"For Dolly's out and about again,She doesn't give a damn for a shower of rain.Here's Dolly with her collie!And London, dear old London,London is itself again."
"For Dolly's out and about again,She doesn't give a damn for a shower of rain.Here's Dolly with her collie!And London, dear old London,London is itself again."
This outburst was followed by a silence which was presently broken by a sound of torn paper.
"What are you tearing up, Tony?"
"Oh, nothing," he called back, in accents of elaborate indifference. "Only an old program."
In the morning Dorothy looked in the paper-basket, the bottom of which was lightly powdered by the fragments of a letter. She stooped to pick up the pieces; then she stopped.
"What does it matter who it was for? It was never sent. But I was only just in time."
On October 15th a party of eight visited "The Belle of Belgravia" at the Vanity. Besides Tony and Dorothy, there were Arthur Lonsdale, who had long forgotten all about Queenie Molyneux and could now watch a musical comedy as coldly as a dramatic critic whose paper did not depend on the theatrical advertisements. He brought his partner, Adrian Lee, whose pretty little wife, all cheeks and hair, looked much more like an actress than Dorothy, though she was really the daughter of a bishop. People used to wonder how a bishop came to have such a daughter;they forgot that while he was a vicar he had written a commentary on the Song of Solomon, with foot-notes as luscious as the plums that sink to the bottom of a cake. Harry Tufton came, and a Mrs. Foster-ffrench who went everywhere except where she most wanted to go and was always a little resentful that even with her two "f's" she could not hook herself up to some altitudes. However, that was Mrs. Foster-ffrench's private sorrow, and she did not let it mar a jolly evening. The other guests were Capt. Archibald Keith, late of the 16th Hussars, who had abandoned the cavalry in order to write the librettos of musical comedies, and a Mrs. Mainwaring, who kept a fashionable hat-shop in Bruton Street and was the widow of poor Dick Mainwaring, a brother of Lord Hughenden. Everybody always spoke about him as poor Dick Mainwaring, but whether because he had been killed at Paardeburg or because he had married Rita Daubeny was uncertain; it probably varied with the point of view of the speaker. The friends of Mrs. Mainwaring put down any oddness in her behavior to French creole blood and a childhood in Martinique; to the former was also attributable her chic in hats; to the latter the dryness and pallor of her complexion; French blood or French brandy, Martinique or Martell, the Hon. Mrs. Richard Mainwaring certainly did stimulate conversation just as paprika stimulates the appetite. But however jocund her life, her hats were chaste, and however sharp her play, her name was honorable. Moreover, so many people owed her money that they had to be pleasant to her. Mrs. Foster-ffrench, in spite of her name, had no French blood to excuse her odd behavior; in fact, she had nothing except a hyphen and those two "f's." Mr. Foster-ffrench was a younger son who, having failed to grow sisal profitably in the Bahamas, was now experimenting in Mozambique with the jikungo or Inhambane nut, and liable at any moment to experiment with vanila in Tahiti or pearls on the GreatBarrier Reef; the only experiment he was never likely to make was going back to Mrs. Foster-ffrench. Dorothy wondered what Tony found to attract him in such a gathering; yet he was in tremendous spirits, obviously delighted that Archie Keith should have met the Vanity comedian that afternoon and warned him who would be in front. He was proud that all the girls on the stage kept their eyes on Dorothy throughout the evening, proud that the comedian inserted two special gags for the benefit of the jolly party, which were rewarded by a loud burst of laughter; and when the alarmed audience trained their opera-glasses upon the boxes as a beleagured garrison might train their guns upon the wild yell of savages he was radiant. After the performance they sat round a large circular table in the Savoy, and when the orchestra played "Dolly and her Collie" there was so much applause from the tables all round that Dorothy could not help feeling rather proud of the pleasure her return to town had given and was touched to think that her memory was still green. The evening wound up at the Lees' flat in Berkeley Street, when Adrian Lee and Clarehaven hospitably lost a good deal of money to their guests in the course of three hours' baccarat.
Now that Dorothy had broken her rule and had visited the Vanity for the first time since she had left the boards, she felt that she could not maintain her policy of isolation any longer; she told Clarehaven as much when they were strolling back down Curzon Street and breathing in the air of night after those feverish rooms.
"Doodles, my dear thing, I'm delighted! I never wanted you to give up any of your old friends. It was you who insisted on cutting them out like that."
"And if," she went on, "we can sit in a box with Rita Mainwaring, I don't think I can keep up this pretense of not being able to meet Olive."
"I quite agree with you. I should love to meet Olive again."
"Then what about asking her to lunch?" Dorothy suggested.
"The sooner the better," he assented, enthusiastically.
A note was sent round to the Vanity, in which Dorothy, without making the least allusion to anything that had happened in the past, most cordially invited Olive to lunch with them two days later. Olive replied, thanking Dorothy for the invitation, but mentioned that she was now living with Sylvia Scarlett, and, since she did not like to go without her and since she knew Dorothy and Sylvia were no longer on good terms, was afraid she must decline lunch, though she promised to come and see her old friend some afternoon.
"Living with Sylvia Scarlett, eh?" commented Tony, with raised eyebrows.
They were sitting in the smoking-room, where in the silence that ensued the red arm-chairs seemed to be commenting upon this problem raised so suddenly, seemed, like wise and rubicund ministers of state, to be bringing their minds to bear silently upon things in general. "Sylvia Scarlett!" Dorothy kept saying to herself, while the scarlet leather answered her. She was perplexed. For one reason she should like to meet Sylvia again, because she felt that better, perhaps, than anybody Sylvia would appreciate her point of view. Could she but bring herself to be frank with Sylvia, she could think of no one who would respond with a more intelligent sympathy to the tale of her disappointment. Moreover, if she showed the least disinclination to exclude Sylvia she might give Tony the impression that she was still resenting that week-end at Brighton, a notion which her pride was not sufficiently subdued to contemplate with equanimity. Yet to make friends again with Sylvia openly would be to penetrate rather more deeply into the hinterland of the bohemian seacoast than she had intended, even after going to the Vanity with Mrs. Mainwaring and Mrs. Foster-ffrench.
"I suppose you wouldn't care to have Sylvia here," Tony said at last; "though of course...."
Dorothy interrupted him sharply. "Why not?" she asked. "Why should I object to have Sylvia here any more than I should object to being seen at the theater with Rita Mainwaring?"
"I thought that perhaps...." he began again.
She told him to ring for a messenger-boy and immediately wrote to invite Sylvia to lunch as well.
It was difficult, considering the circumstances in which Dorothy had parted from Sylvia and Olive, for any of the girls to avoid a feeling of constraint when they met again; Dorothy, for her part, had to make a great effort not to let her nervousness give an impression that she was being reserved with her old friends. Lonsdale, however, who had fortunately been invited, was very talkative, and Tony was in boisterous spirits, so boisterous, indeed, that once or twice Dorothy looked at him in surprise. When he returned her glance defiantly she wondered if she had not made a mistake in her policy; if before consenting to come down to her husband's level she had properly safeguarded herself. No doubt in spite of her disapproval he would have gambled and drunk and made an ass of himself with the Mainwarings and the Foster-ffrenches, but by withholding herself she would have retained, at any rate, as much power over him as would have kept him outwardly deferential to his wife. Now he was no longer afraid of her.
