CHAPTER VIII.
A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE.
"Seraph--I've been thinking," said Cecil musingly, as they pacedhomeward together from the Scrubs, with the long line of the FirstLife stretching before and behind their chargers, and the hands of theHousehold Cavalry plying mellowly in their rear.
"You don't mean it. Never let it ooze out, Beauty; you'll ruin yourreputation!"
Cecil laughed a little, very languidly; to have been in the sun forfour hours, in full harness, had almost taken out of him any power to beamused at anything.
"I've been thinking," he went on undisturbed, pulling down hischin-scale. "What's a fellow to do when he's smashed?"
"Eh?" The Seraph couldn't offer a suggestion; he had a vague idea thatmen who were smashed never did do anything except accept the smashing;unless, indeed, they turned up afterward as touts, of which he had anequally vague suspicion.
"What do they do?" pursued Bertie.
"Go to the bad," finally suggested the Seraph, lighting a great cigar,without heeding the presence of the Duke, a Field-Marshal, and a SereneHighness far on in front.
Cecil shook his head.
"Can't go where they are already. I've been thinking what a fellow mightdo that was up a tree; and on my honor there are lots of things onemight turn to----"
"Well, I suppose there are," assented the Seraph, with a shake of hissuperb limbs in his saddle till his cuirass and chains and scabbard rangagain. "I should try the P. R., only they will have you train."
"One might do better than the P. R. Getting yourself into primecondition, only to be pounded out of condition and into a jelly, seemshardly logical or satisfactory--specially to your looking-glass, though,of course, it's a matter of taste. But now, if I had a cropper, and gotsold up----"
"You, Beauty?" The Seraph puffed a giant puff of amazement from hisHavana, opening his blue eyes to their widest.
"Possible!" returned Bertie serenely, with a nonchalant twist to hismustaches. "Anything's possible. If I do now, it strikes me there arevast fields open."
"Gold fields!" suggested the Seraph, wholly bewildered.
"Gold fields? No! I mean a field for--what d'ye call it--genius. Now,look here; nine-tenths of creatures in this world don't know how to puton a glove. It's an art, and an art that requires long study. If a fewof us were to turn glove-fitters when we are fairly crushed, we mightcivilize the whole world, and prevent the deformity of an ill-fittingglove ever blotting creation and prostituting Houbigant. What do yousay?"
"Don't be such a donkey, Beauty!" laughed the Seraph, while his chargerthreatened to passage into an oyster cart.
"You don't appreciate the majesty of great plans," rejoined Beautyreprovingly. "There's an immense deal in what I'm saying. Think what wemight do for society--think how we might extinguish snobbery, if wejust dedicated our smash to Mankind. We might open a College, wherethe traders might go through a course of polite training before theyblossomed out as millionaires; the world would be spared an agony ofdropped h's and bad bows. We might have a Bureau where we registered allour social experiences, and gave the Plutocracy a map of Belgravia, withall the pitfalls marked; all the inaccessible heights colored red, andall the hard-up great people dotted with gold to show the amount they'dbe bought for--with directions to the ignoramuses whom to know, court,and avoid. We might form a Courier Company, and take Brummagem abroadunder our guidance, so that the Continent shouldn't think Englishwomenalways wear blue veils and gray shawls, and hear every Englishman shoutfor porter and beefsteak in Tortoni's. We might teach them to take theirhats off to women, and not to prod pictures with sticks, and to look atstatutes without poking them with an umbrella, and to be persuaded thatall foreigners don't want to be bawled at, and won't understandbad French any the better for its being shouted. Or we might have aJoint-Stock Toilette Association, for the purposes of national art,and receive Brummagem to show it how to dress; we might even succeed inmaking the feminine British Public drape itself properly, and the B. P.masculine wear boots that won't creak, and coats that don't wrinkle, andtake off its hat without a jerk, as though it were a wooden puppet hungon very stiff strings. Or one might--"
"Talk the greatest nonsense under the sun!" laughed the Seraph. "Formercy's sake, are you mad, Bertie?"
"Inevitable question addressed to Genius!" yawned Cecil. "I'm showingyou plans that might teach a whole nation good style if we just threwourselves into it a little. I don't mean you, because you'll neversmash, and one don't turn bear-leader, even to the B. P., without theprimary impulse of being hard-up. And I don't talk for myself, because,when I go to the dogs I have my own project."
