Chapter V · (continued 2)

"Cobbett?" exclaimed Tony, viciously. "He's about fit to train a bus-horse to jog from Piccadilly to Sloane Street. 'The colt doesn't like the Epsom course, and that's about the size of it,' said Mr. Cobbett to me. 'Course be damned, you old plowboy!' I told him. 'If you hadn't insisted upon giving the mount to that cursed apprentice of yours my horse would have won.' 'I don't think it was the lad's fault, my lord,' said Cobbett, getting as red as a turkey-cock. 'Don't you dare to contradict me,' I said. By God! Doodles, I was in such a rage that it was all I could do not to take the obstinate old fool by the shoulders and shake the truth into him. 'I'd contradict the King of England, my lord, if I trained his horses and he told me I didn't know my business,' 'Well, I tell you that you don't know your business,' I answered. 'Why didn't you let me do as I wanted and get O'Hara over from France to ride him?' 'If you remember, my lord, in the Woodcote Stakes, we gave the mount to Harcourt, and he made a mess of the race.' I couldn't stand there shouting 'O'Hara! Not Harcourt!' It wouldn't have been dignified in the paddock, and so I just told him quietly that I should have to consider if after to-day's fiasco I could still intrust my horses to a man who wouldn't listen to reason; after that I pulled myself together with a couple of stiff brandies and drove the car home myself. By the way, I ran over a kid in Hammersmith and broke its leg or something. Altogether it's been my worst day from birth up."

Dorothy would have liked to reproach him for drinking, to have expressed her dismay at the accident to the child, to have whispered a word of hope for the future, to have taken his foolish flushed face between her hands and kissed it ... but the only speech and action she could trust herself to make or take was to ring for a footman to sweep up the broken glass from the floor of the smoking-room.

Two days later, while Tony was hard at work raising the money to pay his debts on Monday, a letter came from Newmarket:

COBBETT HOUSE., NEWMARKET, June 7, 1912.

To the Earl of Clarehaven.

MY LORD,—After our conversation in the paddock at Epsom on Wednesday I must give your lordship notice that I must respectfully decline to train your horses any longer in my stables. I would be much obliged if your lordship will give instructions to who I must transfer them.

I am,

Yours respectfully, W. COBBETT.

Houston, who happened to be with Tony when this letter arrived, asked him why he did not train with Richard Starkey at Winsley on the Berkshire Downs.

"Yes, that's all very well," said Clarehaven, "but what about the Leger?"

"I'm not going to run Chimpanzee for the Leger. In fact, I've sold him to an Australian syndicate for the stud. Your horse will be the only representative of the stable."

Finally Clarehaven's horses were transferred to Starkey Lodge, and Moonbeam, as the obvious choice of the stable, gave the public a good win at Doncaster. The victory did not do Clarehaven much good in narrower circles, where many people had backed Chimpanzee to win the Leger. The rumors that had gone round the clubs after the Derby sprang to life again, and with an added virulence circulated freely. Lord Stilton, as a friend of his father, warned Tony in confidence that he would not be elected to the Jockey Club and advised him to go slow for a while.

"If the Stewards wish for an explanation," said Tony, loftily, "they can have an explanation."

"It is not a question of your horse's running," said Lord Stilton. "Technically there are no grounds for criticism. But a certain amount of comment has been aroused by your change of stables and by your friendship with this man Houston. Altogether, my dear fellow, I advise you to go slow—yes, to go slow."

Tony, with the amount of money he had won back by Moonbeam's victory in the Leger, did not feel at all inclined to go slow, and with Richard Starkey at his elbow he bought several highly priced yearlings at the Doncaster sales. He would show that pompous old bore Stilton that the Derby could be won without being a member of the Jockey Club.

IV

Moonbeam's victory in the St. Leger had apparently freed Clare from mortgages, and it enabled the owner to meet a large number of bills that fell due shortly afterward. Dorothy, who was continually hearing from Tony how decently Houston was behaving to him, began to wonder if her dread of the Jew had not been hysterical; and when in October he proposed a cruise round the Mediterranean in his new yacht she did not attribute to the proposal a new and subtle form of danger. She and Houston were talking together in the drawing-room at Curzon Street while Tony was occupied with somebody who had called on business. During the summer these colloquies down in the smoking-room had kept Dorothy's nerves strung up to expect the worst when she used to hear Tony accompany the visitor to the door and come so slowly up-stairs after he was gone. But since Doncaster the interviews had been much shorter, and Tony had often run up-stairs at the end of them, leaving the visitor to be shown out by a footman. Throughout that trying time Houston had been always at hand, suave and attentive, not in the least attentive beyond the limits of an old friendship, but rather in the manner of Tufton, though of course with greater age and experience at the back of it. His ugliness, which, when Dorothy had first beheld it again so abruptly that afternoon in the ring at Newmarket had appalled her, was by now so familiar again that she was no longer conscious of it, or if she was conscious of it she rather liked it. Such ugliness strengthened Houston's background, and when Tony's affairs seemed most desperate gave Dorothy a hope; the more rugged the cliff the more easily will the wrecked mariner scale its forbidding face. Yes, Houston had really been invaluable during an exhausting year, and when now he proposed this yachting trip she welcomed the project.

"I think it would be good for Clarehaven to get him away from England for a while—to give him a change of air and scene. We'll lure him with the promise of a few days at Monte Carlo, and something will happen to make it impossible to go near Monte Carlo, eh? A nice, quiet little party. I have cabins for eight guests. Three hundred ton gross. Nothing extravagant as a yacht goes."

"And what do you call her? The Chimpanzee?" asked Dorothy, with a smile.

"No, no, no," he replied. "The Whirligig. A good name for a small yacht, don't you think?"

"Tell me," said Dorothy, earnestly. "Why did you call your horse Chimpanzee? You know, when I first heard it, I felt you were still brooding over that stupid business in those flats. What were they called?"

"Lauriston Mansions."

"Ah, you haven't forgotten the name. I had. But what centuries ago all that seems."

"Does it?"

"To me, oh, centuries!" she exclaimed, vehemently.

Houston's eyes narrowed, as if he were seeking to bring that far-off scene into focus with the present.

"I oughtn't to have reminded you of it," said Dorothy, lightly. "It was tactless of me."

"Not at all," said Houston. "Besides, contemporary with that there are many pleasant hours to remember" ... he hesitated for a second and blew out the end of the sentence in a puff of cigarette smoke ... "with you."

"Yes, I have often wondered why you were so kind to me. I think I must have been very tiresome in those days."

"On the contrary, you were the loveliest girl in London."

"Girl," Dorothy half sighed.

"Come, my dear Lady Clarehaven." Was he mocking her with the title? "My dear Lady Clarehaven," he repeated, with the least trace of emphasis upon the conventional epithet. "You don't expect me to be so bold as to say what you are now?"

For one moment he opened wide his dark eyes, and in that moment Dorothy decided that the party on the yacht should include the dowager and Bella. Simultaneously with this decision she was saying, with a laugh of affected dismay, "Oh no, please, Mr. Houston."

Tony was not at first in favor of the proposed trip, and pleaded that he wanted to see how his yearlings wintered; but Houston insisted that Starkey would look after them better without being worried by the owner. Then Tony urged the claims of pheasants. He had neglected his pheasants of late, and it would be a pity to let the Clare coverts alone for another year.

"Besides, I ought to look after the property," he added.

Dorothy had heard this declaration of duty urged too often to be taken in by it any longer. A week in Devonshire would cure Tony of a landowner's anxiety whether about his pheasants or his peasants; after that he would discover in his bland way that London was more convenient than the country.

"You can get plenty of shooting in the Mediterranean," said Houston. "There's a desert island in the Ægean with mouflon that nobody ever succeeds in getting."

"What? I'll bet you two hundred to one in sovereigns that I bag a couple," Tony cried.

"I won't bet, because you'll lose your money. A friend of mine lay off for a week of fine weather—that's a rare occurrence in those waters—lost nearly a stone climbing the rocks, and at the end of it came away without hitting one."

"Ridiculous," Tony scoffed. "What gun did he use?"

"Don't ask me," laughed Houston. "All I know is he was a first-class shot, and if he couldn't succeed I don't believe anybody can."

"That's rot," Tony declared, angrily. "When are we going to start?"

"She's in commission and now lying at Plymouth, which will save your mother a long journey by train."

"My mother?" Tony echoed, in astonishment.

Dorothy revealed her plan for inviting the dowager and Bella, and Tony was so anxious to prove he was right about the mouflon that he made no objections.

"Then," Dorothy continued, "I thought Harry Tufton had better be asked. He'll be so good at buying souvenirs in port. Your mother is sure to want souvenirs, and you'd hate to scour round for them yourself."

"I suppose Lonnie couldn't come," Tony suggested.

Houston knitted his brows, but said hurriedly that Lonsdale would be an ideal passenger for a cruise. Dorothy did not like to oppose the suggestion; yet she was relieved when Lonsdale replied that, having luckily arrived on this earth many years after the Flood, he did not propose to slight dry land. "Sea-trips," he wrote, "beginning with the Ark's have always been crowded and unpleasant. Besides, I'm learning to fly."

"Silly ass!" said Tony, tearing up the note.

