Chapter XVII: Two Lovers

If God sends friends, the devil sends collaterals, for the former, in addition to their superior good qualities, at least have the civility to knock at your door, the latter walk straight in to torment you at their pleasure, and Carlton had hardly left the house when Lossie appeared, furious at the determined way he had carried Gay off, and more furious still at the rebuke he had administered to herself.

"You've done it now, Gay," she said spitefully. "Frank's raving mad--how I got him to town, I don't know."

"Let him rave," said Gay coolly, holding one little foot to the fire. Her eyes still sparkled, a lovely colour was in her cheeks, on a table near glittered the coveted Gold Vase, and though her arms ached horribly from the late strain on them, she cared no more for the ache than for Lossie's acrimonious reproaches.

"Toes turned out, first position," said Lossie, watching Gay's face cruelly. "It was something to be thankful for, I suppose, that your feet weren't further apart than they were!"

Gay flushed.

She had thought only of bracing her toes hard against the foot-rests, not at all of how they looked. _Had_ she looked immodest after all?

"Lucky you had no feathers in your hat," said Lossie with a sneer, and at that injustice to her invariably neat racing garb, Gay rebelled indignantly.

"Did you _ever_ see me befeathered on a race-course?" she said contemptuously, but Lossie shrugged her shoulders.

"It looks as if you'd dressed for the part, and went down with the full intention of playing it," she said. "That rug, too, outlining you like a sheath--_that_ was ready also, strange to say!"

"It was Mr. Rensslaer's," said Gay. "I suppose it was _my_ fault that my driver got drunk, and someone had to be found at the last moment to take his place?"

"Mr. Rensslaer could have taken it, and would have done, if you'd let him--" And as this was true, Gay had no answer ready on that point.

"Anyway, I won it," she said, and tossed her pretty head, "that's the main thing."

"Because Carlton Mackrell let you," said Lossie. "Didn't you hear the crowd howling at him when he gave you the inside place? Or so a man told me who was watching the race through his glasses. Hark!"

Through the window came the yell of a newsboy in the street:

"Well-known owner of Trotters expelled for unfair driving at Waterloo Park to-day!"

Lossie ran out of the room and downstairs, while Gay, her heart beating wildly, and very pale, felt her triumph turned to sawdust between her teeth.

Carlton's horse was a far better one than hers ... Rensslaer had told her so ... he knew how to drive, she did not.

"Here it is," cried Lossie, returning. Unfolding the sheet at the latest news, she read aloud a brief paragraph announcing that Mr. Carlton Mackrell had been expelled from the Clubhouse, and barred from ever driving again, for tampering with his horse's toe weights in the race for the Gold Vase, won by Miss Gay Lawless.

And he had not said one word to her of this. Oh! what had she done? For a whim, and in pure hot-headedness, she had taken up a sport suitable for men only, made herself notorious, inflicted pain on her brother and Chris, and, finally, made a man who loved her submit to disgrace, and deprivation of his favourite amusement, rather than she should be disappointed of a silly Gold Vase! Did Rensslaer know--had he _seen_ it, and made no sign?

"Poor Mackrell!" she said, then dried her tears, as she would not have done had he or Chris, or Rensslaer been present. At that moment the distracted Professor came into the room, and Gay, with an impulse of pity, went up, and laid her hand on his arm.

"My driver was drunk, Frank," she said, "and it had to be decided all in a moment. It didn't seem to me wrong at all then--and even now I'm not sure that it was--it's Carlton Mackrell I'm worrying about--" then went away, and locked herself into her room.

She was very quiet when she got there, poor Gay, sitting on the side of her bed, with all the triumph of a few hours ago fizzled out. A debt of honour came before all others, and this was one of them.... Gay's heart was generous enough to realise that surely Carlton had never meant her to know, never meant to be found out, but he had bungled at his tricky work, as honest men will, and he meant her to have that Gold Vase, and she had got it--for what it was worth.

Suddenly the ugly, the sordid side of this sport she had taken up so recklessly, showed to Gay. She seemed to see the man carried away with his broken leg--yes, there were accidents at Trotting as well as at Chris's game--and the clamorous desire to win something, money or a bit of plate, or the success that is notoriety, took on its true colours--something loud, common, of no value to a woman of taste, whose true kingdom was her home.