"And what's that?"
"To be groom of the chambers at Meurice's or Claridge's," respondedBertie solemnly. "Those sublime creatures with their silver chains roundtheir necks and their ineffable supremacy over every other mortal!--onewould feel in a superior region still. And when a snob came to poisonthe air, how exquisitely one could annihilate him with showing him hisignorance of claret; and when an epicure dined, how delightfully, as onecarried in a turbot, one could test him with the eprouvette positive,or crush him by the eprouvette negative. We have been Equerries at thePalace, both of us, but I don't think we know what true dignity is tillwe shall have risen to headwaiters at a Grand Hotel."
With which Bertie let his charger pace onward, while he reflectedthoughtfully on his future state. The Seraph laughed till he almostswayed out of saddle, but he shook himself into his balance again withanother clash of his brilliant harness, while his eyes lightened andglanced with a fiery gleam down the line of the Household Cavalry.
"Well, if I went to the dogs I wouldn't go to Grand Hotels; but I'lltell you where I would go, Beauty."
"Where's that?"
"Into hot service, somewhere. By Jove, I'd see some good fightingunder another flag--out in Algeria, there, or with the Poles, or afterGaribaldi. I would, in a day--I'm not sure I won't now, and I bet youten to one the life would be better than this."
Which was ungrateful in the Seraph, for his happy temper made him thesunniest and most contented of men, with no cross in his life save thedread that somebody would manage to marry him some day. But Rock hadthe true dash and true steel of the soldier in him, and his blue eyesflashed over his Guards as he spoke, with a longing wish that he wereleading them on to a charge instead of pacing with them toward HydePark.
Cecil turned in his saddle and looked at him with a certain wonder andpleasure in his glance, and did not answer aloud. "The deuce--that's nota bad idea," he thought to himself; and the idea took root and grew withhim.
Far down, very far down, so far that nobody had ever seen it, norhimself ever expected it, there was a lurking instinct in "Beauty,"--theinstinct that had prompted him, when he sent the King at the GrandMilitary cracker, with that prayer, "Kill me if you like, but don'tfail me!"--which, out of the languor and pleasure-loving temper of hisunruffled life, had a vague, restless impulse toward the fiery perilsand nervous excitement of a sterner and more stirring career.
It was only vague, for he was naturally very indolent, very gentle, veryaddicted to taking all things passively, and very strongly of persuasionthat to rouse yourself for anything was a niaiserie of the strongestpossible folly; but it was there. It always is there with men ofBertie's order, and only comes to light when the match of danger isapplied to the touchhole. Then, though "the Tenth don't dance," perhaps,with graceful, indolent, dandy insolence, they can fight as no othersfight when Boot and Saddle rings through the morning air, and theslashing charge sweeps down with lightning speed and falcon swoop.
"In the case of a Countess, sir, the imagination is more excited," saysDr. Johnson, who had, I suppose, little opportunity of putting thatdoctrine for amatory intrigues to the test in actual practice. Bertie,who had many opportunities, differed with him. He found love-making inhis own polished, tranquil circles apt to become a little dull, and wasmore amused by Laura Lelas. However, he was sworn to the service of theGuenevere
, and he drove his mail-phaeton down that day to another sortof Richmond dinner, of which the lady was the object instead of theZu-Zu.
She enjoyed thinking herself the wife of a jealous and inexorable lord,and arranged her flirtations to evade him with a degree of skill sogreat that it was lamentable it should be thrown away on an agriculturalhusband, who never dreamt that the "Fidelio-III-TstnegeR," which met hiseyes in the innocent face of his "Times" referred to an appointment ata Regent Street modiste's, or that the advertisement--"Whitewins--Twelve," meant that if she wore white camellias in her hair at theopera she would give "Beauty" a meeting after it.
Lady Guenevere was very scrupulous never to violate conventionalities.And yet she was a little fast--very fast, indeed, and was a queen of oneof the fastest sets; but then--O sacred shield of a wife's virtue--shecould not have borne to lose her very admirable position, her verymagnificent jointure, and, above all, the superb Guenevere diamonds!
So, for the sake of the diamonds, she and Bertie had their rendezvousunder the rose.
