The Vanity Girl

by Compton MacKenzie

III

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 considerable sum 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 unlucky and 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 to several 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 the least 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 ask me, 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. The nearest 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, after she 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 for the 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 and calling 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're not 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 be more 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's sleeve, 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 you wish 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 Henry Tufton. "But of course one must remember 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 upon his 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.

"Yes, mortgage Clare," he repeated, savagely.

It was only the noise of the broken glass that kept her from fainting; weakly she pointed at the mirror and with a wavering smile upon her usually firm lips she whispered something about seven years of bad luck.

"Well, it's nothing to laugh about," said Tony.

"I wasn't laughing. Oh, Tony, you can't lose Clare; you mustn't."

"Oh well, I mayn't lose it. I may have some luck late in the season. But my other horses have let me down badly so far."

"You won't go on betting?"

"How else am I to get back what I've lost? I can't make sixty thousand pounds by selling papers!"

"Oh, but you...." She put her hand up to her forehead and sank into one of those comfortable chairs upholstered in red leather. "How did Cobbett explain Moonbeam's defeat?" She felt that, however agonizing, she must have the tale of the race to give her an illusion of action, and to silence these bells that were ringing in her brain: "Clare! Clare! Clare!"

"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.