Dorothy was roused from her abstraction by hearing herself addressed as Cousin Dorothy by Lonsdale. He was in a corner with Sylvia, and they were amusing themselves, presumably at her expense; Dorothy darted an angry look at Sylvia, who shook her head with so mocking a disclaimer that Dorothy gave up the notion of confiding in her old friend. Sylvia evidently still regarded her with hostility and contempt, and was as ready to pour ridicule upon her now as she used to be in the dressing-roomon tour. On tour! The days on tour crowded upon her memory. From the corner where Sylvia and Lonsdale were chatting she heard Lily's name mentioned. What was that? Lily had married a croupier in Rio de Janeiro? But how unimportant it was who married what in this world. After so short a time, life lost its tender hues of sunrise or sunset and became garish or dim. On tour! The funny old life trickled confusedly past her vision like a runaway film, and she took Olive's hand affectionately. Olive was as sympathetic as if she had never been treated so heartlessly that day in Brighton, as eager to hear that Dorothy was happy, as eager to accept her assurances that she was. Tears stood in her eyes when she was told about the baby; but somehow her sympathy was not enough for Dorothy, who only awarded her a half-hearted sort of confidence that was sentimentalized to suit the listener. If she could have confided in Sylvia she would have told the story without sparing herself, but Sylvia had snubbed her; and, anyway, the past was not to be recaptured by talking about it.
Notwithstanding Sylvia's indifference, Dorothy went out of her way to invite her often to Curzon Street that autumn and early winter. She was fascinated by her play at baccarat andchemin de fer; she wondered upon what mysterious capital she was drawing, for, though her name was not coupled with any man who would pay her debts, she was apparently able to lose as much money as she chose. It seemed impossible that it should be her own money; but so many things about Sylvia seemed impossible. In January Olive showed symptoms of a tendency to consumption; Sylvia, without waiting an instant to win back any of her losses, took her off to Italy for a long rest.
"Idespise Tony, andshedespises me," Dorothy thought. "But isn't she right?"
She looked round her at the drawing-room of 129 Curzon Street, where in a foliage of tobacco smoke thefaces of the gamblers stared out like fruit, and upon the green tablecloth the cards lay like fallen petals. Was not Sylvia right to despise her for encouraging Mrs. Mainwaring and Captain Keith and Mrs. Foster-ffrench and half a dozen others like them? Was not Sylvia right to despise her for setting out as a countess so haughtily and coming down to this? How she must have laughed when Olive told her about the parting in Brighton, and how little she would believe her tales of rural triumphs like the meet at Five Tree Farm. Sylvia probably considered that she had found her true level in seeing that her gambling guests were kept well supplied with refreshments.
In March even Clarehaven grew tired of baccarat with Captain Keith and the rest of them, and one morning a big new six-cylinder Lee-Lonsdale was driven up to 129 Curzon Street by the junior member of the firm, who wanted to advertise his wares on the Continent. Clarehaven's man and Dorothy's maid took the heavy luggage by train; the car with Dorothy, Lonsdale, Clarehaven, and a chauffeur swept like an arpeggio the road from London to Dover, transhipped to Calais, and made a touring-car record from Paris to Monte Carlo, whence Lonsdale, after booking some orders, returned to England without it. Tony lost five thousand pounds at roulette, a small portion of which he recovered over pigeons. He would probably have lost much more had not Dorothy told him, on a rose-hung night of stars and lamplight, that she was going to have another baby and that she must go back to Clare.
The prospective father was so pleased with the news that he set out to beat the record established by Lonsdale on the way down, drove into a poplar-tree, and smashed the car. Dorothy had a miscarriage and lay ill for a month at a small village between Grenoble and Lyons. Tony was penitent; but he was obviously bored by having to spend this idle month in France, and as soon as Dorothywas well enough to travel and he had assured himself that she was not nervous after the accident, he drove northward faster than ever. They reached Clare at the end of May.
The bluebells were out when Dorothy came home, their pervasive sweetness sharpened by the pungency of young bracken; even as sometimes the heavenly clouds imitate the hills and valleys of earth or lie about at sunset like islands in a luminous and windless ocean, so now earth imitated heaven, and the bluebells lay along the woodland like drifts of sky. May was not gone when Dorothy came back; the cuckoo was not even yet much out of tune; the fallow deer did not yet display all their snowy summer freckles; the whitethroat still sang to his lady sitting close in the nettles by the orchard's edge; apple-blossom was still strewn upon the lengthening grass; the orange-tip still danced along the glades; the red and white candles upon the horse-chestnuts were not yet burned out. It was still May; but June like a grave young matron stood close at hand, and May like a girl grown tired of her flowers and of her finery would presently fall asleep in her arms. And like the merry month Dorothy pillowed her head upon the green lap of June. For several weeks she made no allusion to the accident on the way home from Monte Carlo; nor, beyond the perpetually manifest joy she took in the seasonable pageant, did she give any sign of her distaste for the way she and Tony had spent the past year. The problem of what was to happen next autumn was not yet ripe for discussion, and in order to enjoy fully the present peace Dorothy persuaded Clarehaven to accept an invitation to go fishing in Norway, after which he would camp with the yeomanry for three weeks; and then another year would have to be catered for so that not one minute of it should be wasted—in other words, that it should besqueezed as dry as an orange to extract from it the last drop of pleasure. Tony wanted her to come with him to Norway, but she made her health an excuse and sent him off alone.
In July the countess and the dowager were pacing the turf that ran by the edge of that famous golden border now in its prime. The rich light of the summer afternoon flattered the long line of massed hues which had been so artfully contrived. The unfamiliar beauty of the bronzed Himalayan asphodels, of citron kniphofias from Abyssinia and sulphur-lilies from the Caucasus, of ixias tawny as their own African lions, of canary-colored Mexican tigridias and primrose-hooded gladioli that bloom in the rain forest of the Victoria Falls, mingled with the familiar forms of lemon-pale hollyhocks and snapdragons, with violas apricot-stained, and with many common yellow flowers of cottage gardens to which the nurserymen had imparted a subtle and aristocratic shade.
"What a success your golden border has been," the dowager exclaimed.
Dorothy felt suddenly that she could not any longer tolerate such compliments. The life-blood of her marriage seemed to be running dry before her eyes while she was amusing herself with golden borders, and she wanted her mother-in-law to understand how critical the position was, and what disasters lurked in the future while the sun flattered the flowers, and she flattered her son's wife.
"I'm going to be very frank," Dorothy began. "I want to know more about Tony's father."
The dowager with a look of alarm leaned over the border to hide her embarrassment.
"My dear," she said, "how cleverly you've combined this little St.-John's-wort with these copper-colored rock-roses. They look delightful together."
"Why did you marry him?" Dorothy asked.
"Dorothy! Such a question, but really, I suppose—well, I don't know. I suppose really because he asked me."
"Your mother didn't insist upon it?"
"Well, of course, my mother didn't oppose it," the dowager admitted. "No, certainly not ... she didn't actually oppose it; in fact possibly ... yes ... well.... I think one might almost say that she.... Oh, aren't these trolliums gorgeous? They are trolliums, aren't they? I always get confused between trilliums and trolliums?"
"Trollius. Persuaded you into it?" Dorothy supplemented. "Did you love him?"
This was altogether too intimate an inquiry, and the dowager, failing to bury her blushes in the opulent group of butter-colored flowers that she was bending over to admire, took refuge in her bringing-up.
"We were brought up differently in those days," she said. "I don't think that men depended upon their wives to quite the same extent they do now."
"I'm asking you all this," Dorothy explained, "because as far as the future is concerned Tony and I are standing now at crossroads. If I oppose or, even without opposing them, if I fail to share in his pleasures, my attitude won't have any sobering effect. But if I take part with him willingly and enjoy what he enjoys, it may be that I shall have enough influence to prevent his going too far. Frankly, he doesn't seem to have an idea that there may be something else in life besides self-indulgence, the instant and complete self-indulgence that he always allows himself. Money and rank only exist for him because they are useful to that end. The only thing he was ever denied for five minutes of his life was myself, and after a period of active sulking he got me. I suppose you spoiled him, really."
