CHAPTER XVIII
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE RACE
THE Golden Bar looked brighter, more burnished, more glorified than usual. The gilt mouldings and inlaid work on the walls shone with added splendour. The yellow statuettes beamed down from their brackets like old-time graven images, and on every hand vast mirrors of bevelled glass reflected and re-reflected the well-dressed habitués, the bar and shelves of sparkling bottles and gleaming decanters, and, above all, the graceful and trim forms of those twin goddesses of this spiritual fount, Ruby and Florrie.
As drinks were for the nonce only casually called for, and Bertha was away at tea, the moment was a precious one. They could have a nice long talk.
“Did you hear the news, Ruby?”
“No; is it about the Cup?”
“Oh, bother the Cup! I hear about it till I’m sick. No; Bertha is going to leave here.”
“You don’t say?”
“But she is. I heard the boss say so. This is her last week.”
“Well, I never! Who’d have thought it? What is she up to? Going to marry that old squatter, I’ll bet sixpence. Anyhow, it’s a good riddance.”
“And so say I, the mean thing! We shall be comfortable again when she has gone!”
At this moment if the girls had not been so busy talking they would have noticed the entrance of Bertha, who stood in a little recess before a mirror adjusting her hair. What was wrong with her hair no masculine mind could ever have divined; it looked as neat and trim as a coiffure by the best artist could look, yet it took Bertha at least ten minutes to re-arrange certain tresses to her satisfaction.
“The bar has never been the same since she came,” continued Florrie. “If the men were not such fools they would see through her airs and her graces, for I’m sure her looks are no better than other peoples!” And Florrie tossed her head significantly.
“And the way she carries on is just scandalous. Old men, young men, it’s all the same to her, with her simpering look and Chinaman’s eyes! I would not throw myself at a man like that if he was the only one left in the world. What I say is, that for a girl that respects herself there is a limit.”
“That’s it, Ruby, there’s a limit; and girls that put on the dying duck style to anybody and everybody ought to be shot.”
“I wonder who she is off with now; for sure enough she is not going to leave here for nothing. One of those young sporting fellows she drives out with I should not wonder.”
“Or that old squatter who is rolling in money; that is about her dart!”
“Now I would not be surprised if it was that old shabby Professor she goes out with sometimes. Although she looks so clever she is no better than a fool.”
“Well, I wish the Professor, or whoever it is, joy of his bargain. And the boss has got no more sense than the others; he pretends her going will be a big loss to him, and offered to raise her wages; but she would not stop at any price, she said.”
“Then it’s the squatter right enough. Of course she would not stop if she had caught him. Men with ten thousand a year are not picked up in Sydney every day.”
Bertha, who had been a silent listener to this conversation, now came forward, and was received by her two helpmates with sweet smiles of amiability.
“How nice you look to-night, dear. Is it true you are leaving us?” asked Ruby.
“Yes,” said Bertha, “I’m afraid I must leave you. That old squatter does bother me so to go and see his station on the Barcoo that I am really tired of refusing.”
“So it is the squatter?” inquired Florrie.
“Oh, I don’t say that. There are those two young sporting men. I think one of those might be better, don’t you?”
“It’s a matter of taste, of course,” replied Florrie. “The squatter would make you a real lady, while those sporting fellows never come to much.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Bertha. “I fancy somehow that money does not always make a ‘real lady,’ as you call her.”
“What does then?” inquired Ruby and Florrie, with astonishment.
“Sugar and spice and all that’s nice—that’s what real ladies are made of!” said Bertha, laughing.
“Now do be a love,” whispered Ruby, “and tell me who it is, and I will not whisper it to a soul.”
“Well, promise to be as silent as the grave.”
Ruby nodded.
“If I don’t change my mind, the shabby old Professor!”
“What do you choose that old fright for?”
“Perhaps because he is the only one that did not ask me!”
* * * * *
The evening began to wear on, and the bar to fill with an ever-increasing crowd. The drinks were called for more and more frequently, and a mingled buzz of conversation and cigar smoke filled the air. The one subject of conversation was to-morrow’s Cup, and the merits of the competing horses. The name of Revolver was in every mouth, bookmakers and backers. A few spoke of Bertha, and a voice here and there championed an outsider; but the vast majority of the public had gone solid for Revolver. In the words of one, “He was a moral,” and his performances were counted up, what he had done, what he had beaten; and if public form was to be relied on, then without doubt Revolver was one of the best of good things.
Books and pencils came out, and wagers were booked, and all the time drinks, plenty of drinks, and the toast was ever the same, “To Revolver, good luck to him.”
If whisky-laden prayer is attended to by the geni that presides over sport, and the incense of tobacco is grateful to him, then the hopes of to-morrow were assured.
