CHAPTER XIV

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.