Derby Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

sporting clubs, and if there are secrets between them, then a Hay Hill duchess has her confidences too.
    Just at that moment a servant came into the room and handed Captain Raff a grimy pink envelope. Ripping it open, he read the contents with an expression amounting to not much less than stark horror, while his friend looked humorously on.
    ‘Who’s your correspondent, Raff? Some demented milliner ruining herself on your account?’
    ‘Fellows shouldn’t make jokes on such subjects,’ Captain Raff said, folding the envelope into the breast pocket of his coat and altogether failing to disguise that this was pretty much the truth. ‘By heaven, I have behaved badly in the affair I know.’ Captain Raff did not look as if he thought he had behaved badly.
    ‘I should rather think you have. Here, Raff’ – Mr Happerton threw his arm conspiratorially around his friend’s shoulder – ‘never mind Miss Baker – poor girl, I’ll send her a sovereign, indeed I shall. There is something I particularly want to talk to you about.’
    ‘Is there now? I suppose it’s that girl you are going to marry.’
    ‘Well – maybe. But it is not quite settled.’
    ‘Not quite settled! Last time we talked of Miss What’s-her-name – Miss Gresham – I thought you were going to spout reams of poetry over her. Shelley and that kind of thing.’
    ‘I don’t think she’s quite the girl for sending verses to, Raff.’
    ‘Ain’t she though?’ Captain Raff remembered the pink envelope in his breast pocket. ‘Marriage is such a serious thing. You’d have to give up Miss Decamp, you know.’
    ‘Hush about Miss Decamp. Miss Decamp never existed. No, the truth is, Raff, I can’t quite get to the bottom of her.’
    ‘What? As to whether she’ll have you?’
    ‘Well – I suppose that’s the rub of it.’ And Mr Happerton explained, in so far as was consistent with good taste, some of his recent dealings with Miss Gresham.
    ‘Playing some game of her own, I suppose,’ Captain Raff said sagely. ‘Well, either she’ll take you or she won’t, you can be pretty sure of that. And how much will the old gentleman cut up for?’
    ‘I don’t know that he’ll cut up for anything. Rich as Dives, but fond of it you know.’
    Captain Raff looked doubtful. ‘That horse won’t buy itself.’
    ‘Well – maybe not. But there are other ways of buying horses. Look at these.’
    So speaking, Mr Happerton took a notecase from his pocket, drew out a couple of pieces of stamped paper, written over with a thick, sprawling hand, and waved them under his friend’s nose.
    ‘What’s them then?’ Captain Raff was short-sighted.
    ‘Two bills of Davenant’s. The man that owns Tiberius. One for two hundred at three months, the other for three at four.’
    ‘The deuce! How much did you pay for them, eh?’
    ‘Not much over half. They are very shy of Davenant’s bills in the City just now. They think he is going to go smash.’
    ‘And you’re set to help him. Ain’t that the case?’
    Mr Happerton gave his companion a sidelong glance, acknowledging that he might in some manner be beholden to him but contriving to suggest, by the way in which he shifted in his chair and glanced out of the window, where the rain had begun to fall over Thavies Inn, that Captain Raff would be prudent not to push this advantage too far. He wondered if he was not a little tired of Captain Raff. The bills were back in his pocket now, snug against an Astley’s ticket and a note from his saddle-maker’s. Captain Raff, meanwhile, had returned to an earlier subject.
    ‘This Miss Gresham. Uncommon good-looking girl ain’t she?’
    ‘Well – I don’t know about that. Dresses well, you know. Always wearing the new thing. Devil of an allowance the old fellow must give her.’
    ‘There’s no one like those doting old men to spoil a girl,’ Captain Raff admitted.
    ‘And as for looks, well she’d make ten of that Miss Tanqueray that Jackson swore he’d carry off