She had all along fought her love for Chris because of the danger, the unhealthy excitement of his life, and deliberately she had emulated it, and was now tasting the bitter fruit of disillusionment, of disgust. It struck her then, as it has done so many others, that it is doing the things that we want to do, not those that we ought, that we mostly come to our ruin.

* * * * * *

Chris Hannen, speeding slowly towards a perfect recovery, had succeeded in turning out his nurses, and Mrs. Summers, to her great joy, was now his sole attendant. Promoted to a sofa, he had opened eagerly the last evening special to see if Gay had won the Gold Vase, only to be confronted with a piquante description of her as she had appeared when seated in the Faber, looking as a man would prefer almost any other woman than his sweetheart or sister to look, as she steered her horse to victory.

He winced as he read, and when he came to Carlton Mackrell's summary expulsion, and the reason, his heart sank, for now Gay would consider herself bound in honour to reward the man who had not hesitated to disgrace himself, so that she might possess the toy after which she had so often hankered in his hearing.

Chris had always hated Gay's going in for Trotting, and yet, was he himself any better--risking his life for excitement, wringing Gay's heart? Why not be a _sportsman_?--ride for pleasure, not gain, though to be sure it was pleasure, and to spare to him!

"Serves Mackrell jolly well right for being kicked out," he growled, and did not pity him a bit--but Gay would, and there was the rub.

Rensslaer, too, had behaved badly. He was a much older man; he was under no illusions as to the status of the sport in England, yet he accompanied her to meetings--would probably go on doing so now that Mackrell was barred from the Trotting course.

Chris's meditations made him so feverish, and brought out such a hectic flush on his cheeks, that Mrs. Summers was seriously alarmed when presently she arranged his dinner on the invalid table slung before him. But looking shrewdly about for the cause, she caught sight of the paper on his knee, and though they had never exchanged a word on the subject, Mrs. Summers knew well enough what place Gay held in his heart, and that the young lady was racing her horse for the Gold Vase that day.

"Has Miss Gay won, Mr. Chris?" she inquired, and he nodded, but did not pursue the subject. Evidently, he thought, Gay had been carried away by audacity and high spirits, for of course he did not know of the driver's mistimed conviviality that had given the girl her longed-for opportunity. And now they were baiting her, no doubt, that spiteful Lossie, and the hysterical Professor, and he not able to stand by her--she wanted someone badly...

For a minute or two he racked his brains, then suddenly remembered Min Toplady, and leaving his dinner untouched, he turned to the telephone within reach, and picking up the book, found to his great relief her husband's number.

He was lucky enough to get on quickly, and to his "Are you there?" it was Min's cheery voice that responded.

"Yes--it's Chris Hannen. I want you to go at once to Miss Gay, she has had a trying day--no, you needn't say I sent you--only that you wanted to congratulate her on her success--you will go? Thanks--yes--she did it splendidly, you say? Never saw anything prettier? Rotten shame about Mr. Mackrell--something must be done--yes--you're going at once--good--'phone me to-night how she is, if possible--yes--good-bye."

He replaced the receiver, and returned to his half-cold dinner with more appetite than he had begun it. Min Toplady was a doughty champion, capable of routing Lossie or the Professor with great slaughter, and Chris grinned to himself as he imagined the passages-at-arms likely to occur.

Anyway, Gay would not stand alone, and with her own courage, and such a powerful backer, ought to pull through with honour.

His spirits rose. Mrs. Summers, coming and going, was delighted to find him in such good fettle; she thought Miss Gay's success in winning the Gold Vase had something to do with it, and though privately a little shocked at the young lady's sporting tastes, she was glad of anything that did her young master good.

But when she had left him, with his cigarette-case at his elbow, he got restless again; the quiet room, in which he had lived so much lately, got on his nerves, and a profound depression stole over him. He longed for someone to talk with; if he had not been such a confounded way from town, he would have called up one of his club friends, and got from him the popular opinion of the day's events at Waterloo Park.

Most of all, he would have liked to see Carlton Mackrell, and as if the thought had summoned him, the door quietly opened, and that gentleman, announced by Mrs. Summers, walked into the room.