IN WHICH A JOVIAL PARTY JOIN ENGLAND'S ANNUAL SATURNALIA AND A NEW
KNIGHT PHILOSOPHIZES ON HIS GREATNESS
Naomi's young friend Dollie Heathcote, who goes everywhere and does
all the doggy things, as he calls them, was so shocked to find that I
had never been to the Derby that, in order to save his reason, which
seemed to be tottering under the blow, I said we would accompany him
there, on condition that he took care of us.
"Very well, then," he said. "I'll make up a jolly party. Wow, wow!"
For some time past he has been including this insane exclamation in
most of his remarks. From what I can understand, the intention is to
signify that the speaker is capable of all--ready for any emergency,
and particularly a convivial one.
"We go, I suppose, in a hearse," I said, when he came to announce
that all the plans were settled.
"Great Heavens, no," replied Dollie. "That's all over. We go in a
motor brake, and my friend Farrar's got a box for us in the Grand
Stand."
"All right," I said. "But I always understood that one should go to
the Derby in a hearse, wearing a green puggeree. You see, I was out
of England so long, I don't really know."
"I hope you'll be able to bear up without your green puggeree next
Wednesday," said Dollie, with real anxiety. These young men, for all
their "wow-wows," are very scrupulous dressers and anxious
company-keepers nowadays, I notice.
"I'll try," I said.
"But, look here," he added, "I don't want to bore you, you know, but
I hope that when we're there you're all going to bet. You haven't
any rotten objections, have you?"
I said that I knew of none. For my own part I would cheerfully put
something on.
Dollie was immensely relieved. "That's all right, then," he said.
"Racing without betting's like oysters without lemon. Some people
pretend to like it for the sport only; but there isn't any sport.
There's only a great, sweltering crowd that lasts for hours, and
every half-hour a brown rush which lasts a second that you can't see
because someone's in the the way. That's racing when you don't bet.
But when you do bet it is interesting all the while. You don't
notice the crowd and you do notice the merry little gees."
"But isn't betting very bad for people?" Naomi inquired.
"Bad for those who can't afford to be pipped," said Dollie, "yes.
But I don't know that it's done me much harm. Whisky and soda
instead of _vino veritas_, now and then, I'll admit; but when you
chance to hop on to a winner, what ho, for the ancient vintage. The
awful thing about betting," Dollie continued, "is, that no matter
whether you lose or whether you win, you always reproach yourself.
You always say, 'If only I'd done so and so."
"But you had what's called a tip, I suppose," said Naomi, with, I
thought, strange knowledge.
"Yes, but a man who bets is always in two minds. That's the second
tragic thing about it. The third is that he's always superstitious.
I'll give you an instance. You've got a strong tip for a horse
called Knucklebones. But there's another horse in it called Bobby.
Well, you're just crossing the road to send a telegram to your bookie
to back Knucklebones (or perhaps you've sent it), when a policeman
grabs your arm and snatches you out of the way of a taxi. After that
how can you possibly not back Bobby?"
"Why?" Naomi inquired blankly.
"Because of the policeman--Bobby--don't you see?"
"Poor things," said Naomi, with real anguish. "How difficult you
make life for yourselves, and how sorry we ought to be for you. I
never thought before how racing men suffer. And some people are so
down on them too!"
"Oh," said Dollie, "if you want to pity us I can give you plenty more
material. If you only knew what I suffer before I send the
telegrams. Which bookie to send to, for example. If I lost the last
time, I wonder whether I hadn't better change to another; for
everyone has more than one. And then the post offices: which one to
go to, because some have been luckier than others. And even which
hand to take the stamps with when you lick them on."
"Poor Dollie, poor Dollie," said Naomi.
"And then," Dollie continued, "think what it must be to have a tip
for a horse and put your shirt on it in a telegram, and then, not
long before the race, meet another man whose information is usually
good who gives you a totally different tip! There's misery for you!"
"And what do you do?" Naomi asked.
"Do?" said Dollie. "Nothing, only suffer and wait for the result.
Haven't you ever watched men's faces after they've bought the evening
paper? Some men with a lot at stake daren't look at the paper at all
in the street. I've carried a paper about for an hour, myself,
before I could bring myself to learn the worst."
"Poor Dollie," said Naomi, "and I have always thought you so
frivolous."
"Few people have more serious times than I do," he replied. "Often I
can't sleep at all wondering if I've done right about a gee. And
then there's scratching."
"Dollie!" exclaimed Naomi reprovingly.
"No, no, I don't mean that," said Dollie. "Scratching means taking a
horse out of a race beforehand. If you've backed him and then he's
scratched, you lose your money just as if he had run and lost."
"I don't think that's fair," said Naomi.
"Well, it's the rule anyhow," said Dollie.