The dowager was rather fluttered by the notion of a cruise in a yacht. Her knowledge of the sea was chiefly derived from Lady Brassey's journal of a voyage in the Sunbeam, the continual references of which to seasickness were not encouraging. Bella, who since Connie's marriage had taken to writing short stories, was as eager for local color as a child for a box of paints, and her enthusiasm at the idea of visiting the classic sea was so loudly expressed that the dowager had not the heart to disappoint her. She did, however, make one stipulation that surprised her daughter-in-law.

"If I go," she said, "you must promise me to invite one of your sisters. Now please, Dorothy, listen to me. You owe it to them. Of course, I should like you to invite them all and your mother, who could talk to me while you were all climbing volcanoes and searching for the ruins of Carthage; but I dare say Mr. Houston won't have room. However, one of them you must invite."

And then suddenly the dowager's suggestion seemed to provide a perfect solution of a problem that had been vexing Dorothy. In thinking over Houston's attitude she had been forced to explain it by the existence of something like a tender feeling for herself. To speak of tenderness in connection with him seemed absurd; but she was beginning to fancy that perhaps in the old days he had in his heart all the time wanted her for himself. If that were so, he had certainly behaved very well both now and then. No doubt he had realized that so long as her marriage with Clarehaven was attainable he stood no chance; but if that should have definitely come to nothing, he must have intended to ask her to marry him. It was with that idea he had helped her with investments, had avoided the least hint of an ulterior motive, and had always treated her so irreproachably. If he had concealed his love so carefully in the past, it was not ridiculous to suppose that he might be in love with her now. The other day he had been on the verge of saying something much more intimate than anything in the most intimate conversation they had ever had together. Perhaps he fancied that she and Tony were nothing to each other now—alas! with gambling as his ruling passion Tony might have given Houston some reason to suppose that she no longer stood where she used to stand in his eyes—or perhaps with a real chivalry he had perceived the dangerous course that Tony was taking and wished to save her without obtruding himself too much. Poor ugly man, with all his wealth he was a pathetic figure. He would suffer when he saw how devoted she was to Tony; she had made up her mind to charm Tony back to his old adoration of herself; this cruise might be her last opportunity.

Then why not ask one of her sisters? Such a sister, reflecting if somewhat faintly her own glories, might console Houston for an eternal impossibility. In that case she must invite the eldest now at home, and with her roses and rich brown hair might serve as a substitute for herself.

"Of course she hasn't my personality," Dorothy admitted. "And she hasn't my brown eyes. But she is beautiful, and what an excellent thing it would be if Houston should marry her. Jews have such a sense of family duty."

With the inclusion of Agnes the party was complete, and in the middle of November The Whirligig left Plymouth for the Mediterranean. Tony's astonishment at the production of this beautiful sister-in-law was laughable; but if heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay had not blanched most of her roses, while Dorothy's own throve in the fierce Atlantic airs, that astonishment might have turned to something less laughable. Houston, indeed, did ask Dorothy once in an undertone if it was not rather imprudent of her deliberately to create a rival for herself; but by the time the yacht had rounded Cape St. Vincent and was lying at ease in the harbor of Cadiz Tony was nearly as much his wife's slave as he was in the first days of their marriage. Dorothy, who had felt a momentary qualm about the success of her project when she saw the effect of Agnes's fair form of England against this passionate beauty of the south, decided that, on the contrary, it would be this very effect that would impress Houston much more than Tony. So far as mortal women are concerned, she had never had to bother much about Tony except when she herself had been cold with him. The fickle goddess of fortune was her only rival; but on board The Whirligig he seemed out of reach of temptation by her. Yes, the party was well chosen. Tufton by this time had recovered sufficiently from the heavy seas to help the dowager obtain her souvenirs of the various ports at which they called, and she at last forgave him for his advice about the pergola; Bella, inspired by a visit to Fielding's tomb at Lisbon, which was the first assurance she had received that England even existed since the Lizard Light had dropped below the horizon, was much occupied with a diary of her impressions; Tony was occupied by herself; and what should Houston do except occupy himself with Agnes? At the same time Dorothy had her doubts. Whenever she was sitting quietly with Tony in some snug windless corner of the yacht their host would always find an excuse to intervene.

After Cadiz they called at Malaga, Cartagena, and Alicante, whence by Valencia and Barcelona they were to sail by the shores of France toward the lights of Monte Carlo, which Houston now wanted to visit, although in London he had said that nothing should induce him to take the yacht there. Tony unexpectedly argued against a visit to Monte Carlo, and was only eager to attack the mouflon on that inaccessible Ægean isle. So the yacht's course was set eastward from Alicante.

"Why did you change your mind about Monte Carlo?" Dorothy asked Houston.

"Isn't it fairly obvious?"

She thought he was going to seize her hand and plunge headlong into a declaration of passion; but he turned away quickly and called her attention to the view. They were passing the southern shores of Formentera, so close that upon the sandy beach flamingos preening their wings in the sunset were plainly visible. The yacht called at Cagliari and Palermo, visited the Ionian islands, and reached the Ægean by way of the Corinth canal. The bet about the mouflon had to be canceled in the end, because the sea was never sufficiently calm to allow a boat to be lowered off Antaphros, and was still less likely to remain calm long enough for a boat to leave the deserted island again. They made several attempts to land, sailing there from their headquarters at Aphros, the white houses of which, stained with the purple Bougainvillea and mirrored in the calm waters of the harbor, seemed eternally to promise fine weather. Luckily the island also offered sufficient entertainment to compensate Tony for the loss of the mouflon; there was a club of which many rich ship-owners were members, where high play at écarté was the rule, and Tony, with the good luck that often attends strangers, repaid his hosts by winning from them nearly twenty thousand drachmas. The war in the Balkans made it difficult for the yacht to visit Constantinople, which was her original destination; and it was decided to substitute Alexandria and allow the members of the party to spend a few days in Cairo; from Egypt they would cruise along the coast of Syria, turn westward again by Cyprus and Rhodes, and with luck land a boat at Antaphros on the journey home, for Tony still regretted those mouflon.

Agnes would probably have found her stay in Aphros romantic enough at any time; but now with the supreme romance of war added and with handsome young Aphriotes going north upon their country's business by every steamer, she wished no higher ecstasy from this wonderful voyage. Agnes had enjoyed a great success on the island, where she had taught the young men and maidens to dance whatever ragtime was then the mode in West Kensington; where with them, when the dancing was done, she had climbed to the ruined temple of Aphrodite on the heights above the town and sat beneath a waning semilune that emptied her silver upon the bare and rounded hills, upon the sea, and upon a necklace of sapphire islands, past which the troopship now winking in the harbor below would sail at dawn. Like father, like son, even love shoots more arrows than usual in time of war. Agnes did not think that Egypt or Palestine could offer better than this, and when the parents of her new friends Antonia and Ariadne Venieris invited her to stay with them in their ancient house until the yacht came back, she begged her sister to make it easy for her to accept this invitation. Dorothy saw no reason to refuse, and they sailed away without her.

Three weeks later, when the yacht reached Rhodes, Dorothy found a letter from Madame Venieris awaiting her arrival, in which she announced that Agnes had married a young lieutenant called Sommaripa; she did not know what Lady Clarehaven would think of her; she did not know how to make her excuses; but at least she could assure Lady Clarehaven that the bridegroom, who was now in Thrace, was an excellent young man, an orphan with plenty of money and well regarded at court. Meanwhile, the bride must be her guest until peace was signed and her husband was released from service.

Agnes herself wrote as follows:

APHROS, January 19, 1913.

MY DEAR DOODLES,—I suppose you're awfully fed up with me; but he is such a perfect darling and so frightfully good-looking. He owns a lot of land and a castle in Aphros that belonged to the Venetians. His ancestors were Dukes of Aphros. He's an orphan and his name is—don't laugh—Phragkiskos (Francis!) Sommaripa. I shouldn't have married in such a tearing hurry if he hadn't been going to the front. I'm writing to mother and father, etc. I suppose they'll have fits; but I really don't believe there is such a place as Lonsdale Road any more. He told me I was another Aphrodite risen from the foam. Aphros is Greek for foam. I dare say it sounds rather exaggerated when written down, but when he said it with his foreign accent I collapsed in his arms. Oh, my dear, don't be cross when you come back with the yacht. Love to everybody on board.

Your loving sister, AGNES SOMMARIPA.

The news of her sister's escapade—well, it was something more than an escapade—affected Dorothy with a jealousy that she recognized for what it was in time to prevent herself from betraying the emotion she felt; so eager, indeed, was she to hide it that she proclaimed her approval of what Agnes had done, and so emphatically that the dowager was much agitated lest Bella should follow her example; but Bella did nothing more alarming than to sit down forthwith in the saloon and begin a very passionate and romantic story founded upon fact and drenched in local color.

Meanwhile, the Italian governor of Rhodes was taking steps to assure himself that The Whirligig was not a Greek war-ship with evil designs upon the Turkish population, which he was petting as a nurse pets a child she has lately had the gratification of smacking. As soon as the police spies guaranteed the harmlessness of the yacht the governor was hospitable and invited the members of the party to shoot the red-legged partridges and woodcock upon the Rhodian uplands. Tony, Bella, and Tufton accepted the invitation; the dowager, fearful lest Bella should envy the repose of some fascinating Turk's harem in the interior, accompanied them in the motor-car as far as the road permitted, where she alighted and passed the time in picking the red and purple anemones that blew in myriads all around, until the sportsmen had killed enough birds and were ready for lunch.

Houston suggested to Dorothy that they should take a walk round the town while the others were away; she accepted, for she was anxious to shake off this brooding jealousy which had oppressed her since the news in Agnes's letter.

