[CHAPTER III]
Mrs. Vanderstein and Barbara hurried over their dinner and were early in their places in Covent Garden. Mrs. Vanderstein always arrived before the orchestra had tuned up. She had, like many of her race, a great appreciation of music and did not like to miss a bar of the overture, even though she had already heard the opera that was being given so often that she knew it by heart.
She felt very much in a mood to enjoy herself that evening, and till the first act was over leant back in her chair with half-closed eyes, hardly moving at all, and absolutely absorbed in listening to the wonderful singers who were that night interpreting Puccini’s melodious work. Even the Royal box opposite barely distracted her attention for more than a few moments.
Barbara Turner was not musical, but she, too, was always pleased to go to the opera. She liked the sensation of luxury, which enveloped her there even more than elsewhere; she liked the feeling that the entertainment offered them was costing a huge amount of money, and therefore could only be witnessed by a privileged few. Although she laughed at Mrs. Vanderstein’s passion for Royalty, she shared her simple satisfaction in the knowledge that the box in which they were now sitting was sandwiched between that occupied by the Duke of Mellinborough on their left, and the one tenanted by Sir Ian Fyves, the sporting Scotch millionaire.
Barbara rejoiced in the exclusiveness obtainable by the rich, therein differing from some other people who depreciate the advantages of wealth on the grounds that the largest fortunes may be made and handled by the most vulgar, and that banking accounts are not in these days the exclusive property of the refined, or even of the intellectual.
Mrs. Vanderstein made no secret of the benefit to her health derived from hours spent in the closest proximity to the aristocracy, the air inhaled by a duchess being separated from that which filled her own lungs merely by the thinnest of partitions. She invariably occupied the chair on the left-hand side of the box, so that the space between her and her unseen neighbours might be thought of in terms of inches; and it cannot be denied that Barbara herself relished the thought of the company of the great who surrounded her, heedless though they might be of the pleasure they were providing. It was not really to be expected, besides, that the nearness of Sir Ian Fyves, whose horse had already so easily won the Derby the year before, and who was again the lucky owner of the favourite for the coming contest, should leave unmoved the daughter of Bill Turner, the trainer.
All Barbara’s childhood had been passed at Newmarket, and the talk of the racing men with whom her father associated had been the first to fall on her infantile ears. The horses in his charge had grown to be her chief interest in life, as they were that of every one she was brought in contact with; and at the age of ten she knew as much about them—their points, prowess, value, and chances—as any stable boy on the place. On a small but truculent pony she followed her father and his friends to the heath in the early mornings and watched the morning gallops with a critical eye; with the same edifying companions she pottered about the stableyard during most of the rest of the day, and only when bed-time came—and it came at eight o’clock, for on that one point her father was firm—was she reluctantly torn away.
All Mr. Vanderstein’s horses were trained by her father, and many a time the childish eyes followed them to victory.