The Storyteller. THE SPOOFING OF VANDYKE.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 164, 31 July 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Storyteller. THE SPOOFING OF VANDYKE.

I hate pondered oft and deeply over that phase in the character of U 8 Lords of Creation, graphically described in the vernacular of the eolonial turf as cronk? And I find that there is solace for my riven heart in the fact that the cronkness of male humanity is not confined to the selfish egotist alone ; the selfish egotist, who lives upon oysters and champagne and dead birds, those malodorous productions of the abortions known as the bookmaker, owner, trainer, etc., etc. No, one of the cronkest cranks who ever otruggled with the better instincts of a very imperfect nature was known to me as the tenderest hearted father that a misguiding providence had ever fashioned ; one whose soul joy wa3 his • bleedin' kid' (I quote him verbatim and I hope that a liberal minded public will acquit me of all all premeditation), and after the aforementioned «bleedin' kid ' the star of his life refulgent rose in the person of his 'sanguinary, missus.' I advisedly say sanguinary, for to quote him verbatim again would here entail the use of an expression common as the leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa, but harrowing, decidedly harrowing to a spirit imbued with the refinement of the latter day saints. William Higgins, or to give the devil —ahem ! I mean gantleman—his due, Bill 'lggins as he is universally styled by his confreres of the turf, first came under my eagle eye at the Arcadian village of Hastings, the centre of racing in Hawke's Bay. I was wandering about the racecourse at the above idyllic Paradise studying form at a glance, or at many glances. I had my own peculiar reasons for wishing to be unobserved, and with that object in view I had religiously sought the seclusion that the macrocarpa grants, when to my undisguised and ill-concealed disgust I observed that the branch anterior to and superincumbent upon that to which I gracefully, though uncomfortably clung, was occupied by a mouldy greenery yallery pair of pantaloons; item one pair of bluchers, item no socks, item one flannel singlet, item no coat or waistcoat (as the morning was warm), item one mass of unkempt hair, item one face more or less, since one optic was unmistakably gone, and the bridge of the nose was conspicuous by its severe absence from an otherwise classic feature, and item a neoplastic stubble of six days' standing upon a distinctly grubby chin. Also item, one voice that said in a hoarse, beery whisper « Ullo ! Mister, wot'3 your bloomin' game V I observed, with an attempt at jocularity, which ill concealed my innate modesty, that T was taking the air for the'benefit of my health ; whereupon my bocry vocaled companion hastily remarked in a bas?o profundo whisper, that I had better not ' yap ' in such a ' blarsted ' loud voice, for though I might relish the idea of having my 'bleedin' 'end punched ' he had little or no stomach for a game which would be as one sided as that which would eventuate should the trainers and jockeys spot us touting 'hup in the bloomin' gallery.' After which remark, noticing my air of hauteur, and tho palpable scorn with which I treated the beery zephyr he wafted on me through the medium of a breath upon which an elephant could have skated with positive impunity, he commenced to chaff me in a grotesquely humorous fashion, his remarks producing much hilarity trom himself. In fact he was the best audience I ever heard or saw a really bad comedian get. ' S'elp me bob ! who'd a thought er findin' you'ere? A toff like you oughter be payin' the likes er me for hinfomation. Strike me lucky, you're a nice 'un, you har, to come robbin' a poor bloomin' bloke like me of er livin'. 'Ow much did them nocklers cost yer !'

He laughed silently, heartily, and lengthily. ' Was they a present from yer pore inflicted mar, or did the girl wot keeps yer give it to 'er ikey pikey !" I preserved a dignified silence, showing scorn and contempt on every one of my Anglo-Saxon lineaments.

• Proud y'are, are ye 1 If yer says another word I'll just 'olloa to Jack Matthews over there and give yer away straight. What right ha you a-comin' e're toutin '! Tt's ray business you're a-takin', an' by crikey I'll give yer away. 'Ow am I going to feed the bleedin' kid, and put clothes on the back of tho blanky missus 1'

How long he might have gone on I could not say ; but luckily (for me) ]ust then threo horses sturted for a genuine trial, and my companion riveted his leonine eye (he had but one) upon the eventful issue. ' Ere, blimy, *vot's that leavin' mister ! Who's that a-cuttin out the work ? I can see Davis on Muster, a holdin' back last, that's the cup 'orse, #§ second's Master Agnes, the trial 'orse —but what the 'ell's that in front?

