I will invest it for you. There is no hurry. The Derby will not be run till three o’clock. We have an hour and a half in which to study form.”
For the life of him he could not imitate the complete annihilation of self practiced by the well-bred English servant. The American girl missed the absence of this trait far less than the other woman, but, by this time, even Mrs. Devar began to accept Medenham’s good-humored assumption of equality as part of the day’s amusement.
Cynthia handed him a card. She had bought three while they were crawling up the hill behind a break-load of jeering Cockneys.
“What will win the first race?” she asked. “Father says you men often hear more than the owners about the real performances of horses.”
Medenham tried to look knowing. He thanked his stars for Dale’s information.
“I am told Eyot has a chance,” he said.
“Well, put me a sovereign on Eyot, please. Are you playing the ponies, Mrs. Devar?”
That lady, being quick-witted, took care not to offend Cynthia by pretending not to understand, though it set Medenham’s teeth on edge to hear a racehorse called a pony. She opened a gold purse and produced a coin.
“I don’t mind risking a little,” she tittered.
Medenham found, however, that she also had handed him a sovereign, and his conscience smote him, for he guessed already, with accuracy as it happened, that she was Miss Vanrenen’s paid chaperon during the absence of the girl’s father on the Continent.
“Personally, I am a duffer in matters connected with the turf,” he explained. “A friend of mine – a chauffeur – mentioned Eyot – ”
“Oh, that is all right,” laughed Cynthia. “I like the color – Eau de Nil and white. Look! There he goes!”
She had good eyes, as well as pretty ones, else she could not have distinguished the silk jacket worn by the rider of a horse cantering at that moment along the cleared course. Crowded coaches, four rows deep, lined the rails near the judge’s box, and the gay-hued parasols of their feminine occupants almost completely blocked the view, a distant one in any case, owing to the width of the intervening valley.
Medenham raised no further protest. He walked to a stand where a press of people betokened the presence of a popular layer of odds, found that Eyot’s price was chalked up at five to one, and backed him for four pounds. He had to push and elbow his way through a struggling crowd; immediately after the bet was made, Eyot’s quotation was reduced by two points in response to signals tick-tacked from the inclosures. This, of course, argued a decided following for Dale’s selection, and these eleventh hour movements in the turf market are illuminative. Before he got back to the car there was a mighty shout of “They’re off!” and he saw Cynthia Vanrenen stand on the seat to watch the race through her glasses.
Mrs. Devar stood up, too. Both women were so intent on the troop of horses now streaming over the crest of the six-furlong course that he was able to stare his fill without attracting their attention.
“I like Cynthia,” he said to himself, “though I shall be in a deuce of a mess if I meet her anywhere after this piece of masquerading. Not much chance of that, I expect, seeing that Dad and I go to Scotland early in July. But what a bore to tumble across Jimmy’s mater! I hope it is not a case of ‘like mother like son,’ because Jimmy is the limit.”
A strange roar, gathering force and volume each instant, rose from a hundred thousand throats. Soon the shout became insistent, and Cynthia Vanrenen yielded to its magnetism.
“Eyot wins!” she cried delightedly. “Yes, none of them can catch him now. Go on, jockey – don’t look round! Oh, if I were your master I’d give you such a talking to. Ah-h-h! We’ve won, Mrs. Devar – we’ve won! Just think of it!”
“How much, I wonder?” Mrs. Devar, though excited, had the calculating habit.
“Five pounds each,” said Medenham, who had approached unnoticed during the tumult.
Cynthia’s eyes sparkled.
“Five pounds! Why, I heard some betting person over there offering only three to one.”
It was a task beyond his powers to curb an unruly tongue in the presence of this emancipated schoolgirl. He met her ebullient mood halfway.
“I have evidently beaten the market – that is, if I get the money. Horrible thought! I may be welshed!”
He strode back rapidly to the bookmaker’s stand.
“What do you think of our chauffeur now?” cried Cynthia radiantly, for the winning of those few sovereigns was a real joy to her, and the shadow of the welsher had no terrors, since she did not know what Medenham meant.
“He improves on acquaintance,” admitted Mrs. Devar, thawing a little under the influence of a successful tip.
He soon returned, and handed them six sovereigns apiece.
“My man paid up like a Briton,” he said cheerfully. “I have no reliable information as to the next race, so what do you ladies say if we lunch quietly before we attack the ring for the Derby?”
There was an awkward pause. The air of Epsom Downs is stimulating, especially after one has found the winner of the first race.
“We have not brought anything to eat,” admitted Cynthia ruefully. “We ordered some sandwiches before leaving the hotel, and we mean to stop for tea at some old-world hotel in Reigate which Mrs. Devar recommends.”
“Unfortunately I was not hungry at sandwich time,” sighed Mrs. Devar.
“If it comes to that, neither was I, whereas I have a most unromantic appetite now. But what can do, as the Babus say in India. I am rather inclined to doubt the quality of anything we can buy here.”
Medenham’s face lit up.
“India!” he cried. “Have you been to India?”
“Yes, have you? My father and I passed last cold weather there.”
Warned by a sudden expansion of Mrs. Devar’s prominent eyes, he gave a quick turn to a dangerous topic, since it was in Calcutta that the gallant ex-captain of Horton’s Horse had “borrowed” fifty pounds from him. Naturally, the lady omitted the telltale prefix to her son’s rank, but it was unquestionably true that the British army had dispensed with his services.
“I was only thinking that acquaintance with the East, Miss Vanrenen, would prepare you for the mysterious workings of Kismet,” said Medenham lightly. “When I came across Simmonds this morning I was bewailing the fact that my respected aunt had fallen ill and could not accompany me to-day. May I offer you the luncheon which I provided for her?”
He withdrew the wicker basket from its nook beneath the front seat; before his astonished guests could utter a protest, it was opened, and he was deftly unpacking the contents.
“But that is your luncheon,” protested Cynthia, finding it incumbent on her to say something by way of polite refusal.
“And his aunt’s, my dear.”
In those few words Mrs. Devar conveyed skepticism as to the aunt and ready acceptance of the proffered fare; but Medenham paid no