"I shouldn't worry myself about your sister," he was saying.

Dorothy frowned to think he should have read her thoughts so easily.

"I'm not worrying. I think she has done exactly right."

"Envying her, in fact," Houston added.

"Why should I envy her?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't we always rather envy the people who do things with such decision? Don't we sometimes feel that we're wasting time?"

He said this so meaningly that Dorothy pretended not to hear what he had said and looked up to admire the fortified gate of St. Catherine through which they were passing.

"It's like Oxford!" she exclaimed.

Her jealousy of Agnes was stimulated by this comparison, for when they came to the Street of the Knights she was reminded of that day when she walked down the High with Sylvia, that Sunday afternoon which had been the prelude of everything. How many years ago?

"O God!" she exclaimed, reverting in her manner, as she often used in Houston's company, to that hard Vanity manner. "O God! I shall be twenty-nine in March!"

"I'm over forty."

"But you're a man. What does your age matter?"

She was looking at him, and thinking while she spoke how ugly he was. Perhaps he realized her thought, for his face darkened with that blush of the very sallow complexion, that blush which seems more like a bruise.

"You mean I'm too hideous?"

"Don't be silly. Let's explore this gateway."

They passed under a Gothic arch and found themselves in a cloistered quadrangle, so much like a small Oxford college that only a tall palm against the blue sky above the roofs told how far they were from Oxford.

"It's uncanny," said Dorothy. "How stupid Tony was to go off shooting without first exploring the town. How stupid of him!"

Dorothy wanted her husband's presence as she had never wanted it; she wanted to help the illusion that she was back in Oxford with all the adventure of life before her. She wanted to see him here in this familiar setting and revive ... what?

"I hope Agnes will be happy," she sighed.

Close by a couple of Jews in wasp-striped gabardines were arguing about something in a mixture of Spanish and Yiddish; without thinking and anxious only to get back to the present, Dorothy asked Houston if he could understand what they were talking about. Again that dark blush showed like a bruise.

"Why should I understand them?" he asked, savagely.

"No, of course. I really don't know," she stammered, in confusion, for she was thinking how much better a gabardine would suit Houston than his yachting-suit and how exactly his pendulous under lip resembled the under lips of the two disputants. An odd fancy came into her mind that she would rather like to be carried off by Houston, to be held in captivity by him in the swarming ghetto through which they had picked their way a few minutes ago, to sit peering mysteriously through the lattice of some crazy balcony ... to surrender to some one strong and Eastern and.... Oh, but this was absurd! The sun was hot in this quadrangle; she was in an odd state; it must be that the news about Agnes had upset her more than she had thought. At that moment her eyes rested upon the broken headpiece of a tomb that was leaning against the cloister, and she found herself reading in a dream: "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The palm still swayed against the blue sky; the Jews still chattered at one another. Dorothy looked round her with a dazed expression, and then impulsively knelt down among the rubble that surrounded the tombstone and read the words again: "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The Italian curator of the museum that was being formed in the old hospital drew near and explained to Dorothy in French that this was the tombstone of an English knight.

"An ancestor of mine," Dorothy told him.

The curator smiled politely; being a Latin, he certainly did not believe her.

"I've never seen you so much interested by anything," said Houston.

"I never have been so thrilled by anything," she declared. "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven! Clarehaven! And when he left it he must have often thought of our little church on the headland; and when he died here, how he must have longed to be at home."

"Does Clare mean very much to you?" Houston asked.

"You could never imagine how much. For Clare I would do anything!"

"Anything? That's a rash statement."

"Anything," she repeated.

Houston tried to persuade the curator to let him have the tombstone for Dorothy to take away with her; but the curator was shocked at such a suggestion and explained that it was an unusual inscription—the earliest of the kind in English that he knew; he should have expected Latin at such a date.

The countess failed to rouse much enthusiasm in the earl about the tomb of his ancestor, but the dowager was glad he was with God; Bella had a subject for another story; and Tufton photographed it. The next day the wind seemed likely to shift round into the north, and The Whirligig left the exposed harbor, traveling past the mighty limestone cliffs of the Dorian promontory, past Cos and many other islands, until once more her anchor was dropped in the sheltered blue waters of Aphros.

There were interminable discussions at the house of Monsieur and Madame Venieris; but there was no doubt whatever that Agnes was married.

"And do you know, my dear Doodles," her sister added, when they were alone, "do you know I believe I'm already going to have a baby?"

Dorothy could stand no more; but when she begged that all speed should be made for England there came a series of breathless days during which Tony stalked the mouflon on the heights of Antaphros. In the end he actually did hit one, and though it fell at the foot of a difficult precipice he scrambled down somehow, raised the carcass with ropes, and rowed triumphantly away with it to the yacht. Houston tossed him double or quits for the sovereign he had won; Tony won five tosses in succession and thirty-two pounds.

"My luck's in," he shouted, gleefully. "Come on, Houston, full speed ahead. I want to see my horses again."

When the yacht reached Plymouth the whole party went ashore and traveled up to Clare.

"Yes," Houston admitted to Dorothy, "I can understand the appeal this sort of thing must have for anybody. It must be glorious here in summer. I suppose the deer look after themselves? Yes, it's a wonderful old place."

A week after their guests had left Tony and Dorothy followed them to London.

"Oh, by the way, Doodles," said Tony at Paddington, "I ought to have explained before, but I've got a little surprise for you. I had to sell one hundred and twenty-nine. I was offered a nailing good price."

"And where are we going to live?" she asked.

"Well, that's the surprise. You'll never guess. I've taken your old flat in Halfmoon Street."

Dorothy looked at Tony.

"You're not angry?" he asked.

"I think I'm past anger," she said, dully.

While they were driving to their new abode Dorothy decided that it would be easy to convince her family that such a romantic marriage was the right thing for Agnes, because her arguments would come from the depths of her heart.

"And I shall be twenty-nine in March," she kept thinking.

"Of course I kept all your favorite things," Tony was saying. "I sold the rest. The pictures fetched a deuced poor price. I hope that if the Clare pictures ever have to go I shall have more luck with them."

"I wonder you don't offer to sell me," said Dorothy, bitterly.

He squeezed her arm affectionately.

"Sha'n't have to do that just yet awhile. I'm going to have a lucky year. I felt that when I pipped that mouflon. Ever since I broke the glass at one hundred and twenty-nine I've been deuced uneasy. As soon as the house was sold I began winning at écarté, and then I pipped that mouflon."

V

The sale of the house in Curzon Street revived all Dorothy's worst fears. If Tony could successfully hide from her knowledge such a transaction he was capable of announcing one day that Clare itself was gone. Life had not offered much stability since that fatal June except for the brief period when Tony's career upon the turf had accorded with the traditions of his order and had seemed to possess the dignity that confers itself automatically upon those who put forth their hands to claim their due, her existence had been periodically shaken like a town in the shadow of a volcano. Was not his marriage judged from the outside a contribution to failure similar to the running of Moonbeam in the Derby? Was she herself much more than a disappointing race-horse? She had failed to keep her classic engagements at Clare; she had failed to carry her weight in the big handicap at Curzon Street. Was the flat in Halfmoon Street a selling-plate? Oh, this flat, how it was haunted with the ghosts of old ambitions! The color schemes and patterns of the chintz might be different, but how familiarly the bells rang, how familiar was the sound of the doors opening and shutting, and the light upon her dressing-table ... and the rumble of the traffic ... leading whither?

"Tony, what do you want?" she asked, passionately, one morning when the sparrows were maddening her with their monotonous chirping praise of the sunshine.

"I want to win the Derby," he said.

"And lose everything else, even me?" she asked.

"And lose nothing," he maintained, obstinately. "Starkey fears nothing."

Starkey feared nothing! Starkey with his long, thin nose and red hair!

By now two of Tony's yearlings stood out well above the rest. Of these a bay colt by Cyllene out of Midsummer Night and, therefore, a half-brother of Moonbeam, had run well in the Brocklesby Stakes at Lincoln, still better in the Westminster Plate at the Epsom Spring Meeting, and had cantered away with the Spring Two-year-old Stakes at Newmarket. He was considered to be a certainty for the Woodcote Stakes; but on Starkey's advice Tony ran instead a chestnut filly by Spearmint out of Blushrose, who won with considerable ease, beating horses that had shown up well in the previous races. Clarehaven was jubilant; Starkey feared nothing; they had next year's Derby in their hands. It had been just after this last victory that Tony had affirmed his only ambition in life to be the Derby. At Ascot, still running unnamed, the filly won the Coventry Stakes; half an hour afterward Moonbeam took the Ascot Stakes by five lengths, and two days later, starting as an odds on favorite, he won the Gold Cup without being extended; finally on the same day the Midsummer Night colt won the New Stakes and was named Full Moon, for certainly the fortunes of Clare seemed in their complement.

"There's never been such an Ascot," said Tony to his wife.

Houston had had to go to South Africa soon after he returned from the Mediterranean cruise; while he was still away, Tony's luck touched its zenith when Moonbeam won the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park.

"Though it's lucky Mr. Houston sold Chimpanzee to that Australian syndicate," said Starkey. "Because I give you my word, my lord, that Chimpanzee was a better horse than Moonbeam, just as the filly is better than the colt."

"I think you're wrong about Moonbeam," Tony argued, "though you may be right about the filly."

