Chapter V: Two Girls

Gay Lawless looked particularly bewitching the while she entertained her visitors that afternoon. She seemed more charming than usual to both Chris and Carlton Mackrell, while even the Professor, who usually noticed nothing, patted her approvingly on the head, and remarked, "You look very well, my dear."

Gay was gifted (for no one can acquire it) with perfect taste in clothes, and her tea-gown was cut with that attention to detail which results in simplicity itself. Although one could be with Gay for quite a long time, and have the pleasing assurance that she was the best style in the world, there was always a great difficulty in remembering exactly what she had worn.

"What had she on?" envious girls used to ask the men who admired her, and the answer usually was, "I don't know, but it was quite simple, and _such_ good style."

To-day she appeared to both men more lovable than ever, and Chris thought what a shame it would be to bury such a bright creature in a place like Epsom, with no one to amuse or to admire her except himself.

He took short hold of his fancy before it carried him to further flights, however, as he dropped into a chair by her side, while, much to Carlton's disgust, the latter was button-holed by the Professor.

"What's the latest about your Trotters?" inquired Chris, breaking into a smile that accentuated the crow's-feet round his young eyes.

"Great news," Gay replied with enthusiasm. "Mr. Mackrell has bought me a couple he got to hear of, a green Trotter who can go in about 2.18 called 'Silver Streak,' and a pacer with a trial of 2.13¼ named 'Maudie T.' And isn't it kind of him, he's going to lend me his trainer--sounds funny to talk of lending a man, doesn't it?--while the craze lasts, as he calls it. But you know, Chris, it _isn't_ a craze, it's a--a--almost a disease now! I'm racing one at Waterloo Park next Monday, and oh! I do hope it will win, don't you?" she asked eagerly.

"With all my heart," Chris replied, with more enthusiasm than he thought he could work up over Trotting. "And may I be there to see. Monday, you said, didn't you? That will suit me to a T. I've got nothing to do till Wednesday at Kempton, so perhaps you'll return the compliment, and come over to see me bump round on Beeswing? He did well in a gallop this morning--better than I expected, in fact."

"Answered the question all right, did he?" Gay asked. "Does he represent a betting chance on Wednesday, with the eminent gentleman-jockey up--and is he _safe_?" she added, turning a little pale.

"Well, he's about as safe a jumper as an amateur"--he grinned, "that's what some of the professionals in their scorn for the 'leather-polishers' they call us, could wish to ride, and my head lad says he has so much in hand that he could stop to scratch himself, and then win," Chris chuckled. "Oh! _hang_ Lossie!"

The stifled ejaculation was prompted by the entrance of a remarkably pretty girl, beautifully dressed in dark blue, who rustled across the room to Gay, and kissed her perfunctorily.

"_How_ are you?" she inquired, but though her voice was affectionate, her eyes flitted from Gay to Carlton Mackrell--where they stayed.

"A1, Lossie, thanks. I needn't ask how _you_ are. I never saw you looking better--(or more expensive)", she added to herself with a sigh, as her cousin shook hands with Carlton and Chris, and begged Gay to give her a cup of tea.

Frank Lawless ambled forward, and was soon busily juggling with milk and sugar basin, while Chris wondered what in Heaven was wrong with the girl, for if she always gave him the same displeasing impression, he could not possibly deny her beauty. Tall and dark, with masses of silky blue-black hair, she had eyes blue as heaven, and straight, delicate features that emphasised the irregularity of Gay's changing face, of which the chief charm, perhaps, lay in its expression.

She seemed a bundle of nerves as her slender foot beat a tatoo on the floor, while her wonderful eyes were never still, yet never rested long on any single object save Carlton, who was certainly well worth looking at.

It was Lossie's misfortune to have fallen genuinely in love with him, not for his money, though she liked that well enough, but himself. His was the Saxon temperament which veils the keenest pleasure, and the deepest grief under the same quiet, almost bored exterior, but she knew that his indifference concealed an ardent, even romantic temperament, that might be counted upon sooner or later to betray him into one of those follies so dear to the heart of woman, while Chris's gay, almost affectionate manner to the women he liked, argued a much greater warmth of temperament than he really possessed.

She felt completely out of it as the three sat talking horses, and had leisure to note the eager look on Gay's face as she listened to what Carlton was saying, also to digest the fact that this Trotting fad would bring her cousin and Mackrell more together than ever.

"Both your horses are timed to do two minutes thirty seconds," said Mackrell presently, "and upon that form they will be handicapped on Monday. I think--at least, 'Brusher' tells me--that Silver Streak had improved on that time in private, but he has always been 'just beaten' lately, so they may put him on a few yards closer mark next time he runs. When a horse is entered for a Trotting race, you know," he explained, "the owner has to supply the handicappers with his best time for a mile on a track."

"What's to stop a man representing his horse as being able to do two minutes thirty seconds when he knows he can do it in less?" inquired Chris, for his experience of the Turf had made him familiar with most of the dodges for throwing dust in the handicappers' eyes, with a view to getting dropped a few pounds in the scale. "You can't get weight off in the stable," was a dictum he often heard, but never practised.

"Well, for one thing," Mackrell replied, "the officials generally like to see a horse do his time before they frame their handicap, to prevent mistakes, you know," and he laughed. "For another, if a horse improves appreciably on his entered time, the 'man in the box,' as they call him, wants to know something about it, though, of course, a few seconds faster might be owing to a good track and good going. On the other hand, if a horse does not trot up to his time, they can, if they like, put up their official driver to take him round as fast as he can make him go. If the discrepancy is considerable, the scheming owner will probably find himself suspended for a few months, or even warned off."

