"Is it true?" Rada's lips were compressed together; she was drawing long deep breaths.
He went on mumbling. "We must live. I had debts. They had to be paid somehow. A thousand pounds——"
"So it is true. You've sold Castor for a thousand pounds! You pretended that you were doing it with my permission. Oh father! oh father!"
Her mood changed with its usual lightning velocity. Her eyes were brimming over with tears. Her father was the one man with whom she always sought to hold her temper in sway. It was the instinct of a lifetime. Pitiful, degrading object as he was, long ago as she had given up all hope of effecting any reformation in him, of making him, at least, clean, and manly, and wholesome, he was yet her father, and she had lived with him ever since the death of her mother when she was little more than a child. His deterioration had been gradual; she had fought and struggled against it. She had taken upon herself responsibilities unsuited to a girl of her age, but all her efforts had been in vain. She despised the degraded old man, and that because she saw him with no prejudiced eyes, she saw him for what he was, but at the same time—he was her father.
Regardless of his protests she began to clear away the bottles from the table; she did so by force of habit, though she knew quite well that as soon as her back was turned he would be after them again; there had been times, however, when he had not allowed her to exercise even this authority, when he had stormed in violent fashion, when he had even struck her. On this occasion, however, he ventured nothing more than a feeble protest, lolling back in his chair, smiling foolishly.
"A thousand pounds, my dear, think of it!" he muttered with a drunken chuckle, "think of it! Needs must when the devil drives, you know, and he's been driving at me, goading at me—oh, yes! an ugly devil, and a lot of little imps besides. They wanted gold, and they've got it. But we're going to make our fortunes," he went on, in maddening sing-song monotone, "for there's enough left to back our luck at Sandown and Ascot. That's what I had in mind, my dear. A quick fortune—cash in hand in a week or so—not to wait a whole year for the Derby, and then perhaps come down. There's Pollux, remember—old Rory's Pollux." His head lolled over to one side, and he spoke sleepily. "Besides, young Clithero will give you the colt back when he knows the truth—it's ten to one on that. It'll be all right for you, my dear, and you needn't worry about me."
"Listen to me, father," said Rada, biting her lip to restrain an outburst of anger and disgust at the meanness, the vileness of the whole thing. Her father had calculated upon Mostyn Clithero giving her back her horse when he found out how he had been defrauded. He did not mind what might be thought of himself—he had had his thousand pounds. She dashed her tears away, and stood up by the cupboard before which she had been stooping, attempting to hide the bottles away. "Listen to me," she went on, "try to understand me if you can. Castor was my horse. You gave him to me when he was foaled. Now he has a big chance for the Derby. He was entered in my name. I was his registered proprietor—he was to be ridden in my colours. All my dreams were of Castor; I would sit building castles in the air by the hour together. It brought colour into my life and made me glad to live. You don't know what it has been to me; you cannot understand how I delighted in watching Castor at his gallops, whispering to myself, 'The horse is mine—mine—and in two years' time—in eighteen months' time—in fifteen months' time—I shall watch my horse winning the big race!'—that's how I used to go on; I counted the months, the days, even the hours. All my pride was centred in Castor; and you have sold him—sold him for a thousand pounds!"
Her voice quivered and shook. She was speaking with an intensity of feeling unusual to her. "I watched the little colt as he grew up," she went on, and her tone was low and plaintive now. "I fed him with my own hand, just as I feed Bess, and he got to know and to love me. I gloried over him as I saw him growing handsomer and stronger—growing into what I had expected he would. I knew he would win the Derby for me, every instinct I have told me so. And do you know, father"—she drew a little closer to the old man's chair, but she was not looking at him, she was absorbed in the train of her own thoughts—"it was not only pride that possessed me; Castor was going to make our fortune for us—I felt that, too—and the money would be mine, mine to do with as I wished. I used to sit and dream of the way I should spend that money. We were going to leave this ugly cottage, and have everything nice and pretty about us; we were going to start a new life altogether." Poor Rada! It was such a vain, such a hopeless dream! for, as far as her father was concerned at least, any new life was out of the question.
She caught her breath, and went on speaking, more to herself than to him, quite heedless of the fact that she received no answer. "Oh! it would have been my money—mine, just as Castor was my horse. If you knew, if you could guess, how I have built upon this! But now there is to be no more dreaming for me: the gold has been fairy gold, it has slipped through my fingers like so many dead leaves. You have taken Castor from me—you have sold him for a thousand pounds! And now what is to be done?"
She choked down her sobs, clenched her little fists with characteristic energy, vaguely conscious of the futility of her emotional outburst, and her natural energy of disposition once more coming to the fore, she took a quick step towards her father. "What is to be done?" she repeated.