1. Describe Eveline’s conflict and the turning point in her life.
Answer:
(6 points)
Score
2. What does the story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” say about the theme of responsibility and neglect. Explain which
character is neglectful of his or her obligations and which character consequently undertakes unnecessary responsibility
as a result of that neglect. Explain the final outcomes of the both the neglect and the misplaced sense of
responsibility.
Answer:
(8 points)
Score
3. Think about the young women in “Eveline” and “The Train from Rhodesia.” Reread the final sentence in “Eveline” on
page 135. Then reread the young woman’s response after her husband gives her the lion in “The Train from Rhodesia” on
page 158 (the sentence that begins “She was looking…”).
What do the two women have in common? Explain your answer, using the stories as support.
Answer:
Your Score ___ of 20
Eveline
SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her
nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the
concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a
field there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought the
field and built houses in it — not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The
children of the avenue used to play together in that field — the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the
cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to
hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he
saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her
mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead.
Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like
the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years,
wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she
had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose
yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to
Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor
her father used to pass it with a casual word:
“He is in Melbourne now.”
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home
anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard,
both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away
with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad.
She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”
“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married — she, Eveline.
People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over
nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the
palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she
was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And
no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always
down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages — seven shillings — and Harry always sent up what he could but the
trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he
wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad
on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner.
Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her
hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to
keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly
and got their meals regularly. It was hard work — a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not find
it a wholly undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him
by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she
remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed
a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a
face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her
home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with
him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass
that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had
been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had
started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the
ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told
her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old
country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say
to him.
“I know these sailor chaps,” he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was
to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he
would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her
out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a
picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling
the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air Strange that
it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long
as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother’s illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other
side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given
sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:
“Damned Italians! coming over here!”
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being — that life of
commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly
with foolish insistence:
“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life,
perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her
in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.
She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to
her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages.
Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall,
with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she
prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she
went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could
she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips
in silent fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
“Come!”
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with
both hands at the iron railing.
“Come!”
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
“Eveline! Evvy!”
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set
her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
The Rocking-Horse Winner
by D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Word Count: 6015
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 centre 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 centre 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 neighbourhood.
Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough 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 into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. 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 nobody 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 the boy. “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 knows 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 are’nt you lucky either, mother?”
“I can’t be, it 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 somewhere,
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 mad 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.
“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.
“Get’s 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 this 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.
“Honour bright?” said the nephew.
“Honour 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, honour 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. 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 Oscar! Honour bright?”
“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 partner’s.”
“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 on 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 boys 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. Honour bright?”
“Honour bright all right, 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, honour
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 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 hard and absent.
She went away to town without saying more.
But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said Paul’s 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 tutor. 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 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 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 pyjamas, 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 brain-fever. 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?” asked the heart-frozen mother.
“I don’t know,” said the father stonily.
“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 thoughts 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 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 his 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.”
Text: “The Train From Rhodesia”
The train came out of the red horizon and bore down towards them over the single straight track.
The stationmaster came out of his little brick station with its pointed chalet roof, feeling the creases in his serge
uniform in his legs as well. A stir of preparedness rippled through the squatting native venders waiting in the dust;
the face of a carved wooden animal, eternally surprised, stuck out of a sack. The stationmaster’s barefoot children
wandered over. From the grey mud huts with the untidy heads that stood within a decorated mud wall, chickens, and dogs
with their skin stretched like parchment over their bones, followed the piccanins down to the track. The flushed and
perspiring west cast a reflection, faint, without heat, upon the station, upon the tin shed marked “Goods,” upon the
walled kraal, upon the grey tin house of the stationmaster and upon the sand, that lapped all around, from sky to sky,
cast little rhythmical cups of shadow, so that the sand became the sea, and closed over the children’s black feet softly
and without imprint.
The stationmaster’s wife sat behind the mesh of her veranda. Above her head the hunk of a sheep’s carcass moved
slightly, dangling in a current of air.
They waited.
The train called out, along the sky; but there was no answer; and the cry hung on: I’m coming…I’m coming…
The engine flared out now, big, whisking a dwindling body behind it; the track flared out to let it in.
