Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels. Bryce Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ a fearful gambler! When you’ve lost as much as I have you’ll go a bit slower.”

      “Have you lost much?” asked Barbara sympathetically. “I’m so sorry. Just lately?”

      “Well, yes, since you ask me I don’t mind telling you that I have had some rather nasty blows during the last few months. That brute, Benfar, has a lot to answer for, my word!”

      “He’ll turn out a winner yet,” said Barbara hopefully.

      “He might come in first if all the other starters tumbled down,” said Sidney, with an effort to treat the subject lightly, “but I’m afraid before that happens I shall have to shut up shop. Things can’t go on like this. I lost £10,000 over the Lincolnshire meeting, and that’s only a drop in the ocean. But I don’t know why I’m bothering you with my troubles,” he concluded, pulling himself up abruptly.

      “I am glad you tell me,” she replied simply. “I am so very sorry that you have had such rotten luck. You’d better change it by backing my tip. Ned Foster would never have advised me to put my all on Averstone unless he knew it was a sure thing. He really has a regard for me, I believe, and he often used to say that the day would come when he’d make my fortune and his own. He doesn’t approve of betting as a general thing. He’s a most steady, cautious kind of individual.”

      “I wonder,” said Sidney. “I think perhaps I’ll have a last fling. What are the odds?”

      “They’re long. Averstone’s not supposed to have a ghost of a chance. I think it’s about 40 to 1 against him.”

      “My word, just think if one had a few thousands on him and it came off!” said Sidney. “The bookies would all die on the spot.”

      “It would be rather annoying for some one,” laughed Barbara. “I hope it will come off.”

      “I’m afraid it would be too good to be true,” said Sidney gloomily, “but it would certainly save the situation if it did. If I lost a very little more I’d have to leave the army.”

      “Is it as bad as that?” asked Barbara, for the first time realising the graveness of the position for Sidney. “How dreadful. I am sorry!”

      The young man laughed awkwardly.

      “It’s awfully good of you,” he said. “I’ve been a perfect ass, of course. If I could win back half what I’ve lost, I swear I’d never back a horse again!”

      “I expect your luck will turn,” repeated Barbara hopefully. She had all a gambler’s instinct of optimism.

      But Sidney only laughed again rather recklessly as he got up to go. The interval was over and the people were hurrying back to their seats.

      “As the orchestra seems to be going to make another effort,” he said, “I must get back to the Garringdons’ box. Good night, Miss Turner; good night, Aunt Ruth; I’ll come and look you up in a day or two, if I get over to-morrow without being obliged to put a sudden end to my career.”

      “What did Joe mean by his last remark?” Mrs. Vanderstein asked as the door shut behind the young man’s vanishing form. “I don’t understand what he meant about putting an end to his career.”

      “He was telling me he has lost a lot of money lately, racing,” Barbara murmured rather reluctantly, for she was not sure if Sidney would like her to repeat what he had said. Still, she thought, it was surely absurd for her to imagine that he would confide in her anything he would hesitate to tell a relation. “I suppose he was trying to joke about that.”

      “It’s nothing to joke about,” said Mrs. Vanderstein severely. “Not that I saw anything like a joke. I think it’s disgraceful, and I shall alter my opinion of him very seriously if he really has been betting. But hush, the music is going to begin.”

      And she was soon entirely engrossed in listening to it.

      But Barbara, to whose ear any but the most elementary tunes presented nothing but a confused medley of noises, wriggled rather impatiently on her chair from time to time, as she waited for the act to come to an end. Recollections that had lain dormant for a long time, put away on some high shelf of the wardrobe of memory, had been awakened again by her conversation with Sidney and the letter she had that day received from the old stableman. How happy her childhood seemed when viewed now through the flattering medium of the intervening years, which obscured all that had been disagreeable, and magnified the delights of her unrestrained wanderings and of the free and easy company of her father and her father’s delightfully jocular friends.

      How they used to laugh at each other’s witty remarks, and how she, too, had laughed, joining in the mirth without understanding in the least what aroused it but with enjoyment none the less complete on that account. With closed eyes she leant back against the wall of the box, her lips curved in a smile and her head a little to one side in an attitude of listening. But it was not the voices of the singers she heard. Instead, the thud, thud of galloping hoofs sounded in her ears, coming nearer and nearer, and, mixed with the creaking of leather, the excited snorts of her pony and the jingling of bits. She seemed to see around her the bare, open spaces of the heath and the figures of the watchers, among them herself, crouching low in the saddle with her back to the bitter east winds that sweep across the bleak Newmarket country in the spring. Splendid bracing air, her father used to say, and for her part she had never given a thought to the weather. Happy, happy times! Oh, that they could return. Why could not Mrs. Vanderstein give her that £500 a year, thought Barbara, and let her take a cottage, however tiny, within reach of a race-course and within hail of a training stable? If only she had a little money of her own. Money was everything, after all. It meant liberty. If Averstone won his race it would be something to the good.

      Mrs. Vanderstein, turning to catch her eye at a point in the music which, even more than the rest, gave her a pleasure that asked to be shared, saw only the closed lids and the smiling lips, and with a sensation of gratified surprise said to herself that Barbara was at last developing an appreciation of music.

      CHAPTER V

      When Madame Querterot left the cool, airy house, which reminded her so unpleasantly of one which was associated principally in her inmost consciousness with the sensation of corporal punishment applied in no niggardly spirit, she turned her steps towards her own home, which was situated in the remotest part of Pimlico.

      By the time she got off her bus and set out on foot into the dreary labyrinth of dingy streets, in one of which she lived, the shadows were lengthening fast and the pavement was losing some of the blistering heat accumulated during the day. Madame Querterot climbed rather wearily the flight of steps before her door. When she entered the little shop where Julie sat sewing behind the counter, she passed through it without a word to her daughter, and going into the tiny room, which served as a sitting-room, threw herself into the one arm-chair with something like a groan.

      Julie, whose smile of welcome had faded on her lips when she saw the expression on her mother’s face, bent again over her work, and for a little while all was still in the tiny, two-storied house.

      There was not room for many customers in the shop. Julie often wondered what she would do if more than two came in at the same time, but such an embarrassing contingency had not so far occurred. Quite half the space was taken up by the counter, on which stood a tray containing hair-pins and hair-nets. In one corner a space was curtained off for such clients as should wish to have their hair dressed or washed. No one had as yet requested this last service. In the window Madame Querterot displayed a few superior articles which had survived the wreck СКАЧАТЬ