CHAPTER XII
RENSSLAER PACE MACKRELL
It was curious how that opportunity never arrived, and Carlton came to regret very heartily the introduction that had resulted in the rapid installation of Rensslaer as a friend of Gay's.
Here was a man who had forgotten all that Carlton ever knew about Trotting, entirely superseding him as mentor to Gay, and enjoying all those sweets of her society that the lover had promised himself when she took up the sport, yet he could hardly be said to feel jealous, for love seemed the last thing likely to occupy Rensslaer's mind, and women, as women, held not the slightest attraction for him.
The two men had nothing in common, were almost antipathetic even, for Rensslaer was always doing things, Mackrell only hovering on the brink; even Chris, enthusiastic, dare-devil, lovable, had a definite aim and pursued it, but Mackrell unhappily lacked the lash of need, the spur of ambition, and had been gradually degenerating into an idle, cynical, self-centred egoist when he met Gay, and to obtain her became the one object and passion of his life.
Gay, on her part, felt a lively gratitude to him for having introduced her to Rensslaer; the man was so intensely interesting, and so completely unconscious of it, that he was a constant surprise to her, and she never knew a dull moment in his company. With animals he was perfectly charming, as Gay quickly discovered, and when one day she asked him if he thought there would be horses in Heaven, he replied with perfect simplicity that he was sure of it, as cats would be there.
Gay had rather demurred to this, as she liked dogs better, but the Connaught Square cat being slung round his neck at that moment, she swallowed the idea at a gulp, and was delighted to find that if he had deeply studied the subject of religion, he yet held a very definite belief in a future state, though possibly he believed it to be a more workaday one than she did. It was to be a world very much like this one, in which we continue the work we have done here, only under better conditions, with a knowledge of our past mistakes to profit by—and such animals as were the friends of man were to be there; of horses, dogs, and cats he felt certain—especially cats, as he had already told Gay.
If it was in sport that he excelled, and there Gay was with him heart and soul, their friendship had its serious side also. It was, indeed, through accidentally taking up a book lent to her, that the Professor afterwards discovered the "Trotting man," as he called him, to be one of the finest classical scholars in the world, a good mathematician, and owner of one of the finest libraries of rare editions extant, and Gay declared she could not get in a word edgeways when the two men met, and discussed learned scientific problems.
The great disparity in their age enabled her to say to him, what she never would have done to either of the younger men, and one day she confided to him her intense desire to drive herself in a Trotting match—she knew it was wicked and quite impossible, but she had never longed for anything so much in her life!
She blushed vehemently as she said it, and Rensslaer smiled—nothing could be kinder, more humorous, than that smile.
"I've always meant to own up, Miss Gay," he said, "but I saw you that time you took a trial spin at Inigo Court—and uncommonly well you did it, too, for a beginner."