"But," said Chris, who at heart deeply resented Mackrell's encouraging Gay in her misguided fancy, "when such men as Rensslaer and Vancouver and that ilk, all hold aloof from the sport as understood in England, what chance has it of becoming a national sport? The trotting tracks here are so bad that it is really kinder not to enumerate them; most are in connection with public-houses, and the people who frequent them are the middle class. Trotting, in short, is the sport of that and the lower classes, and they trot cheap horses in consequence."

"Unfortunately," said Mackrell, with a slightly heightened colour, for he got fearfully chaffed among his own set for his bizarre taste, "the upper classes take no interest in Trotting in England. It will take time to prove to them that a trotter is not necessarily a butcher's horse, but can vie with a hackney and swell carriage horse, and is almost as fast as a motor car as well, thus combining the horse and motor in one animal. Of course we all know that in America the trotter is the National horse, as the thoroughbred is the English one."

Chris was silent. He thought that Mackrell understood trotting, or rather mixed trotting and pacing, as practised in England, but knew nothing of the higher art of trotting, that is to say, real first-class trotting with horses worth money, and which could go in 2.8 or better--like the famous Rensslaer's, for example.

"Are you _really_ going to keep Trotters, Gay?" Lossie cut in sharply.

"Rather! and I'm going to train at Flytton. Inigo Court's close by, you know, and I shall love seeing my horses jog in the morning. They'll let me do that, I suppose?" she asked Carlton Mackrell, and pointedly turning her back on Chris.

"Oh, certainly," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, and much to the disgust of the Professor, who considered that all this horsey talk was more suitable for stables than a drawing-room. He did hope Gay would not become one of those horrid, slangy, racing-women he abominated; almost unconsciously he exchanged a glance with Lossie, who flashed back one of sympathy, for jealousy and envy of Gay corroded her.

All the advantages were with Gay--money, position, freedom--there was even her great capacity for winning hearts to set against her cousin's beauty; it wasn't fair, and the unfairest thing of all was Carlton Mackrell's obvious devotion, and as Lossie sat unnoticed, while Gay was the magnet that drew the eyes and hearts of both men present, perhaps the two smartest and best-looking men of their circle, and one of whom Lossie loved, her gorge rose.

Fortunately Gay was not in love with him, and up to now, at any rate, Carlton had not picked a quarrel with Lossie for loving him unbidden, as some men do (regarding it as an unwarrantable encroachment on their liberty), and when Gay married Chris, whom she loved without knowing it, then Lossie would cut in, and a beautiful woman at close quarters is a beautiful woman all the world over.

Failing him, but the girl shuddered at the thought, there was the Professor ... rich men did not grow on every bush, and her tastes were expensive.

The mother of Frank and Gay had been wealthy, and their father and his family comparatively poor, a fact greatly resented by Lossie, who had a mordant tongue, and was wont to describe the Lawless branch of the family as "the silk cloak," and hers as "the cotton lining."

It was with angry, embittered heart that later in the afternoon she turned her steps homewards, bitterly comparing her lot with Gay's, for Becky Sharp's type is much commoner than is generally supposed--the type that can be good and happy (at a pinch) on five thousand a year, but _quite_ good, and _quite_ happy on ten and upwards, and Lossie was of that type.

She had friends, of course, and admirers, who came to see her, George Conant much oftener than she wanted him, but a house without plenty of money, and a man at the head of it, is not half equipped for life and happiness. For the tiny establishment in South Street was run, if not ruled, by Aunt Lavinia (Chris's especial pal), who would greatly have preferred the more roomy comfort of Connaught Square, in which the Professor and Gay buried their unfashionable heads.

Both Lossie's parents were dead, and Lavinia had given her sister's child a home, tackling each day the difficult problem of trying to love a singularly unloveable girl, though "Anyway, my dear, she's delightful to look at!" Lavinia would say confidentially to Gay, after some especially flagrant piece of selfishness on Lossie's part.

Lavinia had a queer religion of her own (but not so queer when you come to reflect that nowadays real religion is found chiefly in those who do not profess any), and it was summed up in the love of humanity, and the law of human kindness.

"Teach folks to love," she used to say; "teach 'em to keep on loving--the rest will follow. No soul was ever yet damned that knew how to love--it's in the loving, not the _being_ loved, that we find happiness. Have you ever noticed the courting couples about on Sundays and holidays, that if the girls are not pretty, they _look_ so? Love has done the trick--not new clothes, or getting themselves up, but just _loving_ something that's not themselves."

Lossie had an immense contempt for the "giving out" process of love as practised by Aunt Lavinia, the more especially when it took the form of cheques better employed in paying the milliners' bills of her niece, nor was the Professor more appreciative, for he seldom or never went to see his father's sister in South Street, though he welcomed her cordially enough on her rare visits to Connaught Square. Perhaps it was because (as he had long ago suspected) she reluctantly recognised him as lazy, self-indulgent, ruined by his too abundant means, amiable with the tepid amiability of a dog who does not fight, and by blandishments hopes to be allowed to retain his bone. Hall-marked he was, with the special form of selfishness that makes the man completely happy in his bodily environment, and mental pursuits and hobbies, shun the society of his kind, and to whom it is a matter of complete indifference that "grass-grown become the paths to friendship that are never trod."

He usually (in quite unconscious antagonism) ordered twenty pounds worth of new books when through Lossie he heard of some preposterously good deed done by Lavinia, but to go and do likewise simply never occurred to him, nor did it at that time to Gay, who, without knowing it, was selfish also.

Yet, but for this blessed privilege of youth, where would beautiful, much-abused youth be? Gay was young, full of life and spirits, and would have to suffer a bit herself before she vividly realised the sufferings of others, even if she responded readily enough to any demand on her purse, if not her time. All of this Lavinia perfectly understood, but much as she loved the girl, Chris, whose mother's friend she had been was the very light of her eyes.