When Houston reached England in July he motored down to Winsley with the Clarehavens to discuss future plans with the trainer, and when the old argument about the respective merits of Chimpanzee and Moonbeam began, as usual, he laughed, saying that for him the discussion was a barren one, because after this Derby victory he did not intend to tempt fortune any more.

"I wish you could persuade Tony to follow your example," said Dorothy.

"Don't be silly, old thing. I haven't won the Derby yet," Tony proclaimed, in a hurt voice.

"Don't be afraid, my lord; you can't lose it next year, not if you tried. Of course I'm not going to say yet for certain whether it'll be with the colt or with the filly; but I think it'll be with the filly."

"Which reminds me," said Tony. "We haven't given the lady a name yet."

"Why not Vanity Girl?" Houston suggested.

"Of course," Tony shouted, gleefully. "Vanity Girl she is."

Dorothy protested that the name would bring bad luck and begged for Mignonette instead.

"Mignonette won a race at Liverpool only yesterday," said the trainer.

"But there must be plenty of other names that haven't been used," Dorothy insisted. "As we've got the Full Moon of Clare, why shouldn't we call the filly Supporting Angel?"

"Well," said Mr. Starkey, "with her ladyship's permission, I prefer Vanity Girl. It sounds like a winner."

Tony and Houston were emphatically in favor of Vanity Girl, and the filly was named accordingly. Dorothy stayed behind to contemplate the beautiful creature in her box, the fair, shimmering creature lately anonymous and now burdened with what was surely a title of ill omen.

"But you have no ambitions," said Dorothy. "If you fail you won't mind. What do you care about your purple clothing with its black border and its silver coronet?"

Dorothy left the dim, cool stable and emerged into the glare of the July noon. She felt sad about the filly's name, and, unwilling to meet the others until she had recovered from her depression, she walked away from Starkey Lodge, walked up the sloping single street of the little village of Winsley, the houses of which seemed to have drifted like leaves into this cranny of the bare downs. At the top of the street the village ended abruptly where a white road ran like a line of foam between a sea of grass that stretched skyward to right and left until the horizon faded into the summer haze.

"Thirty next March," said Dorothy, aloud. "And what have I done with my life?"

She envied the thistledown that floated by, envied its busy air and effect of traveling whither it would; compared with those winged seeds the blue butterflies seemed as irresolute and timorous of the future as herself ... herself.... A voice shouted that lunch was waiting, and there was Tony waving to her from the road. Lunch was waiting for herself; but for that thistledown what was waiting? Dorothy's clear-cut personality was becoming blurred; she never used to speculate about thistledown in cloud cuckoo land. Everybody noticed the change. Some had heard that there really was something between Dorothy Clarehaven and that fellow Houston; others knew for a positive fact that Tony Clarehaven neglected his wife; and all the women decided that she must be well over thirty by now.

Tony began to bet recklessly as soon as Houston returned, and by the autumn he was again in difficulties. Moonbeam failed to give two stone to a smart three-year-old in the Jockey Club Stakes, and he lost much more than Full Moon had made for him by winning the Boscawen Stakes the day before. But there had been no purchase at Tattersall's, no ambitious yearlings from Doncaster, for Tony had given his word to Dorothy that after next year's Derby he would retire from racing. In fact, to show that this time he was in earnest he sold all his horses except the two sons of Cyllene and Vanity Girl. The filly had just won a severe trial and on Starkey's advice was preferred to Full Moon for the Middle Park Plate. She was heavily backed, started a hot favorite, and was not placed. Tony declined to accept her running as true and backed her heavily to win the Dewhurst Plate. O'Hara was brought over from France to ride her, and she was again unplaced. Some people declared she was no stayer, some that her victories at Epsom and Ascot had been flukes; others spoke of coughing in the Starkey Lodge Stables; a few murmured that a coup for next year's Derby was being carefully engineered.

"I knew it would bring bad luck to call her Vanity Girl," Dorothy lamented. "Sell her. Get rid of her. Get rid of them all."

"Sell the Derby winner?" Tony ejaculated. "My dear Doodles, you surely must realize that her form at Newmarket was too bad to be true. If she can beat Full Moon at home, and if Full Moon can beat the winner of the Middle Park as he did in the Boscawen Stakes, one or other of them must win the Derby. We'll see how they winter. Meanwhile I've sold Moonbeam to Houston. He paid me twenty-six thousand pounds. He intends to start a stud; I'm bound to say he got my horse cheap; whatever Starkey says, Chimpanzee would never have beaten him again; but I wanted the money."

"I'm sorry you've had to sell Moonbeam, but do sell Vanity Girl, too. Don't bet any more on any of them. Run Full Moon for the Derby, and if he wins be content with that. Then we could start a stud at Clare ourselves. But do get rid of Vanity Girl."

She felt as the dowager must have felt when she was trying to dissuade Tony from marrying an actress; she instanced every disadvantage she could think of for the filly; but Tony was obstinate.

They were going out that afternoon to the Pierian Hall. Sylvia Scarlett, after over two years' absence in America, had returned to England and suddenly taken the fancy of the public with a new form of entertainment that was considered very futurist. Dorothy did not think that her performance deserved all the praise it had received, but she felt jealous of Sylvia's success and, turning to Tony in the interval, said, fiercely, that sometimes she wished she had never married him.

"I should have done better to stick to the stage," she vowed.

"If you're wishing you hadn't married me because you'd like to be doing this sort of thing," said Tony, "you can spare your regrets. This, my dear Doodles, is the rottenest show I ever saw in my life."

"But it's a success."

"Only because it's so devilish peculiar. If I walked down Bond Street in pajamas I should attract a certain amount of attention the first time I did it, but people would get used to it, and I should soon be forgotten. By the way, would you like to send round a card?"

"No, no," said Dorothy. "I've seen quite enough of her from where we are."

"Don't get bitter, Doodles. I don't know what's come over you lately. You seem to hate everything and everybody."

That winter was a miserable one, because Tony took to baccarat again, and, having been accustomed to bet on the turf in large sums, he carried his methods to the tables with such recklessness that Dorothy, unable to stand the strain, left him in London and went down to Clare. She had a notion to kill herself out hunting, but even in this she was unsuccessful, for in February all the hunters, including Mignonette, were sold. Moreover, at the end of the month a valuer arrived with an authorization from Tony to complete the details for a forthcoming auction of the whole property as it stood, pictures and all. Dorothy hastened up to London and demanded what was the matter.

"The matter is that I've got to sell Clare."

"Sell Clare?" she repeated. "I suppose you mean mortgage it?"

"Mortgage it? It's mortgaged already."

"But you paid that off."

"Yes, once. But you don't suppose that I've always got money handy?" he asked, petulantly. "Some damned firm has bought up all my bills; I'm being pressed all round; and the Jews won't lend me another farthing."

"Then you must sell the horses."

"The Derby winner? They're my only chance of keeping out of the bankruptcy court. They're all we have, Doodles."

"You have Clare."

"How can I pay the interest on the mortgages and live at Clare? Try to be a little reasonable. I've got a good offer, and the money will come in very handy for the final plunge."

"You're mad."

"All right. I'm mad."

"But your mother?"

"I've given Greenish notice to leave Cherrington Cottage and I'm reserving that from the sale."

"But what will your mother live on?"

"Oh, of course her jointure will be paid. Besides, I tell you that this season with Full Moon and Vanity Girl I simply can't go wrong. The mistake I made was playing baccarat with my ready cash."

"Won't Houston help you?"

"My dear Doodles, it's Houston who's going to buy Clare."

She was silent before the revelation of what for long she had surmised. The quadrangle of the hospital in Rhodes where she had admitted openly that for Clare she would do anything flashed upon her vision, and the thought of that Oriental patience practised for so long terrified her. His desire for her must have been kindled years ago, a desire that, once kindled, had been fed by the will to revenge himself for being what he was upon Clarehaven for being what he was. It was Houston who had subtly helped his rival along the road to ruin, taking him by the arm as it were to the edge of the precipice and toppling him over. Now it was her place to interview this enemy, plead with him, entreat him to be content with what he had done already ... but of what use would entreaties be? Of no use except to stimulate the lust of victory.

"You can't sell Clare to Houston," she was saying, mechanically, lest her silence should be noticed. "You can't sell Clare to Houston," she was repeating; and then she was off again, chasing the excited, restless ideas in her brain until she should have driven them like poultry into a corner and be able to pick the victim that should serve her best. Yes, yes, if Houston really did covet her, she still had a chance to preserve Clare. There was no weaker adversary for a woman whose heart was untouched than a man who was madly in love ... no weaker adversary.... Should she write to Houston and give him the idea that by pressing her hard he could win? In the past she had known how to cook a dozen geese in fierce ovens without cooking her own by mistake, without even burning her fingers. If Houston had waited years, he would surely be willing to risk a few more weeks.

"You can't sell Clare to Houston," she said, once more.

"For God's sake, don't go on repeating that like a parrot," said Tony. "I'm going round to settle the matter now."

A few moments later the door of the flat slammed behind him. Houston lived in Albany, not five minutes away, and Dorothy went across to the telephone.

"Yes? Who's speaking?"

"Dorothy Clarehaven. Listen," she said, hurriedly. "Once you lent me money, or at any rate you helped me make money, and you were always very decent about it. Won't you do the same thing again? You know that Tony is putting everything on the ability of one of our two horses to win the Derby. Tell me—there's every reason to suppose he will win the Derby—why shouldn't you lend him enough to prevent his selling Clare?"

