They said afterward that the big race wasn’t half so exciting as this one witnessed by an unexpected audience. They had hardly mounted their horses and gotten under way before several of the stable boys and the visiting grooms were rushing wildly to the track. The horses had been missed at once, and already up to the house the message had been sent that Mars’ Bobbie and Peter Black were racing.
Hardly waiting to slip on their clothes, down came Mr. Tayloe and Dr. Trevillian, followed by some three or four of the gentlemen guests and numerous servants, all making madly for the race track.
Both children could be distinctly seen, though now half way round the bend, and breathlessly the men stood and watched. Mr. Tayloe’s face was deathly white, and his hands shook as he grasped the gate-post at the entrance to the track. The rest, however, had forgotten who were on the horses. It was a race that they were watching, and so intense was the interest that they almost held their breath as again the children appeared in sight, for neck and neck they were going now. Both horses were being ridden at break-neck speed. All sense of servant and master was forgotten in Peter Black’s and Bobbie’s minds; it was a race to win, and all else save winning was driven out. Nearer and nearer they came, and up through the stillness of the early morning could be heard the ringing of the horses’ hoofs upon the hard-packed track; and now they could see that each was stretched almost flat upon the back of his horse, holding on in some mysterious way known only to himself.
Neck and neck they still held, and though Major Dalrymple felt afraid of an accident, he mentally determined that if Tayloe wanted to get rid of Peter Black after this escapade, he would buy him and have him trained for a jockey. He had the making of one in him, and Lady Virginia was doing well, even as it was.
On they came, and instinctively the men and stable hands breathed hard. For the life of them not one could say which he thought would come in ahead. Louder and louder sounded the hoof-beats on the hard earth; and though his heart was beating almost out of his bosom, even Mr. Tayloe could scarce repress a smile when he saw the eager excitement on his little son’s face as he neared the stretch that would decide the race. Peter Black was losing his head, but Bobbie leaned still lower and touched Dare Devil on the forehead, as he was accustomed to do in the stables, and then he saw the crowd at the gate and his father’s white face among them. “Dare Devil, we must!” he cried, almost frantically. “Don’t you see father? We must;” and he bent his feet against his flanks, and Dare Devil gave a great leap—and Peter Black was behind!
The men set up a shout, and Dare Devil, almost maddened, kept up his wonderful speed, and in a moment it was over—the goal was reached, and Bobbie had loosened his hold and was shouting wildly to his father, when Dare Devil gave another spurt—and Bobbie lay on the ground, flung against the fence. Every man rushed quickly to the spot; but already his father had him in his arms, and Dr. Trevillian was bending over him. Peter Black was there, too, and they said afterward that he was as white as Bobbie. It was quite five minutes before they brought him to, and his first words caused a great cheer to break the awful stillness that had followed his fall. “We beat him father! tell him so; tell him that Dare Devil can beat them all!” he cried; and then he lifted his hand to his face and saw the blood with which it was stained.
“What is it?” he asked, trying to rise, and looking at it again wonderingly. “Oh, father,” he pleaded, “don’t tell mother ’bout the blood—take me down to Sallie Tom’s cabin—don’t let mother see it—you can do anything you want with me, father,” he continued, and he tried hard to look up bravely in the latter’s face, “only don’t let mother know I am hurt, and don’t punish Peter Black. I made him do it—he didn’t want to, and he’s mine, you know father, and you haven’t the right.” He watched his father’s face eagerly. “Promise me,” he cried, “promise me.” And though his father had an intense desire to see Peter Black soundly thrashed, he knew he had no right to do it, for he had simply obeyed his little master, as he himself had ordered him to do.
Up at the house there was great excitement when it was known that Bobbie’s nose was broken, and more than ever was his sway over the household absolute and entire, as he lay for a few days a prisoner in his little bed, waiting for the great surgeon from the North to come down and make it all straight and well again.
That night his mother knelt by his bed and held him passionately to her heart and thanked God that he was still her own, and then she asked him what he most wanted to play with while he was waiting to get well, and his answer brought the first tiny twinge of jealousy of which she had ever been conscious. “I want Dorothy, mother,” he said, putting his arms around her neck in his old sweet, baby way. “I want Dorothy most of all. I’m sorry she ain’t a boy as big as me—but maybe I’ll be glad she is a girl when she gets bigger—for I’ll have to have a sweetheart, won’t I, mother?” But before she could answer he was fast asleep in her arms. The seed, however, had fallen on fruitful ground, and with a sigh of which she was half ashamed, his mother began to think it would not be so very long before her realm in her boy’s heart would be invaded, and she no longer reign supreme.
The same night she told her husband of Bobbie’s wish, and also what he had said, and together they laughed at the way he regarded the inevitability of a sweetheart, and though neither said anything more, it seemed too absurd to discuss children scarce seven and three years old—still the idea took root, and the hope was born that some day Bobbie and Dorothy would keep up the life in the big house when they were growing old, or when, perchance, they had passed away.
“Louder and louder sounded the hoof-beats.”
Dorothy came the next day, Dr. Trevillian bringing her over himself in answer to the urgent note sent him by Bobbie’s father, and for a week the two were blissfully happy. At the end of that time Dorothy was taken back, the promise that she should come again being the only way of stopping her sobs at parting. Bobbie was standing in the doorway with his hands clutched closely together, trying hard to keep back the tears; but when the carriage was lost sight of by a turn in the road, he ran to his mother and buried his head in her lap. “He can take her from me now, ’cause I’m little and can’t help it,” he blurted out, gulpingly, “but when we get bigger I won’t let any man, not even her father, take her from me; for, mother,” and he slipped up into her lap and locked his arms around her neck, “if I tell you something will you promise not to tell—not even father?” and he whispered something solemnly in her ear, and his mother laughed and kissed him, and held him a little closer to her heart.
When Dr. Trevillian put his little daughter into the carriage and started off for home, he wondered why he had been fool enough to let her stay away from him and her own home for seven long days, and then when he saw the beautiful baby eyes, with their wondrously beautiful lashes all filled with tears, and heard the little catch in her voice because she was leaving her playfellow, he felt himself a selfish brute, and his heart smote him at the thought of the loneliness of his motherless child.
The Tayloes and Trevillians had been friends loyal and true for generations back, but only of late had the Doctor begun again to visit “White Point.” After the terrible shock of his wife’s death he had refused to go among his former friends or take up his old life as before, and not until Dorothy was nearly three years old did he realize the error of his way, or the injustice to his child that such a life entailed. He began gradually to resume his practice and to visit a little, and when he yielded to Mr. Tayloe’s request that Dorothy should come and pay them a visit, it was only after a severe struggle and the urgent pleading of his maiden sister that the child should have this pleasure, that he finally gave in, and the pain it cost him to let her go was known only to himself.
And that was the way it went on. Year in and year out they grew up, seeing each other so constantly that no thought of either was ever kept from the other; and while over everybody else in the house and neighborhood Bobbie reigned supreme, to Dorothy alone did he succumb, and mercilessly she tyrannized over him with all the inconsistency of the woman nature that was in her.