Chapter XIV: A Beautiful Case

"It was a beautiful case," said the Professor, looking rapturously at Gay through his glasses, and he fired off a lot of technical terms that she did not in the least understand, but inwardly shuddered at, for it was Chris's flesh and bones of which he was speaking, and he wound up by telling her of the cemetery so conveniently placed for jockeys under the hill at Epsom.

"When are you going to see him again?" inquired Gay, sitting down to hide a sudden faintness.

"I have placed him in charge of an excellent man at Epsom," said the Professor in the superior way in which one doctor speaks of another, "but I shall overlook him, of course."

"Take me when you go," pleaded Gay. "I could speak to Chris through the door, you know, and it might buck him up."

"More slang," said the Professor resignedly. "And--ah--Epsom Downs is not _quite_ the place for a young lady, my dear--the air is so strong and keen, it nearly takes your head off--" And indeed he looked more alive than he had done any time these ten years.

"I wonder if his mother knows," she said, and her voice trembled. We seldom weep at things we _feel_, it is in the attempt to put them into words that we break down, and quite unexpectedly a tear rolled down her cheek.

A tear with Gay was so unprecedented an occurrence, that the Professor realised the severe nervous strain the girl had passed through, and that had kept her sleepless during the past night, but before he could make up his mind to try and comfort her, Gay had vanished, blaming herself for her lack of pluck.

After all, Chris lived, and that was everything; but oh! she hated sport--hated anything to do with horses. She had taken Chris's steeple-chasing more or less light-heartedly till the accident to which she had been an eye-witness, she had only _heard_ of the others--become used to his disappearances while being patched up. But now she knew, in one lightning flash, that she could not bear to live with the constant dread before her of his being killed, or dragging out a maimed existence, and with her usual decision of character, came to the conclusion that Chris would have to choose between racing and herself.

She fell to wondering if Mrs. Summers would be offended if she sent down by the Professor some of her famous strong mock turtle soup, and she hoped his beef tea would be made properly, one part beef, one mutton, one veal. She was still thinking about it when her cousin walked in, unannounced, of course, as most undesirable things are.

"So Chris is going on all right," said Lossie, thus proving that she had already looked up the Professor. "Awful good sort, isn't he?" she added, in a tone of pretended warmth, for as she wanted Carlton Mackrell for herself, she never missed a chance of pointing out Chris's charms to Gay.

Gay nodded, and, in an effort to calm herself, took up a bit of needlework, and began to plant delicate, intricate stitches. It was significant, perhaps, that no one ever saw Lossie with a needle in her hand, and as she had no maid, how she got mended was a mystery.

"You look awfully bad," said Lossie frankly. "But if you feel like that, why not marry Chris Hannen when he gets up, and have done with it? Steeplechasing doesn't begin again till the autumn, and you may as well be his wife as his widow."

Gay paled. Lossie had brutally enough hit the right nail on the head. It was because she could not bear to own Chris, then lose him, that she must keep him at arm's length--be his comrade rather than his wife, which was by no means what Chris wanted!

"How is Aunt Lavinia?" she said, abruptly changing the conversation.

"Just as idiotic as ever. Sent five pounds to Barnardo's Homes yesterday, and refused to pay my hat bill."

Gay looked disgusted, knowing that the sweet lady's life was one long struggle to balance Lossie's dressmaking bills and her own private charities, the result being that she had not a frock or bonnet good enough to play chaperon in, so that Lossie was dependent on her friends and Gay to take her about.

"That reminds me," said Gay, "I haven't sent my contribution yet," and she rose and went to her writing-table, where she jotted down a note.

"As to my dressmaker," said Lossie, "she's going to summon me. It's all these hateful seasons of the year--as soon as one is straight for spring, it's summer, then winter in the middle of _that_--and so on. Why can't we live in a place where the same sort of clothes do all the year round?"

"That blue frock you wore at the ball must have been very expensive," said Gay hesitatingly; "the dear aunt really does her best, you know."

"Oh, it's easy for you to talk," cried Lossie spitefully. "One-half of the feminine world is a pincushion, for the other rich and happy half to stick pins in, and I don't pretend to be like Aunt Lavinia, who would rather be the pincushion than the pins!"

"I'm sure," said Gay wearily, too unhappy to be indignant, "_I_ never stuck any pins in you or anybody else."

"Well, no," admitted Lossie, who had an excellent reason for getting Gay into a good temper, "_you_ don't, but every woman is given two chances of happiness in life, a rich father, or an adequate husband--or both--but as a matter of fact, the double event seldom comes off--indeed, far more women are ruined by their fathers than their husbands. _Cherchez la femme_ indeed! Oh, it's easy enough for a girl to be gay, to be happy, if she's rich--if men 'don't go after the money,' they don't refuse to go where the money is!"

Gay coloured. She knew well enough that her fortune counted for nothing in the eyes of at least two men towards her--Chris couldn't and wouldn't give up trying to win her because she had more money than he had, and Carlton was so rich, that if he ever cast it a thought, it was merely as private pocket-money with which to buy chiffons and fal-lals.

"How much will your dressmaker take off her account?" she said, for she always preferred coming to the point, to beating about the bush, and she was used to these periodical attacks on her pocket.

"Thirty pounds would do. Then I could order something for--"

"Don't," said Gay, who had drawn out her cheque-book, and begun to write. "Lossie," she said half sadly, as she came forward, and handed her cousin a slip of pink paper, "why do you bother so much about the outside of you? Be rice, be natural, be _kind_; don't talk scandal--men _hate_ it--" She paused and blushed; unconsciously she was trying to teach Lossie those pretty manners and ways of her own that men cherish so deeply, and to which their homage, so long forgotten among brusque women, inevitably sprang.