Creaking, jerking, jostling, gasping, the train filled the station.
Here, let me see that one—the young woman curved her body farther out of the corridor window. Missus? smiled the old
man, looking at the creatures he held in his hand. From a piece of string on his grey finger hung a tiny woven basket;
he lifted it, questioning. No, no, she urged, leaning down towards him, across the height of the train towards the man
in the piece of old rug; that one, that one, her hand commanded. It was a lion, carved out of soft, dry wood that looked
like spongecake; heraldic, black and white, with impressionistic detail burnt in. The old man held it up to her still
smiling, not from the heart, but at the customer. Between its vandyke teeth, in the mouth opened in an endless roar too
terrible to be heard, it had a black tongue. Look, said the young husband, if you don’t mind! And round the neck of the
thing, a piece of fur (rat? rabbit? meerkat?); a real mane, majestic, telling you somehow that the artist had delight in
the lion.
All up and down the length of the train in the dust the artists sprang, walking bent, like performing animals,
the better to exhibit the fantasy held towards the faces on the train. Buck, startled and stiff, staring with round
black and white eyes. More lions, standing erect, grappling with strange, thin, elongated warriors who clutched spears
and showed no fear in their slits of eyes. How much, they asked from the train, how much?
Give me penny, said the little ones with nothing to sell. The dogs went and sat, quite still, under the dining
car, where the train breathed out the smell of meat cooking with onion.
A man passed beneath the arch of reaching arms meeting grey-black and white in the exchange of money for the
staring wooden eyes, the stiff wooden legs sticking up in the air; went along under the voices and the bargaining,
interrogating the wheels. Past the dogs; glancing up at the dining car where he could stare at the faces, behind glass,
drinking beer, two by two, on either side of a uniform railway vase with its pale dead flower. Right to the end, to the
guard’s van, where the stationmaster’s children had just collected their mother’s two loaves of bread; to the engine
itself, where the stationmaster and the driver stood talking against the steaming complaint of the resting beast.
The man called out to them, something loud and joking. They turned to laugh, in a twirl of steam. The two
children careered over the sand, clutching the bread, and burst through the iron gate and up the path through the garden
in which nothing grew.
Passengers drew themselves in at the corridor windows and turned into compartments to fetch money, to call
someone to look. Those sitting inside looked up: suddenly different, caged faced, boxed in, cut off after the contact
of the outside. There was an orange a piccanin would like…. What about that chocolate? It wasn’t very nice….
A girl had collected a handful of the hard kind, that no one liked, out of the chocolate box, and was throwing
them to the dogs, over at the dining car. But the hens darted in and swallowed the chocolates, incredibly quick and
accurate, before they had even dropped in the dust, and the dogs, a little bewildered, looked up with their brown eyes,
not expecting anything.
—No, leave it, said the young woman, don’t take it….
Too expensive, too much, she shook her head and raised her voice to the old man, giving up the lion. He held it
high where she had handed it to him. No, she said, shaking her head. Three-and-six? insisted her husband, loudly. Yes
baas! laughed the old man. Three-and-six?—the young man was incredulous. Oh leave it—she said. The young man stopped.
Don’t you want it? he said, keeping his face closed to the old man. No, never mind, she said, leave it. The old native
kept his head on one side, looking at them sideways, holding the lion. Three-and-six, he murmured, as old people repeat
things to themselves.
The young woman drew her head in. She went into the coupe and sat down. Out of the window, on the other side,
there was nothing; sand and bush; and thorn tree. Back through the open doorway, past the figure of her husband in the
corridor, there was the station, the voices, wooden animals waving, running feet. Her eye followed the funny little
valance of scrolled wood that outlined the chalet roof of the station; she thought of the lion and smiled. That bit of
fur round the neck. But the wooden buck, the hippos, the elephants, the baskets that already bulked out of their brown
paper under the seat and on the luggage rack! How will they look at home? Where will you put them? What will they mean
away from the places you found them? Away from the unreality of the last few weeks? The young man outside. But he is
not part of the unreality; he is for good now. Odd…somewhere there was an idea that he, that living with him, was part
of the holiday, the strange places.
