National Velvet (32 page)

    
As this message left London it flashed in a few seconds along the trunk lines that were being held open for it, through Egypt, to India, South Africa, Australia, and to Singapore and the Far East. From the arteries ran the veins. Men in Shanghai, Sydney, Capetown became disseminators almost at the same moment that they had been receivers. And in a steady spreading belt round the world ran the reply to the frantic queries.

    
In each country there was a Smaller Proper Machinery to receive it and its re-distribution was carried out in eddies from the main encircling belt. In each country the Smaller Proper Machinery distributed it to the newspapers, and newspapers set it up in print, printed it,
issued it, sold it, and it was read by white, brown, yellow, red and black men who exclaimed in their tongues—“Whew!”

    
Heads of news agencies, heads of syndicates, heads of newspapers said in their various languages, “This is a Press Ballyhoo. Spread all out on this. This is frontpage stuff.”

    
“We gotta splurge,” said a great man in New York. “Get the dope from that dame. She's swell!” And he cabled, “Ten thousand dollars for exclusive rights of personal story.” A girl in London got into a fast car and drove rapidly down to the coast.

    
It was the great bellows of the Glory-Machine starting to blow. But it had not nearly got its wind up yet. The pink balloon of notoriety had hardly done more than shake loose its ropes and fill out. And the little creature whose name it bore lay very slight, very sheltered, under the deep and fumy blanket.

    
“It's Velvet. Sure's fate it's Velvet,” said Mr. Brown, standing in the street doorway. “Come in, gentlemen!”

    
“Mother! Hi! Come on in here!” he called. “Here's our Velvet gone . . . I feel hot in the stomach, gentlemen. She ain't hurt herself? (I gotta sit down.) She safe?”

    
Mrs. Brown filled the inner doorway.

    
“Mother,” said Mr. Brown, looking white and shaken, “our Velvet gone an' won the Grand National. Ridden it herself . . .”

    
Certainly Mrs. Brown's eyes changed their colour in
some way. They did not gleam. They were too high in their shallows for that, but a curious light seemed to shift in them.

    
“She's not one for words, sir,” said Mr. Brown, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his hands. “(Fingers gone all sticky. Takes me that way.) I can't take it in what she done. Where is she, then?”

    
“She's in the Liverpool Central Hospital . . .” began one of the reporters.

    
“Why?” said Mrs. Brown like a pistol shot.

    
“Just fatigue, so we understand,” said the reporter.

    
“They're from the newspapers, mother,” said Mr. Brown.

    
“She slipped off her horse, Mrs. Brown,” said the reporter. “Fainted after she had passed the winning post. No bones broken, no harm done. Is this the first you have heard of it?”

    
“Papers don't get here till seven,” said Mr. Brown. “On the Tilling's bus.” He looked at his watch. “It's a quarter of now.”

    
“Then you have no doubt,” said another reporter, “that the rider is also the owner, your daughter Velvet?”

    
“He don't even know,” said Mrs. Brown suddenly. “Don't you tell him nothing, William. I know them.”

    
“Why ever not?” said Mr. Brown. “She's got a bit of a down on newspaper gentlemen, sir,” said he apologetically. “Haven't you, mother? She had a bit of a bad time with 'em once.”

    
“Tell 'em what you like. You've begun,” said Mrs.
Brown, shutting the door. She crossed the room in majesty and went up to her room.

    
Mr. Brown gave a lengthy interview only interrupted by the gentlemen's desire to get away and to the telephone to catch the last edition of the evening papers.

    
The reporters were shown the paper horses in the shell-box.

    
One of them thought the shell-box touching, but did not say so.

    
“Fresh, fresh, fresh an' hot!” said another as they sped down the street.

    
“Old lady's bin in the news,” said another. “Wonder how?”

    
“Bloody old cathedral!” said the first.

    
In the morning at the Liverpool Central mother sat by Velvet's bed (mother, carrying her washing things in her old “Art” bag).

    
“I've come to take you home, dearie,” she said.

    
Velvet, dazed with her sleep, still, and brilliantly happy, smiled through her dreams.

    
“Nice kettle of fish,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“Travelled up through the night,” said mother. “You done well, Velvet.”

    
This was the summit, and Velvet felt the beating of glory.

    
Before coming in mother had had a talk to the Resident Medical Officer and they discovered in their wordless way that they felt alike on certain subjects. It was
found that Velvet could be taken out by the laundry entrance.

    
“She's ser little she could go in a laundry basket,” said mother.

