Chapter XIX: "fighting" Gay

Those who thought they knew their Gay, and that she was humbled, penitent, and willing to amend her "trotting" ways, speedily found themselves mistaken on this point, and the first to whom she gave a taste of her quality was the unhappy Professor, who entered the breakfast-room next day, gibbering, and extending towards her an illustrated morning paper.

Gay took it calmly from his hand, but a flush of anger rose to her cheek as she saw that, whether from spite or ignorance, the artist had maliciously altered the position of her feet, a pose emphasised by the devil-may-care look in the pretty, saucy face turned impudently over her shoulder.

"Somebody who doesn't like me, evidently," said Gay, sitting down at the head of the table, and commencing to pour out coffee. "Wonder if it's anyone Lossie knows?"

"Hardened! Shameless!" sputtered the Professor, walking to and fro and wringing his hands. Gay felt glad Chris was not there, as he used to get behind the Professor, and wring _his_ in imitation, convulsing her.

"I insist on it," cried her brother, "that you wire your trainer instantly to 'scratch'--I believe that is the expression--your horses for all future meetings, and I will take you abroad till this shocking scandal is forgotten. Why, even there, we shan't be safe, for you will be lampooned on the boulevards--an English lady driving like a stable-boy--in a man's attitude"--his voice rose to a shriek as Gay walked to the chafing-dishes on the sideboard, and helped herself to bacon.

"Shouldn't wonder if I get mentioned as a 'horrible example' from a pulpit or two," she said placidly, "and probably there will be several fancy sketches of me driving _really_ like a boy--in one of those old-fashioned sulkies where you can't even see your horse's head, and have to guide him by faith and a double squint. Have some kidneys, Heron? They're awfully good."

But the angry Professor waved away the proffered delicacy, and resumed his wind-mill antics up and down the room, thereby getting on Gay's nerves.

"Look here, Heron," she said quietly, "it may save trouble if you will just grasp the fact that my horses will not be withdrawn, that their engagements _will_ be fulfilled, and that I shall be present at _all_ the meetings, and if you don't care to chaperon me, I'll find someone who will."

"Lossie won't!" screamed the Professor, now almost beside himself at this flat rebellion, "nor Mrs. Bulteel either! You've never been able to persuade her to set foot on a Trotting course--even if she were willing, Tom Bulteel wouldn't let her!"

It was true, and Gay thought it horrid of Effie; then her soft little face hardened, and she shot her bolt.

"Then I'll go under Min Toplady's protection," she said. "I can make her do anything I like--and _she_ shall take me--and jolly good times we shall have, too!"

"Good God!" cried the Professor, "my sister--my _sister_ going to Meetings with public-house ladies in public-house traps"--he forgot that he had once censured Lossie for thus speaking of Gay's old nurse.

Gay nodded emphatically.

"I shall stay at the 'Trotting Nag' altogether, if you're going on as you are now," she said. "Lossie can come and keep house for you--no one could say anything on the score of propriety, you know," she added, with as much malice as her sweet temper permitted, "for she is a relation!"

The Professor shuddered. He had not yet got over the shock Min Toplady's remarks about Lossie had given him overnight. What would become of his specimens, his microscopic work, of _him_, if pitchforked into matrimony?

Lossie was a deuced pretty woman, of course, but she had a horrid temper, and original as Gay was, his natural selfishness, and sure male instinct, told him he was safer with the latter than the former.

"Well, well," he said, and sat down dejectedly. "A wilful man will have his way, they say, and now that my feminine little sister has taken up with a man's life and sports, I suppose she'll, like him, have _her_ way, no matter who pays."

"Heron!" exclaimed Gay, suddenly contrite, and got up, and went round to him. For a moment she did not speak, and it struck her that she had shed more tears, felt more "sloppy," since she started Trotting, than in all the years of her life before--yes, and apparently done more mischief to others.

"Don't you see, Frank, that if I don't face the music, if I seem ashamed of all this hateful publicity--for it _is_ hateful--I shall only be a coward, and make things worse? I don't promise that I'll give up Trotting, but probably I may--with poor Carlton warned off, I don't expect to take much pleasure in it again. And now, Frank"--she kissed him, and smoothed his hair--"you've got to eat your breakfast, and forget about all this for the present."

