Text
2
Exercises
The
Rocking-Horse Winner (II)
by
D. H. Lawrence
Uncle
Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an
afternoon, and there they talked.
"It's like this, you see,
sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning
yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if
I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year since, now, that
I put five shillings on Blush of Dawn for him - and we lost.
Then the luck turned, with that ten shillings he had from
you, that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's
been pretty steady, all things considering. What do you say,
Master Paul?"
"We're all right when we're
sure," said Paul. "It's when we're not quite sure that we go
down."
"Oh, but we're careful
then," said Bassett.
"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.
"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett, in
a secret, religious voice. "It's as if he had it from heaven.
Like Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as
eggs."
"Did you put anything on
Daffodil?" asked
Oscar Cresswell.
"Yes, sir. I made my bit."
"And my nephew?"
Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at
Paul.
"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett?
I told uncle I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."
"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.
"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.
"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul
he can have it any minute he likes to ask for it."
"What, fifteen hundred
pounds?"
"And twenty! And forty, that is, with the
twenty he made on the course."
"It's amazing!" said the uncle.
"If Master Paul offers you to be partners,
sir, I would, if I were you; if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.
Oscar Cresswell thought about it.
"I'll see the money," he said.
They drove home again, and sure enough, Bassett
came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred pounds
in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with Joe Glee,
in the Turf Commission deposit.
"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm
sure! Then we go strong, for all we're worth. Don’t we,
Bassett?"
"We do that, Master Paul."
"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.
"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure,
like about Daffodil," said the boy; "and sometimes I have
an idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I, Bassett?
Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."
"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like
about Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"
"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily.
"I'm sure, you know, uncle; that’s all."
"It's as if he had it from heaven,
sir," Bassett
reiterated.
"I should say so!" said the uncle.
But he became a partner. And when the Leger
was coming on, Paul was
"sure" about Lively Spark, which was
a quite inconsiderable horse.
The boy insisted on putting
a thousand on the horse. Bassett went for five hundred, and
Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively
Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against
him. Paul had made ten thousand.
"You see," he said, "I was absolutely sure
of him."
Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.
"Look here, son," he said,
"this sort of thing
makes me nervous."
"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure
again for a long time."
"But what are you going to do with your
money?"
asked the uncle.
"Of course," said the boy,
"I started it for
mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky,
so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."
"What might stop
whispering?"
"Our house. I hate our house for
whispering."
"What does it whisper?"
"Why - why" - the boy fidgeted -
"why, I don't
know. But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."
"I know it, son, I know
it."
"You know people send mother writs, don't you,
uncle?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.
"And then the house whispers, like people
laughing at you behind your back. It's awful, that is! I thought
if I was lucky ..."
"You might stop it," added the uncle.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that
had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
"Well, then!" said the uncle.
"What are we doing?"
"I shouldn't like mother to know I was
lucky,"
said the boy.
"Why not, son?"
"She'd stop me."
"I don't think she would."
"Oh!" - and the boy writhed in an odd way
- "I don't want her to know, uncle."
"All right, son! We'll manage it without her
knowing."
They managed it very easily. Paul, at the
other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his
uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then
to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand
pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand
pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five
years.
"So
she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five
successive years," said Uncle Oscar. "I hope it
won't make it all the harder for her later."
Paul's mother had her birthday in November.
The house had been "whispering" worse than ever lately, and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not
bear up against it. He was very anxious to see the effect
of the birthday letter, telling his mother about the thousand
pounds.
When
there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents,
as he was beyond the nursery control. His mother
went into town nearly every day. She had discovered that she
had an odd
knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so
she worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the
chief "artist" for the leading drapers. She drew the figures
of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the newspaper
advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand
pounds a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundreds,
and she was again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first
in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches
for drapery advertisements.
She was down to breakfast on the morning of
her birthday. Paul watched her face as she read her letters.
He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother read it, her face
hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined
look came on her mouth. She hid the letter under the pile
of others, and said not a word about it.
"Didn't you have anything nice in the post
for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.
"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice
cold and absent.
She went away to town without saying more.
But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared.
He said Paul' mother had had a long interview with the lawyer,
asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced at
once, as she was in debt.
"What do you think,
uncle?" said the boy.
"I leave it to you, son."
"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some
more with the other," said the boy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,
laddie!" said Uncle Oscar.
"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National;
or the Lincolnshire, or else the Derby. I'm sure to know for
one of them," said Paul.
So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's
mother touched the whole five thousand. Then something very
curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad,
like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain
new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going
to Eton,
his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers
in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother
had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind
the sprays of mimosa and almond blossom, and from under the
piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed
in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there
must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w- there must be
more money!-more than ever! More than ever!"