    
“No need for that,” objected the M.O. who was against exaggeration.

    
And Velvet (and Mrs. Brown with her, for her bulk had not yet become as famous as it did a few days later) went in the laundry van, its rear backed up against the Laundry Entrance.

    
They reached the station in safety, for though the film of the Grand National had already been on the screens of thousands of cinema houses the night before, and the morning papers were alive with Mr. Brown's interview, there were no pictures as yet (Mr. Brown had not dared to ask for the one off Mrs. Brown's dressing-table), and the crouching black ant flashing by on the film bore no relation to the peaky young man walking beside the big woman to a third class carriage on the “Merseyside” as its engines got up steam.

    
“Better you kep' 'em on,” Mrs. Brown had said in the van. “N'anyway I never thought to bring your others. Look the proper boy!”

    
The carriage was full, but no one's attention was caught. Velvet behaved like the obscure child she thought herself to be.

    
They reached London, crossed it on the Underground, and took the local train.

    
A taxi stood in a dark corner of the station yard. As Velvet was pushed into its gloom by her mother she was
caught by the eager hands of her sisters. “Velvet, Velvet . . . Oh, Velvet. . . . What you got on? Coo lummy, she's dressed like a boy!”

    
“Ssh!” said mother. “Don' talk so . . .” The taxi started off.

    
“Velvet, it's glorious! All the afternoon, ever since yesterday, everybody Comin' to ask. We knew it was you las' night when the newspaper men came. All the papers got pictures of us in, but it's you they're waiting to get! American girl come in a car, an' the things she asked father said it made him hot to hear her. She said she gotta get your story.”

    
“What story?” said Velvet.

    
“Don' talk ser much,” said mother. “She don' know about all that yet.”

    
When the celebrated child returned home that night she was able to walk under the triumphal arch which the villagers had built with haste in the morning.

    
(And this arch and this street opening were the gateway to a village whose roofs and whose faces were the same but whose nature was changed to her. From now on she walked, fastened to that glory, whose teeth were sharp and held well, but whose wings were golden. She walked with an eagle on her back, observed by all.)

    
As the station taxi turned into the narrow lane of the village shouts and dangling lights brought it to a halt. There was a rope across the street, hung with lanterns, and by its light the glossy flutter of the leafy arch could be seen. Mr. Croom was at the taxi door, a bouquet
of lit faces behind his shoulder, and Velvet was lifted out and walked under the arch and was carried home, rockily, on many shoulders. Mrs. Brown paid off the taxi, and strode with her face glum. She was reminded of Calais.

    
In the living-room at home there was not room for everybody, and the villagers hung in the doorway and shuffled in a tail in the street. The bottle of port came out but there was not much in it, and Mr. Brown sent Mally out for more. It was not long before Mrs. Brown bore Velvet, like a child of paper, to her bedroom. “You'll lay there,” she said, “an' I'll bring you your supper.”

    
Greatest wonder, it was Edwina who brought her a hot-water bottle, who stayed to talk in marvelling whispers, and listened with Velvet to the clamour down below. Mother brought the tray up, cold salt beef and chopped beetroot and a cup of cocoa. Velvet nibbled gently, changed feet on her hot-water bottle, watched the dark sky through the undrawn curtains.

    
“No one's to come up,” said Mrs. Brown. And Velvet finished her supper and lay and waited for Mally and Merry, who came when the visitors had melted.

    
Mi turned up, having mysteriously come by a later train, for nothing. Velvet slipped on her clothes again.

    
“You got up?” said Mrs. Brown as Velvet walked into the living-room.

    
“It's dark now. Pitch,” said Velvet. “I mus' just go up the field an' fetch him in.” She turned and took her shell-box of paper horses off the sideboard.

    
“They seen that, Velvet.”

    
“Who did?”

    
“The newspaper men,” said Mr. Brown. But Velvet did not seem to understand.

    
Mrs. Brown expanded her breast in an unusual and vigorous sigh.

    
“She won't pass no one now, though the whole village's bin hanging round the horse from what I hear. Better let her go. She won't pass no one ser late. Heigho . . . I bin a darn donkey once in my life an' it seems I bin it twice.”

    
Velvet, dressed in her own clothes, went up the road between the ditches with Mally. The cats' eyes gleamed and shifted and went out. Nettles and cats' eyes and stars and stillness and not a soul about. The Piebald was flashing his colours under stars by the gate. The other horses hearing her step cantered down the slope whinnying. They greeted her with little jealous screams and lashings.