Derby Day by D.J. Taylor Page A

whereupon Mr Solomons conceded that it might possibly be done after all. Mr Happerton offered his own bill at three months by way of payment, was stoutly repulsed, and eventually produced fifteen ten-pound notes from the breast pocket of his coat. ‘Cash, sir. Cash is how I likes to deal,’ Mr Solomons said sententiously as he stowed the money away in the folds of his dressing gown. By the time he looked up, Mr Happerton was gone.
    That evening, after Mr Gresham had drunk the milk-and-arrow-root that his son-in-law had brought him and been escorted up to bed, the Happertons held a conference before the drawing-room fire. It is always said that young women are changed by their marriage, that certain qualities in them are brought out, while certain other qualities recede into shadow, but Mrs Happerton was not at all changed – except that perhaps her hair seemed a little sandier and her eyes a little greener, and that she was a little quieter and a little more reflective. She had read many novels, she had been taken to Astley’s and the theatre, she had watched the preparation of the milk-and-arrowroot and made one or two sharp little remarks. But still there was a way in which she had become intimate with her husband – not perhaps in any open displays of affection, but in the conversations Mr Happerton initiated about the progress of his business affairs. Hearing him talk with old Mr Gresham over the drawing-room fire, watching him as he administered the hot-milk-and-arrowroot – he made a joke, sometimes, of the patient’s duty to finish it all up – she would sometimes cast him a look of sudden interest. Mr Happerton noticed the looks and was comforted by them. He thought he and his wife were getting on.
    ‘Your father seems very tired,’ Mr Happerton began comfortably. ‘He will go to sleep at the table one of these days. What does Mr Morris say?’ Mr Morris was the Greshams’ doctor.
    ‘I don’t know Mr Morris says anything other than that he should not exert himself.’
    ‘Well, he is certainly following his instructions then,’ Mr Happerton said, a little less comfortably. ‘Has he said anything about returning to chambers?’
    ‘No, he has said nothing.’
    ‘Nor of … of that business affair I asked you to mention to him.’
    ‘He said, when I asked him, that he was not disposed to give you any money. He said’ – Mrs Happerton’s expression as she said this was quite horribly demure – ‘that gentlemen who wanted a thing should find the means of paying for it.’
    Mr Happerton stared into the fire. He was not cast down by this information, for he fancied that his position with regard to Mr Gresham was growing stronger by the day.
    ‘There would be nothing quite so advantageous,’ he began again, ‘as two thousand pounds in my account at Overend & Gurney. Of course, if the money is not forthcoming then the plan will have to be given up. You might tell your father that.’
    ‘Certainly I shall tell him.’
    ‘And now – well, you could come and sit beside me here if you liked, you know.’
    Mrs Happerton went and sat beside him, to the slight disarrangement of her dress. The tall footman, coming into the room for the tea things, saw them from the doorway and went away again. What she said to her father next morning, is uncertain, but two days later a cheque for £2,000 drawn in favour of George Happerton, Esq., and signed by Mr Gresham was presented to one of Messrs Overend & Gurney’s tellers in Lothbury.
    Not long after this, one of the sporting newspapers carried a paragraph that assured gentlemen of the racing fraternity that they would be delighted to learn that TIBERIUS, the champion horse formerly owned by Mr Davenant, had been purchased by that well-known sporting gentleman Mr Happerton, known to all patrons of the turf as one of its most doughty supporters, etc.
    ‘So he has brought it off,’ Captain Raff said to himself, reading the paragraph at the Blue Riband. ‘See