"Why not, indeed?" said Mr. Houston. "But what's the security?"

"Aren't the horses a security?"

"Horses are very capricious, almost as capricious as women."

"Would you prefer a woman as security?" she asked, trying to rake up from nine years ago a coquetry that had once been so profitable. It was easier by telephone. "Supposing I offered myself as security?"

So much was she playing a part of long ago that instinctively she had used her old invincible gesture of lightly touching a man's sleeve. That also was easier by telephone.

"I could lend a good deal," twanged the voice of the buyer along the wires. "I could lend a good deal."

"Very well then," said Dorothy. "Lend me the money."

"By telephone? Not good enough. Come, come, let's be frank, let's be brutally frank. You know you're worth twenty Derby winners to me; but, as I said, women are more capricious than horses. I'm no longer a schoolboy. Are you in earnest or not?"

"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "Why should you think I wasn't?"

"So much in earnest that you'll come to my rooms this afternoon and tell me so?"

"Yes, if you like," she replied, without hesitating. "But you must prove to me that you're in earnest too. Send me something on account."

"How much do you want?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "About fifty thousand pounds I suppose."

Dorothy's sense of proportion about large sums of money had been destroyed by her husband's extravagant betting. When one lives with a man who will win £50,000 at Ascot and lose it all and more the following week, it is difficult to preserve a table of comparative values. She supposed that £50,000 would represent about half the price of Clare, and the importance she attributed to Clare gave money such a relative unimportance that she saw nothing even faintly ridiculous in demanding a sum of this magnitude from Houston. Perhaps he was impressed by the size of her demand into believing that she really was in earnest about accepting his proposals; even a financier like himself might be excused for supposing that a woman, one of the most beautiful women in England and a countess to boot, does not ask for £50,000 without being in earnest. At the same time it appealed to his sense of humor that any woman, even England's most beautiful countess, should ask for £50,000 by telephone.

"Why, it's not even a note of hand," he chuckled, and his laugh, traveling from Albany to Halfmoon Street along the wires, lost its mirth on the way and reached Dorothy with the sound of a dropped banjo.

"Well, I must have something to prove you're in earnest," she argued, fiercely. "Tony is on his way to see you now. He'll be with you in another minute. Tell him that as a friend you can't let him sell Clare. Offer him enough to tide him over the Derby. I'm willing to risk everything on that."

"Are you trying to tell me that if Clarehaven pulls off the Derby our arrangement is canceled? Ring off. Nothing doing, dear lady."

Away in Albany she heard a bell shrill; it was like a prompter's warning of the play's ending.

"That's Tony now," she cried. "Do what I ask. Give him enough. He'll say how much is necessary for the moment. Lend it to him on the security of Clare. Buy up his mortgages. Do what you like, and if Tony comes back with Clare still his, at any rate until he has lost all or saved all on the Derby, I'll come to Albany this afternoon and thank you."

"Tangibly?" murmured Houston.

"Tangibly."

Her agitated breath had so bedewed the mouthpiece that when with trembling hands she replaced the holder it was like being released from a kiss.

VI

Tony came back from his visit to Houston in a temper of serene optimism.

"Well, Doodles," he cried, gaily, "I've saved Clare for you."

"Oh, you've saved Clare, have you?" She could not resist a slight accentuation of the pronoun, but he did not notice it.

"Yes, Houston was very decent. I told him how much I hated getting rid of the old place, and he was very decent. Of course he knows from Starkey that the Derby is a certainty and that in Full Moon and Vanity Girl I've got the two best three-year-olds in England."

"You're still infatuated with the filly?"

"Now wait a minute. Don't begin arguing till you hear what's been decided. Houston is going to lend me enough cash to pay off the present mortgages of Clare, and when that is done I'm going to mortgage the place to him on the understanding that if I don't settle up on the Monday after the Derby he takes immediate possession. I told him that I should want some ready money, and he offers to buy whichever horse I don't run in the Derby."

"Then sell him Vanity Girl," said Dorothy, quickly. She could hardly refrain from adding, "One of us he must have."

"Don't be in such a hurry. At present Full Moon has engagements in the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby, also in the Grand Prix and the Leger. Vanity Girl is entered for the Thousand Guineas, the Derby, and the Oaks. I shall run Full Moon for the Guineas; if he wins he will be the Derby favorite. In that case I shall scratch Vanity Girl for the Thousand Guineas, and we'll have a secret trial at Winsley. Houston hasn't taken Moonbeam away yet, and Starkey is to put him into strong work for this trial. If Full Moon shows up best in the trial I shall sell Vanity Girl to Houston, who will run her in the Oaks; then I shall back Full Moon for the Derby till the cows come home. But if, as Starkey thinks and as I think, Vanity Girl is the goods, Houston is to have Full Moon for ten thousand pounds as soon as I've scratched him for the Derby. I don't want to scratch him until I've got my money out on the filly, but I shall get busy quickly, and the public will have plenty of time to know which horse I think is going to win. Then you and I, Doodles dear, will retire from the turf and live ever afterward at Clare."

"And if Full Moon doesn't win the Guineas?"

"Oh, I've thought of that. In that case I shall run Vanity Girl in the Thousand Guineas, declare to win with either in the Derby, and Houston is to have his pick after the race for ten thousand pounds."

"And you've thought out all this wonderful and complicated plan of campaign?"

"Not entirely," Tony admitted.

"Not at all," said Dorothy, sharply. "You know perfectly well that Houston thought out every detail of it."

She wondered if a man who could juggle like this with the future of horses might not be equally expert with women. But no, he wanted the woman; he did not want the horses. She sent a note round to Albany saying that a bad headache kept her at home that afternoon, but that she fully appreciated the good will he had just shown and that she hoped to see him at dinner to-morrow. She knew that she could not keep Houston at arm's-length indefinitely, but if she could keep him there until, at any rate, Clare was temporarily safe she should have a breathing-space until June. Then if Tony lost the Derby, she should have to offer herself to preserve Clare; but if he won, she and Clare would both be saved.

"God!" she cried to her soul, "with me it always seems that June is to decide everything."

When the following night Houston reproached her for breaking the appointment of yesterday she reminded him that he, too, had only made promises so far; but when Houston kept his word and freed Clare until the settling day after Epsom, she still held back.

"You'll appreciate me all the more for being kept waiting."

"I've waited years," he said.

"I'll go for a drive with you to-morrow."

So it went on until the week before the Guineas.

"You're trying to fool me. You think you can get something for nothing as easily now as you could when you were at the Vanity."

"Be reasonable, my dear man," she begged. "Your money is perfectly safe. What are you risking? If Tony loses the Derby you win me the moment you put in my hands the title-deeds of Clare. If Tony wins the Derby...." She let her deep-brown eyes gaze into his.

"Kiss me," said Houston. "Kiss me once and I'll believe you."

A good lady's maid is bound to enjoy a considerable amount of intimacy in her relationship with her mistress; no lover is allowed as much. Dorothy from youth had trained her kisses to be her servants; they had always served her well, and if a degree of intimacy was unavoidable it was always the intimacy of a servant, which does not count. One of these kisses she summoned to her aid now.

Tony proposed that Lonsdale should drive them down to Newmarket for the Guineas, but Lonsdale said he was booked to fly on that day.

"You never come near us now," said Dorothy, reproachfully.

"I can't stand that fellow Houston. I can't think how you can bear him around all the time."

"He's very amusing," said Dorothy.

"So's a bishop in a bathing-dress. If you want amusement you can get plenty of it," Lonsdale growled, "without having to depend on a fellow like that."

Tufton, who was as sensitive as a tress of seaweed to the atmosphere, had also neglected his old friends recently, and Dorothy knew by his manner that people must now be talking very hard about herself and Houston.

Tony kept his promise not to bet heavily on the result of the Guineas, and Full Moon's win did not do more than keep quiet a certain number of low-class creditors who had for some time been supplying Lord and Lady Clarehaven with such trifles as wine, food, and clothes. However, the win did seem to make the Derby a certainty for the stable; Full Moon and Vanity Girl, unlike Moonbeam, had both won at Epsom as two-year-olds, and if Vanity Girl could beat Full Moon, surely no horse in England could beat her on a course to which she had already shown her partiality. When the filly did not appear in the Thousand Guineas the quidnuncs, the how-nows, and the what-nots of the turf said she had wintered disappointingly and that she would never be seen in the Oaks. There was scarcely a sporting paper that did not assure its readers that they would soon hear of Vanity Girl's having been scratched for both the Derby and the Oaks. She was a flier, but a non-stayer, and the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood was her journey.

At the same time the quidnuncs, the how-nows, and the what-nots of the turf were puzzled to find that after Full Moon's victory in the Guineas no money from Starkey Lodge seemed to be going on the colt's chances for the Derby. All the touts set hard to work to solve what was called the Starkey Lodge Puzzle; Winsley and the hamlets round were frequented by inquisitive men whose pockets were bulging with sheaves of telegraph forms.

"They think we've got something up our sleeves," said the trainer to the owner. It was half past four o'clock of a morning early in May; Tony, Dorothy, Houston, and Starkey had just taken up their positions to watch the trial that was to decide which horse should carry the Clarehaven colors a month hence. They had motored down to Winsley the night before; and under a cold sky of turquoise scattered with pearls and amethysts they had ridden up here at dawn; but when their clothing had been taken off the horses, heads had popped up like rabbits from behind every hillock along the course.

"No good running it this morning," said the trainer, shouting some abuse at the touts and galloping his hack in the direction of the horses.

