and the tramp of the horse's feet broke the silence. Overhead there soared aloft a living canopy of verdure, formed by the mighty trees, that seemed to throw, as it were, a succession of triumphal arches over the smooth carriage-road, flecked with broad bars of light and shadow. There were vistas here and there, opening out from between the massive trees, on which an artist's eye might have feasted, dells clothed with beech and birch trees, fairy glens through which trickled some brooklet fresh from its cradle among the ridges of Dartmoor, pools on which the water-lily floated, and around which the deer bent down their antlered heads to drink. But Jasper Denzil had little or no appreciation of the charms of a landscape, and as he rode on, the only comment which escaped him was evoked by the sight of the superb old house, its many windows glistening golden in the sloping sun, as though to challenge admiration.
‘Tiresome old jail!’ he said, tossing away the stump of his cigar. ‘A nice place to be mewed up in, with the London season at high-pressure, is this! If it were mine to do as I liked with’ – But the only son and heir of Sir Sykes Denzil did not definitely state the course that he should pursue were he undisputed proprietor of Carbery Chase.
Jasper, whose actual age may have been six or at the most seven and twenty, was one of those men of whom it is puzzling to say whether they look, for their years, very youthful or surprisingly old. He was below the middle height, and his smooth pale face seemed at first sight almost boyish; but the cold glance of the small blue eyes, the firmness of the compressed lips, and the tell-tale lines that were faintly visible at the angles of both eyes and mouth, were not such as we associate with ingenuous youth.
Captain Denzil (Jasper had at an early age attained, thanks to the golden ladder by which the offspring of wealthy men were wont to climb, his captaincy in the light cavalry regiment to which he had till recently belonged) had proved himself an expensive son to Sir Sykes. His fair moustache, pallid face, and drawling accent were well known on race-courses, and quite familiar in those darkened rooms at fashionable clubs where the fickle goddess Chance is worshipped by card-players around their lamp-lit green tables, while it is honest daylight in the workaday world beyond.
He rode into the yard and dismounted; but instead of immediately entering the house, lingered to exchange a thoughtful word or two as to the signs of an incipient spavin in the off fore-leg of the fiery chestnut which he had been riding.
‘Knew he wasn't sound of course, when I bought him,’ remarked the captain, with calm philosophy. ‘A friend's horse never is, especially when the friend is such an impulsive open-hearted fellow as Charley Granger. But he was cheap, and he has a turn of speed, and I've entered him for the Pebworth Steeplechase, and don't want to pay forfeit. So see to the bandages, Phillips, will you; and don't have him out, except for gentle exercise on the soft, this fortnight. We mustn't neglect that leg.’
Jasper was not one of those who care for a horse, as some of us do, for the horse's own sake, and out of genuine love for the noblest of the dumb servants that do the bidding of mankind. But he did regard the genus equus as a very valuable instrument for gambling purposes, and as such to be tended with jealous care and helped, when convenient, to victory on the turf.
With a slow step and a careless indolent manner, Jasper Denzil crossed the paved yard, and entered by a side-door the mansion that must one day in the course of nature be his, but of which as a place of residence we have already heard him express an opinion the reverse of flattering. There was very little at Carbery Chase to amuse the captain, cut off from his usual sources of excitement and a temporary exile from London and its pleasures. It was sorry work this pottering business of picking up a few ten-pound bets on country courses, or winning paltry stakes by the aid of wretched platers. It was better than nothing no doubt; precisely as at Monaco we see the ruined millionaire, Spanish or Russian, eagerly playing for silver when his last rouleaux of louis-d'or have taken wing; but he felt that it was a sore degradation for one whose dash and coolness had won dubious compliments from very great personages.
Traversing a passage, Jasper presently crossed the great hall – full of costly marbles brought from Italy, in days when there were no manufacturers of the spurious antique – and opened the door of what was known as the morning-room, cheerful and bright as a morning-room should be, and overlooking the rose-garden, then glorious in its glow and blush of tender colour.
Two ladies were the occupants of the room, both young and both pretty, though each of them had that likeness to Jasper (her only brother) which we so constantly trace in members of the same family. Lucy it is true was dark-haired and dark-eyed; while Blanche, the younger and taller of the two, was delicately – perhaps too delicately – fair of complexion, and had hair of the palest gold. Sir Sykes had been for several years a widower; and all the Denzil family, with the exception of the baronet himself, were now present in that room, through the French windows of which came stealing in the fresh scent of roses.
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