"Don't tell me any more," said Naomi. "I shall get you on my mind
and lose my sleep too. But answer just this one question. It's
about the saying 'If only I'd done so and so.' How is it that all
you poor dears say that if you win as well as if you lose?"
"Well, if you lose," said Dollie, "you say, 'If only I'd backed that
other gee instead;' but if you win you say, 'If only I'd put on a
tenner instead of a fiver.' Don't you see? You can't get away from
it. The words 'If only I'd' are engraven on every betting man's
heart."
"Then really I almost wonder you don't give up betting," Naomi
replied.
"Give up betting? Good Heavens! You must do something," said
Dollie, in alarm. "How could one get through the day without a
little flutter? I don't mean at the races only, but in town? It
just keeps you going. You pick out your fancies in the morning, and
then you go on buying the evening papers all through the day. That's
life."
"I am afraid I have sadly misspent mine," I said. "I haven't had a
bet for thirty years."
"We must get you into good habits again on Wednesday," said Dollie.
The ride to the Derby was amusing, but to have chartered a motor was
the height of foolishness. The motor's recommendation is its speed;
but owing to the congestion of the road we rarely proceeded above a
walking pace after the first few miles. As a matter of fact, a
donkey barrow with three passengers kept ahead of us for an hour.
Dollie had charge of the party. With him was Ann Ingleside; Algy
Farrar and his wife Gwen, whom it appeared Naomi had known and liked
at school; Naomi; I; and, to my great pleasure, Ann's father, Sir
Gaston Ingleside, who had been induced to go, much, he said, against
his will and, he feared, in his country's time, he being a Whitehall
magnate; but he thought it only right, as a good parent, to
participate in some of Ann's actions.
"But what I am chiefly doing," he said, "is marvelling at the change
that has come over life in my time. I can no more fancy my father
taking me to the Derby than to an opium den; yet here am I placidly
seated in the same dissolute vehicle as my unmarried daughter, on our
way to the great reprehensible annual carnival of vice."
"Yes," said Ann, "and you one of the newest K.C.B.s too, fresh from
the King's presence."
"By the way," said Dollie, "the King will be there to-day. He always
goes to the Derby. Perhaps you'll meet, sir. You know each other
now, don't you?"
"I shall never forget him as long as I live," said Sir Gaston; "but
even if he, as is likely, has forgotten my face, the spectacle of my
legs, in hired knee-breeches, walking perilously backwards with a
sword between them, must be indelibly printed on his memory."
"Do tell me," said Naomi. "Was it very dreadful?"
"Very," said Sir Gaston. "We did our best to hearten each other, but
the dentist is nothing to it. Decent fellows we were, most of us:
brewers, music hall managers, actors, Party-plutocrats, caterers, and
so forth, all armed to the teeth, all conscious of clothes we had
never worn before and should probably never wear again--which is in
itself an embarrassment--and all on the brink of changing our
identity for ever."
"How do you mean?" Naomi asked.
"Why, all my life until then, or a few days before (but unofficially,
of course, since the accolade had not been bestowed), I have been to
the world Mr. Ingleside. My Christian name, which always seemed to
me a strangely affected one and was due to my mother as a young woman
having deplorable romantic tendencies, I have done my best to
suppress. And now the Ingleside alone goes for ever, and everyone is
entitled to call me Sir Gaston."
"I almost wonder you accepted the title," Naomi said.
"My dear Mrs. Falconer," said Sir Gaston, "I wonder, too, now; but at
the time there seemed to be several rather good reasons. Perhaps the
best of all was that I was a widower."
Sir Gaston gave me a sidelong glance here which I greatly esteemed.
Here was good company; old in bottle. The joke was lost, I fear, on
Naomi, who puckered her beautiful forehead over it in vain. As for
the rest, they had not been listening to us at all but were busy
watching the occupants of the other carriages, with some of whom
Dollie and Farrar were on very familiar terms.
We reached the course at last and the Grand Stand, where Farrar, who
seems to be a millionaire, had a box for the week, in which not only
were chairs but a very attractive lunch.
I thanked him later in the day for being so hospitable to strangers.
"That's all right," he said, almost as if I had apologized for
something.
A curious young man, one of those mixtures of sagacity and apathy,
thoughtfulness and blankness, which the idle classes throw up so
easily and which make an expensive education look so foolish. His
passion is motoring, but he has leanings towards the air, which,
however, his wife discourages. He therefore does not fly himself,
although he has been up as a passenger once or twice, but spends most
of his time between Brooklands and Hendon, being convivial with his
aviating friends while they are alive, and following them loyally to
the grave when they fall.
"What is it like in the air?" I once asked him.
"Ripping," he said.
"But the sensations?" I continued. "How do you feel?"
"Ripping," he said.
"And what does the world look like down below as you rush along?"
"Ripping," he said.