The sun was now well about the rounded edge of the downs; the air of the morning was lustrous and scented with young grass upon which the dew lay like golden wine.

"You can't get up too early for these touts," Starkey told them at breakfast, "and if we want to know where we are for the Derby a bit before any one else, we'll have to run the trial by moonlight. I'll keep 'em on the hop all the day before and tire some of these Nosey Parkers into staying at home for once in their lives."

Dorothy was never sorry of an excuse to spend a few days with the horses. They had caused her so much misery; but she had no ill will when she saw them.

"Yes," said the trainer. "A moonlight trial. That's the ticket. What with Full Moon and Moonbeam you can't say it isn't highly suitable. I'm not going to pretend that Moonbeam is up to his best form. Thinking Mr. Houston was going to take him to the stud, I only began putting him into strong work a month ago. So I thought we'd run them at weights for sex, and put in a couple of good handicappers belonging to Mr. Ginsberg to make a bit of a field."

At two o'clock there was the clank of a pail in the stable-yard, followed by a low murmur of voices and the grumble of the big yard gates being cautiously opened. Presently the team emerged and walked slowly up the village street, where half a dozen touts were fast asleep, because they must be up at dawn to haunt the entrance to the Starkey Lodge Stables. By the magic of the moon the horses in their clothing were turned into the caparisoned steeds of knights-at-arms setting forth upon a romantic quest. Dorothy, Houston, Tony, and the trainer followed on hacks; and even when far out of hearing of the most vigilant tout they continued to talk in half-tones. So breathless was the night that the thundering of the hoofs coming nearer and nearer over the turf seemed to vibrate the stars, and Dorothy had a fancy that presently all the people in the little villages below the rim of the downs would wake and run with lanterns up here to know if the moon had fallen down upon the great world.

Vanity Girl won the trial; Moonbeam was second; the winner of the Guineas was third.

"Well, I hope that's decisive enough," said Tony, gleefully. "Starkey, you were right!"

He and the trainer moved off in excited conversation. Houston took Dorothy's hand, and she did not try to withdraw it from his grasp; Vanity Girl was going to win the Derby; Clare would be safe in June; she should be safe in June. The benevolent moon, quite undisturbed by all this mad nocturnal galloping, gazed blandly at Dorothy's complaisance; she would not have put a cloud up to her face for much more than that, the unscrupulous old bawd.

A week later the following paragraph appeared in one of the sporting weeklies:

THE STARKEY LODGE PUZZLE

Rumor says that the young Earl of Clarehaven, who has recently had very heavy losses on the turf, positively intends to capture the Derby this year. It was only a few months ago that we had to condole with the gallant young nobleman on the sad necessity which forced him to sell that great horse Moonbeam last year to the well-known South African capitalist, Mr. Lionel Houston, who indorsed the public view that Moonbeam's defeat in the Derby by his own horse Chimpanzee was not true form when he sold Chimpanzee to an Australian syndicate of breeders and bought Moonbeam for the stud he is now forming, and which we have no doubt will give many famous new names to the history of English racing. But our readers' present concern is what is popularly known as the Starkey Lodge Puzzle. We have the highest authority for saying that this is no longer a puzzle. At an important trial held in great secrecy on the Starkey Lodge training-grounds it was conclusively established that Vanity Girl is more than likely to give the Blue Riband of the turf to Lord Clarehaven and console him for the failure of Moonbeam. It will interest our readers from the smallest punter upward to hear that Full Moon, the victor of the Two Thousand Guineas and the present Derby favorite, will not run at Epsom, having been sold like his half-brother to Mr. Lionel Houston, who no doubt intends to keep him for the St. Leger, a race which he is ambitious of winning. We need scarcely point out to our readers the obvious tip for this year's Derby, and we do not hesitate to plump right out for Vanity Girl as the winner. We were the only paper to advise our readers not to back Full Moon until the intentions of the stable were a little plainer, and to all those who failed to follow our advice we can only say, "I told you so." Lord Clarehaven has done well to scratch the winner of the Guineas, for there is no doubt that if both the colt and his stable companion had faced the starter at Epsom the public would have followed the son of Cyllene. As it is, we confidently expect to see Vanity Girl a raging favorite before the week is out, and we may remind our readers that Lord Clarehaven's beautiful chestnut has already shown that she likes the Epsom course by winning the Woodcote Stakes last year. Her running at Newmarket last autumn may be discounted. We happened to know that the stable was coughing; as we have hinted, the gallant young nobleman who sports the black, white, and purple was very hard hit by her defeats, and this expression of renewed confidence in the chestnut daughter of Spearmint cannot be disregarded.

The people who had hurried to put their money on Full Moon grumbled loudly; but the public appreciated the clear lead that Tony had given them. He had put his own money on Vanity Girl before the result of the trial leaked out, and though he had obtained tens against the first two thousand he wagered, the news ran round the clubs so quickly that even before the public was warned by the scratching of Full Moon that Vanity Girl was the hope of Clare, he was finding it hard to get fours against the filly; after that her price shortened to five to two; in the week before the race it was only six to four; in the ring on the day itself not a bookmaker was risking more than eleven to ten, and with money still pouring in faster than ever she seemed likely to start at odds on, an unprecedented price for a horse that had not been seen in public since two consecutive defeats in the autumn of the year before. The public could not be blamed for their eagerness to back the filly. It was generally known that Clarehaven either had to win the Derby or be ruined, and if he preferred Vanity Girl to the winner of the Guineas at such a crisis in his affair she must indeed be sure of her success. If the public had known that even his wife's honor was in pawn besides his house and his lands they could not have been more confident.

"If Vanity Girl fails," Dorothy asked, on the morning of the race, "you won't have a halfpenny left?"

"I might have an odd hundred pounds," Tony reckoned.

"And your mother—and Bella?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I suppose Uncle Chat will look after them."

"And us?"

"Oh, we'll emigrate or something. Rather fun, don't you know. I shall wangle something. The going will be hardish," he said, looking at the sky, "and that's always in her favor. She hated that Newmarket mud last autumn. Come on, Doodles, the car's waiting."

They walked down the steps of the flat, and the porter who had hurried out to shut the door of the car touched his cap.

"Good luck, my lady! Good luck, my lord! Shepherd's Market is on Vanity Girl to the last copper."

"Put on a sovereign for yourself, Galloway," said his lordship, grandly proffering the coin.

Several loafers who had sometimes run for his lordship's cabs shouted, "Hurrah for the Derby favorite!" and Tony flung them some silver to back his filly. The road to Epsom was thronged; Tony, who was obviously feeling nervous, had left the driving to the chauffeur, and was sitting back with Dorothy in the body of the car.

"I think Lonnie might have come with us," he said, fretfully.

"Does it bore you so much driving with me alone?" she asked.

"Don't be silly! Of course not. But I'm nervy and.... Oh, but what rot! Nothing can go wrong."

They were passing a four-in-hand with loud toots upon their Gabriel horn, which were being answered by the guard of the coach, when he suddenly recognized the occupants of the car. Standing up, he blew a dear "Viewhalloo!" and shouted: "Berkshire's on the filly, my lord, to the last baby! Hurrah for Vanity Girl!" There was a block in the traffic; the occupants of every vehicle in earshot, from the gray hats and laces of the four-in-hand to the pearlies and plumes of a coster's cart, applauded the earl and countess, each after his own fashion.

"Don't forget the Mile End Road, Mr. Hearl of Clarehaven," bawled one of the costers, "if that's who you are. Hoobeeluddiray!" he went on, and caught his moke an ecstatic thwack on the crupper.

In the ring friends and acquaintances crowded round them, eager to say how they had backed Vanity Girl and how fervently they hoped for her victory. There was no doubt that if the filly was beaten a groan of disappointment would resound through England.

"I think it's so sweet that Lord Clarehaven's horse should be called Vanity Girl," some foolish woman was babbling. "So sweet and romantic," she twittered on.

"Yes, what devotion," chirped another as foolish.

Tony wanted to go round to the paddock to have a few last words with Starkey and the jockey O'Hara, but Dorothy did not think she could bear to see the filly before the race.

"I'm so nervous," she said, "that I feel I should communicate my nerves to her. But don't you bother about me. I'll wait for you in the inclosure."

"Where's Houston?" said Tony, irritably. "I thought he was going to meet us."

At that moment a messenger-boy came up. "Are you the Earl of Clarehaven?" he asked, perkily, and handed Tony a note, which the latter read out:

"DEAR CLAREHAVEN,—To what will I'm sure be my lifelong regret, important business prevents me from being at Epsom to see your triumph. Believe me, my dear fellow, that there is no one who hopes more cordially than I do for your success to-day. My kindest regards to your wife and tell her from me that I'm looking forward to our Derby dinner at the Carlton to-night.

Yours ever sincerely, LIONEL HOUSTON."

"Funny chap! But I believe he's sincere," Tony muttered, "though it would be all to his interest if I lost."

But how much to his interest, Dorothy thought, how little did Tony know.

She waited for him in the company of the twittering women until he returned from the paddock.

"They're going down now," he told her.

"Everything all right?" she asked.

"Yes, yes." He was biting his nails and cursing the focusing arrangements of his field-glasses.

"They're off!"

The roar of the crowd was like a mighty storm within which isolated remarks were heard like the spars of a ship going one by one.

"She isn't finding it so easy."

"He's taking her into the rails too soon."

