The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral

by Josephine Tey

  The paddock was deserted, since nearly everyone was watching the running of the second race, but away by the far boundary there were signs of activity where the runners for the Duke of York’s Handicap were being made ready for the race. As they crossed to them the little man asked Sara if she was interested in horses, and Sara explained that this was her first race meeting and that she knew nothing at all about horses.

  “Commendable frankness. Most commendable. I wish more people would admit the fact. You must be the only person in this square mile who isn’t an authority on horseflesh. Personally I prefer pigs. I find pigs very interesting. Breed ’em.”

  Sara thought this a little strange, but she supposed that even trainers have their hobbies. She noticed that the waterproof which he wore in spite of the sunny afternoon was shabby and frayed at the wrists. Perhaps he wasn’t the trainer; just the head lad, or something. He didn’t talk like a lad, but perhaps he had come down in the world; been a trainer and failed, or something like that. He was a “character”, but she liked him.

  There were six or seven horses in the space of grass before them, and the little man nodded at them.

  “Which would you have, you who don’t know anything about them?”

  Sara considered for a little and then chose a bay filly. “The one by the primrose rug,” she said.

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about horses?”

  “Have I chosen a good one? I had an Irish grandmother, but I expect it is just a fluke.”

  “Have a second choice, then.”

  This time she chose a brown colt.

  Before her companion could remark on her choice Chitterne appeared. “I didn’t know you knew each other,” he said.

  “We don’t, officially,” the little man said. “You left us stranded together, and we picked each other up.”

  “Allow me to make amends. Father, this is Sara Ellis. Sara came down with me to help my luck. Have you been showing her Double Bass?”

  “Miss Ellis has a marvellous eye for a horse. Either that or it’s black art. She says she doesn’t know a horse from a wheelbarrow. And first she chooses Wilmer’s filly, and then Double Bass.”

  “Oh, is the black one Double Bass?” Sara said, glad to have something to talk about, in her confusion.

  Chitterne said, yes, but they called that colour brown in a horse.

  They moved nearer to see Double Bass saddled, standing in an attentive little group just far enough away not to upset the colt, who laid back his ears at any attempt at familiarity. The trainer and two lads were busy with the paraphernalia: saddle, surcingle, girth, number sheet, bucket, sponge, blanket and rug. Everything was done with the nicety, the unhurrying expedition, of a surgical operation. It was very quiet there; the sun warmed Sara’s back, gilded the high-lights on Double Bass’s dark coat, and illuminated the brown, shrewd faces of the men. The air was full of the sweet smell of crushed grass, the brave smell of leather and horses. She was very happy. She forgot that she had taken Lord Wilmington for a stable lad, forgot that she was Sara Ellis and must go back to Seventeen Sark Street to-night; forgot everything but that she was there among the horses in the sunlight with these two men whom she liked and who liked her.

  But presently people began to come from the stands; men and women whom she did not know clustered round Chit to inspect the horse. She was amused to notice that Lord Wilmington had been right: they were all authorities. Double Bass was voted to be nearly everything that a horse might be; too sloping in the fetlock, too upright in the shoulder, not well let down, inclined to be over at the knee, a bit on the leg, inclined to be back at the knee, sluggish, excitable, not bred for speed, not bred to stay. Chitterne took it all smiling, his father with a bored gravity; but Sara began to feel a little desolate and out of it all. The extravagant praises of the women roused first contempt and then antagonism in her. “Fools!” she thought, listening to their high, over-accented, insincere accents; and despised herself for being led into feeling anything at all for them. Why should she care that both Chit and his father were surrounded and that no one spoke to her; it was not done willingly; people came and went so rapidly that introductions were not possible; it was contemptible of her to be thin-skinned. But she felt a little desolate.

  And then a very smart little American girl who was standing at her elbow gazing at Double Bass said to her: “Say, tell me something to say about him. Everyone seems to know the language but me.” And Sara laughed and felt better. The crowd of acquaintances faded away when they went hack to the stands to see the parade, and she found herself once more between Chit and his father. Daphne Conyers-Munford, who had made one of the admiring crowd, paused as she passed, to say: “Where’s Ursula?”

  “Don’t know,” Chitterne said. “She was coming, but something else turned up.” The Munford girl cast a mildly curious glance at Sara, but her main interest seemed to lie in the betting book which she was clutching.

  At the mention of Chitterne’s sister the out-of-it feeling revived unreasonably in Sara; she was depressed and a little weary. And very angry with herself. Not even the glittering line of horses walking down the course in front of the stands could take her mind away from the argument she was having with herself. Why should she expect to feel at home with these people? And (the next moment) why shouldn’t she? They were just human beings like herself. She didn’t look their inferior, why should she feel it? Her resentment of them was merely inferiority complex. It was she who was wrong, not they. She was probably tired. It was Saturday afternoon, and she had had a rush to get away, and she had been standing about ever since she arrived.

  The horses were coloured specks fading into the distance. Presently they disappeared, and people devoted themselves to consolidating their positions on the stands, or ran about in last minute attempts to back their choice at a reasonable price. Sara stole a glance at Chitterne, and was ashamed of her pettiness. There was nothing mean or small or carping about Chit. But then, perhaps life had always been so easy for him that he had found nothing to sour him. Would Chit have been “big” if he had been brought up in Sark Street?

