THE TUG-OF-WAR
Chris looked very white and thin, but just as smart as ever, and
completely unsubdued in spirit and intention, when he called in
Connaught Square one afternoon late in May, and found Gay in.
She looks prettier than ever, he thought, if less rounded than of
yore, and if he had expressed sorrow at causing her so much pain,
Gay's tender heart would instantly have melted, but for all his
delight at seeing her, his evident determination to treat his
accident as a trifle not worth talking about, put her back up to
begin with. And when he unblushingly asked her to condole with him
on the number of good things he had missed, and roundly abused the
Professor and his understudy, for refusing him permission to ride
with an arm strapped to his side, Gay's patience gave way utterly,
and the first little rift within the lute made itself known.
Poor Chris felt that coldness in the air, but had not the key to the
puzzle, and he could not make Gay out. Instead of the jolly little
girl, eager to hear all about his stable, to discuss his horses, his
hopes and future chances, to buck him up as she had so often done
when things went wrong, she did not seem to have a word to throw to
him except about trivial matters that didn't in the least interest
him--or her, formerly.
How could he tell that those moments in which she saw his colours
closed in by a mêlée of struggling horses and men, had changed her
from a careless, happy-go-lucky girl, who laughed at accidents, had
scarcely flung a fear even to death, to a thoughtful woman whose
outlook on life would never again be quite the same? In a word, what
he did before had not mattered, but now that she knew she loved him,
it _did_, yet this solution never occurred to him, nor was there
anything in her manner to suggest it--quite the reverse, in fact.
He asked her a few questions about her horses, and what they had done
lately, as the papers did not always chronicle their doings, and she
told him of their failures and successes, quite without enthusiasm,
and Chris came to the conclusion that experience and Rensslaer
combined, had put her off Trotting. And if she did not tell him that
her horses were entered for no more fixtures after the end of June,
and that her brief connection with Trotting would altogether cease on
her return from abroad, Chris saw, clearly enough, that she took no
more interest in the sport into which she had so light-heartedly
plunged, than she did in his.
If hitherto Gay's life had been regulated by a warm heart, high
spirits, and quick wits, he knew that it was so no longer, and
resented the change in her. Sunbeams might not fulfil any recognised
place in the scheme of creation, but they were delightful all the
same, and he had been quite satisfied with her as she was. If he had
only known it, she loved him at that moment more than ever, realising
now she was with him, how completely he had spoiled her for everyone
else, that he was the one companion of whom she never tired, never
could tire.
"Frank and I are going abroad early in July," she said presently, and
Chris's face lengthened. Steeplechasing was over for the year, and
until he began to train his horses at the end of August, there was
only the flat racing he despised, very seldom took the trouble to
look at--and now Gay, on whose precious company he had counted, was
going away in a little more than a month.
"I shan't be riding again till autumn, worse luck," he said. "And
I'm too late for Olympia."
Gay looked at him, half-angry, half-reluctantly admiring--here he
was, a mere gaunt shadow of himself, after the worst outing he had
ever had, with only one longing--to court another!
Chris was very sensitive, and his hatred of talking about himself was
only equalled by his horror of being a bore. So although the change
in her manner hurt him more than either he or she knew, he abruptly
changed the subject.
"You'll let me escort you to your meetings now, with Lossie, of
course," he added grudgingly. "Tom Bulteel will be jolly glad to be
off duty, I expect."
"And Effie too," said Gay candidly. "She did detest coming with me
so, but they both played up splendidly, even if Tom's temper has been
perfectly horrid."
"And where is this wonderful Gold Vase?" said Chris, looking at the
centre of the carpet as if he expected to see it installed there as
tutelary god.
"Oh, I hate it!" cried poor Gay, with tears in her voice. "It's
covered over with a piece of sackcloth--I mean silk--in my den. It
was won by a fraud--paid for with Carlton's good name--the great
mistake was his thinking I'd value anything bought at such a cost."
"He never expected that brute to follow him up and see the
toe-weights trick," said Chris consolingly. "Honest men can't play
the rogue, and that's about all there is to it. Heard from him
lately?"
"He is doing a cure at Aix--for the sake of the scenery, you know!"
she laughed. "I have had some cheerful, gossiping letters from him,"
and Chris nodded carelessly, as at a matter of no interest to either.
Mackrell had played the fool, and must take the consequences.
Then there was a horrid pause--a pause between these two who usually
chattered like magpies when they got together!
"I made a scrap-book out of the snapshots and sketches of you," said
Chris, rather gravely. "By a moderate computation there are
somewhere about thirty, and I divided them into groups--the
decent"--he hesitated--"the--not nice--and the positively libellous."