The dowager looked melancholy.
"I'm not reproaching you," said Dorothy. "I quite understand the temptation. That's why I asked if you ever loved your husband. I thought that perhaps you didn't and that you'd had to love Tony much more inconsequence. I'm sorry about that son of mine, because I should have liked to prove that it is possible to devote oneself utterly to a son without spoiling him. Meanwhile, I'm afraid it's too late to do anything with Tony. You must forgive me for this attack upon illusions. I shall never make another. I only wanted you to know, because you were kind to me when I first came here, that I've done my best and that there's nothing more to be done."
"But you're so beautiful," said the dowager. "I was never beautiful."
"Oh, so far as keeping him more or less faithful is worth while, I don't suppose I shall have the least difficulty," Dorothy admitted. "But each time I tame him with a kiss I reduce my own self-respect a little bit, and I blunt his respect for me. If I were his mistress, my kisses would be bribes to make him spend money on me; as his wife my kisses are bribes to prevent his spending money on other women. Anyway, this is the last that you or any one else shall ever hear on this rather unpleasant subject. I think these tigridias that Mr. Greenish was so keen to combine with the ixias were a mistake. They are quite faded by the afternoon."
It was now Dorothy's turn to direct the conversation toward flowers, while the dowager endeavored to keep it personal.
"I've often thought," she began, "what a pity it was for you to cut yourself off so completely from your own family."
"I certainly shouldn't find them of any help to me now," said Dorothy.
"Well, I don't know. I think that a mother can always be helpful," the dowager argued. "I think it's a pity that you should have felt the necessity of eliminating your family like this. I dare say I was to blame in the first place, and I'm afraid that I gave you the impression that we were much more snobbish down here than wereally are. Your impulse was natural in the circumstances, but I had hoped that I had been able to prove to you that my opposition was only directed against your profession, and you who know what Tony is will surely appreciate my alarm at the idea of his marrying merely to gratify himself at the moment. My own dear old mother was perhaps a little more sensitive than I am to old-fashioned ideas of rank. She belonged to a period when such opinions were widely spread in the society she frequented. I confess that since she died I have found myself inclining more and more every day to what would once have been called Red Radicalism. You know, I really can't help admiring some of the things that this dreadful government is trying to do." The epithet was so persistently applied by the county that for the dowager it had lost any independent significance; it was like calling a tradesman "dear sir."
Dorothy was tempted to ask the dowager if she did believe the account she had given of her family, but she felt that if she suggested even the possibility of such skepticism she should be admitting its justification. And then suddenly she had a profound regret that her mother had never seen Clare, had never trodden this ancient turf nor sat beneath those cedar-trees. If the dowager had extended the courtesy of breeding to accept those legends her daughter-in-law had spread about herself, her courtesy would certainly not be withheld from accepting that daughter-in-law's mother. The idea took shape; it positively would be jolly to invite her mother to stay for a month at Clare. Tony would not be bored; he would be away all the time.
"And not merely your family," the dowager was saying. "Oh no, it's not merely cutting yourself from them, but also from your friends. I've heard somebody called Olive alluded to once or twice, and surely she would enjoy visiting here. Though please don't think me a foolish busybody. Perhaps Olive prefers London."
"Olive has just got married. She was married last week."
"Then I've heard you talk about a Sylvia, who possibly might care to stay down here. Dear child, don't misunderstand me, I beg. I'm only trying to suggest that you are conceivably making a mistake in dividing your life into two. After all, look at this border. See how the old-fashioned favorites of us all are improved by these rarer flowers. And do notice how well the simple flowers hold their own with those exotics that have been planted out from the greenhouse. You see what I'm trying to tell you? If Tony has certain tastes, if he likes people of whom you and I might even mildly disapprove, let him see them here in another setting. However, that you must decide later on. The only thing I should like to lay stress upon is your duty toward your family...."
"To my mother only," Dorothy interrupted. "I have no duty toward my father."
"Perhaps you will think differently when you have seen your mother. I like her so much already. How could I do otherwise when she has given me a daughter-in-law for whom I have such a great admiration?"
Dorothy took the dowager's hand and looked down earnestly and affectionately into her upturned gaze.
"Why are you always so sweet to me?" she asked.
"Whatever I am, my dear child, it is only the expression of what I feel."
That evening Dorothy wrote to her mother.
CLARECOURT, DEVON,July 8, 1909.MYDEARMOTHER,—Such a long time since I saw you. Don't you think you could manage a visit to Clare next week? Come for at least a month. It will do you all the good in the world and I should so much enjoy seeing you. You will find my mother-in-law very sympathetic. I had thought of suggesting that you should bring Agnes and Edna with you, but I think that perhaps for the first time you'd rather be alone. Thebest train leaves Paddington at eleven-twenty. Book to Cherrington Lanes and change at Exeter. On second thoughts I'll meet you at Exeter on Wednesday next. So don't make any excuses.Your loving daughter,DOROTHY.
CLARECOURT, DEVON,July 8, 1909.
MYDEARMOTHER,—Such a long time since I saw you. Don't you think you could manage a visit to Clare next week? Come for at least a month. It will do you all the good in the world and I should so much enjoy seeing you. You will find my mother-in-law very sympathetic. I had thought of suggesting that you should bring Agnes and Edna with you, but I think that perhaps for the first time you'd rather be alone. Thebest train leaves Paddington at eleven-twenty. Book to Cherrington Lanes and change at Exeter. On second thoughts I'll meet you at Exeter on Wednesday next. So don't make any excuses.
Your loving daughter,DOROTHY.
The prospect of her mother's visit was paradoxically a solace for Dorothy's disappointed maternity. The relation between them was turned upside down, and her mother became a little girl who must be looked after and kept from behaving badly, and who when she behaved well would be petted and spoiled.
Heaven knows what domestic convulsions and spiritual agitations braced Mrs. Caffyn to telegraph presently:
Am bringing three brats will they be enough.
Am bringing three brats will they be enough.
For a moment Dorothy thought that she was coming with Vincent, Gladys, and Marjorie, so invariably did she picture her family as all of the same age as when seven years ago she first left Lonsdale Road to go to the stage. A little consideration led her to suppose thathatsnotbratswere intended, and she telegraphed back:
You will want a nice shady hat for the garden.
You will want a nice shady hat for the garden.
Dorothy went to meet Mrs. Caffyn at Exeter in order that the three hours in the slow train between there and Cherrington Lanes might give her an opportunity of recovering herself from that agitation which had made her telegram so ambiguous. It was impossible to avoid a certain amount of pomp at the station, because the station-master, on hearing that her ladyship was expecting her ladyship's mother, led the way to the platform where the express would arrive and unrolled before her a red carpet of good intentions.
"Stand aside there," he said, severely, to a boy with a basket of newspapers.
"First stop Plymouth," shouted the porters when the express came thundering in.
"Stand aside," thundered the station-master, more loudly; perhaps he was addressing the train this time.
Mrs. Caffyn looked out of a second-class compartment and popped in again like some shy burrowing animal that fears the great world.
"What name, my lady, would be on the luggage?" asked the station-master when, notwithstanding her emersion from a second-class compartment, he had seen Mrs. Caffyn embraced by her ladyship.
"Caffyn! Caffyn!" he bellowed. "Stand aside there, will you? Both vans are being dealt with, my lady," he informed her.
