My Heart Laid Bare Read Free

over his left eye, and the meticulously trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee, and the jaunty straw hat, and the air of patrician confidence, was betraying now and then a just-perceptible apprehension, or whether, like numerous others, quite naturally in these heightened circumstances, he is merely anticipating the contest to come. A neutral observer would have guessed that so sporting a gentleman, with that steely-smiling gray gaze, those moist white teeth and ruddy lips, has placed a sizable bet; just possibly, on a “dark” horse; but could not have guessed that the gentleman has secretly made book with $44,000 of his and his clients’ money on the rangy black colt Midnight Sun—whose odds are presently 9-1.
    (That’s to say: if Midnight Sun wins the Derby, as Dr. Frelicht believeshe must, he, Frelicht, will collect an unprecedented $400,000 from a half dozen bookmakers and private parties, to be divided not quite equally among himself and the Warwicks; Frelicht’s share being understandably disproportionate to his modest $1,000 stake. And if Midnight Sun betrays Dr. Frelicht’s astrological prognosis, if the very Zodiac has misled him, then Frelicht will lose his $1,000 and the Warwicks will lose their $43,000 . . . a prospect that doesn’t bear contemplation; so Frelicht refuses to contemplate it.)
    No, he betrays no sign of worry. Only the vulgarian worries in public.
    A tumultuous day of brisk chill winds, and high, fast-scudding clouds like schooners, and a slate-blue sky far, far overhead!—and here below, on time-locked Earth, an amiable confusion of handsome carriages, and motorcars gleaming with newness, and spectators afoot, crowding the narrow streets and lanes leading to the Colonel’s racecourse. Here are splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen in the clubhouse area—terrace, lawn, shaded boxes—white clapboard and dazzling white-painted stucco—a lawn fine and clipped as a bowling green, edged with rhododendron shrubs and vivid red geraniums. In the grandstand, newly painted dark green, sits the noisy majority of citizens, while the “common-folk,” quaintly so called, of both mingled races, settle themselves in the infield or on low roofs and hills abutting the track. For all are Thoroughbred fanciers on Derby Day in Chautauqua; no one so poor, or in debt, that he, or she, can’t afford a bet of at least $1 on one of these fine racing horses; even children are caught up in the betting frenzy. For all who live humanly are wagerers as Dr. Frelicht is in the habit of murmuring, with that inscrutable expression to his strongboned, ruddy face that some observers have described as philosophic and stoic, even melancholy, and others have described as childlike in yearning. And Americans are, of the Earth’s population, the most wondrously human.
    The band strikes up an exuberant polka, mule-drawn watering wagons make their slow, stately way around the track. By Colonel Fairlie’sproud estimate some forty-five thousand persons are attending this Twenty-third Derby, having converged on Chautauqua Falls from such places as New York City, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, and of course Kentucky, as well as Texas, California and abroad; by highways, waterways, and rail. The Kentucky Derby having lapsed into a decline, the Chautauqua Cup has emerged as the most prestigious of American Thoroughbred races, for a record one hundred eighty-four horses were originally entered for the race, of which nine, from the finest stables in the country, are to start. Every hotel in town is filled, including the palatial Chautauqua Arms, where Lord Glencairn of Scotland (a racing enthusiast rumored to wish to purchase the beautiful chestnut Xalapa) has taken an entire floor; the Pendennis Club is given over to officers of the Eastern Association for the Improvement of Breeds of Stock, and their wives and companions; such famous sporting gentry as James Ben Ali Hagin of