It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away
at his Latin and Greek with his tutors. But his intense hours
were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by; he
had not "known," and had lost a hundred pounds. Summer was
at hand. He was in agony for the Lincoln.
But even for the Lincoln he didn't "know," and he lost fifty
pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were
going to explode in him.
"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about
it!" urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn't
really hear what his uncle was saying.
"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got
to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue
eyes blazing with a sort of madness.
His mother noticed how overwrought he was.
"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't
you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think
you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her
heart curiously heavy because of him.
But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby,
mother!" he said. "I couldn't possibly!"
"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy
when she was opposed. "Why not? You can still go from the
seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that's
what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think
you care too much about these races. It's a bad sign. My family
has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow
up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I
shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to
talk racing to you, unless you promise to be reasonable about
it; go away to the seaside and forget it. You're all nerves!"
"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as
you don't send me away till after the Derby," the boy said.
"Send you away from where? just from this
house?"
"Yes," he said, gazing at her.
"Why, you curious child, what makes you care
about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved
it."
He gazed at her without speaking. He had a
secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even
to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.
But his mother, after standing undecided and
a little bit sullen for some moments, said.
"Very well, then! Don't go to the seaside
till after the Derby, if you don't wish it. But promise me
you won't let your nerves go to pieces. Promise you won't
think so much about horse-racing and events, as you call
them!"
"Oh, no," said the boy casually.
"I won't
think much about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't
worry, mother, if I were you."
"If you were me and I were you," said his
mother," I wonder
what we should do!"
"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't
you?" the boy repeated.
"I should be awfully glad to know
it," she
said wearily.
"Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean, you
ought to know you needn't worry," he insisted.
"Ought I? Then I'll see about
it," she said.
Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse,
that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse
and a nursery-governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed
to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
"Surely, you're too big for a
rocking-horse!"
his mother had remonstrated.
"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a
real horse. I like to have some sort of animal about," had
been his quaint answer.
"Do you feel he keeps you
company?" she laughed.
"Oh, yes! He’s very good, he always keeps
me company, when I'm there," said Paul.
So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested
prance in the boy's bedroom.
The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew
more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him,
he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother
had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes,
for half-an-hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him
that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once,
and know he was safe.
Two nights before the Derby, she was at a
big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about
her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could
hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main,
for she believed in common-sense. But it was too strong. She
had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the
country. The children’s nursery-governess was terribly surprised
and startled at being rung up in the night.
"Are the children all right, Miss
Wilmot?"
"Oh, yes, they are quite all
right."
"Master Paul? Is he all
right?"
"He
went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up
and look at him?"
"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly.
"No!
Don't trouble. It's all right. Don't sit up. We shall be home
fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy intruded
upon.
"Very good," said the governess.
It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother
and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul's
mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak.
She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her
husband downstairs, mixing a whisky-and-soda.
And then, because of the strange anxiety at
her heart, she stole upstairs to her son's room. Noiselessly
she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise?
What was it?
She stood, with arrested muscles, outside
his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not
loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise,
yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed
motion. What was it? What in God’s name was it? She ought
to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it
was.
Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say
what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.
Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she
turned the door-handle.
The room was dark. Yet in the space near the
window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She
gazed in fear and amazement.
Then suddenly she switched on the light, and
saw her son, in his green pajamas, madly surging on the rocking-horse.
The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden
horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress
of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.
"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you
doing?"
"It's Malabar!" he screamed, in a powerful,
strange voice. "It's Malabar!"
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and
senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then
he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented
motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.
But he was unconscious, and unconscious he
remained, with some brainfever. He talked and tossed, and
his mother sat stonily by his side.
"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett,
I know! It's Malabar!"
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge
the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked
her brother Oscar.
"It's one of the horses running for the
Derby,"
was the answer.
And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell
spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at
fourteen to one.
The third day of the illness was critical:
they were waiting for a change. The boy, with his rather long,
curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither
slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue
stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned
actually into a stone.
In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come,
but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one
moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was very angry at the
intrusion, but on second thought she agreed. The boy was the
same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.
The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little
brown moustache, and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into
the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul’s mother, and
stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes
at the tossing, dying child.
"Master Paul!" he whispered.
"Master Paul!
Malabar came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you
told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you have;
you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right,
Master Paul."
"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother?
Did I say Malabar? Do you think I'm lucky, mother? I knew
Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that
lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call
that lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds!
I knew, didn't I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If
I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you
can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth,
Bassett?"
"I went a thousand on it, Master
Paul."
"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride
my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh, absolutely!
Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"
"No, you never did," said the mother.
But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard
her brother's voice saying to her: "My God. Hester, you're
eighty-odd thousand to
the good, and a poor devil of a son to
the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best
gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find
a winner."
(3 036 words)
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