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 adores her children.\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 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 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 can't make something.\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: \must be more money! There must be more money!\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. \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: \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: \breath is coming and going all the time.
\we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?\
\\are we, mother?\
\suppose,\she said slowly and bitterly, \because your father has no luck.\
The boy was silent for some time.
\
\
\filthy lucker, it meant money.\
\Filthy lucre does mean money,\\
\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.\\\The boy watched her with unsure eyes. \
\\nobody know?\\
\\\
\\
\
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. \\
He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it. \brazening it out.
\\
\
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 \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.
\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.
\
\leave off !\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.
\jockey ! Riding a winner?\
\longer, you know,\
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.
\long legs straddling apart.
\\
\horse's name?\
\\
\Sansovino last week.\\Ascot . How did you know his name?\\
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 \boy lived with him.
Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.
\his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters. \
\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. \put anything on a horse ?\The boy watched the handsome man closely. \
\The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire. \\\
\
\\
There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively. \\
\\
\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.
\putting on him?\
\The uncle thought it a good joke.
\betting, then?\
\Uncle Oscar! Honor bright?\
The uncle burst into a roar of laughter.
\
where's your three hundred?\
\
\
\\
\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. \horse you fancy. What's your pick?\\
\fiver 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!\
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.
\\and twenty in reserve; and this twenty.\His uncle studied him for some moments.
\hundred, are you?\
\\
\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.
\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?\
\go down.