The luggage was identified; a porter was bidden to carry it to No. 5 platform; and the station-master, taking from Mrs. Caffyn a string-bag in which nothing was left except a paper bag of greengages, led the way to the slow train for Cherrington.
"I traveled second-class," Mrs. Caffyn whispered, nervously, while the station-master was stamping about in a first-class compartment, dusting the leather seats and arranging the small luggage upon the rack. "I hesitated whether I ought not to travel third, but father was very nice about it."
"Please change this ticket to first-class as far as Cherrington Lanes, Mr. Thatcher," said Dorothy.
"Immediately, my lady," he announced; and as he hurried away down the platform Mrs. Caffyn regarded him as the Widow Twankay may have regarded the Genie of the Lamp.
"I've brought five hats with me," Mrs. Caffyn announced when the slow train was on its way and Mr. Thatcher was left standing upon the platform and apparently wondering if he could not give it a push from behind as a final compliment to her ladyship. "And now—oh dear, I must remember to call you Dorothy,mustn't I? By the way, you know that Dorothy is going to have a baby in November? Her husband is so pleased about it. He's doing very well, you know. Oh yes, the Norbiton Urban District Council have intrusted him with—well, I'm afraid I've forgotten just what it is, but he's doing very well, and I thought you'd be interested to hear about Dorothy. But I reallymustremember not to call you Norah."
"It wouldn't very much matter, mother."
"Oh, wouldn't it?" Mrs. Caffyn exclaimed, brightening. "Well, now, I'm sure that's a great weight off my mind. All the way down I've been worrying about that. And now just tell me, because I don't want to do anything that will make you feel uncomfortable. What am I to call your sisters-in-law? I understand about your mother-in-law. She will be Lady Clarehaven. Is that right? But your sisters-in-law?"
"Bella and Connie."
"Bella and Connie?" repeated Mrs. Caffyn. "Nothing else? I see. Well, of course, in that case I don't think I shall feel at all shy."
Although Dorothy was no longer concerned whether her mother did or did not behave as if she were in the habit of visiting at great houses during the summer, she could not resist indulging her own knowledge a little, not with any idea of display, but because she enjoyed the feeling that somebody was dependent upon her superior wisdom in worldly matters. Mrs. Caffyn enjoyed her lessons, just as few women—or men, for that matter—can resist opening a book of etiquette that lies to hand. They would not buy one for themselves, because that would seem to advertise their ignorance; but if it can be read without too much publicity it will be read, for it makes the same appeal to human egoism that is made by a medical dictionary or a work on palmistry. One topic Dorothy did ask Mrs. Caffyn to avoid, which was the life of her own mother. After that conversation by thegolden border she had little doubt that the dowager did not accept as genuine the tapestry she had woven of her life; but that was no reason for drawing attention to all the fabulous beasts in the background.
"Perhaps you'd better not say anything about Grandmother Doyle," Dorothy advised. "I had to give an impression that she was related to Lord Cleveden, and if you talk too much about her it would make me look rather foolish."
"But she did belong to the same family," said Mrs. Caffyn.
"Yes, but I'd rather you didn't mention it. You can talk about Roland and Cecil and Vincent, only please avoid the topic of Grandmother Doyle."
"Of course I'll avoid anything you like," Mrs. Caffyn offered. "And perhaps I'd better throw these greengages out of the window."
The dowager was much too tactful, as Dorothy had foreseen, to ask Mrs. Caffyn any questions; she, with a license to talk about her children, was never at a loss for conversation. There is no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed herself at Clare, and with two garden hats worn alternately she sat in placid survey of her daughter's grandeur, drove with the dowager in the chaise, congratulated Mrs. Beadon and Mrs. Kingdon upon their children, patted every dog she met, and went home first-class surrounded by baskets of peaches.
Notwithstanding the dowager's advice, Dorothy sent her mother home before Tony came back, not because she was ashamed of her, but because she dreaded his geniality and cordial invitations to bring the whole family to Curzon Street. She could not bear the idea of her father's arriving at all hours, for since the revelation of his tastes that night in St. John's Wood she fancied that he would rather enjoy the excuse his son-in-law's house would offer him of forgetting that he was still secretaryof the Church of England Purity Society. So long as Tony did not meet any of her family he would not bother about them; but if he did, the temptation to his uncritical hospitality would be too strong.
The partridges were very plentiful that autumn at Clare; the pheasants never gave better sport. Dorothy invited Olive and her husband, a pleasant young actor called Airdale, to visit Clare, but Olive had to decline, because she was going to have a baby. Sylvia Scarlett Dorothy did not invite; but Sylvia Lonsdale came with her brother, and late in the autumn the Clarehavens went to stay with the Clevedens in Warwickshire. Lord Cleveden talked to Tony about the need for a strong colonial policy, and Lady Cleveden talked to Dorothy about the imperative necessity of finding a wife for Arthur at once. The shooting was not so good as at Clare, and Tony decided that he required London as a tonic for the rural depopulation of his mind.
"These fellows who've been in administrative posts get too self-important," he confided to Dorothy. "Now I don't take any interest in the colonies. Except, of course, British East and the Straits. When a fellow talks to me about Queensland my mind becomes a blank. I feel as if I was being prepared for Confirmation, don't you know?"
They reached town toward the end of November, and within a week the old set was round them. Baccarat andchemin de fer, the Vanity and the Orient, smart little dances and rowdy little suppers, Mrs. Foster-ffrench and the Hon. Mrs. Richard Mainwaring, they were back in the middle of them all. Sylvia Scarlett turned up again, still apparently with plenty of money to waste on gambling. She and Dorothy drifted farther apart, if that were possible, and their coolness was added to by Sylvia's recommendation of a rising young painter called Walker for Dorothy's portrait, which Dorothy considered a failure, though when afterward she was painted by an artist who had already risen that was afailure, too. Sylvia seemed to misunderstand her wantonly; Dorothy armed herself against her old friend's contempt and tried to create an impression of complete self-sufficiency. Once in the spring an occasion presented itself for knocking down the barrier they had erected between themselves. Sylvia had just brought the sum of her losses at cards to over six hundred pounds, and Dorothy, on hearing of it, expressed her concern.
"I suppose you wonder where I find the money to lose?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh no, I wasn't thinking that. I'm not interested in your private affairs," said Dorothy, freezing at the other's aggressive tone.
"No?" said Sylvia. "You easily forget about your friends' private affairs, don't you? But I warned Olive that your chauffeur wouldn't be able to find the way to West Kensington."
"How can you...." the countess broke out. Then she stopped herself. If she tried to explain what had kept her from visiting Olive Airdale all these months, she should have to reveal her own intimate hopes, her own jealousy and disillusionment; she would prefer that Sylvia supposed it was nothing more than snobbery that kept her away from Olive. If once she began upon explanations she should have to explain why she so seldom visited or spoke of her family. She should have to admit that she could no longer answer for Tony, even so far as to be sure that he would not invite her father to sit down with him to baccarat. And even those explanations would not be enough; she should have to go back to the beginning of her married life and expose such rags and tatters of dreams. Her mind went back to that railway carriage on a wet January afternoon when "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" traveled from Manchester to Birmingham. She remembered the supper that was kept waiting for Sylvia and her cheeks all dabbled with tears and a joke she had made about trusting in God and keepingher powder dry. She had tried to win Sylvia's confidence then and she had been snubbed. Should she volunteer her own confidence now?
"I'm sorry you've lost so much money in my house," said the countess.
Then she blushed; the very pronoun seemed boastful.
"Never mind. I'm going down to Warwickshire to-morrow to help Olive bring an heir into the world."
"Does she want a girl or a boy?" Dorothy asked.