  For the first part of the race the horses were not visible from the stands. Then they appeared, a small patch of colour in the distance, indistinguishable except to an expert. Sara stared with caught breath at this scrap of motley hurling itself so smoothly yet so impetuously across the landscape. Presently its advance was no longer smooth; one could see the horses galloping, pick out the jockeys. The group opened out a little; grew larger with incredible swiftness. They were coming, they were almost here. Sara looked for Double Bass but could not see him; there were several dark horses and the colours were such a muddle. At the distance, however, she could see plainly. There were three horses in front, and a gap between them and the rest of the field. The crowd had begun to call the names of the horses, shouting in a growing excitement until the names had merged into a continuous roar. Sara recognised the horses now. One was the filly she had chosen in the paddock, one was Double Bass, and the other was a roan. “Oh, please let Chit’s horse win!” she prayed with a fervour she had never used at the meetings. The filly was in front on the rails, with the roan and Double Bass together a length behind. The filly’s jockey was riding her, but the boy on Double Bass was sitting still. The roan had started to roll, but was still game. The filly, unbalanced by her jockey’s vigorous methods and tiring rapidly, hung away from the rails for a moment. Double Bass’s jockey moved, and Double Bass shot into the gap on the rails. The crowd yelled their admiration and fear. A quick recovery on the filly’s part and Double Bass would be finished. But he had done it. They were level now, neck and neck. For one moment Sara wanted the filly to win; she was such a gallant thing, struggling there, and she had chosen her out of the lot. But she forgot all about the filly as Double Bass went sailing past the post a clear length ahead, as easily as if he were taking part in an exercise canter.

  It was a popular victory. The horse had been thoroughly exposed
and well backed, and where the crowd was concerned Chitterne was a person almost as well known and popular as the Prince of Wales. They looked on Chitterne, as they looked on the Prince of Wales, as a personal possession. It was almost like having a horse of their own win. There was vociferous rejoicing in the cheaper stands, and much back-clapping in the enclosure as the proud owner went clown to meet Double Bass.

  It was nearly half an hour later that Chitterne’s car slid out of its privileged position in the ranked car park; a position which his money and his popularity invariably gained him, and which he took, as he took the rest of life, as a matter of course. Healths had been drunk, bets collected, congratulations said, and now they were alone together again and the daylight was beginning to fade. The glow had gone out of everything except Chitterne’s face, which was still radiant. As they came out of the gates he swung the car away from town, and she asked where they were going.

  “My luck’s in to-day,” he said. “I’m going to put it to one last test.”

  “But where are we going?”

  “Up the river to have a meal somewhere,” he said, and refused to say more.

  They had tea at a window which overlooked the river, misty now in the twilight, and the rosy lamp on the checked cloth challenged the dusk with its optimism. Over tea Chitterne talked about the doings of the afternoon, and the future of Double Bass, but when he had lighted her cigarette he said: “I say, I want to ask you something. Now don’t say no straight away as soon as I’ve put the proposition to you. Take a little time and think it over.”

  “Yes?” she said, a little sadly. This was the end, then. There would be no more afternoons in Sussex, and teas by inn fires. No more of the companionship she had come to find so precious. The relationship had been untenable, she supposed; this had been bound to come. But the time had been so short. The happiest time of her life; perhaps the only really happy time she would ever have. She looked across at Chitterne’s earnest grey eyes watching her over the lamp, and a pang shot through her. It would be awful not to see him any more. Awful.

  “Will you marry me, Sara?”

  “Marry you!” She stared at him.

  “Don’t say a word!” he warned. “I told you not to say no straight away. Count a hundred before you say anything.” He gave her a quick, eager smile. “I know I’m the most notorious riotous liver in Britain, but ninety-nine point nine per cent of that isn’t true. Just newspaper stuff. If you believed all you read in the papers you’d be justified in thinking that I’m a bit mental. I’m not really a madcap, you know. I’m quite dependable privately. If you married me I’d never let you down. I promise you that. I’ve been in love with several women in my life—at least, I thought I was in love with them—but I stopped when I came to you. You’re the only person I’ve ever felt like spending the rest of my life with, and the thought that perhaps you won’t say yes just takes my breath away with terror. I didn’t mean to ask you to-day. I meant to give you a long time to get used to me, but my luck is so wonderful to-day that it seemed criminal to waste it.”

  “But it’s quite impossible,” she gasped. “Quite. I’m not the kind of wife you want.”

  “I’m the best judge of that, surely.”

  “Oh no, you’re not. You’re no judge at all at this moment. You’re in love with me, and all you know just now is that you want me.”

  “As my wife,” he said smoothly.

  “Yes, I know, but you’re not thinking of the kind of wife I might be. You don’t know anything about me. Not a thing.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. You forget my long conclave with Sidney Webb. I knew a tremendous amount about you before I ever met you. Inside information it was, too. I wish you could have heard Sidney’s unsolicited testimonial. I fell in love with you when I saw you in the shop. I’d been in love with you for weeks when I met Sidney. It isn’t many men who fall in love with an unknown girl and have a testimonial like Sidney’s presented to them about her. I decided then that I wanted to marry you. Now if you’re going to say no, just don’t. Say nothing, and think it over.”