As time went on, a species of delirium possessed this crowd. From talking they had got to shouting; from modest doubt of assertion to positive assurance. Some were florid and blatant, others jolly and hilarious, and when news arrived from the stable, Revolver’s stable, of course, that all was well, a perfect roar of satisfaction went up.
The news necessitated more drinks, and still more, the cigars were now puffed by many a happy smoker, oblivious of their being unlit, and all this time the weary barmaids served and smiled, served and smiled, with a smile so automatic it might have been worked by a string.
The hero of the hour, next to Revolver, was his owner, known to Ruby and Florrie as the “Squatter.” He was in strong evidence in the bar to-night. Many the questions he answered, many the drinks he shouted, and it was always champagne, or so the bottle was labelled, and the sparkling liquid flowed down many a brazen throat in a vain effort to quench the unappeasable drought.
Alec Booth was there, beaming with hope and assurance, the centre of a little coterie that listened with silent contempt to his confident prediction of Bertha’s winning. But they found their tongues when he offered to “shout,” and assured him that if any man knew a horse he was the man.
“A real sportsman, and no mistake.”
Amidst this excitement there was one man who said little or nothing, but watched from the corner of the room all that was going forward with a derisive smile on his face, Huey Gosper.
“What fools!” he seemed to be saying to himself, “to talk of public form, of private trials, and all that kind of rubbish, as though that had anything to do with who was going to win! Why, if merit counted in horse-racing, how could a smart man live?”
The Squatter was getting minute by minute more joyous. The glassy shining light of alcohol shone from his eyes. He was mellow, unctuous, benevolent. All men were his brothers, more particularly this crowd of wolves and lambs; and all women were his sisters, all excepting one fair maid, and for her he felt more than a brother’s regard.
“I’ll tell you what it is, my dear,” he said, leaning over the bar and addressing Bertha, “I’ll tell you what it is. To-morrow night in this bar you shall drink Revolver’s health out of the Sydney Cup, and what’s more, I’ll make you a present of it. Now, mark my words, and what I say I stick to. To-morrow night the Cup shall be yours.”
Bertha laughed at the offer, but graciously, neither assenting or dissenting. In any case, it was useless to argue with a man who had drunk three bottles of champagne. Presently the Squatter subsided. He wanted to sleep on the floor; “sleep at the feet of beauty,” he murmured, but his friends hurried him to a cab, and that night he was no more seen.
With less demonstration Alec approached the bar, and seizing a moment when Bertha was not busy, said to her—
“Don’t you mind that old fool, Bertha. I’ve got Revolver’s measure. Your namesake can make a common hack of him. Don’t you put a penny on Revolver. Bertha’s as right as rain, and bar accidents she’s bound to win. But you shall have the Cup to-morrow all the same. As that old fool says, you shall drink the winner’s health, but the name will not be Revolver, for Bertha will come in first.”
Huey had heard some of this talk; heard with an inward chuckle of derision, and the smile of amused thanks had not passed from Bertha’s face before he too had edged his way to the front, and speaking very low, so that only she could hear, he said—
“Pay no attention, Miss Summerhayes, to all this foolishness. Revolver and Bertha are very good horses, no doubt, but there are plenty better, and one of them for certain will be running to-morrow. Neither the Squatter nor Alec Booth will win the Cup, for there is another who means to defeat them both, and have the pleasure of presenting you with the Sydney Cup.”
“And who is this kind person?” inquired Bertha.
“Your very humble servant,” replied Huey.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Gosper, for your kind intentions, but all this talk is not serious. There is many a slip between the Sydney Cup and the lip. I hope you may all win, if it be possible; and if you all lose I shall think of you all just the same.”
“But I am serious. To-morrow night it is I that will bring you the Sydney Cup.”
“We shall see, we shall see,” laughed Bertha, incredulously. “It is nearly to-morrow now, and closing time. So good-night to you.”
“Decidedly,” said Bertha, as she hurried, tired, to bed, “to-morrow I bid fair to own the Sydney Cup. Do I care who wins—the Squatter, Alec, or Huey Gosper? Do I care?” And she paused as she asked herself the question again. “No, I don’t care a silver sixpence! What good will the money do them? It will go as it came. And if some win others lose, and all the pleasure of the one must be paid by the pains of the many. Decidedly, old Pro is right; it is a dirty business, this horse-racing, as bad for a man as a bar is for a woman, and I’m glad I’m going to leave it all. And to think of Ruby and Florrie talking of me like that! It shows what they are, and what I should come to, no doubt, if I stopped here. Oh, why can we not live honestly and comfortably in this world without having to meet such a lot of horrid people?”
So she rambled in her thoughts till sleep came to rest her weariness. And over the silent city no sound could be heard but the hasty rumble of some night hansom as it sped over wood-blocked roads, laden with midnight travellers.