IN WHICH AN OLD GAMBLER (RETIRED FROM BUSINESS) TELLS OF A TRIUMPH,
AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION IN LOVE COME UNDER REVIEW
On the way back Sir Gaston told us of an incident many years ago,
when he did occasionally put something on a horse--not as a habit,
but if he heard anything.
He had been staying, he said, with two friends for a fortnight in
Ireland, fishing at a man named Regan's. One friend was Glenister, a
curious obstinate fellow, now in India; the other was Horace Bradley,
the K.C. The day before their last they were driving over to
Rushtown to see the races, and on the way Captain O'Driscoll overtook
them in his American buggy. I reconstruct Sir Gaston's story.
"'Going to the races?' O'Driscoll asked, as he slowed down for a
moment. 'So'm I. See you there.' He clicked on, and then, stopping
again, turned round to call out--'Don't forget Blackadder for the
College Stakes. Dead cert. Put your shirts on,' and was again off.
"'All very well,' said Glenister thoughtfully, 'but where are our
shirts? Speaking personally, my shirt is a return ticket to London
and about eighteen shillings, which I shall need.'
"'Yes,' said Bradley. 'And I'm no better off, confound it!'
"'You forget,' said I, 'that I have a five-pound note in my pocket
intended as our joint tip to old Rice.' (Rice was Regan's butler.)
'Lucky we decided to put it aside.'
"'Yes,' said Glenister, 'but that's the butler's.'
"'Not till to-morrow,' said I.
"'No,' said Bradley, 'not till to-morrow.'
"'But hang it all,' said Glenister, who was a precisian and adored
his conscience, 'where are we if we put it on this horse and the
beggar loses? I know these dead certs. It won't be Rice's
to-morrow, then, will it? To my mind it's his now, and we ought to
respect his ownership. It was to make sure of his having it that we
gave it to the Goat to keep.'
"I was the Goat. How funny to think of it now! I haven't been
called the Goat for hundreds of years."
"O father," said Ann, "may I call you the Goat?"
"Certainly not," said the Knight. "I admitted that Glenister was
logical," he continued, "'but all the same,' I said, 'here's a
straight tip, and it's a sin not to use it. One doesn't often get
them, and to start a whole menagerie of sophistries in return is the
kind of ingratitude that providence doesn't soon forgive.'
"'Of course,' said Bradley. 'The Goat's right. And, after all,
there's no sense in being so infernally conscientious. A gamble's a
gamble, and old Rice would be almost as pleased to hear that we had
put his fiver on a horse as to have it shoved into his hand.'
"Glenister laughed. 'I say no more,' he said. 'You do what you like
with the fiver. Personally, I shall have ten shillings on Blackadder
to win, although why on earth we all swallow that soldier man's
advice so unquestioningly I shall never understand.'
"'If the Goat will lend me two pounds,' said Bradley, 'I will back
Blackadder for a pound each way.'
"'The Goat won't,' said I. 'All that the Goat proposes to do is to
put the butler's fiver on to win.'
"This, later, I did, having found a bookmaker who was giving 10 to 1;
and, true to Captain O'Driscoll's word, Blackadder romped in an easy
winner.
"I collected the eleven rustling five-pound notes and stowed them
carefully away inside my coat, and in the late afternoon we drove
back. Naturally we had a good deal to say about the racing, our
fortunate meeting with O'Driscoll, and so forth. And then suddenly
Glenister remarked, 'I wonder what the old boy will do with it? Set
up as a small tobacconist in Dublin, do you think?'
"'What old boy?' I asked.
"'Why, Rice, of course.'
"'You can't set up as a small tobacconist on five pounds,' said
Bradley. 'At least, if you did, you'd be so small a tobacconist that
your customers would want a microscope.'
"'Don't be an idiot,' said Glenister. 'He'll have fifty-five pounds,
won't he?'
"Bradley and I were silent. This was a proposition that needed
thought.
"'I don't see why he should have more than the fiver,' I said at
last. 'It was all we were going to give him, wasn't it? You will
admit that?'
"'Certainly,' said Glenister. 'It was his fiver, and you were
keeping it for him, weren't you? You won't deny that?'
"'In a way I was,' I said.
"'O law!' groaned Bradley. 'What a hair-splitter!'
"'Very well, then,' said Glenister. 'You had Rice's five pounds and
you gambled with it--in itself a jolly unprincipled thing to do, as
it wasn't yours: poor devils are doing time all over the place for
much less; and now, when your flutter turns up trumps, you deny
him--who might have been your victim--the benefit! I call it
downright mean--squalid, in fact.'
"'You make it sound rotten,' I said, 'but there's a fallacy
somewhere. To begin with, as I said before, it isn't the butler's
own money till to-morrow. He hadn't earned it till the end of our
visit. If it wasn't his it is ours, and we could do as we liked with
it. We did, and the result is we have now enough to divide up into
sixteen pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence each, which I shall
be pleased to give you directly we get back, while Rice has his fiver
intact.'
"'Not for me,' said Glenister. 'I won five pounds with my own ten
bob, and that's all I make out of Blackadder. I can't take your
sixteen pounds odd, because it isn't mine. I may snore, as you agree
to allege, but I'm not a thief.'
"'O law!' Bradley groaned again. 'My dear Glenister, you're talking
like a Herbert Spencer sort of ass. All it means is that the Goat
and I will have to take twenty-five pounds each?'
"'No,' said Glenister, 'you can't do that; because a third, at any
rate, of the original fiver was mine, or, as I hold, the butler's,
and he must have what that share made. You and the Goat can take the
sixteen pounds odd each, but the butler must have my third and the
original fiver besides. But I don't envy you your explanation to
him.'