  “But you’ve got to understand. Thinking it over won’t alter anything. Won’t make it any more possible. We belong to two different worlds. I should be no good in yours. I don’t know how to entertain or run a big house, or any of the things you would expect your wife to know. It would be a dreadful failure.”

  “Darling, you’re making difficulties. There’s no such thing as entertaining. You tell the housekeeper how many are coming, and when they come you say ‘How interesting!’ until they go, and that’s that.”

  “But I don’t want that kind of life!” she cried. “I don’t understand it. I should have nothing in common with the people you know.”

  “Sara,” he leaned over and caught her hand. “Sara,” he said seriously, “do you care for me at all? That’s what I want to know.”

  “I care for you a great deal.”

  “Love me?”

  “I—don’t know. I’ve never been awfully in love. But if what I feel for you is love then it is all I ever want.”

  Chitterne sat a moment looking at her, gave a big sigh, and released her hand. “That’s all right then,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know. I feel like a chap who’s been reprieved at the last moment.”

  “But I can’t marry you, Chit. I can’t. It would be a hopeless failure.”

  “Why? We’ve been very happy together, haven’t we? We were just made for each other, and you know it.”

  “Yes, but if I married you there wouldn’t be just us. There would be other people to consider. It isn’t you I’m afraid of, Chit, it’s the life you lead. If I married you I should have to lead a life I don’t understand, a life I should probably be a failure in because I should hate it in my heart. When I marry I don’t want an establishment. I want a small home full of things I’ve bought myself, where one or two people drop in now and then because they want to see me not because they’re looking for a meal, and where I shouldn’t have to say ‘How interesting!’ when I’m not interested.” “And” she mentally added, “where I won’t be an interloper.” Unconsciously her almost morbid pride was bolstered by the memory of the lonely feeling of the afternoon. She was not going to be the skeleton in any family, much as she cared for Chit.

  She sat listening to herself talking, and marvelled. Chit had asked her to marry him, and she was refusing! He had opened a way out of Seventeen for her, and she wasn’t taking it. Someone who wasn’t herself was doing the reasoning for her, but she knew that the other person was right, and so she sat still and let them talk. To-night in the attic at Seventeen she would probably call herself a fool, but she would have done the right thing.

  “But we could have a home like that. We can have any kind of home you like!”

  “That’s just it! It would be make-believe. Nothing can alter the fact that you’re rich and the heir to your father and that you know half London, and have nothing to do but amuse yourself. Think of your people and mine! Think of—oh, it’s impossible, I tell you!”

  They argued long, but he could not move her from the belief that his marriage to her would be a failure. “You’d be disappointed in me, Chit, and I couldn’t bear that.”

  “Well,” he said at length, “do what I said at first—though I said it for a different reason; I never thought you’d take this line! Think it over. There’s no need to decide yet. You’ll find presently that all the difficulties you are imagining are just shadows. As long as you don’t disapprove of me personally nothing in all the world matters.”

  As they went out to the car he suggested that she should come to the celebration dinner that night, and meet some of his friends; but she could not come. There would be too many explanations at home.

  “Why can’t I come and meet your people?” he asked reasonably. “Then there would be no need for mystery when we went out together.”

  “Wouldn’t there! You don’t know father. Even if I was going to marry you father would expect me t
o be in by eight, and make a row if I was five minutes late.”

  “But you are going to marry me,” he said, and kissed her for the first time. “Some day,” he amended as he let in the clutch. “I’m going to be like old Whatsisname and serve my seven years for you, if necessary.”

  Chapter XIV

  It was the beginning of November, and Ursula was giving a party. Lady Wilmington had gone to the country to assist in the organisation of a charity ball where everyone was going to be some kind of fish, and her husband had gone to earth in a remote part of the house with a bottle of port and the Encyclopedia Britannica, which, with the Daily Telegraph and the Pig Breeder, was his usual literary fare. The party was a more elaborate affair than Ursula’s usual entertainments, which had, even the most forethought of them, an air of informality, a charade-like spontaneity. This was what Ursula called a Coggins party; that is, one at which all the servants from Coggins downwards assisted, and the guests had the run of the house instead of being confined to Ursula’s flat. There was a definite programme of “turns”, and there would be dancing afterwards in the ball-room. Ursula “received” her guests instead of greeting their arrival with a gesture from the middle distance.

  “Darling,” said Daphne, who had been in Cannes for a fortnight with a married sister, “you do it beautifully. I feel I ought to have a train. You might have borrowed some of your mother’s armour, though. That breastplate thing with the ruby lion on it would have been frightfully impressive. Oh, darling!” clutching Ursula’s arm as a memory struck her, “I almost forgot. Is it true?”

  “On an odd chance I’d say not. But what are you talking about specially?”

  “That Chit’s sold his horses?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “But, darling, has he gone mad?”

  “I don’t know. He talks about justifying his existence. He’s going to work.”