The horses were coming straight round to us. The morning, though warm, was misty, and in spite of the . deadly penetration of his solitary peep-hole, my arboreal com-

panion bad some difficulty in spotting the runners first pop. As they flew past us, however, he located the pacemaker. ' Love a duck Vhe exclaimnd, ' blo.v me if th' 'aven't got that (lit Vandyke to lend them 'is cup horse for the trial ! The bloomin' hopper can spread em' too, mister, carnt 'e?' 'E's a fair ten lengths ahead of 'em now, ain't 'o? And only three more furlongs to go. Why blast me if they ain't a-ridin' after 'im ? Gor bliiuy, they'll never catch the bloke ! There goes Muster, 'e's given Marstor Agnes the go by 1 By crikey, the boy's finishing on Swordsman, 'e going away from 'em. By 'ell he's beaten 'em by twenty lengths ! What a snip for Vandyke !'

In his excitement he had raised his voice and at the finish he gave vent to a loud whistle which betrayed him at once. For two stalwart trainers came tumbling across the course to our hiding place. My champion shinned clown the tree like a lamplighter and broke records to the racecourse fence, which he attempted to take in a fly. The result was disastrous, for he turned a flip-flap over into the road on his back with a crash that made the iron fence rattle. Luckily for me his pursuers never suspected a second spy, so 1 was left in purity and peace. Let me here assert, before proceeding with the more eventful issues of this authentic revelation, that my position in the macrocarpa above alluded to was purely through force of circumstances and from no absolute desire 011 my part to figure as a crafty tout in search of a moral, i.e., a dead bird. Alas ! dear friends, no. For me the stern necessity of spying out the lay of the ' coup ' was the result of incipient impecuniosity. For me, alas ! no oof bird ' sang ; for me, heigho ! no flat (or sharp even) produced harmony in the shape of notes (bank I mean). For me no Juggins laid eggs ; inferentinlly I maintain, since the depositing of the ovarian amalgam conveys in the existing vernacular an equally succinct explanation of the process of shelling out £, s. d. 1 No ; I was up a tree positively and actually. And to my distinct horror (for I hate hard work and constitutionally I am unfit to do bittle among tho 'orny 'anded sous of toil) I found myself reduced to my last hundred. Fancy that my readers ! (those of you who ever had a hundred to be reduced to) I saw starvation staring me in the face. A cold winter and a heartless cheer lay before me. An overpowering desire for suicide possessed me. 1 could not dig, to beg I was afraid 1 But I put the cowardly thought far from me ! I resolved upon a desperate plan. I constituted myself my own tout and made up my mind to spot the winner of the coming Hawke's Bay Cup ; plank all my hundred dollars on him, and co.ne out again a man of wealth and big cigar.-*. Heaco my equivocal position in the macrocarpa Wending my solitary way home wards, I pondered deeply over the events of the morning, and that which I had seen from the seclusion of the macrocarpa. The time had been within a fraction of a second of the existing record, anil no one but an ass would argue that Swordsman, doing the same journey in the Cup, would sutler defeat by .Muster, Master Agnes and Co. I am n*>t an as?, though financially impoverished by pursuing the ' mug's game,' id est backing horses when I should have been laying them, so I saw at once that Vandyke held a mortgage over the Hawke's Bay Cup through his horse Swordsman. And forthwith I resolved to invest not only the homely century at my banker's but also my wardrobe in the shape of my last new shirt (I had but one, on the line) on A'andyke's prancing steed ; with which object in view I vulgarly bolted an nl fresco breakfast (one sardine and a cup of Newending's XXXX, slightly stalo, since I had left 1 he cork out of the bottle overnight) and rusiied down tc Hastings town in search of Dinnie, Pil, and Tom at the billiard room, bent on jumping the market and getting all the long shots. .Standing at the corner of the railway crossing was my quondam companion of 4 a.m. on the racecourse. Me limped painfully, and bad to fall back on the auxiliary assistance of a badly damaged broomstick to help him along on his pins. He recognised me in a moment. I print his qualifying adjectives under disguise in parenthesis. ' 'Ullo,' he cried, ' still baUlin'. My word ! mister, I did get a (blank) buster over that (blank) tin fence. S'elp me never if 1 ain't as groggy as a (busted) 'urdler ! But my word, what a snip ! 'Ere, whisper, don't you give it away, now, that there Swordsman can win it on 'is tail if he's jiggiu' ! And as soon as 1 sees Jack Matthews I'm agoin' Co get a score from him or Vandyke'll know all about it afore you're, ten minutes older. I'll go yer 'alves if yer say nothin' about it, We'll put the 'ole (blank) lot on his nibs an' my oath what a (blank) div' VII pay ! I'll buy a section and build a (blank mansion for me (crimson) missus, and I'll get a go-cart and toys for the (bleedin') nipper. 'E ought to pay fifteen !' (The latter remark undoubtedly in reference to the racehorse under discussion, and not to the offspring of the greasy tout.) I agreed with suspicious alacrity, and he withdrew to interview Jack Matthews, who appeared

