushes back with his sporting friends to their places on the Grand Stand, and a hush pervades the mighty assemblage as the long string of horses are marshalled into order on Shooter's Hill, and a dapper little personage steps into the open ground with a flag in his hand.

There is all the usual difficulty, of course, in arranging the start. The horses seem, for the nonce, sentient beings, and, mad with excitement, and impatient, will not remain still.

Athleta, conspicuous by his rider's blue-andyellow colours, plunges madly, and, before the

flag drops, shoots forward and taxes all the strength of his rider to hold him in. "They're off! They're off!"

No, they are not off. I tell you it was a false start."

And Grantley gnaws his moustache savagely as the horses are again marshalled into line, and the field-glass in his hand shakes with the violence of his emotions, and he can hear the vehement throbbing of his heart, like the beat of a muffled drum, as it leaps against his breast.

Will they never start? Why doesn't Dawson give the word?

At last something like a fair start is effected; the flag is dropped; the subdued murmur in

creases to a roar.

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'They're off at last! Here they come!" "Athleta has the lead, at all events." And, with one mighty bound, the band of horses dash away.

"How they keep together-a blanket would cover 'em!" roars an excited sportsman, with an oath. And for the first few hundred yards, the ruck of flying horses do keep together in one confused mass of colour; but gradually, as the pace gets hotter, they drop off and part company by twos and threes; but in the van the well-known yellow-and-blue of Athleta show steadily, and look uncommonly like winning, while back in the rear the black-and-red of Peep o' Day make a sombre back-ground to a rainbow of different colours.

"Ha! Challoner's holding him in now. Wait a minute, though, till he gets into the stride."

A good-looking dissipated lad, dressed in all the magnificence of sporting costume, as he hears the words, leans dizzily against a rail of the Grand Stand, and his white lips murmur, hoarsely:

"Oh, God! I hope Peep o' Day is only staying for a bit! If he doesn't win

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He left the rest unfinished. Poor lad! he was young in crime, and he felt all the terrors of ghastly remorse and suspense. If Peep o' Day did not win, how could he ever restore the money which he had only intended to borrow from his employer? The loss or detention of that cheque would not long remain undiscovered, and then he would have to pay dearly enough for a short day's excitement.

Nearer and nearer come the flying horses, the pace getting every minute more maddening, as the lithe jockeys exert every muscle of their little bodies to urge their steeds; and as they come a change is wrought, as if by magic. Peep o' Day shoots forth from the confused ruck behind, and at every stride is gaining on Athleta. The excitement is terrible. The long line of faces turn white, and scarcely a sound is heard, till Challoner's horse slips, almost without an effort, up to the side of Athleta, whose rider, with one look behind, rises forward in his saddle, and almost lifts his animal from the ground, Then the pent-up excitement bursts cut, and from that mighty crowd arose a roar of

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'Peep o' Day wins! Black and Red has him, by George!"

"No, he doesn't, though. Athleta is getting away again easily!"

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They're neck and neck!"

"It will be a dead heat!" screamed the different partisans.

All the other horses were forgotten as they struggled heavily in the rear. The deadly rivalry of the two magnificent animals, as they rushed gallantly on, was the only thing noticed.

"It will soon be over, thank God!" thought Grantley. "They will soon be here."

"All right, my boy," shouted his friend, his florid face white with excitement; "Challoner has only just begun to use the whip. I don't think there can be much doubt."

And now they are nearing the Grand Stand, and shouts of "Peep o' Day wins easily-he is getting away like a bird!" "Black and RedBlack and Red!" seemed a little premature; for neither horse seemed to gain the slightest advantage; every feature and limb seemed perfectly even, and Challoner is doing his best now, with whip and spur.

Straight on to the winning-post they come, neck and neck, when, suddenly-how no man can tell-Peep o' Day seems to hang back, but for a second-some trifling stumble perchance, but one which loses him the race irretrievably. His rider tries his best to make up for it, but in vain; Athleta passes on to the winning-post by barely a head, and Peep o' Day makes a splendid second, and the Derby of 18- is over, and Grantley is a ruined man.