She helped him to kidneys, and rang, for fresh coffee. Presently, comforted against his will, Frank stole a glance at Gay, who seemed deep in thought, and indeed with one lover outlawed from his favourite sport, and the other absent, prevented for the time being, from following a dangerous profession that Gay hated, she felt at that moment very friendless indeed.

If Mr. Rensslaer would only weigh in, and race Trotters himself, she thought, but he wouldn't, and then she got up, fetched her little basket of keys, and waving her hand to Heron, set out on her usual morning tour of housekeeping.

The Professor waited till she had gone, then deliberately kicked the offending newspaper round the room (all men of science are childish), and departed, well-pleased with himself, to his study. Inflating his pigeon-chest, he said to himself that Gay was a dear little thing, if misguided--and after all she had _him_ to stand by her. The escapade of yesterday would probably do no more than make a nine days' talk, then blow over, and when she married Chris, as the Professor had always felt sure she intended to do ultimately, she would be just a domesticated girl, with all this racing rubbish knocked clean out of her head.

At eleven o'clock, Rensslaer was announced, and Gay rose eagerly to meet him, for he might be able to give her news of Carlton, from whom she had heard nothing, and she put the question without loss of time.

"Well," said Rensslaer, "it struck me as ironic that one of the few men who had conferred distinction on the sport of Trotting in England, should be expelled the Club, when so many undesirables remain to disgrace it, so I looked in at St. James's Place just now to tell him so."

Gay opened her lips to ask how he looked, then checked herself, but in reality Carlton was not in the least disgraced. Everyone knew how he had lost a race purposely that a pretty girl might win it, but he _did_ blame himself for encouraging Gay in her fad, and still more for the weakness that had at all costs determined her girlish wish for the Gold Vase should be gratified.

He had done her as ill a turn as a man can do the woman he loves, but he felt justly, that Rensslaer was to blame for the scandal of Gay's driving herself, that the latter should have dissuaded her, and taken Brusher's place, and had not hesitated to tell him so when he appeared.

"We had a talk over his plans for the future," said Rensslaer, "and I strongly advised him to race his horses in Vienna and Paris, and offered him every assistance should he decide to do so. But he didn't seem keen on it--promised to think it over, and let me know. Said he was taking a short run abroad for the present--would probably do a cure at Aix."

A look of keen relief crossed Gay's face, and at that moment a servant entered with an express letter. While Gay, asking permission from Rensslaer, read it, he thought how almost incredible was the amount of wicked, even dishonest, things that a dear, pretty little girl, honest as the day, could make a man do, and how ungrateful she could prove herself for his doing them.

"Will she feel bound to reward him, I wonder? Will he expect it?" he thought.

Yet with William Blake, Rensslaer knew that

"He who bends to himself a joy,
Does the wingéd life destroy,
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise."

"For it's that Hannen boy she loves, and he her. I've watched her face--still, as he won't promise not to steeplechase, and she won't marry him if he doesn't, I don't see what's going to happen."

"You're quite right," she said, "Mr. Mackrell is off to-day, and will not have time to call here before he starts. I told my brother this morning that my horses will keep the engagements for which they are entered, but after that--" She hesitated, and looked at him anxiously.

"After that, Miss Gay," he said gravely, "don't enter them for any more. It's not a woman's game--at least, for one so womanly as you are--and you'll never do any good at it over here."

"Aren't those snapshots and sketches of me horrible?" said Gay in a whisper. "I'm looking forward with terror to the illustrated weeklies."

"It was a plucky idea, pluckily carried out," he said, "though Mackrell didn't mince his words to me just now--told me I ought to have prevented you and done the driving myself. But I don't think"--he smiled whimsically--"anything short of _force majeure_ would have stopped you."

"Not even the devil," cried Gay, with sparkling eyes. "I sin with my eyes wide open, and I'd do it again this very minute."

"Why not?" he said equably. "As I said before, you must come over and drive for me in Vienna. I have won so many prizes there," he added quaintly, "that they don't like me to compete any more. Let me know the dates of any Meetings you have to attend, and no matter how far away I may be, I'll come back to escort you."

"Thank you," she cried, impulsively holding out both hands, and as he took them, the door opened, and Effie Bulteel came in.

