The Rocking-Horse Winner
  There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the center of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the center of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighborhood.
Although they lived in style , they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never eno
ugh money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went in to town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialized. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time, though nobod
y said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!"
It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: "There must be more money!"
Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.
"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own? Why do we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?"
"Because we're the poor members of the family," said the mother.
"But why are we, mother?"
"Well--I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has no luck."
The boy was silent for some time.
"Is luck money, mother?" he asked rather timidly.
"No, Paul. Not quite. It's what causes you to have money."
"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said filthy lucker, it meant money."
"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother. "But it's lucre, not luck."
"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "Then what is luck, mother?"
"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."
"Oh! Will you? And is father not lucky?"
"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.
The boy watched her with unsure eyes.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. Nobody ever know why one person is lucky and another unlucky."
"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?"
"Perhaps God. But He never tells."
"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky either, mother?"
"I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband."
"But by yourself, aren't you?"
"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed."
"Why?"
"Well--never mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.
The child looked at her, to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him.
"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person."
"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.
He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it.
"God told me," he asserted,brazening it out.
"I hope He did, dear!" she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter.
"He did, mother!"
"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.
The boy saw she did not believe him; or, rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhat, and made him want to compel her attention.
He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to "luck." Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. Wildly the horse careered the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him.
When he had ridden to the end of his made little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright.
"Now!" he would silently command the snorting steed. "Now, take me to where there is luck! Now take me!"
And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it. So he would mount again, and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there. He knew he could get there.
"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.
"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off !" said his elder sister Joan.
But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him . Anyhow he was growing beyond her.
One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his furious rides. He did not speak to them.
"Hallo, you young jockey ! Riding a winner?" said his uncle.
"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know," said his mother.
But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he was in full tilt . His mother watched him with an anxious expression on her face.
At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop, and slid down.
"Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.
"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.
"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.
"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop till you get there. What's the horse's name?"
"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.
"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.
"Well, he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week."
"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot . How did you know his name?"
"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.
The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the racing news. Bassett, the young gardener, who had been wounded in the left foot in the war and had got his present job through Oscar Cresswell whose batman he had been was a perfect blade of the "turf". He lived in the racing events, and the small boy lived with him.
Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.
"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.
"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"
"Well--I don't want to give him away--he's a young sport, a fine sport, sir. Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind."
Bassett was serious as a church.
The uncle went back to his nephew and took him off for a ride in the car.
"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse ?" the uncle asked.
The boy watched the handsome man closely.
"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.
"Not a bit of it. I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."
The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.
"Honor bright?" said the nephew.
"Honor bright, son!" said the uncle.
"Well, then, Daffodil."
"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"
"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's Daffodil."
"Daffodil, eh?"
There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.
"Uncle!"
"Yes, son?"
"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Bassett."
"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do with it?"
"We're partners. We've been partners from the first. Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost, I promised him, honor bright , it was only between me and him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"
The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together. The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.
"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. Daffodil, eh? How much are you putting on him?"
"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve."
The uncle thought it a good joke.
"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer? What are you betting, then?"
"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely. "But it's between you and me, Uncle Os
car! Honor bright?"
The uncle burst into a roar of laughter.
"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," he said, laughing. "But where's your three hundred?"
"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."
"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"
"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."
"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.
"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."
Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was silent. He pursued the matter no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.
"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five for you on any horse you fancy. What's your pick?"
"Daffodil, uncle."
"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"
"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.
"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."
The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire. He pursed his mouth tight, and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling, "Lancelot! Lancelot!" in his French accent.
Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third. The child flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene. His uncle brought him four five-pound notes, four to one.
"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them before the boy's eyes.
"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I expect I have fifteen hundred now; and twenty in reserve; and this twenty."
His uncle studied him for some moments.
"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"
"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle. Honor bright!"
"Honor bright all bright, son! But I must talk to Bassett."
"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners. Only, you'd have to promise, honor bright , uncle, not to let it go beyond us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started winning with…."
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 yearns , 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 do
wn.
"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.
"But when are you vaguelysure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.

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