This day she went down to see a dowager Baroness aunt, out at HamptonCourt--really went, she was never so imprudent as to falsify her word;and with the Dowager, who was very deaf and purblind, dined at Richmond,while the world thought her dining at Hampton Court. It was nothing toanyone, since none knew it to gossip about, that Cecil joined her there;that over the Star and Garter repast they arranged their meeting atBaden next month; that while the Baroness dozed over the grapes andpeaches--she had been a beauty herself, in her own day, and still hadher sympathies--they went on the river, in the little toy that he keptthere for his fair friends' use; floating slowly along in the coolnessof evening, while the stars loomed out in the golden trail of thesunset, and doing a graceful scene a la Musset and Meredith, with acertain languid amusement in the assumption of those poetic guises, forthey were of the world worldly; and neither believed very much in theother.
When you have just dined well, and there has been no fault in theclarets, and the scene is pretty, if it be not the Nile in theafterglow, the Arno in the moonlight, or the Loire in vintage-time, butonly the Thames above Richmond, it is the easiest thing in the world tofeel a touch of sentiment when you have a beautiful woman beside you whoexpects you to feel it. The evening was very hot and soft. There wasa low south wind, the water made a pleasant murmur, wending among itssedges. She was very lovely, moreover; lying back there among her lacesand Indian shawls, with the sunset in the brown depths of her eyesand on her delicate cheek. And Bertie, as he looked on his liege lady,really had a glow of the old, real, foolish, forgotten feeling stir athis heart, as he gazed on her in the half-light, and thought, almostwistfully, "If the Jews were down on me to-morrow, would she reallycare, I wonder?"
Really care? Bertie knew his world and its women too well to deceivehimself in his heart about the answer. Nevertheless, he asked thequestion. "Would you care much, chere belle?"
"Care what?"
"If I came to grief--went to the bad, you know; dropped out of the worldaltogether?"
She raised her splendid eyes in amaze, with a delicate shudder throughall her laces. "Bertie! You would break my heart! What can you dreamof?"
"Oh, lots of us end so! How is a man to end?" answered Bertiephilosophically, while his thoughts still ran off in a speculativeskepticism. "Is there a heart to break?"
Her ladyship looked at him an laughed.
"A Werther in the Guards! I don't think the role will suit either youor your corps, Bertie; but if you do it, pray do it artistically. Iremember, last year, driving through Asnieres, when they had found ayoung man in the Seine; he was very handsome, beautifully dressed, andhe held fast in his clinched hand a lock of gold hair. Now, there was aman who knew how to die gracefully, and make his death an idyl!"
"Died for a woman?--ah!" murmured Bertie, with the Brummel nonchalanceof his order. "I don't think I should do that, even for you--not, atleast, while I had a cigar left."
And then the boat drifted backward, while the stars grew brighterand the last reflection of the sun died out; and they planned to meetto-morrow, and talked of Baden, and sketched projects for the winterin Paris, and went in and sat by the window, taking their coffee, andfeeling, in a half-vague pleasure, the heliotrope-scented air blowingsoftly in from the garden below, and the quiet of the starlit river inthe summer evening, with a white sail gleaming here and there, or thegentle splash of an oar following on the swift trail of a steamer; thequiet, so still and so strange after the crowded rush of the Londonseason.
"Would she really care?" thought Cecil, once more. In that moment hecould have wished to think she would.
But heliotrope, stars, and a river, even though it had been tawny andclassical Tiber instead of ill-used and inodorous Thames, were notthings sufficiently in the way of either of them to detain them long.They had both seen the Babylonian sun set over the ruins of the BirsNimrud, and had talked of Paris fashions while they did so; they hadboth leaned over the terraces of Bellosguardo, while the moon was fullon Giotto's tower, and had discussed their dresses for the Veglionemasquerade. It was not their style to care for these matters; they werepretty, to be sure, but they had seen so many of them.
The Dowager went home in her brougham; the Countess drove inhis mail-phaeton--objectionable, as she might be seen, but lessobjectionable than letting her servants know he had met her at Richmond.Besides, she obviated danger by bidding him set her down at a littlevilla across the park, where dwelt a confidential protegee of hers, whomshe patronized; a former French governess, married tolerably well, whohad the Countess' confidences, and kept them religiously for sake of soaristocratic a patron, and of innumerable reversions of Spanish pointand shawls that had never been worn, and rings, of which her lavishladyship had got tired.