"My God! I wouldn't lay sixpence there won't be an objection for crossing. Did you see that?"

"Go on, Vanity Girl! Go on!"

"Go on, you blasted favorite!"

"She's swishing her tail."

"No, she's not. That's ... yes, it's her. Vanity Girl! Vanity Girl!"

"Go on, Vanity Girl!"

The roaring died down to a suppressed murmur of agitation.

"What's the matter with the favorite?"

"O'Hara's flogging her along."

The horses flashed past the stand with the black, white and purple of Clarehaven twinkling in the ruck like a setting star.

"Tony!" Dorothy screamed. "She's beaten!"

"Oh well," said the owner, "don't make such a noise about it."

He was smiling a foolish, fixed smile, but he let his glasses drop from his hands on the toes of a lady close by.

"I'm very sorry, ma'am," said Tony, raising his hat. "I hope I didn't hurt you."

The injured lady glared at him; it was her first Derby, and perhaps she did not realize that it mattered who won or lost.

"Come on, Doodles," said Tony. "Home. For God's sake, let's get home."

He would not wait to hear any explanation of the filly's defeat, but pushed his way savagely through the crowd to find the car.

"Gorblime!" a ragged vender of unauthorized race-cards was ejaculating near the garage. "Gor strike me blurry well pink! She'd make a blurry tortoise crick his blurry neck looking round to see why she was dawdling behind. Race-horse? Why, I reckon a keb-horse could give her three stone and win in a blurry canter, I do. Vanity Girl? Vanity Bitch, that's what she ought to have been called."

VII

The news of the defeat had already reached Halfmoon Street, and Galloway inclined his head when they passed quickly from the car into the hall of the flats, as if his patrons were returning from a funeral.

"We must telephone round to the Carlton to say that the dinner is off," said Tony; even that small action he left to his wife, himself sitting for the rest of the evening mute of speech, but drumming upon the table with his fingers or sometimes tambourinating upon an ash-tray. His dinner consisted of anchovy sandwiches washed down by brandy. There was no word from Houston, and Dorothy supposed that he was waiting to hear from her. "Going! Going! Clare! Clare! Clare!" The auctioneer's hammer seemed to be striking her temples, and, passing her hand over her forehead, she realized that it was only Tony who was drumming upon the table or tambourinating upon the ash-tray. She went to bed before he did and, lying awake in the rosy light of the reading-lamp, she wondered if, perhaps, he would try to forget this day in her arms, half hoped he would, and picked up the hand-mirror beside her bed to see how she was looking. He must have sat up drinking till very late—she had fallen asleep and did not hear him come to bed—and in the morning his eyes were bloodshot, his razor tremulous.

The letter-box was choked with bills; but there were several letters of condolence, and a reminder of the Day of Judgment from an enthusiastic enemy of the turf who, with ill-concealed relish, advised his lordship to observe the hand of God in the retribution which had been meted out to him and to turn away from his wickedness. Finally there were letters from O'Hara, the jockey, and Houston.

EPSOM SUMMER MEETING 1914. Wednesday evening.

MY LORD,—I had hoped to have a few words with your lordship after the race, but was told you already left the course. I was intending to say that I could not go through what I suffered to-day on Friday, and would be obliged if your lordship wouldn't insist I would ride Vanity Girl in the Oaks. My lord, the filly is tired, and I wouldn't say another race mightn't kill her dead. It's not for me to give advice to your lordship, but how you ever come to run her in the Derby I don't know. She never was a stayer. I saw that plainly enough last autumn at Newmarket. I'm going back to France as soon as I hear from your lordship you won't run her in the Oaks. I'm engaged to ride Full Moon in the Grand Prix by Mr. Houston, and I hope I won't have to suffer what I suffered this afternoon. It's enough to make a jockey chuck riding for good and all.

I am,

Your lordship's obedient servant, PATRICK O'HARA.

Pardon me if I've written a bit unfeelingly. It wasn't the filly's fault. She was tired. She didn't seem to know where she was, somehow, and when I flogged her along it near broke my heart to do it. She couldn't seem to understand what she was wanted to do. Poor little lady, I was so savage I could have shot her. But afterward I went and had a look at her, and had a few words with Mr. Starkey when he was abusing her.

QZI ALBANY, W. Wednesday.

DEAR CLAREHAVEN,—I'm not going to worry you with sympathy at such a moment. But I'm writing as soon as possible to let you know that last week, owing to circumstances which would not interest anybody except a business man, I was compelled to part with my Clare mortgages for ready money, and I'm afraid that without doubt Reinhardt and Co. will foreclose on Monday. I wish I could offer to lend you the money to put yourself straight again, but I have been speculating myself and for the moment am a little short. By the way, I think Full Moon is a good thing for the Grand Prix. Perhaps you might get a bit on. Kindest regards to Lady Clarehaven.

Sincerely, LIONEL HOUSTON.

Tony telegraphed to scratch Vanity Girl for the Oaks and ordered that she should be sold outright for what she would fetch; £200 was the figure, a tenth of what she had cost as a yearling and an insignificant fraction of what she had cost in ruinous disappointment, to which, perhaps, dishonor was soon to be added.

Houston's letter showed plainly that nothing was to be hoped for in that quarter.

"Reinhardt and Co.," scoffed Tony. "In my opinion Reinhardt and Co. includes Houston."

Dorothy wondered if the communication was intended to bring her quickly to heel, to show her brutally that unless she kept her bargain Clare was lost. She supposed that somehow Houston would be ingenious enough to keep Tony from being suspicious when he found his house and lands restored to him, and she even wondered if under the demoralizing effect of gambling he would much mind if he did know. She looked at him with a feeling half compassionate, half contemptuous while he was calculating, with an optimism rapidly rising, every knickknack in the flat at four times its value in the sale-room. She persuaded him to go out and forget his troubles at the theater, and telephoned to the Albany that she was coming to see Mr. Houston after dinner.

Dorothy dressed herself in a frock of champagne silk and wore no jewelry except a drop pendant of black pearls, thinking ironically, when she fastened it round her neck, how premature Tony had been in estimating that it would fetch £500 at auction. She flung over her shoulders a diaphanous black opera-cloak stenciled in gold and, covering her face with a heavy veil of black Maltese lace, she passed out of Halfmoon Street and walked slowly up Piccadilly in the June starlight. On second thought she decided to enter Albany from Burlington Street instead of through the courtyard, and, turning into Bond Street, moved like a ghost along the pavements where on thronged mornings in old Vanity days her radiance and roses used to compete for the public regard with the luxurious shops on either side. Burlington Street at this hour was deserted, and the porter of Albany with his appearance of an antique coachman, and his manner between a butler's and a beadle's, dared not hesitate to admit such an empress, and perhaps marveled, when he watched her walk imperiously along the glass-roofed cloister that smelled of freshly watered geraniums toward QZI, with what honey the ugly tenant of it was able to attract this proud-pied moth.

Lady Clarehaven might have been excused for feeling a heroine, a Monna Vanna in the tent of the conqueror, when she found herself in the big square room which she now visited for the first time. She did not indulge herself with heroics, however; it seemed to her so natural for her to save Clare that the adventure was as commonplace as when once in early days on the stage she had pawned a piece of jewelry she did not like in order to save a set of furs to which she attached a great importance. She threw back the opera-cloak and sat down in an arm-chair to wait for Houston with as little perturbation as if she were waiting for a dinner guest in her own drawing-room.

Suddenly he appeared from an inner doorway and, turning on several more lights, looked at her. He was in evening dress, and the sudden glare gave the impression that he was going to perform; he looked more like an intelligent ape than ever when he was in evening dress.

"Well, here I am," she said.

Her coolness seemed to confuse him, and he began to ask her how she liked his rooms, to say that he had been lucky enough to take them on as they stood from a man called Prescott who had killed himself here. One had the impression that he had bought the furniture for a song on account of the unpleasant associations with a suicide.

"I'm rather tired of values," said Dorothy. "Clarehaven has been valuing the flat at Halfmoon Street."

"Will you have something to drink?"

"Do you think that I require stimulating? Thanks, I don't."

It was curious that this man, who in Rhodes had appeared so sinister and powerful and almost irresistible, should here in this decorous room with only a background of good-breeding appear fussy and ineffective.

"But let me recommend you to have a drink," Dorothy laughed. "For, now that you've got me, you're as awkward as a baboon with a porcelain teacup."

Her instinct told her that she must dispel this atmosphere of embarrassment unless she wanted to be bowed out of the chambers as from those of a money-lender who had been compelled most respectfully and without offense to refuse a loan to her ladyship. The allusion to the baboon was sufficient. The decorum of Albany was shattered and Houston held her in his arms.

At that moment the servant tapped at the door and announced that Lord Clarehaven was in the anteroom; before Houston could hustle his quaking servant outside and lock the door Tony appeared in the entrance, a riding-crop in his hands.

"My God! you rascal," he was saying, "I've just found out all about you. I've been fooled by you and that scoundrel of a trainer you recommended. I've been ... That trial.... I've seen.... I've understood ... you blackguard!" Without noticing Dorothy he had forced Houston across a chair and was thumping him with the crop. "Yes, I've heard all about you.... Of course people tell me afterward ... damned cowards.... You damned sneaking hound ... I.D.B.... hound.., you dog ... and there's nothing to be done because you were too clever ... curse you ... but I'll have you booted off every racecourse in England...."

By this time he had beaten Houston insensible, and, looking up, perceived his wife.

