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."

"Oh!" cried Gay, and caught her breath, then leaning forward, said almost in a whisper: "I'm just dying to do it again. I've been _possessed_ with the idea ever since you told me a lady drove for you in Vienna!"

He laughed.

"Why not?" he said again, in that way of his that no one else had, and which made impossibilities not only possible, but easy. "I'll take you down to Inigo any day you like after to-morrow, and you shall drive one horse, and I drive another--"

Gay sat erect, quivering with eagerness.

"The Professor mustn't know--or Lossie," she said. "I'll get my friends at Flytton to ask me down on Wednesday, and tell Frank so--it's awful being so deceitful, isn't it?" she added deprecatingly.

"You'll be doing no harm," said Rensslaer, getting up to go, for he was at that time a very busy man--at a Hackney Show one day, in Paris the next, all his arrangements to make for Olympia. Yet like most busy men he was never in a hurry, and such an economist in time, that he literally made it where lazy people could find none, and also do those kindnesses that the idle do not.

The Professor rather bristled at the idea of Flytton, but fortunately Lossie did not call that day, so Gay escaped in good time the following morning, and on arriving at the course found Rensslaer there before her, superintending the harnessing by Tugwood of two horses to two speed wagons.

One horse was "Marvellous" (record 2.8½), the other a young one bred in Austria, which was being prepared for the Austrian Derby.

Gay was put in behind Marvellous, and after the hand-loops on the reins were adjusted the right length for her, she was told to jog once round the wrong way of the track, and then turn and stand at the starting-post.

She found the mare had a perfect mouth, but kept giving little twitches with her nose to get her head free, and when the girl stopped as directed, the American came up, and let down the mare's check-rein.

"The race you are supposed to be driving, is the usual English mile and a half handicap heat," he said; "yours is the scratch horse, consequently you will start from here, and go three times round the track, the full mile and a half."

Gay nodded.

"My horse," continued Rensslaer, "is reckoned to be the limit horse. I will start 210 yards in front of you. Handicapping is supposed to be with the idea your horse can trot the mile and a half, at the rate of 2 minutes 30 seconds for the mile, the mile and a half therefore, in 3 minutes 45 seconds. Every ten yards means, roughly, one second, so my horse being put 210 yards in front of you, means that he is supposed to be 21 seconds slower than yours for a mile and a half, that is to say, he has to trot at the rate of a mile in 2 minutes 44 seconds, to make a dead heat of it with you."

Gay nodded again comprehendingly, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

"You must drive so as to gradually overtake me," went on Rensslaer, "but not starting too fast, or you would pump your mare, if she could really only trot a 2.30 gait, and you must not overtake me till you get into the back stretch the third time. I have given you a very fast mare, so as to make you judge speed, and also so as to make it easier for you to be sure of overtaking me, as I intend to drive strictly at no faster speed than 2.44 for the mile."

"And fast enough, too," thought Gay, her heart beating a little too quickly for comfort.

"Carry this watch in your left palm, slipping the strap over your hand," said Rensslaer, "so that you can see what speed you are going. Try and drive the quarter miles in 37½ seconds till you come up with me, which should be, if you drive to this time, thirty yards from the winning post."

He then hooked up Marvellous' check-rein, and told Gay to walk the mare back from her starting-post twenty yards, turn back again, and so on till she saw him at his mark, and then stand still at her mark.

Tugwood stepped into the centre of the grass plot, and held a pistol in the air. The moment Marvellous saw his arm raised (she had been thoroughly schooled to this), she fixed her eyes and ears in his direction, and commenced to tremble slightly.

As the smoke came from the pistol, before Gay could hear the report, Marvellous jumped forward with a jerk that nearly threw her out backwards, and landed on a square trot. She was so much stretched out that she seemed two inches lower than when standing, and was sending the earth in quick hoof-fulls on to Gay's chest. It was lucky, the girl thought, her eyes were protected by goggles.

As soon as she had got over her surprise, Gay found she was gaining very rapidly on her teacher, and close to the first quarter pole. Glancing hurriedly at her watch, she found, to her horror, that the quarter was done in 35 seconds, a 2.20 gait, so she said, "Hoo, girl," and took a steadying pull at the mare, who came back to her at once, although by the way she shook her head, she did not seem to like it.

As Gay drove, she thought that, as she had made up 2½ seconds too much in the first quarter, she should drive the next in 40 seconds to make the proper average, but when she got to the second quarter mile she found she had overdone it, and Rensslaer was sailing away a full half of the track in front of her.

She therefore determined to rely on her own judgment of how fast she should gain on him, and gave a gentle click to Marvellous, who instantly lowered her head, and began to strike out, gaining rapidly on Rensslaer; as she came into the back stretch the third time she was just behind him.

Round the last turn she drew up to him on the outside, and, in spite of the much greater distance her mare had to go in turning, held her place, and passed him just as they came into the straight. The mare shot out of herself, and drew so rapidly clear of Rensslaer that Gay thought she would make a close finish of it, and took back her mare sharply. This was a fatal mistake, as Rensslaer shot up alongside, and before she could set her mare going again, he had won by a head, in 3.45½.

She looked so taken aback that he controlled a smile as he told her not to be disappointed, as it would be a good lesson to her, never to slacken speed enough to let herself be caught in that way, but he also told her that it was bad tactics to be alongside another horse at the turns, as it takes so much more out of your horse.

Here ended Gay's first Trotting lesson at the hands of a great expert, and if she had been too ignorant, too excited even, to appreciate the marked difference between "Marvellous" and the Trotters owned by Mackrell and herself, she had yet realised that this last experience of driving herself was something very different to that first essay in which Rensslaer had surprised her. For many a night after, she would wake up, throbbing with excitement, hoping that she would find her dream, in which she re-lived those glorious moments in a real race, a fact.

"Oh! if I only dared!" she thought, but the plain truth was that she did not dare. There was the Professor--the world--and--yes--_Chris_ ... though she scarcely owned it to herself, Carlton's opinion did not count.