From here she would take her ex-governess' little brougham, and getquietly back to her own home in Eaton Square, in due time for all thedrums and crushes at which she must make her appearance. This was thesort of little device which really made them think themselves in love,and gave the salt to the whole affair. Moreover, there was this groundfor it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prizecattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice ofpride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to thewinds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander andto the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did. So thatCecil had not only her fair fame, but her still more valuable jewels inhis keeping when he started from the Star and Garter in the warmth ofthe bright summer's evening.
It was a lovely night; a night for lonely highland tarns, and southernshores by Baiae; without a cloud to veil the brightness of the stars. Aheavy dew pressed the odors from the grasses, and the deep glades ofthe avenue were pierced here and there with a broad beam of silverymoonlight, slanting through the massive boles of the trees, and fallingwhite and serene across the turf. Through the park, with the gleam ofthe water ever and again shining through the branches of the foliage,Cecil started his horses; his groom he had sent away on reachingRichmond, for the same reason as the Countess had dismissed herbarouche, and he wanted no servant, since, as soon as he had set downhis liege lady at her protegee's, he would drive straight back toPiccadilly. But he had not noticed what he noted now, that instead ofone of his carriage-grays, who had fallen slightly lame, they had putinto harness the young one, Maraschino, who matched admirably for sizeand color, but who, being really a hunter, though he had been broken toshafts as well, was not the horse with which to risk driving a lady.
However, Beauty was a perfect whip and had the pair perfectly in hand,so that he thought no more of the change, as the grays dashed at aliberal half-speed through the park, with their harness flashing in themoonlight, and their scarlet rosettes fluttering in the pleasant air.The eyes beside him, the Titian-like mouth, the rich, delicate cheek,these were, to be sure, rather against the coolness and science thatsuch a five-year-old as Maraschino required; they were distracting evento Cecil,
and he had not prudence enough to deny his sovereign lady whenshe put her hands on the ribbons.
"The beauties! Give them to me, Bertie. Dangerous? How absurd you are;as if I could not drive anything? Do you remember my four roans atLongchamps?"
She could, indeed, with justice, pique herself on her skill; shedrove matchlessly, but as he resigned them to her, Maraschino and hiscompanion quickened their trot, and tossed their pretty thoroughbredheads, conscious of a less powerful hand on the reins.
"I shall let their pace out; there is nobody to run over here," said herladyship.
Maraschino, as though hearing the flattering conjuration swung off intoa light, quick canter, and tossed his head again; he knew that, goodwhip though she was, he could jerk his mouth free in a second, if hewanted. Cecil laughed--prudence was at no time his virtue--and leanedback contentedly, to be driven at a slashing pace through the balmysummer's night, while the ring of the hoofs rang merrily on the turf,and the boughs were tossed aside with a dewy fragrance. As they went,the moonlight was shed about their path in the full of the young night,and at the end of a vista of boughs, on a grassy knoll were some phantomforms--the same graceful shapes that stand out against the purpleheather and the tawny gorse of Scottish moorlands, while the leanrifle-tube creeps up by stealth. In the clear starlight there stoodthe deer--a dozen of them, a clan of stags alone--with their antlersclashing like a clash of swords, and waving like swaying banners as theytossed their heads and listened.[*]
[*] Let me here take leave to beg pardon of the gallant Highland stags for comparing them one instant with the shabby, miserable-looking wretches that travesty them in Richmond Park. After seeing these latter scrubby, meager apologies for deer, one wonders why something better cannot be turned loose there. A hunting-mare I know well nevertheless flattered them thus by racing them through the park: when in harness herself, to her own great disgust.
In an instant the hunter pricked his ears, snuffed the air, and twitchedwith passionate impatience at his bit; another instant and he had gothis head, and, launching into a sweeping gallop, rushed down the glade.
Cecil sprang forward from his lazy rest, and seized the ribbons that inone instant had cut his companion's gloves to stripes.
"Sit still," he said calmly, but under his breath. "He had been alwaysridden with the Buckhounds; he will race the deer as sure as we live!"