"Tony," she cried, "you really are rather an old darling."

"What are you doing here?" he panted.

"I was pleading for Clare."

"You oughtn't to have done that," he said, roughly. "You might get yourself talked about, don't you know. Come along. It's rather lucky I blew in. I met old Cobbett, who talked to me like a father. Too late, of course, and nothing can be done. Besides.... However, come along. As you're dressed we might see the last act."

"We've seen that already," said Dorothy. So brilliant and gay was she that Tony forgot about everything. So did she, and they walked home arm in arm along the deserted streets of Mayfair like lovers.

The scene in Albany was not made public property; Houston came to himself in time to prevent that. Dorothy accepted Tony's interruption as a sign that fortune did not intend her to preserve Clare, and she now watched almost with equanimity the fabric of a great family crumble daily to irreparable ruin. Then Full Moon, the winner of the Guineas, scratched ignominiously for the Derby, won the Grand Prix in a canter, and the following letter from the Earl of Stilton, K.G., appeared in the Times:

SIR,—In the interests of our national sport, which all Englishmen rightly regard as our most cherished possession, I call upon Lord Clarehaven to give a public explanation of his recent behavior. The facts are probably only too painfully known to many of your readers. In May Lord Clarehaven's horse, Full Moon, won the Two Thousand Guineas; two years ago his horse Moonbeam won the same race. Moonbeam ran fourth in the Derby and was transferred to the same stable as the winner, Chimpanzee. This horse, owned by Mr. Lionel Houston, was scratched for the St. Leger, and the race was won by Moonbeam. This was explicable; but when two years later another of Lord Clarehaven's horses wins the Two Thousand Guineas and finds his stable companion preferred to him to carry Lord Clarehaven's colors in the Derby, when, furthermore, the chosen filly runs like a plater, and when this morning we read that Full Moon, now in the ownership of Mr. Lionel Houston, has won the Grand Prix in a canter at a price which the totalizator puts at sixty-three to one, a proof that nobody in Paris considered the chances of this animal, the public may, perhaps, demand what it all means. They will ask still more when I inform them that I have absolute authority for saying that this horse was heavily backed in England, which proves that by some his chance was considered excellent. I have no wish to accuse his lordship of having deliberately deceived the public for his own advantage; but I do accuse him of folly that can only be characterized as criminal. Perhaps he has been the victim of his friend and of his trainer; at any rate, if his lordship was deceived about the chance of Vanity Girl, and if it is true that the defeat of Vanity Girl in the Derby represented to his lordship a loss of thousands of pounds in bets, he should make this clear. In that case I have no hesitation in accusing Mr. Lionel Houston, formerly known as Leopold Hausberg, of having deliberately conspired with the Starkey Lodge trainer to perpetrate a fraud not only upon their friend and patron, but also upon the public.

I have the honor to be, sir,

Your obedient servant, STILTON.

Although Lord Stilton's letter hit the nail on the head, Tony was so furious at being called a fool in public that he sent the following letter to the paper:

SIR,—If Lord Stilton had not been my father's friend and a much older man than myself, I would pull his nose for the impudent letter he has written about me. The running of my filly in the Derby is an instance of the uncertainty of fortune, by which I am the greatest loser. I was convinced by a trial which I saw with my own eyes between Full Moon and Vanity Girl that the former did not stand a chance against the filly. It was I who insisted upon scratching him for the Derby so that the public might be spared the unpleasant doubt that always exists when an owner runs two horses in the same race. I sold the colt shortly after this trial to Mr. Houston, because I wished to put every halfpenny I could raise upon Vanity Girl. When I say that Mr. Houston is so little a friend of mine that I was unfortunately compelled to horsewhip him in his rooms on the day after the Derby, it will be understood even by Lord Stilton that there can be no possible suggestion of any collusion between myself and Mr. Houston. I do not know if Lord Stilton seriously means to insinuate that I have benefited by Full Moon's victory in the Grand Prix. If he does, the insinuation is cowardly and unjust. If Lord Stilton is so much concerned for the future of English sport, let him think twice before he hits a man who is down. Full Moon did not carry a halfpenny of my money.

I am, sir, etc., CLAREHAVEN.

This letter, with the reference to Lord Stilton's nose excised by a judicious editor, rehabilitated Tony in the eyes of the public and earned him a gracious apology from Lord Stilton, who also had to apologize much less graciously to Houston and Starkey, being threatened with legal proceedings unless he did so. Had there been the least chance of substantiating the ugly rumors, both earls might have gone to law; unfortunately legal advice said that neither of them stood a chance with the astute pair, and public opinion contented itself with compassion for the gallant young nobleman who had been thus victimized.

It may have been the victory of Full Moon in the Grand Prix with its suggestion of what might have been, or it may have been only the invincible optimism of the gambler, that started Tony off again upon his vice. When by the middle of July he and Dorothy found themselves with the rent of the flat paid up to Michaelmas, with enough furniture and enough clothes for present needs and with £250 in ready money, he told Dorothy that their only chance was for him to make money at cards. It was in vain that she argued with him; he seemed to have learned nothing from this disastrous summer, and with £100 in his pocket he went out one night, to return at six o'clock the next morning with £1,000.

"My luck's in again," he declared, "and I've got a thundering good system. You shall come with me every night, and I will give you two hundred pounds, which I must not exceed. Nothing that I say must induce you to give me another halfpenny. If I lose the two hundred pounds I must go away. It'll be all right, you'll see. I'm playing at Arrowsmith's place in Albemarle Street. Arrowsmith himself has promised not to advance me anything above two hundred pounds, so it'll be all right."

Dorothy begged him to be satisfied with the £1,000; but it was useless, and the following night she accompanied him. He won another £1,000, and when they had walked back under a primrose morning sky to Halfmoon Street Tony was so elated that he handed over all his winnings to Dorothy. The next night he lost the stipulated £200, but he came away still optimistic.

"I'm not going to touch that two thousand" he assured her. "I've got fifty left of my own, and one always wins when one's down to nothing; but on no account are you to offer me a halfpenny from your money. It's absolutely essential that you should bank everything I make."

The next evening Tony took the keeper of the hell aside and told him that he was to be sure not to let him exceed £50; if he should lose that, Arrowsmith was not to accept his I.O.U. and on no condition to allow him to go on. They were playing chemin de fer and Tony's luck had been poor; when his turn came to take the bank and he was stretching out his hand for the box of cards Arrowsmith told him he had already reached his limit.

"Oh, that's all right, Arrowsmith. I only meant that to count if I'd already had a bank."

"Excuse me, Lord Clarehaven, but I never go back on my word. The agreement we came to was...."

"That's all right," Tony interrupted, impatiently. "Dorothy, lend me some money."

"No, no. You made a promise, and really you must stick to it."

"Dash it! I haven't had a single bank this evening."

"You should have thought of that before."

"But, my dear girl, our agreement was that I shouldn't lose more than two hundred pounds at a sitting. I've only lost fifty pounds to-night."

"If I lend you any more," she said, "I must break into the two thousand pounds, which you told me I was not to do on any account."

The other players, with heavy, doll-like faces, sat round the table, waiting until the argument stopped and the game could be resumed. The keeper of the hell was firm; so was Dorothy; and Clarehaven had to yield his turn to his neighbor.

"I'll just stay and watch the play for a bit," he said. "It's only three o'clock." He took a banana from the sideboard and sat down behind the player who held the bank.

"No, no, come away," Dorothy begged him. "What is the good of tormenting yourself by watching other people play when you can't play yourself?"

"Damn it, Dorothy," he exclaimed, turning round angrily. "I wish to God I'd never brought you here. You always interfere with everything I want to do."

It happened that the bank which Tony had missed won steadily, and while the heavy-jowled man who held it raked in money from everybody, Tony watched him like a dog that watches his master eating. At last the bank was finished, and with a heavy sigh of satisfaction the owner of it passed on the box to his neighbor.

"How much did you make?" asked Tony, enviously.

"About two thousand five hundred. I'm not sure. I never count my winnings."

Tears of rage stood in Tony's eyes.

"God! Do you see what you've done for me by your confounded obstinacy?" he exclaimed to his wife.

All the way home he raged at her, and when they were in the flat he demanded that she should give him back all his £2,000.

"So you've reached the point," she said, bitterly, "when not even promises count?"

"If you don't give it back to me," Tony vowed, "I'll sell up the whole flat. Damn it, I'll even sell my boots," he swore, as he tripped over some outposts for which there was no place in the line that extended along the wall of his dressing-room.

Dorothy thought of that lunch-party in Christ Church and of the first time she had beheld those boots. She remembered that then she had beheld in them a symbol of boundless wealth. Now they represented a few shillings in a gambler's pocket. And actually next morning, in order to show that he had been serious the night before, Tony summoned two buyers of old clothes to make an offer for them.

"Don't be so childish," Dorothy exclaimed. "You can't sell your boots! Aren't you going down to camp this year?"

"To camp?" he echoed. "How the deuce do you think I'm going to camp without a halfpenny? No, my dear girl, a week ago I wrote to resign my commission in the N.D.D. You might make a slight effort to realize that we are paupers. And if you won't let me have any of that two thousand pounds we shall remain paupers."

At that moment a telegram was handed in:

All officers of North Devon Dragoons to report at depot immediately.

"Hasn't that fool of an adjutant got my letter?" Tony exclaimed.

Another telegram arrived:

Thought under circumstances you would want to cancel letter holding it till I see you.