Outside, a bell rang. The stationmaster was leaning against the end of the train, green flag rolled in
readiness. A few men who had got down to stretch their legs sprang on to the train, clinging to the observation
platforms, or perhaps merely standing on the iron step, holding the rail; but on the train, safe from the one dusty
platform, the one tin house, the empty sand.
There was a grunt. The train jerked. Through the glass the beer drinkers looked out, as if they could not see
beyond it. Behind the flyscreen, the stationmaster’s wife sat facing back at them beneath the darkening hunk of meat.
There was a shout. The flag drooped out. Joints not yet coordinated, the segmented body of the train heaved and
bumped back against itself. It began to move; slowly the scrolled chalet moved past it, the yells of the natives,
running alongside, jetted up into the air, fell back at different levels. Staring wooden faces waved drunkenly, there,
then gone, questioning for the last time at the windows. Here, one-and-six baas!—As one automatically opens a hand to
catch a thrown ball, a man fumbled wildly down his pocket, brought up the shilling and sixpence and threw them out; the
old native, gasping, his skinny toes splaying the sand, flung the lion.
The piccanins were waving, the dogs stood, tails uncertain, watching the train go: past the mud huts, where a
woman turned to look up from the smoke of the fire, her hand pausing on her hip.
The stationmaster went slowly in under the chalet.
The old native stood, breath blowing out the skin between his ribs, feet tense, balanced in the sand, smiling and
shaking his head. In his opened palm, held in the attitude of receiving, was the retrieved shilling and sixpence.
The blind end of the train was being pulled helplessly out of the station.
The young man swung in from the corridor, breathless. He was shaking his head with laughter and triumph. Here! he said.
And waggled the lion at her. One-and-six!
What? she said.
He laughed. I was arguing with him for fun, bargaining—when the train had pulled out already, he came tearing
after…One-and-six Baas! So there’s your lion.
She was holding it away from her, the head with the open jaws, the pointed teeth, the black tongue, the wonderful
ruff of fur facing her. She was looking at it with an expression of not seeing, of seeing something different. Her face
was drawn up, wryly, like the face of a discomforted child. Her mouth lifted nervously at the corner. Very slowly,
cautious, she lifted her finger and touched the mane, where it was joined to the wood.
But how could you, she said. He was shocked by the dismay of her face.
Good Lord, he said, what’s the matter?
If you want the thing, she said, her voice rising and breaking with the shrill impotence of anger, why didn’t you
buy it in the first place? If you wanted it, why didn’t you pay for it? Why didn’t you take it decently, when he offered
it? Why did you have to wait for him to run after the train with it, and give him one-and-six? One and six!
She was pushing it at him, trying to force him to take the lion. He stood astonished, his hands hanging at his
sides.
But you wanted it! You liked it so much?
—It’s a beautiful piece of work, she said fiercely, as if to protect it from him.
You liked it so much! You said yourself it was too expensive—
Oh you—she said, hopeless and furious. You…She threw the lion onto the seat.
He stood looking at her.
She sat down again in the corner and, her face slumped in her hands, stared out of her window. Everything was
turning round inside her. One-and-six. One-and-six. One-and-six for the wood and the carving and the sinews of the
legs and the switch of the tail. The mouth open like that and the teeth. The black tongue, rolling, like a wave. The
man round the neck. To give one-and-six for that. The heat of shame mounted through her legs and body and sounded in
her ears like the sound of sand pouring. Pouring, pouring. She sat there, sick. A weariness, a tastelessness, the
discovery of a void made her hands slacken their grip, atrophy emptily, as if the hour was not worth their grasp. She
was feeling like this again. She had thought it was something to do with singleness, with being alone and belonging too
much to oneself.
She sat there not wanting to move or speak, or to look at anything even; so that the mood should be associated
with nothing, no object, word, or sight that might recur and so recall the feeling again….Smuts blew in grittily, settled
on her hands. Her back remained at exactly the same angle, turned against the young man sitting with his hands drooping
between his sprawled legs, and the lion, fallen on its side in the corner.
The train had cast the station like a skin. It called out to the sky, I’m coming, I’m coming; and again, there was no
answer.
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