Race the deer he did.
Startled, and fresh for their favorite nightly wandering, the stags wereoff like the wind at the noise of alarm, and the horses tore after them;no skill, no strength, no science could avail to pull them in; theyhad taken their bits between their teeth, and the devil that was inMaraschino lent the contagion of sympathy to the young carriage mare,who had never gone at such a pace since she had been first put in herbreak.
Neither Cecil's hands nor any other force could stop them now; on theywent, hunting as straight in line as though staghounds streamed in frontof them, and no phaeton rocked and swayed in a dead and dragging weightbehind them. In a moment he gauged the closeness and the vastness ofthe peril; there was nothing for it but to trust to chance, to keephis grasp on the reins to the last, and to watch for the first sign ofexhaustion. Long ere that should be given death might have come to themboth; but there was a gay excitation in that headlong rush through thesummer night; there was a champagne-draught of mirth and mischief inthat dash through the starlit woodland; there was a reckless, breathlesspleasure in that neck-or-nothing moonlight chase!
Yet danger was so near with every oscillation; the deer were troopingin fast flight, now clear in the moonlight, now lost in the shadow,bounding with their lightning grace over sward and hillock, over briarand brushwood, at that speed which kills most living things that dare torace the "Monarch of the Glens." And the grays were in full pursuit; thehunting fire was in the fresh young horse; he saw the shadowy branchesof the antlers toss before him, and he knew no better than to hunt downin their scenting line as hotly as though the field of the Queen's orthe Baron's was after them. What cared he for the phaeton that rockedand reeled on his traces; he felt its weight no more than if it werea wicker-work toy, and, extended like a greyhound, he swerved from theroad, swept through the trees, and tore down across the grassland in thetrack of the herd.
Through the great boles of the trunks, bronze and black in the shadows,across the hilly rises of the turf, through the brushwood pell-mell, andcrash across the level stretches of the sward, they raced as though thehounds were streaming in front; swerved here, tossed there, carried ina whirlwind over the mounds, wheeled through the gloom of the wovenbranches, splashed with a hiss through the shallow rain-pools, shotswift as an arrow across the silver radiance of the broad moonlight,borne against the sweet south wind, and down the odors of the trampledgrass, the carriage was hurled across the park in the wild starlightchase. It rocked, it swayed, it shook, at every yard, while it wascarried on like a paper toy; as yet the marvelous chances of accidenthad borne it clear of the destruction that threatened it at every stepas the grays, in the height of their pace now, and powerless even tohave arrested themselves, flew through the woodland, neither knowingwhat they did, nor heeding where they went; but racing down on thescent, not feeling the strain of the traces, and only maddened the moreby the noise of the whirling wheels behind them.
As Cecil leaned back, his hands clinched on the reins, his sinewsstretched almost to bursting in their vain struggle to recover powerover the loosened beasts, the hunting zest awoke in him too, even whilehis eyes glanced on his companion in fear and anxiety for her.
"Tally-ho! hark forward! As I live, it is glorious!" he cried, halfunconsciously. "For God's sake, sit still, Beatrice! I will save you."
Inconsistent as the words were, they were true to what he felt; alone,he would have flung himself delightedly into the madness of the chase;for her he dreaded with horror the eminence of their peril.
On fled the deer, on swept the horses; faster in the gleam of themoonlight the antlered troop darted on through the gloaming; faster torethe grays in the ecstasy of their freedom; headlong and heedless theydashed through the thickness of leaves and the weaving of branches; neckto neck, straining to distance each other, and held together by the gallof the harness. The broken boughs snapped, the earth flew up beneaththeir hoofs; their feet struck scarlet sparks of fire from the stones,the carriage was whirled, rocking and tottering, through the mazeof tree-trunks, towering like pillars of black stone up against thesteel-blue clearness of the sky. The strain was intense; the dangerdeadly. Suddenly, straight ahead, beyond the darkness of the foliage,gleamed a line of light; shimmering, liquid, and glassy--here brown asgloom where the shadows fell on it, here light as life where the starsmirrored on it. That trembling line stretched right in their path. Forthe first time, from the blanched lips beside him a cry of terror rang.
"The river!--oh, heaven!--the river!"