"I can't be a dear little charmer like you, Gay, if you mean that," said Lossie, as she put the cheque away, and warmly thanked its giver, though after all it was no more than her right. Those who _had_, ought to share with those who had not, and our Labour Members' vigorous contention that people who have money, should be forced to provide for those who have spent theirs, also for those who can't and won't work, expressed her opinion exactly.

And yet the cheque did not make Lossie as happy as usual. In sudden flashes, now and then, she realised her position--saw over. Beauty she had, and brains, but up to now, and she was twenty-seven, they had brought her little good. She had received no really good offers, but it never seemed to strike her that her extreme expensiveness in dress and tastes had a good deal to do with it, and her absorbing (and patent) passion for Mackrell still more. To be sure there was that ridiculous George Conant, at present the favourite nephew and heir of the enormously rich Mrs. Elkins, but as the old lady made a new will every three months or so, and he might do something specially idiotic to annoy her, it would be madness to bet on _that_ chance.

Poor Frank would be safe, and less trouble--anyway, she had no intention of drifting into that grey life in which one is first with nobody, or worse still (for Aunt Lavinia's pension died with her), forming one of that hopeless army of incapables that is always "looking for something," and helpless, unbraced, expects a heaven-born post to fit it, not that it should learn to fit itself for a post.

Lossie sighed impatiently, and glanced across at Gay, who sat, needlework in hand, in the charming room that was feminine like herself, and fresh and sweet, with nothing whatever about her to suggest the Trotting or Race-course, and, as often before, she tried to analyse the irresistible charm of her cousin.

"A good sort" (from the women), "a _darned_ good sort" (from the men), was the invariable verdict passed upon her, and even taking up vulgar Trotting, and doing things men hate their women to do, had not affected her popularity. "The first time you see Gay Lawless you'll hardly think her good-looking, the second you'll fall in love with her, and the third you'll ask her to marry you!" Lossie had once heard one man tell another--but as to _beauty_! It was true that Gay's eyes had a curious power of refraction, so that shades of feeling chased each other over them like shadows on a clear pool, and her skin had the clear transparency that goes with hair that not so long ago, as Gay confidentially told her men friends, was "carrots," though the laugh with which she said it, showing the loveliest little white teeth in the world, usually inclined the person addressed to a quite contrary opinion. But compared with what Lossie found in her own mirror, Gay had no good looks at all.

"I half expected Mr. Rensslaer," said Gay, glancing at the clock.

"He's not a beauty," said Lossie, with some irrelevance, but he was no favourite of hers, and, on his part, he had never found reason to alter his summing up of her on the first occasion they had met.

"His kind face is more distinguished than any man's I know," cried Gay with spirit. "I learn more from him in five minutes, than all the stupid people I've ever known put together!"

"Including Chris?" said Lossie drily.

"Including Chris."

"Then the sooner you make yourself happy with this pattern of all the perfections, including a few millions, the better," said Lossie, who did not care who Gay married, so long as it was not Carlton.

Gay laughed. "Wasn't it Nathaniel Hawthorn who said that 'to have wealth beyond a certain point, is only to undertake the labour of living the lives of ten or a thousand men as well as your own?' And besides--can't you see, but of course you can't, that a man like that must have had his own ideal, his own romance, ages before he ever saw silly little me? There's a story in his life, and no mean one, I'll wager."

"Really," said Lossie, "I don't think your lovers are much comfort to you. One lets you in for a disreputable sport, another breaks your heart by half-killing himself, and the third string to your bow isn't in the very least in love with you!"

At that moment the door opened, and Rensslaer came in.

"So Mr. Hannen is going on all right," he said in a tone of great pleasure as he shook hands with Gay, and Lossie, with a vague wave of her hand, disappeared.

"Yes--thank God!"

"Nice boy," said Rensslaer, as he sat down opposite Gay, and she gave him a few details of Chris's case. There were dark rings round her eyes--she looked really ill, and Rensslaer guessed that if Chris's accident had shaken her into a vivid realisation of her love for him, it had only the more convinced her that to see his life in almost daily jeopardy for five months out of the year, would be more than she could bear, and that this was the real parting of their ways.

"Couldn't you persuade him to give it up?" he said abruptly; it was not the first time he had startled her by knowing precisely of what she was thinking.

She shook her head

"You know," she said, "Chris is too tall for a jockey--he _will_ train--and, apart from accidents, all the tall jockeys go out quickly. There was Archer--there are many others. It's sheer perversity in a man of six feet to want to be a jock--"

Her voice broke, and Rensslaer bent his head, and looked away--it struck her then that a man's silence is more decent, and worth more sometimes, than all a woman's sympathy, and talk, and kisses.

"Perhaps this will sicken him of the game," he said presently.

It might have enlightened him as to Gay's chances of happiness to know how at that very moment Chris, for the most part in bandages, was using almost his first conscious moments to have held up before his eyes by an unwilling nurse, his note-book of "fixtures" for the ensuing week, the while eagerly calculating his chances of being able to ride before the last day of the month, when steeplechasing ended.

Gay pulled herself together, but when Rensslaer spoke of her horses and their engagements, and the much-coveted Gold Vase, she felt that for the time being, at any rate, she hated anything to do with a race of any kind.

And yet it was no more than two days ago that she had told Carlton she would break her heart if it did not become hers, and he had by no means forgotten....

"You must let me drive you down to Waterloo Park," said Rensslaer, and then told her that on the Gold Vase day, he was for once entering a horse, and going to drive himself, though not in competition for the Vase.

Gay hardly heard him. She wanted to go to the telephone and get the latest news of Chris. The Professor, now taking some rest, was to go down to Epsom later in the day.