“But I am serious. To-morrow night it is I that will bring you the Sydney Cup.”
“We shall see, we shall see,” laughed Bertha, incredulously. “It is nearly to-morrow now, and closing time. So good-night to you.”
“Decidedly,” said Bertha, as she hurried, tired, to bed, “to-morrow I bid fair to own the Sydney Cup. Do I care who wins—the Squatter, Alec, or Huey Gosper? Do I care?” And she paused as she asked herself the question again. “No, I don’t care a silver sixpence! What good will the money do them? It will go as it came. And if some win others lose, and all the pleasure of the one must be paid by the pains of the many. Decidedly, old Pro is right; it is a dirty business, this horse-racing, as bad for a man as a bar is for a woman, and I’m glad I’m going to leave it all. And to think of Ruby and Florrie talking of me like that! It shows what they are, and what I should come to, no doubt, if I stopped here. Oh, why can we not live honestly and comfortably in this world without having to meet such a lot of horrid people?”
So she rambled in her thoughts till sleep came to rest her weariness. And over the silent city no sound could be heard but the hasty rumble of some night hansom as it sped over wood-blocked roads, laden with midnight travellers.
CHAPTER XIX
THE SYDNEY CUP
Cup Day was one of unbroken sunshine and brightness, one of those days, so frequent in Sydney, when only to breathe and respire is a pleasure and a joy.
At an early hour the trams and ’buses were loaded with sightseers bound for Randwick. A stranger might regret, at the sight of these orderly and well-dressed groups, the absence of that abandon and camaraderie between rich and poor that is so distinctive of a great racing carnival in conservative England.
For all outward sign to the contrary, this demure throng might be going to attend a prayer-meeting; not even a “drunk” to relieve their intense respectability. At Randwick itself, the same decorum. The spieler and the sharper were there, it is true, but in subdued, unpoetic form—the fear of the “copman” in their eyes and movements. Law and Order presided over all. Now, Law and Order, however admirable in themselves as abstract entities, are, for the being overflowing with pent-up animal spirits, profoundly dull.
* * * * *
In the vast crowd that filled the grandstand it would have been difficult to detect Huey Gosper; but there he was in a sheltered corner, quiet, sardonic, and watchful of all.