Gay coloured warmly. If her escapade had brought her a _succès de
scandal_, caused her to be surrounded wherever she went in public,
and make acquaintances faster than she wanted, she knew well enough
the subtle difference in men's manners towards her, since she had
courted publicity.
"It wasn't such a very awful thing to do, really," she said, with a
rebellious toss of her red-brown head. "It was only those spiteful
wretches made it _look_ bad."
"I'd rather see a picture of you as you look now," said Chris
quietly, and Gay blushed again, the gentlest of reproofs always hit
her hard.
"You see, Chris," she said earnestly, "I had always _longed_ to drive
myself--I had had two trial spins in private--and when I saw my
driver was tight at the critical moment, of course I ought to have
asked Mr. Rensslaer to take his place, but the temptation was too
irresistible, and, of course, I fell."
"So, apparently, did one of the competitors," said Chris; "broke an
arm or leg, didn't he? So, you see, Trotting people can have
accidents as well as jockeys."
Gay reluctantly admitted the fact.
"Of course," she said, "such a fall may be anything from a scratched
face up to being killed--one of Mr. Rensslaer's drivers had just such
a fall, not from hobbles, but from the track being badly made, and
the man did not hurt himself a bit, but he has known a man killed by
it. Still, you may say that of every sport. Take hunting--"
"Oh, Lord," cried Chris, "don't compare our national pastime with
Trotting, please!"
But Gay affected not to hear. "I can quite understand a man being
fond of riding, or even of 'riding jolly,'" she said severely. "Our
forefathers did--and on considerably more jumping powder than in
these almost Spartan days--and it must be a lovely feeling that
everything is plain sailing, that neither you nor your horse are
capable of making a mistake--in that heavenly state of mind you do
remarkable things over and over again that you never could do in cold
blood--but that is quite a different thing to steeplechasing!"
"Quite," agreed Chris in a tone that made Gay turn away indignantly,
thinking of Carlton, and what he had not hesitated to do for her.
Yes, Chris was certainly doing his best to throw her into his absent
rival's arms, while on the other hand he was cut to the heart by her
reception of him, so utterly different to the one for which during
long weeks of pain he had longed.
Unconsciously, he had looked for a little of that "mothering" that
the best kind of woman knows how to give the man she loves, when in
trouble, but Chris's pride was more than equal to his tenderness of
heart, and he gave no sign of his wound.
"Mr. Rensslaer has asked us over to his place at Vienna--he is going
to let me drive one of his Trotters for him. After all," cried Gay,
becoming only the more rebellious under Chris's grave looks--Chris
the gay-hearted, whom she had confidently reckoned on to think her
right whatever she did--"why should a thing that is right in Vienna,
be wrong in England?"
"In Rome," murmured Chris vaguely, "you must do as the 'Rum-uns' do."
"Oh," cried Gay impatiently, "we know that vice and virtue are
matters of climate and colour, that what is right in the east, is
wrong in the west, and it's the same with Trotting--if I am satirised
in England, I shall make up for it in the encouragement and respect I
shall get abroad!"
She jumped up, and fetched some large photographs that represented an
attractive girl driving one of Rensslaer's trotters, and Chris
mentally compared this modest presentment of a modest woman, in an
elegant conveyance, with the fiendish cleverness of a sketch
representing Gay perched upon a shining skeleton wagon, with a
charming leg stretched along a shaft on either side of it.
"You're too good for it, Gay," he said, "either there or here.
Rensslaer is right--there is no future for Trotting under present
conditions in England."
Gay shrugged her shoulders, and abruptly, contemptuously even,
changed the subject.
"I am looking forward tremendously to Olympia," she said, "aren't
you?"
"I suppose the jumping will be all right. I hear the fences are to
be very much higher than any seen before in other shows in England,
that gentlemen are to ride instead of stable-boys, is good."
There was a note in his voice that made Gay sigh impatiently, and
turn her head away; here was the ruling idea, strong in death, or
what was very near it.
"Rensslaer must have his hands full," said Chris. "Awfully decent
chap--he has looked me up several times." He did not say that he had
encouraged him, as bringing news of Gay.
"Oh, he's delightful," said she as tea appeared, and she began to
pour it out. "His naïveté, his tremendous natural ability, whether
he's revolver-shooting, or writing a play, or modelling, or driving
Trotters, or judging horses, or nursing a cat, or taking a lot of
trouble about a silly girl like me and my stupid fancies, there's no
one like him!"
But Chris was not jealous, though some men might have misunderstood
Gay's intense admiration of Rensslaer's genius and many-sidedness,
and the pleasure his friendship had clearly brought into her life.
"You know the papers have engaged you to him?" he said, and thought
of an extremely uncomplimentary snapshot of Rensslaer, crouched low
on his seat, and made ferocious by his huge goggles, published in the
papers side by side with Gay.