that moment in the street on a bicycle. I at the same moment turned to Dinnie and secured fifty to five about Swordsman, which I immediately after supplemented by taking a hundred to ten from Charlie at the other corner and a hundred to ten from Pil, whom I met opposite the bank, following this with a hundred to fifteen from Dinnie again. Meanwhile a heated discussion was going on across the ro id between my friend of the early morning and Mr John Matthews, who trained for the Honorable (in the colonial sense of the title) Mr James Upstate, of Forty Thievesville, Several times the trainer raised his slick menacingly, and was met with persistent humility by the tout. Fragments of the conversation readied my ear. (I had taken the precaution of getting to the windward of th<2 interested pirties.) ' 'Off am I agoin' to keep the (carmine) missus an' me p ire (blank) kid?' waiied the tout. ' If you lot out a word of this I'll have you killed, you ,' said the trainer.

' My troubles,' bleated the tout. ' I wants a 'ome for me (cochineal) missus and me (dynamite) kid, an' now I've got a chance.' It was evidently settled amicably, for I saw the flutter of notes, and presently my beery friend sauntered up to me with the remark : ' Comeanaveadrink !'

We adjourned to our Irish friends opposite. ' It's all square,' ho whispered, and I carelesdy removed my nasal organ from the vicinity of his oral cavity. ' Swordsman's the pea, and Vandyke is told he's no (sanguinary unprintable) good. I got a score out of Jack an' 'eres your bit,' offering a £lO note as ho spoke. Could moral man refuse ? Visions of the blood-dyctd wife and infant, starving, homeless and withal flesh and blood like myself, rose before me, Alas ! I was but human. Conquering the overpowering desire that seized me like the clasp of an angel's hand, I grabbed tho note and placed it hurriedly in my pocket, at the same time emptying tho pewter pint of beer in order to keep down the sobs which were choking me. Remember Carping Critic, the reduced circumstances of the gentle narrator !'

In ten minutes we bad invested the score in long and short shots on Swordsman, and then drinking luck (this time I am proud to record at my expense) to our ' dedd bird,' we adjourned to the duties of a nobler life.

The natural sequence to a heavy plunge like mine—l am not a peacock, I would to heaven I were ! what a glorious existence ! All tail and no graft! I feel proud to admit that it was a heavy plunge—would have been to reduce the price of a horse from twenties to one, to even money or more certainly to an odds on price in the Htopian Event of Hastings. Then imagine my horror gentle reader (it's a wonder my grey hairs did not go down with sorrow to the Sarcophagus of the ancient chiefs who honoured me with their spirit and beauty) when I found that the bookies in the angelic centre above mentioned, instead of wanting seven to four or six to four, about Swordsman, were open to lay me fifty, aye, and even a hundred to to one; about his chance. And Dinnie, that beardless boy whom I had tried my level best to break to stoniness time and again, actually offered to lay me a guinea to a gooseberry about my ' dead bird.' (There register a mental prayer of thanksgiving that fruit was as plentiful in this year of grace as colonial politicians) I said I'd bring a barrowful along and take all he could lay against Swordsman ; but ho only laughed and placing one hand over the region of the epigastrium, he fatuously murmured, 'Do, do my huckelberry, do !' I became dreadfully alarmed ! It needed no medheval ghost to produce a cold sweat, (1 beg pardon, my excitement betrayed me I.should have said a profuse perspiration,) all over me. With trembling knees I sought my tout of tho racecourse. Tlie awful, fact had already found him out ere I reached him.

With ashen lips and quivering flipper he stood beside the bar at the kilted one's, drowning his sorrow in the flowing bowl.

When he saw me he was transfigured with grief. (He looked like a second edition of Abdul the—but no I cannot pollute my pen ; call it 'eternally perditioned) !

' What does this mean !' I cried with anguish.