When he had gone, and he went immediately, Effie flung her arms round Gay, and gave her a good hug.

"I don't care what Tom says, or how those horrid papers lampoon you," she cried, "it was awfully game of you, and I'd have loved to do it myself!"

"You're a trump!" cried Gay. "You see, the driver was tight, and I _longed_ to do it, so when the opportunity came, I was like the teetotaler who joined the Blue Ribbon Army, because he thought it must be so delicious to be tempted--and to _fall_--and I fell!"

Effie laughed heartily, then exclaimed:

"Poor Carlton! But what a fool to be caught like that! Gay, if ever you want a thing done properly, get a knave to do it--"

"But I _didn't_ want," cried Gay, "and as to that Gold Vase, it may be turned into a coal vase for all I care. He--he is going abroad at once--he has written to tell me so."

"_Reculer pour mieux sauter_," said Effie significantly. "Awfully good form of him, though, to clear out just now, instead of appearing like a tradesman with his bill made out, waiting for it to be paid, and a receipt given! And Chris out of the running, too! Poor Gay! You'll have to take the Trotting man after all."

"Only, even if I wished it, he won't take me," said Gay, and laughed at the epithet--Effie, like others, was still possessed of the entirely mistaken idea that Trotting was the be-all and end-all of Rensslaer's life, when in fact it was only one, and that by no means the greatest, of his hobbies.

"I don't believe in platonics, you know," said Effie drily, "and I intruded on quite an affecting little tableau just now. But now, Gay, what are you going to do? Tom says, of course, you'll drop it--the Trotting, I mean--

"I'd die sooner!" cried Gay, with flashing eyes. "Effie, if you've come here only to tell me that, then you are no real pal of mine. The least you can do is to stand by me, you and Tom--I can't attend the race Meetings alone, or with Lossie, who has been perfectly hateful to me."

"Ah!" said Effie sympathetically, "she would, you know!"

"And Frank simply won't--besides, I don't want to be regarded as keeper to a lunatic. Failing you and Tom, I'll have to attend the meetings with Rensslaer or Min Toplady--or both! We don't want our friends when we are in the right, but to dig us out of holes that our own folly has let us into--though in spite of everything I'm glad, _glad_ I drove yesterday!"

"It's true I have some influence over Tom," said Effie thoughtfully.

"Boundless," murmured Gay.

"But I don't think it goes far enough to make him attend, or consent to my appearing at, a Trotting Meeting. I believe he's really glad Carlton's warned off--a sort of being saved from the evil to come, you know."

"If the man I married, refused to perform an act of Christian charity for my greatest friend, I'd know the reason why, that's all," said Gay curtly.

Effie gasped. This was a new Gay, with whom she did not know how to reckon--evidently Trotting was spoiling her sweet temper....

"But is it charity?" she said.

"Didn't you say just now how you'd have liked to do what I did?" cried Gay in a rage, "and now you're jibbing at the consequences! I don't--I face them. And it's just a piece of snobbishness for Tom to turn up his nose at what is good enough for Rensslaer, and the very pick of American sportsmen!"

"Yes, everywhere but in England," said Effie absently.

Gay's jibes had hit her hard, and she was wondering if it would be possible to persuade Tom...

"When is the next Meeting--and where?" she said.

Gay told her, and making a rapid calculation of dates and engagements, Effie exclaimed:

"There's no racing that day! Look here, Gay, I'll use every means of bribery and corruption to get Tom to drive us down--"

"Don't," said Gay coldly. "Put it on the bare ground of loyalty to a friend."

"Call it what you like. And if he does, we'll stick to you like burrs--anyone who cheapens you, takes on the three--"

"Thank you, Effie," said Gay quietly, but wishing all the same that her friend had done the right thing, without having the way pointed out to her so violently.

"Come out," cried Effie briskly--"come out and show yourself. My motor's at the door. Put on your smartest hat and clothes, and your best 'don't-care-a-damn' smile, and face the music."

Gay did, and by the time they had shopped in Bond Street, traversed Piccadilly twice, dropped in at Effie's club, and fooled round generally till lunch-time, then attended an At Home or two, winding up with tea at Rumpelmeyer's, it was the general opinion of those who saw her, that the person least ashamed of what she had done the preceding day, was Miss Gay Lawless.