Useful Performer
(By “G.G.” in Sporting Sketches.)
With a desire perchance to please himself rather than others—a not uncommon ambition even with men of the higher principle—Bertie Wraggles was chaffing Snooker about his stud, and made the statement incidentally that, if Snooker had ever ridden a good horse, it was not his own. Now, this is delicate ground to touch upon with sportsmen. We all like to think that our horses are, in some subtle, indefinable way, better than those of our friends, and that, if they mere not vastly superior on entering our possession, they become so afterwards. Nothing improves a horse like owning him.
Having had a wide experience of the world, chiefly in its sportive aspects, Snooker is not the sort of man who may be chaffed into ill-humor, so as to place himself at a disadvantage in controversy. He loses his temper, when he thinks the loss will do him no harm. In reply, therefore, to Bertie’s badinage concerning the poverty of his stud, he said “Good old Wraggles! One of the best, truly, but not when he opens his mouth to be funny. That should not be opened except to be fed. If such warriors would only speak when they have their mouth full, the infliction of listening to them would be less harrowing. But, all the same, I had a really good horse once.”
“Not all at once, surely,” remarked Bertie, with undiminished jocosity; “what you mean is that you had a bit of a good horse at one time, long, long ago, or a few bad ones out of which you might with luck have made a good one if you could have combined their merits. A really good horse,” added the speaker, philosophically, “is not the reward of virtue. He is generally the result of a fraudulent transaction.”
“Yet I had one, all of him, at least,” retorted Snooker, with a of triumph in his eyes; “and he was a sort of champion. He could win over any kind of course; he could go fast and stay; he was sound as a bell of brass and game as a fighting cock; and I won a lot of money with him at one time and another. He came into my hands in rather a peculiar manner.” Our friend glanced at us significantly. We might want to hear the story.
“Of course he would reach you unconventionally; you don’t suppose we think you bought him,” said Wroggles. “There is nothing costs more money than good horses, and I know that you prefer to acquire them on easier terms. Any fool can buy them if he has the money; a man who gets them, having no money, is not remarkable for his folly. I have never heard, old boy, that you were distinguished for the latter patrician quality even in your youth.”
It was not immediately that Snooker deigned to answer this remark. He sat quietly in his chair, with folded arms and legs stretched out as if he were winning easily on the favorite. His features were lighted np with a smile suggestive of playful reminiscence. He was thinking of the I past, no doubt—of the strange darts he had played in the race of life, and in other races, to get money when his fortunes, drooped, and of the extraordinary incidents of his career in different countries. His habit having been to leave a nation when the natives had acquired a knowledge of his character, he had naturally had a very diversified experience.
He puffed at his cigar a little before speaking, while we waited, also puffing. “Well, well,” he said at length, “some folks may entertain a doubt as to which was their really good horse I know which was mine. Hurlingham was the name of the animal, and if you will lend me your ears (which are all you are likely to lend) I’ll tell you how I got hold of him.”
“Do,” said Wraggles, offering one ear, sympathetically, “and also how you got rid of him, what you did with him to get weight off, how you bet lavishly when yon slipped him for the confusion of the enemy, and so on. But you are not bound to incriminate yourself by telling the truth.”
“I won’t,” said Snooker, sincerely. “This is the story, without veracious embellishments. Some years ago I had a friend—young Waste wash. You remember him; he possessed the face of a fatted calf; no brains, and plenty of money. What he lacked in common sense he made up for in solid bullion, and it was all right. He wished to own racehorses for amusement, so I bought some yearlings for him at Doncaster in the usual way. These were sent to old Sam Slyton, the Ripston trainer, whose employers were aristocratic, albeit of a retiring disposition when it became a question of parting with ready cash. Sammy knew his customers, and did not expect them to do impossibilities, such as paying their debts when they had no coin. He was able to wait for one of their bursts of prosperity, the result of the death of a progenitor, or of a good night at cards; then he was inexorable. He should have his money, he said, or at least something on account, or a promise to pay when another progenitor had passed to the golden shore or another haul was made with the ‘broads.’”
“The yearlings I had purchased for Wastewash,” continued the raconteur, warming to his subject as it became more familiar to his imagination, “were moderate. When tried early in the year they were beaten by the old ‘un, just a useful plater, at the customary weights. Sammy gave them more time in the hope of improvement, and, having sharpened them up, tried them again, with pretty much the same result. One, however—a chestnut colt called Hurlingham—made a better show; he stuck to his work with great gamenees, being only beaten by half a length. The old ’un was trying to give him 21 lb. If he had tried to give much more he would have been second. My spirits rose a little, but not aggressively. It is foolish to shriek before you are sure the fox has gone away to be killed.
“Indeed, having seen all the young ones gallop, I was not elated by their performances. There were no flyers amongst them. So I said to the trainer, who was often prepared to listen to reason, even when it came from his employers without a cheque: ‘We shall have to place this lot carefully to get a race out of any of them. They don’t seem worth, in the aggregate, half what they have eaten in the short time they have been alive. Now, honestly speaking, Sammy, do you think there is one of our lot capable, under favourable circumstances, of winning a selling race?’