"My dear," said Sylvia, "she is so anxious not to show the least sign of favoritism even before birth that in order to achieve a perfect equipoise she'll either have to have twins or a hermaphrodite."
In April Dorothy heard that her friend actually had produced twins.
"It seems so easy," she sighed, "when one hears about other people."
"Cheer up, Doodles," said Tony. "I won four hundred last night. It's about time I got some of my own back from Archie Keith; he's been plucking us all for months, lucky devil. I shall chuck shimmy."
"I wish you would," said Dorothy.
"Solemn old Doodles," he laughed. "Harry Tufton wants me to take up racing. By Jove, I'm not sure I sha'n't. You'd like that better, wouldn't you?"
"I'd like anything better than these eternal cards," she declared, passionately.
At the same time she was a little nervous of the new project, and she took an early opportunity of speaking about it to Tufton, who addressed her with the accumulated wisdom of the several thousand hours he had spent in the Bachelors' Club.
"My dear Dorothy," he began, flashing her Christian name as his mother flashed her diamonds. "I'm very glad you've broached this subject. The fact is, Tony really must draw in a little bit. I don't know how much he's lost these last two years; but he has lost a good deal,and it certainly isn't worth while losing for the benefit of people like Archie Keith and Rita Mainwaring. Only the other day at the Bachelors' I was speaking to Hughenden, and he said to me, 'Harry, my boy, why don't you exercise your influence with Tony Clarehaven and get rid of that harpy who unfortunately has the right to call herself my sister-in-law?' Well, that was rather strong, don't you know? And your cousin Paignton spoke to me about him, told me his father was rather worried about Tony—the Chatfield push feel it's not dignified. As I said to him: 'My dear fellow, if you want to lose money, why don't you lose money in a gentlemanly way? There are always horses.'"
"But I don't want him to lose his money at all," Dorothy protested.
"Quite, quite," Mr. Tufton quacked. "But you'd prefer him to lose money over horses than present it free of income tax to Archie Keith and Rita Mainwaring? At this rate he'll soon lose all his old friends, as well as his money."
Dorothy looked at the speaker; she was wondering if this was the fidgeting of a more than usually apprehensive ship's rat.
The Clarehaven property outside the park itself did not now include more than three thousand acres; but some speculations in which the fourth earl indulged after selling the old Hopley estate had grown considerably in value during his son's minority; and when Tony came of age, in addition to his land, which, after the payment of the dowager's jointure and all taxes, brought him in a net income of about three thousand pounds a year, he had something like seventy thousand pounds invested in Malayan enterprises which paid 10 per cent, and brought up his net income to well over eight thousand pounds. He had already been forced to sell out a considerablesum for the benefit of Captain Keith, Mrs. Mainwaring, and the rest of them; but should he decide to start a racing-stable he would have plenty of capital left on which to draw. Dorothy protested that he ought not to look upon a racing-stable as a sound and safe investment for capital that was now producing a steady income and that, with rubber booming as it was, would probably be much augmented in the near future. Yet she was afraid to be too discouraging, for, whatever might be urged against horse-racing, it offered a more dignified activity to a gambler than baccarat.
Clarehaven began his career on the turf with a sobriety which contrasted with his extravagance at cards. He bought the stable of Mr. Tufton, senior, and, leaving it in the cautious hands of old William Cobbett at Newmarket, was content during his first season to compete in a few minor handicaps and selling-plates. Such betting as he did was, on the whole, lucky; he found himself toward the end of the season with a margin of profit; and triumphantly he announced to Dorothy that he was going to invest in some really first-class yearlings at Tattersall's and Doncaster. She did not dissuade him, because she had had a talk with honest old William Cobbett, who had assured her that his lordship was willing to listen to his advice, and that if he would be guided by him there was no reason why his lordship should not win some of the great classic races the year after next, fortune being favorable. He spoke of the black, white, and purple of Clarehaven as of colors once famous upon famous courses, and implied that Saturday afternoons at Windsor or Lingfield Park were hardly worthy of the time-honored combination. Dorothy could not help agreeing with the trainer; throughout this first season there had been a great deal too much of Captain Keith and Mrs. Foster-ffrench, too much of a theatrical garden-party about those Saturday afternoons, and although this year Tony had been lucky, another year he might be unluckyand fritter away his money and his reputation in the company of people who saw no difference between the green baize of a card-table and the green turf of a racecourse. Several people had talked of the fourth earl's great deeds upon the turf during the 'seventies; she, still susceptible to intimations of grandeur, viewed with dismay these degenerate week-ends and encouraged Tony to aim higher. If he would not speak in the House of Lords, he might at least win the Derby; and if he won the Derby, surely his lust for gambling would be satiated and he might retire to Clare to raise blood-stock. The idea of owning some mighty horse, the paragon of Ormonde or Eclipse or Flying Childers, obsessed her; she pictured ten years hence a small boy attired in Gainsborough blue, proudly mounted upon a race-horse that should be the sire and grandsire and great-grandsire of a hundred classic winners. She became poetical, so keen was her ambition, so vivid her hope; this mighty horse should be called Moonbeam, should be a ray from the full moon of Clare to illuminate them all—Anthony—herself, that son, who might almost be called Endymion. Why not? Disraeli had called one of his heroes Endymion. Affected? Yes, but Endymion Viscount Clare! Why should Endymion for a boy be more affected than Diana for a girl? And why not Diana, too? Lady Diana Clare! They might be twins. Why not? Mrs. Beadon had produced twins, Olive had produced twins. Moonshine suffused Dorothy's castle in Spain, and moonstruck she paced the battlements.
Tony bought a string of horses at Tattersall's, and at Doncaster paid £600 and £750, respectively, for two yearlings with which old William Cobbett expressed himself particularly well satisfied. It happened that year that a young Greek called Christides, who had lately come of age, won the Champagne Stakes and, in his elation, bought a yearling for three thousand guineas. It further happened that after a triumphal dinner he gave toseveral friends, among whom was Tony, he lost twice that sum at auction bridge. Though Mr. Christides was extremely rich, his native character asserted itself by an abrupt return to prudence. He had allowed himself a fixed sum to spend at Doncaster, and, having exceeded his calculations, he must sell the yearling—a black colt by Cyllene out of Maid of the Mist. There was no question that he was the pick of the yearlings; if old William Cobbett had not protested so firmly against the price, Clarehaven would have been tempted to buy him at the sale. Dorothy, with her mind still a tenant of Spanish castles, saw in the Maid of the Mist colt the horse of her dreams, and by letting her superstition play round the animal she became convinced that it held the fortunes of Clare. Was not the sire Cyllene, which easily became Selene—Dorothy was deep in moon-lore—and would not the offspring of Selene and Maid of the Mist be well called Moonbeam? Moreover, was not the colt black with one splash of white on the forehead? When, therefore, Mr. Christides offered the yearling to settle his losses with Tony, in other words for £2,722, Dorothy was anxious for him to accept. Old William Cobbett was frightened by the price, but he could urge nothing against the colt except, perhaps, the slightest tendency to a dipped back, so slight, however, that when Mr. Christides, still true to his native character, knocked off the odd £22, the small sum was enough to cure the slight depression.
Dorothy thoroughly enjoyed the winter that followed the purchase of the colt. As soon as Moonbeam—of course he was given the name at once—was safe in William Cobbett's stable the trainer admitted that there was not another yearling to touch him. In the two colts which he himself had advised his patron to buy he could hardly bring himself to take the least interest, and in fact both of them afterward did turn out disappointments, one bursting blood-vessels when called upon for theleast effort, and the other a duck-hearted beast that for all his fine appearance never ran out a race. But Moonbeam was everything that a colt could be.