There it lay in the distance, the deep and yellow water, cold in themoon's rays, with its further bank but a dull gray line in the miststhat rose from it, and its swamp a yawning grave as the horses, blindin their delirium and racing against each other, bore down through allobstacles toward its brink. Death was rarely ever closer; one scoreyards more, one plunge, one crash down the declivity and against therails, one swell of the noisome tide above their heads, and life wouldbe closed and passed for both of them. For one breathless moment hiseyes met hers--in that moment he loved her, in that moment their heartsbeat with a truer, fonder impulse to each other than they had ever done.Before the presence of a threatening death life grows real, love growsprecious, to the coldest and most careless.
No aid could come; not a living soul was nigh; the solitude was ascomplete as though a western prairie stretched round them; there wereonly the still and shadowy night, the chilly silence, on which the beatof the plunging hoofs shattered like thunder, and the glisten of theflowing water growing nearer and nearer every yard. The tranquillityaround only jarred more horribly on ear and
brain; the vanishing formsof the antlered deer only gave a weirder grace to the moonlight chasewhose goal was the grave. It was like the midnight hunt after Herne theHunter; but here, behind them, hunted Death.
The animals neither saw nor knew what waited them, as they rushed downon to the broad, gray stream, veiled from them by the slope and thescreen of flickering leaves; to save them there was but one chance, andthat so desperate that it looked like madness. It was but a second'sthought; he gave it but a second's resolve.
The next instant he stood on his feet, as the carriage swayed to andfro over the turf, balanced himself marvelously as it staggered in thatfurious gallop from side to side, clinched the reins hard in the grip ofhis teeth, measured the distance with an unerring eye, and crouching hisbody for the spring with all the science of the old playing-fields ofhis Eton days, cleared the dashboard and lighted astride on the back ofthe hunting five-year old--how, he could never have remembered or havetold.
The tremendous pace at which they went swayed him with a lurch and areel over the off-side; a woman's cry rang again, clear, and shrill,and agonized on the night; a moment more, and he would have fallen, headdownward, beneath the horses' feet. But he had ridden stirrupless andsaddleless ere now; he recovered himself with the suppleness of an Arab,and firm-seated behind the collar, with one leg crushed between thepole and Maraschino's flanks, gathering in the ribbons till they weretight-drawn as a bridle, he strained with all the might and sinew thatwere in him to get the grays in hand before they could plunge down intothe water. His wrists were wrenched like pulleys, the resistance againsthim was hard as iron; but as he had risked life and limb in the leapwhich had seated him across the harnessed loins of the now terrifiedbeast, so he risked them afresh to get the mastery now; to slacken them,turn them ever so slightly, and save the woman he loved--loved, at leastin this hour, as he had not loved her before. One moment more, while thehalf-maddened beast rushed through the shadows; one moment more, tillthe river stretched full before them in all its length and breadth,without a living thing upon its surface to break the still and awfulcalm; one moment--and the force of cool command conquered and broketheir wills despite themselves. The hunter knew his master's voice,his touch, his pressure, and slackened speed by an irresistible, almostunconscious habit of obedience; the carriage mare, checked and galledin the full height of her speed, stood erect, pawing the air with herforelegs, and flinging the white froth over her withers, while sheplunged blindly in her nervous terror; then with a crash, her feet camedown upon the ground, the broken harness shivered together with a sharp,metallic clash; snorting, panting, quivering, trembling, the pair stoodpassive and vanquished.
The carriage was overthrown; but the high and fearless courage of thepeeress bore her unharmed, even as she was flung out on to the yieldingfern-grown turf. Fair as she was in every hour, she had never lookedfairer than as he swung himself from the now powerless horses and threwhimself beside her.
"My love--my love, you are saved!"
The beautiful eyes looked up, half unconscious; the danger told on hernow that it was passed, as it does most commonly with women.
"Saved!--lost! All the world must know, now, that you are with me thisevening," she murmured with a shudder. She lived for the world, and herfirst thought was of self.
He soothed her tenderly.
"Hush--be at rest! There is no injury but what I can repair, nor isthere a creature in sight to have witnessed the accident. Trust in me;no one shall ever know of this. You shall reach town safely and alone."
And, while he promised, he forgot that he thus pledged his honor toleave four hours of his life so buried that, however much he needed, heneither should nor could account for them.