“‘Well, you see, it’s like this,’ replied the trainer judicially, ‘it is early yet to judge. The best of the others in a race are not always trying; that is called the “luck of the race,” and good luck, too if you can get it when you are betting. We must give our young ’uns time. They may come on wonderfully by-and-bye; that chestnut colt improves every time he has a gallop. What a made ’un, too! With all the essentials of size and quality and running blood, he’s as game as a bulldog; he never leaves off trying. He has no idea when he is beaten. We must give him a chance.’ So spoke the worthy trainer.”
“And did you give him a chance?” Wraggles interposed, impulsively. He never can wait, like a graven image, for the denouement. He likes his ant climax to come before the other one.
“Acting upon the trainer’s advice,” continued Snooker, “the other youngsters were disposed of as worthless at cat’s meat prices, and Hurlingham was kept. He did not appear in public as a two-year-old, as he was coughing and amiss nearly the whole of that time; besides, he had leg troubles. Early in the following year his trainer got him fit, and, confident that he was a pretty good one, tried him at five furlongs to beat a smart plater (that could always win when wanted) at evens. He did so, and I”—here Snooker looked sternly at Wraggles as though conveying a great moral lesson against the futility of impatience—“who had arranged the trial, knew that, whenever we liked to slip Hurlingham, we could bet until the bookmakers were wearied by our exertiont. And, as you know, the bookies soon weary of your exertions if you find winners.”
At this point our companion stopped to sigh, and to seek appropriate stimulus from a goblet by his side, ere he was able to continue, without emotion, his story as follows—
“We had to make out a programme for Hurlingham. ‘I’ll tell you what I shall do with this horse,’ I said to Slyton, without consulting Wastewash, who knew nothing about racing, and not much about anything else; ‘I shall pop him in a selling race, and make a certainty of it the first time out. Then we can speculate with advantage to ourselves, if not to the community, and win a nice stake. Of course we can buy the colt back after he has won, as no one is likely to know anything about him. You see, it is necessary that I should have money at once, my creditors having become faint-hearted from hope deferred; and here we have a little gold mine!’
“So, in accordance with my plan, Hurlingham was started in a selling race at a provincial meeting. It was with enthusiasm that I backed him on the nod. He did not forget to win, you may be sure, as you have heard how he was tried; he had about ten pounds in hand. The good thing came off all right; then my faint-hearted creditors began to regard their future with brighter visions. I paid them a little and promised them a great deal.”
Here Snooker chuckled. He always has reasons for an ebullition of this sort, and no doubt what he paid was insufficient in comparison with his rapturous promises.
“We bought Hurlingham in after the race on moderate terms,” he continued, after the chuckling had died away, “and we soon won again with him, whereupon his owner (Mr Wastewash), who intellectually had never grown up, discovered that each time he had won a race he had lost money, for he did not bet, and it had cost him more than the amount of the stake to buy his horse back. It was I who had done pretty well. So, disgusted with the Turf, he asked me what I would give for Hurlingham. ‘The first good stake he wins,’ I replied, ‘and the blessing of an honest man’ ‘Blow your blessing,’ he said, with unusual vivacity, ‘but you can have the brute.’ How pleased I was to become the owner of such a valuable property on terms that caused me no personal inconvenience even for a moment! I am pleased now when I think of the transaction after the lapse of years, for Hurlingham was one of the best handicap horses in England, and I knew it. What was more, I was the only man, barring the trainer, who possessed that knowledge.” The speaker sank back in his chair as if exhausted by a rush of in-flooding memories.
“But what did Wastewash say after you brought off that series of three big coups with Hurlingham, and when you were for a short time after rolling in wealth?” This question was asked by Wraggles, who has some savoir faire when he wants to know anything, but is of too tempestuous a temperament to wait for people to tell him gladly all they know and more, as most people are wont to do.
“As if I cared what Waterwash said,” retorted Snooker, with genuine feeling. “I do not wish to be spoken well of by men who, mentally, never attain their majority. But—ah! yes, now I come to remember, he did hint darkly to a friend of mine that, if anyone sought to know me intimately, he ought to go through the Bankruptcy Court as a preliminary to the introduction, since it might save him the trouble of that ordeal afterwards. Not so bad, was it, for a person with an addled brain?”
We said it was not so bad. We did not like to say it was true. We laughed heartily as though someone—preferably a female—had tickled us confidentially in a favorable spot.
“And so that was one of your really good horses, eh?” said Wraggles. “I suppose you could do with another of the same sort at the same price now?” Times change, but they do not improve.”
“A man can’t expect to have two good horses in one life,” replied Snooker with dignity, “unless he steals one and promises to pay for the other when his ship comes home. Hurlingham was by way of being a champion. I cannot hope to have another even if I live a long time, which is improbable, seeing how much I have enjoyed myself during the seasons when Fortune smiled upon me. If I had a horse now that had been beaten by a champion with, so to speak, one hand behind his back, I should be delighted to take him on the course and gamble with anybody.”
Then we knew, from the benign way in which Snooker looked at us, as if he intended to give us something on a future occasion, that his story was ended. He does not look like that unless he has nothing more to say, unless his thirst is, for the moment, appeased. We crowded round our old friend and shook hands with him heartily. One of the convives— Wraggles, to be sure—while performing that act of kindness, placed in Snooker’s palm a card on the back of which were written, in bold characters, these words—
“Thanks, old man. I’m a bit of a holy friar myself, but I am not within 28lb of your form.”
New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 6 July 1899