"'No,' I said after a while, 'either the butler must have all or
none. I can see that.'
"'Dash the whole stupid business!' exclaimed Bradley. 'Let him have
it all. We'll be generous.'
"'It belongs to him,' said Glenister. 'There's no generosity in the
matter. There's nothing but justice or injustice.'
"'Very well,' Bradley snapped out. 'I'm tired of it. Next time I go
to a race-meeting I'll take care it's not with a blooming Socrates.'
"'Then that's settled,' I said as cheerfully as I could. 'Rice has
the lot.'
"'The lot,' said Glenister. 'I'll admit it's enough, but there's no
other course.'
"We rode the rest of the way in disgust and silence, and then"--here
Sir Gaston began to laugh--"and then the rummest thing happened.
Regan's groom met us at the stable-yard and took the mare's head. He
seemed to be unusually excited, and I wondered if he had learned that
he too had backed a winner.
"'I'm afraid you'll find the house a bit upset,' he said to
Glenister, 'but the fact is, there's been a little trouble while you
were away. The butler's bolted. It seems he's been dishonest for a
long time, and to-day he thought the game was up and ran.'
"We looked at each other and then a threefold sigh rent the air.
"Bradley suddenly began to roll with laughter.
"Glenister for a while did not speak. Then, 'I'll trouble you,' he
said to me, 'for sixteen pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence,
and the third of a five-pound note."
I wondered what were Sir Gaston's feelings as to his prospective
son-in-law's gambling propensities, and later, on the way back, he
enlightened me.
"It's an odd business, this," he said, "to you and me, for I take it
that you, like myself, were brought up in a middle-class way by quiet
and God-fearing parents. Here we are with a lot of young people
doing a thing which my father would have heartily disapproved of, and
which we should have the greatest difficulty in defending if we were
accused of it in public by a professional religious man or
enthusiastic philanthropist. You, of course, would have a
comparatively easy time. You would come out merely as a retired
gentleman from abroad who was interested in social customs. But I--I
am a Government servant and the father of a young girl who is going
to marry this racing habitué. What sort of a case should I have?"
"Well, if it comes to that," I said, "what sort of case does one ever
have while the prosecution is talking? Personally, I always agree
with my own censors, although dimly I am conscious that there is
another side to the case--mine--if only it could be made articulate.
All the same, I too have been considering the question of young
Heathcote. When are they going to marry?"
"I haven't a notion," said Sir Gaston. "All I know is that it will
be later rather than sooner. My daughter is out for what she calls a
good time--by which, of course, she means an irresponsible one. She
has enough instinct and good feeling to realize that once she is
married irresponsibility will cease. She has not enough emotional
dependence to be impatient for marriage. Heathcote seems to me
precisely similar in temperament. Hence I look upon them as two of
the most enviable creatures living. I sit and watch them at their
superficial jokes and superficial wranglings, and most of all at
their frivolous plan-makings for the morrow, and consider them the
heirs of the ages in the happiest sense. The best of it is that both
are really exceedingly sensible, and it only needs a shock--such as
standing at the altar steps in their best clothes, with a really
serious person in a surplice saying really serious things--to steady
them for life. Ann, who has already shown her capacity for work and
routine, having learned typing thoroughly in an office, will
instantly become a wife and Heathcote instantly a husband. He will
adopt regular habits, come home to lunch, and very likely keep
accounts. The very harmless form of wild oats that they are sowing
now I don't fear in the least. I should be much more alarmed if they
were always embracing and whenever they walked out he took her arm
and they were both hastening the wedding: then I should fear that the
flame might die down too quickly, and trouble follow. But these
two--they're all right. They have a public contempt for each other
which contains the best promise."
I dare say Sir Gaston is right. He seems to be shrewd. But his
remarks caused me to press Naomi's hand under the rug with more than
usual fondness.
Yet Ann was not really selfish, even if she shared with her father a
perversity which made her willing to appear so; for when once we
found ourselves in a block, and were conscious of the crying of a
small child, with its mother, father, and two other children in a
donkey barrow, it was Ann who saved the situation. Never have I
heard such pitiful wailing. The mother was tired and cross, and in
no mood to be patient with it; the father was cross too, and the
other children began to whimper in sympathy. Before anyone knew what
she was about, Ann had jumped out of the car, taken the child from
its mother, and was giving it one of Dollie's expensive chocolate
creams and saying pretty crooning things to it. The mother and other
children had the rest of the box, and in a short time all were happy
again.
"But although it amuses me to watch them," Sir Gaston continued, "I
can't find much real satisfaction in it. My other daughter, Alison,
is completely lost to me, except for letters, for her husband has
taken her to Ceylon. And now Ann is going; and deprived of any
society of the younger generation, which, however it may irritate us
at times, helps us to keep young and in touch with the day (I can say
'topping' with the best of them, although 'wow-wow' is beyond me), I
have no alternative but to become old. And old age has no kind of
attractiveness. I have no patience with people who profess to enjoy
growing old. They merely remind one of those lines of the American
poet:
Unto each man comes a day when his favorite sins all forsake him,
And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins.
Speaking for myself, who am nearing sixty, I would say that the only
piece of satisfaction that the process of ageing has brought to me is
the knowledge that the word 'unshrinkable' has no real basis in fact.
But I do not call myself really old yet. Not till a young woman
offers me her seat in a railway compartment will that tragedy really
be mine. At that moment I shall know that all is up."