For a moment or two he is unable to comprehend the misery of his position; he seems completely dazed, as if he had received some stunning blow which had paralyzed his faculties, and he stands utterly regardless of the frantic crowds that are rushing to the winning-post. Staring blankly before him, with eyes that seem to have lost all speculation; with a face that seems as surely turned to stone as if the eyes of Medusa had looked upon it; but, by a violent effort, he raises his eyes to the board, and there, sure enough, there was no mistaking the plain black and white:

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torn and ravaged by conflicting emotions, seems bent on enjoying some short moment of repose before it collects all its scattered faculties to try and master the full realities of the position. Just as happens when one is saved from a horribly imminent death, the first feeling is not one of gratitude to the preserver, that bursts forth afterwards; but an intense longing to lie still for a while in the preserver's arms, to enjoy the delicious sense of calm after the agonizing struggle for dear life. So it was with Grantley. While other men were crushing their hats over their heads, and burying their hands in their empty pockets, and trying, with their dry lips, to form a curse, which for once delayed on their ill-luck (I saw, the other night, in "Flying Scud," several unhappy gentlemen doing this in the most life-like manner); while the eager crowd of parasites were struggling to get near the winner, and trying their best to throttle his jockey, in their wild demonstrations of affection; he stood still, dazed and trembling, seeing nothing of these things, hearing not the shouts

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of congratulation as Athleta was led back to IN WHICH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE TURNS his paddock-seeing nothing but that board, with those horribly distinct letters, which seemed to exercise a weird fascination over his eyeshearing nothing but a confused droning noise in his ears.

In those few minutes he seemed to have aged years; that look of grey stony despair seemed to have imprinted itself indelibly on his facethe face of a man who has staked his last card,

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and sees the remorseless croupier rake in his lost coin; the face of a hunted criminal, who hears the deep hoarse growl of the bloodhounds and the footsteps of the avengers of blood, and sets his teeth to meet death unflinchingly, despairingly; the face of a leader of the "forlorn hope" as he sees cannon to left of him, cannon to right of him," and bids his men trust to nothing but the steel. In those few minutes came crowding, with startling minuteness, into Grantley's mind, all the realities of his position; he saw himself a broken man, ruined to the very ground, with no earthly chance of paying off his liabilities except by selling-up everything that he possessed-a man marked and branded with debt and difficulties as with a very plaguespot, condemned to herd, for the rest of his life, amongst the kites and jackals of society.

I am bound to say that he did not waste a thought on his wife. I can't gloze over the faults of the man; he was so bad that he could not be otherwise than intensely selfish-all bad men are they cannot help it.

He recollected just then that he had stood quite long enough there making a spectacle of his hideous disappointment, and was staggering away, when he heard sounds of sobbing, and turned to see the young fellow who had so earnestly prayed for Peep o' Day's success burying his white face in his hands, through which the scalding tears trickled, and quivering from head to foot, a wretched spectacle of abject misery.

It is almost impossible-so I find it-to attempt to tell a story without doing some of the characters a little injustice; and it would be as the sparkling critiques in the "Hebdomadal well that those impartial gentlemen who write Thunderer," " and the "Bi-weekly Grumbler," should cast a thought upon this. Not injustice so much in the treatment of the characters, in

depicturing the lights and shadows which make up the picture of their existence, but in the neglect of them altogether. And often doth the reader howl with rage, when he discovers that a character whom he was getting rather fond of has disappeared, like a shooting-star, out of the firmament altogether, not to appear for many, many chapters. In this I must cry peccavi with what grace I may, and make projustice as far as in me lies. If my reader, gentle mises to amend my ways, and do everybody and kind, will make a violent effort of memory— I am sorry that I cannot provide a "memoria technica" like Mr. Gray's, in which the whole of ancient history is boiled down into one wonderful word that sounds like some Welsh place of the most malignant Celtic type, but is not he must make the effort for himself, and, after he has retraced his steps backward along the devious and confused road that I have been leading him on through, with, I fear me, very few milestones or landmarks, or entertainment wherewith he might refresh his spirit, he may, perhaps, stumble upon a man of the name of Charley Dalton, who was mentioned, in the early portions of this true chronicle, as being in that state of existence which is metaphorically expressed in the words "under a cloud." Well, some years have passed-" a period of some years will be supposed to have elapsed" before the next scene," as they say in the stage-directions--and this young fellow has been quietly and unconsciously consigned to

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