"The heart of a lion," said honest old William, "and as gentle as a dove with it all. Be gad! my lady, I believe you're a real judge of horseflesh, and damme—forgive the uncouth expression—but damme, if ever I go to another sale without you."
"But will he win the Derby?" Dorothy asked.
"Well now, come, come, come! This is early days to begin prophesying. But I wouldn't lay against him, no, begad! I wouldn't lay ten to one against him—not now I wouldn't. Dipped back? Not a bit. If ever I said his back was dipped I must have been dipped myself. You beauty! You love! You jewel!"
After which honest old William took out a bandana handkerchief as big and bright as the royal standard and blew his nose till the stable reverberated with the sound.
"See that? Not a blink," he chuckled. "Not a blink, begad! That colt, my lady, is the finest colt ever seen at Cobbett House. You bird! You gem!"
Tony himself was as enthusiastic as Dorothy or the trainer, and there was no talk of London for a long while. He rented a small hunting-lodge in the neighborhood to please Dorothy, and what between shooting over the Cambridgeshire turnips and hunting hard with two or three noted packs the winter went past quickly enough. Even better than the shooting and the hunting were the February days when Moonbeam was put into stronger work and, in the trainer's words, "ate it."
"He's a glutton for work," said honest old William.
Dorothy and he used to ride on the Heath and watch the horses at exercise, and if only Moonbeam was successful next season with his two-year-old engagements and if only he would win the Derby and if only next year she might have a son....
Moonbeam's first public appearance was at the Epsom Spring Meeting when he ran unplaced in the Westminster Plate, much to Dorothy's alarm.
"He wasn't intended to do anything," the trainer explained, soothingly. "This was just to see how he and Joe Flitten took to each other. Well, Joe, what do you think of him?"
"All right, Mr. Cobbett," said the young jockey, who was considered to be the most promising apprentice at headquarters.
The colt's next engagement was for the Woodcote Stakes at the Epsom Summer Meeting, when he was ridden by Harcourt, one of the leading jockeys of the day, and was backed to win a large sum. Something did go wrong this time, for, though he was running on strongly at the finish, he was again unplaced.
"Dash it!" Clarehaven exclaimed, ruefully. "I hope this isn't going to happen every time. You and her ladyship have made a mistake, I'm afraid, Cobbett. If you ask me, he pecked."
Honest old William looked very grave.
"If you askme, my lord, it was his jockey. The colt was badly ridden. Still, it was a disappointment, there's no getting over it. But it's early days to begin fretting, and he was running on. No doubt about that. Tell you what, my lord, if you'll take my advice you'll give Joe Flitten the mount for Ascot, and if Joe doesn't bring out what there is in him, why then we'll have to put our heads together, that's all about it."
So Joe Flitten, the Cobbett Lodge apprentice, rode Moonbeam in the New Stakes, when the colt made most of his rivals at Epsom look like platers; although it was to be noted that Sir James Otway's unnamed colt by Desmond out of Diavola, which had won the Woodcote Stakes, did not run.
"Like common ordinary platers," honest old William avowed.
After this performance the racing-press began to pay attention to Moonbeam, and when in July he won the Hurst Park Foal Plate with ridiculous ease they admitted that his victory at Ascot was no fluke.
In August Tony rented a grouse-moor in Yorkshire. His other horses were not doing too well, but he was feeling prosperous, for Moonbeam had already repaid him several times over his losses at Epsom; and at the end of the month a jolly party drove over to York in a four-in-hand to see the colt canter away with the Gimcrack Stakes. At this meeting Dorothy really felt that Tony was what in another sense the press would have called "an ornament to the turf." There were no Mrs. Mainwarings and Captain Keiths with them at York, and she never felt less like a Vanity girl than when she heard the crowd cheering Moonbeam's victory—he was by now a popular horse—and looked round proudly at her party; at Uncle Chat with Paignton and Charlie Fanhope; at Bella and Connie, both bright red with joy; at Arthur and Sylvia Lonsdale, and at Miss Horatia Lonsdale, a delightful aunt who was helping Dorothy chaperon the girls, an easy enough task as regards Bella and Connie and not very difficult as regards her niece.
Finally in the autumn Moonbeam won the Middle Park Plate and was voted the finest two-year-old seen at Newmarket for several seasons.
"And now let him keep quiet till the Guineas," said William Cobbett, with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You wouldn't run him in the Dewhurst?"
"No, no, let him rest with what he's done."
"Cobbett is right," said Lord Stilton, one of the stewards of the Jockey Club, who came into the paddock at that moment. "You've got the Derby next year, Clarehaven, if you don't overwork him. That apprentice of yours is a treasure, Cobbett."
"A good boy, my lord."
"You don't know my wife," Tony was saying.
"My congratulations, Lady Clarehaven. I hear you picked out with my old friend William here."
Later on Dorothy was presented to Lady Stilton. She in turn presented her daughter, the beautiful and charming Lady Anne Varley, whose engagement to the young Duke of Ulster had just been announced.
"My dear Dorothy," said Harry Tufton that evening, "you must admit that my advice was good. How much better this sort of thing becomes you than ..." He waved his arms in a gesture of despair at finding any adjective sufficiently contemptuous for those evenings at Curzon Street before his lifelong friend, Tony Clarehaven, had followed his advice and sported the black, white, and purple colors so famous forty years ago.
The prospect of winning the Derby next year really did seem to have completed Tony's cure. He raised no objections when Dorothy insisted that his mother and his sisters should spend the autumn in town, and he actually went three times to the House of Lords to vote against some urgent measure of reform. He did not make a speech, but he coughed once in the middle of an oration by a newly created Radical peer, so significant and so nearly vocally expressive a cough that it deserved to be recorded in Hansard as a contribution to the debate.
Dorothy had been desirous of the dowager's help to consolidate a position in London society that now for the first time appeared tenable. Her meeting with Lady Stilton had given her a foothold on the really high cliffs, and if Tony did not spoil everything she saw no reason why she should not repeat on a larger scale in town her success in Devonshire. It was a pity that Bella and Connie were so ugly; if she could bring off brilliant matches for them, what a help that would be. Of course, it was not the season; most people were out of town notwithstanding that Parliament was sitting; but still surely somewhere in the crowded pages of Debrett could be found suitors for the hands of her sisters-in-law. Thenearest approach to a match was when Lord Beccles, the lunatic heir of the Marquis of Norwich, became perfectly manageable if he was allowed to drive with Bella in Hyde Park, chaperoned by his nurse and watched by a footman who held a certificate from one of the largest private asylums in England. If Lord Beccles was a congenital idiot, there were three other sons of Lord Norwich who were sane enough, the eldest of whom, Lord Alistair Gay, agreed with Dorothy that, if Lady Arabella was willing, the marriage would be a kindness to his poor brother. Bella would not take the proposal seriously, and it was evident that she regarded her drives with the poor idiot in the light of a minor charity ranking with the care of a distempered dog or of a cottager's baby.
"You surely aren't serious, Dorothy," she laughed.
"Well, it would give you a splendid position. You would be a countess now and probably a marchioness very soon. Lady Norwich is dead. Lord Norwich is very old, and idiots often live a long time. I'm not suggesting that it would be anything more than a formal marriage, but you apparently don't mind his dribbling with excitement when he sees the Albert Memorial and.... However, I wouldn't persuade you into a match for anything. Only it doesn't seem to me that it would imply anything more than you do for him at present."