1 Damfino,' he answered, shaking like an aspen. Once more to the lute 0 ! my soul—l must print his language in disguise or a moral world would rise at me like the Bowers at Boor Greece. 'Some (sanguinary unpublishable) goat 'as let the cat out of the bag. If I'ad'ut seen you put) yer (all-fired) stuff on I'd a thought you was the bloke. But strike me (eternal punishment) blind, you stand to loose a mint 'o (1 dare not venture it, even in disguise;) money, so it can't be you. Wot is the (let four stars suffice, my ingenuity is played out.) game? 0! my poo kid, an' my helpless —— missus !' he buried his face in his pewter and drank aloud ! 1 Well, things look very queer,' 1 said helplessly.

' They looks mighty queer, gasped my friend.

' But I'm agoin' to find out wot's on the bloomin' cushion if I burst for it !'

Diplomatically we discussed the campaign and it was revolved that we should at once communicate with Vandyke. 'You see, said the tout ' I gave me word to Jack Mathews 1 wouldn't split, so I can't give the game away, but you ice all right, just sit down an' write to Mr Vandyke and tell the bloomin' flat what a bird 'e's got. Ask the bloomin' mug to try 'e's 'orse again an' then '0 can put up another jockey and win by a street. Tell him as 'ow Charlie Dean who's engaged to ride Swordsman is cronk. Say yer knows 'e's been squared by the push. That's bound to fetch him to his senses !'

Accordingly I indited a friendly and feeling espistle to Mr Oscar Vandkye, which procured mi! an interview with that august swell. I flatter myself I" convinced him of his big chance and wo bad a trial .all to ourselves the next morning. Needless to say an eminently satisfactory one too. With which result in view, at the eleventh hour, Mr Charles Dean was ordered to stand down and astrange lad got the legup on Swordsman. We found it hard to get a fresh lad at all, as all the light weights had been previously engaged, so we had to be content with

a comparatively unknown jockey. Swordsman in spite of this started a pronounced favourite, Mr Vandyke and myself plunging heavily on his number 011 the machine.

The deepest student of human nature would fail in discovering any especial feature of interest in it. Suffice it to say, that after holding a beautiful position all the way, Swordsman fought out a desperate finish with Muster, and coming at the right end won a grand race in hollow fashion by two lengths, Muster second, Teerai third, the others close up. Vandyke executed a pas seul in front of the grand stand, and the bumble chronicler of this narrative made four distinct efforts to stand on his head, a proceeding attended with failure only because it was his misfortune to be early associated with an oflice desk instead of a circus ring. Suddenly there was consternation. The rider of Swordsman failed by two pounds to draw the right weight, and after due deliberation the stewards disqualified that horse and aivarded the race to Muster, who finished second and weighed in all right. .1 draw a veil over the discomfited Vandyke. But truth compels me to state that ho had to be removed from the refreshment room two hours later upon an improvised stretcher. The procession across tho lawn and down the straight to the racecourse gates forming an invaluable lesson to those prone to over indulgence and acting as a lasting warning to the embryo topers there assembled never to make beasts of themselves, (at least in public). As regards myself, I felt disgusted with all the world. But now, when all the beat and excitement of the gamble is buried in the disappointment of the past, I. cannot help feeling a deeper disgust when 1" recognised the solemn face that [ —l, who felt that no man could outwit me, juggins-like was had. My friend (ye gods ! I blush for him), my beery friend, the tout, now lives in a mansion with ornamental grounds attached. His enpurpled missus is one of society's (colonial) shining lights and his ' bleedin' kid,' now a strapping youth, is the owner and trainer of racehorses. And Iks, iny one time friend, bears the reputation of being a model husband and a religious father. And be who did this to mo ! Ho it was who libelled an honest jockey and through me got his tool the mount on Swordsman ! He it was who betrayed both Jack Mathews and the bumble writer of this yarn. He it was who sold his friends, joined hands with the ring, had all the Muster money on the machine, and drew £2OOO all over New Zealand from the outside books. He it was who ruined Vandyke, and paralysed a promising punter in the person of yours truly ; and be it is who is a shining light of the local church, a church-warden and a town councillor of Hastings. Ah ! my dear friends, ponder deeply over this and should your erring footsteps lead you to the racecourse and your wicked heart prompt you to go for the beans, pause, I beg you, pause and reflect on the cronkness of racing humanity, and recall, I implore of you, recall ' The Spooling of A r andykc !'—E. D'A. Delisle.