"Why?" she said incredulously. "Do you suppose that a man like that
would care for a silly little ignoramus like me?"
"Men hate brains," said Chris grumpily, and his temper was not
improved by being told that it was only _boys_ who did.
"He wants you to go down to Elsinore," said Gay. "Oh, Chris, the
peace of that great quadrangle--the luxury of those stables that yet
compass the most perfect simplicity of service to those beautiful
creatures--you'll be like a boy in a sweet-shop, running about from
one joy to another and loth to leave any. To run through his hundred
or so of horses, will take you approximately, I should say, a year of
undulterated bliss!"
"I don't know that his stable will interest me so much," objected
Chris. "You see, he doesn't go in for steeplechasing--it's driving
he's great at."
"Why, he _loves_ his horses," cried Gay indignantly. "It's his
humanising influence in the stable--loving the dear beasts, not for
what they do, and the money to be made out of them, but for what they
_are_--that's so lovely."
Chris sighed. To love horses, and live among the world's pick of
them as Rensslaer did, was a lot that the most fortunate man alive
might envy.
"Chris?"
"Yes?"
"Aunt Lavinia has been a great comfort to me while you were laid up."
Chris smiled--it was a sign of grace in her that she had need of
comforting.
"I didn't know till she told me--how--how charitable you are. No
wonder you're always hard up, when you give away most of your
winnings in helping poor, wretched people!"
Chris coloured.
"I don't," he said. "Aunt Lavinia has been pulling your leg."
"Has it ever struck you that I am very selfish?" inquired Gay
anxiously.
"Often--about not making me happy. And it would be so easy, and
so--er--so pleasant," said Chris, with the lines that meant mischief
wrinkling his young eyes.
"You know," said Gay hastily, "somehow my ambitions seem _common_ to
me when I look at that dear little lady, who lives entirely for
others, and I question my right to waste money as I do on Trotting
and otherwise. Oh, I'm not a Socialist"--
"I should hope not," said Chris significantly. "It just means that
you make another man work for you while you idle, and then curse him
because he does not make enough to give you luxuries."
"Oh, I'm idle enough," said Gay remorsefully, "but I _do_ feel a
burning desire to see the rich enjoy less, and the poor and
unfortunate _suffer_ less, and I know perfectly well that I ought to
sell my horses--
"They wouldn't fetch much," said Chris, chuckling unkindly. "But
there's nothing I'd enjoy more than putting 'em up at
Tattersall's--if they're good enough for Tat's."
Gay turned very white, and a flash like steel came into her grey
eyes--few people had ever seen it, but it meant mischief.
"And I to see you put up yours," she said quietly. "When you drop
racing, Chris, you may talk to me about Trotting--not before."
Chris too had turned very pale, he understood now. He was to tear
out what was in the very blood and fibre of him--what had been in
countless generations of his hard-riding, sporting forefathers...
"You ask me for my very life itself," he said heavily. "Even my
mother never asked me that impossibility. She placed my deep
happiness in riding before her own peace of mind always."
Yes, his mother had known how to love him better than that.... He
must possess great qualities to love, and be so beloved by his
mother, that their love went on, unbroken even by death. After all,
Gay asked herself, was it not _she_ who was selfish, not he?
Had Chris but looked at her in that moment of insight, of revelation,
each might have been spared much sorrow, but he was staring straight
before him, his face set and stern at the _impasse_ to which he and
Gay had come--he thought he knew now the real reason why she had
refused him at the Ffolliott's dance.
At that pregnant moment the door opened slowly, and a timid face came
round the corner, like a rabbit peering from a burrow; since Min
Toplady's visit, the Professor always looked first to see if Lossie
were there, before entering.
"Are you alone, my dear? Ah, only Chris, I see," and the Professor
came forward, and shook his 'case's' hand warmly. If only the boy
could be weaned from steeplechasing, there was no one he would like
better for a brother-in-law, though of course it must be a long--a
very long engagement.
"I wish," he said presently to Chris in his tactless way, "that you
would persuade Gay to listen to reason, and give up Trotting."
"He had better get the whip-hand of _himself_ before he tries to
manage others," cried Gay; then looking at Chris, white, wasted,
invincible in his weakness, her heart was pierced with cruel pain.
He looked like slipping through, without the help of any more
accidents, and what would life be worth to her without him?
As she moved to the window, and stood looking out, she lived again
those awful moments at Sandown, yet when she came back to the two
men, her face told nothing, for if Chris had pluck, she had grit, and
the latter wears best in the long run.
"Each to its own, Heron," she said--"you to your books and
microscope, Chris to his racers, and I to my Trotters; there isn't a
pin to choose between the selfishness of any one or us!"
And Chris, when presently he said good-bye, thought grimly that she
was about right.