The dowager told Dorothy that she would rather dear Bella married somebody simpler than poor Lord Beccles, to which Dorothy retorted that it might be difficult to find even a commoner more simple. Moonbeam's victories as a two-year-old had restored that self-confidence which had been so shaken since her marriage; Dorothy, like most nations and most human beings, was more admirable in adversity than in triumph. The disposition she had shown to recognize her suburban family did not last; she knew that the integument with which she was so carefully wrapping up her reality could be stripped from it by her relations in a second. Only now, aftershe had been a countess for six years, had Dorothy discovered the narrow bridge that is swung over the center of the universe—the well-laid and lighted bridge so delicately adjusted to eternity that the least divergence from correctness by one of its frequenters might be enough to imperil its balance. That bridge Dorothy was now crossing with all her eyes for her feet, as it were, and she certainly could not afford to be distracted by a family. If Sylvia Scarlett had been in London to watch this new progress she would have made many unkind jokes about the countess; but Sylvia was away acting in America, and in any case she would have found the door of 129 Curzon Street closed against her.
The dowager worried over the way Dorothy was ignoring her mother, and, fortified with strong smelling-salts, she braved the Underground to pay a visit to West Kensington, an experience she so thoroughly enjoyed that she could not keep it a secret for long, but one day began to praise the beauty of Edna and Agnes.
"Frankly, my dear Dorothy," she told her daughter-in-law, "I must say I think that you would be likely to have much more success as a match-maker for your sisters than for dear Bella and dear Connie, who even in London seem unable to avoid that appearance of having just run up and down a very windy hill. Why not have Edna and Agnes to live with you until they're married? And when they are married invite the youngest two, who will also be very beautiful girls, I'm convinced. Really, I never saw such complexions as you and all your sisters have."
Dorothy thought the dowager's suggestion most impracticable.
"Yes, but my most impracticable suggestions nearly always turn out well."
Perhaps, so sure was she of the impression that Agnes and Edna would create in a London ballroom, the dowager would have had her way if she had remained in town forthe spring, but in the month of February, anticipating St. Valentine's Day by a week, the Rev. Thomas Hemming wrote from Cherrington to say that Mrs. Paxton, his godmother, had just offered him the living of Newton Candover in Hampshire and would Lady Constantia Clare become Lady Constantia Hemming? Lady Constantia would. The trousseau was bought under the eyes of Dorothy, who, regardless of the fact that she was going to marry a parson, insisted that Connie should look beyond viyella for certain items. Soon after Easter Mr. Beadon had to find another curate and Connie's room at Clare Lodge was empty.
Tony was too much occupied with Moonbeam's chances of winning the two thousand guineas at the end of April to bother who married his sister; but he wrote her a generous check that compensated for the decline in value of the vicar's glebe at Newton Candover.
"And I suppose," said Dorothy, "that next January Connie will have a son."
"Never mind," said her husband. "Next June you and I shall have the Derby winner."
Honest William Cobbett had made no secret of his conviction that Moonbeam was going to canter away with the Guineas, and in the ring his patron's horse was favorite at five to two.
"It'll have to be something very hot and dark that can beat him," he told Clarehaven. "Has your lordship betted very plentiful?"
"I shall drop about ten thousand if the colt fails," said Clarehaven, airily. "But most of my big bets are for the Derby. I got sixes against him twice over to two thousand and fives twelve times in thousands. If he wins to-day I shall plunge a bit."
The trainer blinked his limpid blue eyes.
"Oh, then you don't consider you've done anything in the way of plunging so far?"
"Nothing," said Clarehaven, flicking his mount andcalling to Dorothy to ride along with him to the Birdcage. They had taken a small house for the meeting, and they were just off to escort Moonbeam to the starting-post. Lonsdale and Tufton had also come down to Newmarket, the former mounted under protest on a hack which he rode as if he were driving a car.
"Well, so long, Cobbett," the owner cried. "Hope we shall all be feeling as happy in another half-hour as we are now."
"Never fear, my lord. As I told you, there's only the Diavola colt to be afraid of. There's not a bit of doubt he won the Dewhurst in rare fashion, and of course that made his win at Epsom in the Woodcote look good. And now Sir James has gone and sold him for seven thousand guineas with a contingency to this man Houston—somebody new to racing. Well, seven thousand guineas is a nice little price, and there's been a lot of money forthcoming from the Winsley crowd. Dick Starkey always tries to serve up something extra hot for Newmarket. There's nothing gives greater delight to a provincial stable like Starkey Lodge than to do us headquarter folk out of the Guineas, which, as you may say, is our specialty. Stupid name, though, to give such a nice-looking animal. Chimpanzee!"
Dorothy uttered an exclamation. She divined the owner's name at once, and when Lonsdale told her it was Leopold Hausberg who had been away in South Africa and returned more rich than ever with a license to call himself Lionel Houston in future, she was not at all surprised, but her heart began to beat faster.
"Come along, come along, you two. We sha'n't be in time to escort the horses from the Birdcage."
"I say, Tony," said Lonsdale, anxiously, "the bookies are shouting twenty to one bar two, and Moonbeam has gone out to eleven to four."
"Damn!" ejaculated his owner. "I wonder if there's time for me to get any more money on?"
"No, leave it alone," Lonsdale begged. "Good Heavens! It makes me feel absolutely sick when I think of having ten thousand pounds on the result of one race. Why, compared with that, flying is safer than walking."
Two Cambridge undergraduates riding by jostled his cob so roughly that for the next few moments his attention was bent on maintaining himself in the saddle.
"Flying would certainly be safer than riding for you," Clarehaven laughed.
"The horse's mechanism is primitive, that's what it is—it's primitive," said Lonsdale. "And to risk ten thousand pounds on a primitive mechanism like a horse—Shut up, you brute,you'renot entered for the Guineas. I say, this steering-gear is very unreliable, you know."
Dorothy had wanted to ask Lonsdale more about the owner of Chimpanzee; but at this moment the sun burst forth from behind a great white April cloud full-rigged, the shadow of which floated over the glittering green of the Heath just as the horses emerged from the Birdcage, escorted on either side by horsemen and horsewomen of fame and beauty. It was a fair scene, to play a part in which Dorothy exultantly felt that it was worth while to lose even more than £10,000. The coats of the horses shimmered in the sunlight; the colors of the jockeys blended and shifted like flowers in the wind; no tournament of the Middle Ages with all its plumes and pennons could have offered a fairer scene.
Tufton joined his friends, and, turning their mounts, they rode back toward the winning-post.
"I say, Tony, Chimpanzee has shunted to three's—only a fraction's difference now between him and Moonbeam," he was murmuring.
"Tell me more about Houston," said Dorothy to Lonsdale. "I don't think I can bear to watch the race."
"Cheer-oh, Doodles! You can't feel more queasy than I do. And I've told you all I know about Houston."
"But why should he call his horse Chimpanzee?"
There was a roar from the crowd.
"They're off!"
They were off on that royal mile of Newmarket.
"Flitten was told to ride him out from the start. Damn him, why doesn't he do so?" said Tony.
"He is, old boy. He's all right. Don't get nervy," said Tufton.
"Which is Chimpanzee?"
"That bay on the outside."
"What colors?"
"Yellow. Harcourt up."
"Take him along! Take him along! Good God, he's not using the whip already, is he?"
"No, no! No, no!"
"Damnation!" cried Tony, "why didn't we keep to the inclosure? I believe my horse is beaten. Don't look round, you little blighter! It's not an egg-and-spoon race."
The spectators were roaring like the sea.
"Moonbeam! Chimpanzee! Moonbeam! Moonbeam!" was shouted in a crescendo of excitement.
There was a momentary lull.
"Moonbeam by a head," floated in a kind of unisonant sigh along the rails.
"O Lord!" Lonsdale gulped. "I'd sooner drive a six-cylinder Lee-Lonsdale at sixty miles an hour through a school treat."
The strain was over; the noble owner had led in the noble winner; the ceremonies of congratulation were done; there was a profitable settlement to expect on Monday; yet Dorothy was ill at ease. The resuscitation of Hausberg clouded her contentment. Coincidence would not explain his purchase of the Diavola colt, his naming of it Chimpanzee, and his running it to beat Moonbeam. To be sure, he had failed, but a man who had taken so much trouble to create an effect would bemore eager than ever after such a failure to ... "to do what?" she asked herself. Was he aiming at revenge? Such a fancy was melodramatic, absurd ... after all these years deliberately to aim at revenge for a practical joke. Besides, she had had nothing to do with the affair in St. John's Wood. Nor had Tony except as an accessory after the fact. Yet it was strange; it was even sinister. And how odd that Lonsdale should be present at this sinister resurrection.
"Lonnie," she said, "do you remember about the monkey?"
"What monkey? Did you have a monkey on Moonbeam?"
"Not money, you silly boy—the chimpanzee you put in Hausberg's rooms."
"Of course I remember it. So does he, apparently, as he's called his horse after it."
"I know. I feel nervous. I think he's going to bring us bad luck."
"Hello, Doodles, you're looking very gloomy for the wife of the man who is going to win the Derby," said Tony, coming up at that moment, all smiles. "I've just bet fifty pounds for you on one of Cobbett's fillies, which he says is a good thing for the Wilbraham. And the stable's in luck."
Dorothy won £250 in a flash, it seemed—the race was only four furlongs—and when in the last race of the day she backed the winner of the Bretby Handicap and won another £250 Tony told her cheerfully that she ought not to gamble because she was now a monkey to the good. Dorothy was depressed. The £500, outside the ill omen of its being called a monkey in slang, assumed a larger and more portentous significance by reminding her of the £500 she had borrowed from her mother when she first went on the stage and of the way she had invested some of it afterward with Leopold Hausberg. All her delight in Moonbeam's victory had been destroyed by a dread of the unknown, and she suddenly pulled Tony'ssleeve, who was busily engaged in taking bets against his horse for the Derby. He turned round rather irritably.
"What is the matter with you?"
"Give it up," she begged. "Don't bet any more."
"Give up betting when I've just won twenty-five thousand pounds over the Guineas and am going to win one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds over the Derby? Besides, I thought you were going to live happily ever afterward if Moonbeam won?"
He turned away again with a laugh, and Tufton's grave head-shake was not much consolation to Dorothy. She was walking away a few paces in order not to overhear Tony's jovial badinage with the bookmakers, when a suave voice addressed her over the shoulder and, looking round, she saw Leopold Hausberg.
"You've forgotten me, Lady Clarehaven," he was saying. "I must explain that I—"
"Yes, yes," Dorothy interrupted, quickly, "you're Mr. Houston. I've just been told so by Mr. Lonsdale, whom no doubt you also remember."
She mentioned Lonsdale's name deliberately to see if Houston would speak about the monkey or even show a hint of displeasure at the mention of Lonsdale's name, but there was no shadow on his countenance, and he only asked her if she would not introduce him to her husband.
"I should like to congratulate him," he said, "though his win hit me pretty hard."
At this moment Tony with a laugh closed his betting-book and joined them.
"By Jove! there's not a sportsman among you," he called back to the bookmakers. "What do you think, Doodles? There's not one of them who'll give me four thousand to a thousand against Moonbeam for the Derby.... I'm sorry, I didn't see you were talking to somebody."
Dorothy made the introduction.
"I'll give you four thousand to a thousand, Lord Clarehaven," the new-comer offered. "Or more if youwish to bet. I don't think my horse showed his true form to-day. He swerved badly at the start, and my jockey says he was kicked."
Clarehaven was delighted to find somebody who would lay against Moonbeam, and he entered in his book a bet of £20,000 to £5,000.
"I had the pleasure of meeting Lady Clarehaven before her marriage," Houston was explaining. "I should have called upon you long ago, but I've been away for some years in South Africa."
"Making money, eh?" said Tony, holding in his mouth like a cigarette the pencil that was going to make money for him.
"I've not done so badly," said the other, deprecatingly.
"Look here, you must dine with us to-night," Tony declared, cheerily. "We're having a little celebration at the Blue Boar."
"Delighted, I'm sure. That's what I always like about racing," said Houston, "it brings out all our best sporting qualities as a nation."
Dorothy thought her husband was going to say something rude, but she need not have been worried. He had no intention of being rude to a man who would lay so heavily against the horse he thought was bound to win. In fact, he went out of his way to be specially friendly to Houston, and during the month of May the financier was at Curzon Street almost every day. Moreover, he brought with him others like himself who were willing to bet heavily with Clarehaven, and Dorothy began to think that even Captain Keith and Mrs. Mainwaring and those Saturday afternoons of peroxide and pink powder at Windsor or Lingfield Park were better than this nightmare of hooked noses and splay mouths.
"Well," said Lonsdale, "if anybody ever talks to me again about the 'lost' tribes or the missing link, I shall ask him if he's looked in Curzon Street. He'll find both there."
"Tony's being a little bit promiscuous," said HenryTufton. "But of course onemustremember that the king was very fond of Jews. And then there was Disraeli, don't you know, and the late queen."
Just before the Derby, Houston, whom, in spite of the menace he seemed to hold out against the future of Tony's career on the turf, Dorothy could not help liking in the intervals when she forgot about her premonitions of misfortune, said to her in a tone that it would have been hard to accuse of insincerity:
"Look here, I want to show you I'm a true friend, and I warn you that my horse is going to win the Derby. Nothing can beat him. Tell Clarehaven to hedge. I wish I'd not laid that bet now, for I hate taking his money. I suppose he'd be insulted if I offered to cancel the bet? But I would, if he would."
Dorothy told Tony about Houston's offer; but he laughed at her and said that, like all Jews, Houston did not relish losing his money. Nevertheless, finding that his liabilities were alarmingly high and knowing that Houston, not content with laying against Moonbeam, was backing Chimpanzee wherever he could, Tony invested some money on the second favorite and declined to lay another halfpenny against him. As a matter of fact, the money he invested thus was in comparison with the thousands for which he had backed Moonbeam a trifle; but rumor exaggerated the sum, and when Chimpanzee won the Derby, with Moonbeam just shut out of a place, there were unpleasant rumors in the clubs.
Dorothy did not go to Epsom—her nerves could not have stood the strain—and when she heard of Moonbeam's defeat she was grateful to her impulse. Nowadays her self-confidence was very easily upset, and from the moment Houston had appeared upon the scene at Newmarket she had never in her heart expected that Moonbeam would win the great race.
It was Tony himself who brought her the bad news. In a gray tail-coat and with gray top-hat set askew uponhis flushed face—flushed with more than temper and disappointment, she thought—he strode up and down the smoking-room at Curzon Street, swinging his field-glasses round and round by their straps, until she begged him not to break the chandelier.
"Break the chandelier," he laughed. "That's good, by Jove! What about breaking myself? You don't seem to understand what this means, my dear Doodles. I've lost sixty thousand pounds over that cursed animal. Sixty thousand pounds! Do you hear? And I've got four days to find the money. Do you realize I shall have to mortgage Clare in order to settle up on Monday?"
"Mortgage Clare?" Dorothy gasped; she turned white and swayed against the table. At that moment Tony let the straps escape from his hand and the glasses went crashing into a large mirror.