CHAPTER IX.
THE PAINTED BIT.
Baden was at its brightest. The Victoria, the Badischer Hof, theStephanie Bauer were crowded. The Kurliste had a dazzling string ofnames. Imperial grandeur sauntered in slippers; chiefs, used to besaluted with "Ave Caesar Imperator," smoked a papelito in peace over"Galignani." Emperors gave a good-day to ministers who made theirthrones beds of thorns, and little kings elbowed great capitalists whocould have bought them all up in a morning's work in the money market.Statecraft was in its slippers and diplomacy in its dressing-gown.Statesmen who had just been outwitting each other at the hazard ofEuropean politics laughed good-humoredly as they laid their gold down onthe color. Rivals who had lately been quarreling over the knotty pointsof national frontiers now only vied for a twenty-franc rosebud from thebouquetiere. Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Golden Fleece,who had hated each other to deadliest rancor with the length of theContinent between them, got friends over a mutually good book on theRastadt or Foret Noir. Brains that were the powder depot of one-half ofthe universe let themselves be lulled to tranquil amusement by a fairidiot's coquetry. And lips that, with a whisper, could loosen thecoursing slips of the wild hell-dogs of war, murmured love to aprincess, led the laugh at a supper at five in the morning, or smiledover their own caricatures done by Tenniel or Cham.
Baden was full. The supreme empires of demi-monde sent their sovereigns,diamond-crowned and resistless, to outshine all other principalities andpowers, while in breadth of marvelous skirts, in costliness of cobweblaces, in unapproachability of Indian shawls and gold embroideries,and mad fantasies and Cleopatra extravagances, and jewels fit for aMaharajah, the Zu-Zu was distanced by none.
Among the kings and heroes and celebrities who gathered under thepleasant shadow of the pine-crowned hills, there was not one in his waygreater than the steeple-chaser, Forest King--certes, there was not onehalf so honest.
The Guards' Crack was entered for the Prix de Dames, the solerepresentative of England. There were two or three good things out ofFrench stables,--specially a killing little boy, L'Etoile,--and therewas an Irish sorrel, the property of an Austrian of rank, of which fairthings were whispered; but it was scarcely possible that anythingcould stand against the King and that wonderful stride of his whichspread-eagled his field like magic, and his countrymen were wellcontent to leave their honor and their old renown to "Beauty" and hissix-year-old.
Beauty himself, with a characteristic philosophy, had a sort ofconviction that the German race would set everything square. He stoodeither to make a very good thing on it or to be very heavily bit. Therecould be no medium. He never hedged in his life; and as it was almosta practical impossibility that anything the foreign stables could gettogether would even be able to land within half a dozen lengths ofthe King. Cecil, always willing to console himself, and invariably toocareless to take the chance of adverse accident into account, had cometo Baden, and was amusing himself there dropping a Friedrich d'Or on therouge, flirting in the shady alleys of the Lichtenthal, waltzing LadyGuenevere down the ballroom, playing ecarte with some Serene Highness,supping with the Zu-Zu and her set, and occupying rooms that a RussianPrince had had before him, with all the serenity of a millionaire, asfar as memory of money went; with much more than the serenity in othermatters of most millionaires, who, finding themselves uncommonly illat ease in the pot-pourri of monarchs and ministers, of beau-monde anddemi-monde, would have given half their newly turned thousands to getrid of the odor of Capel Court and the Bourse, and to attain the calm,negligent assurance, the easy, tranquil insolence, the nonchalance withPrinces, and the supremacy among the Free Lances, which they saw andcoveted in the indolent Guardsman.
Bertie amused himself. He might be within a day of his ruin, but thatwas no reason why he should not sip his iced sherbet and laugh with apretty French actress to-night. His epicurean formulary was the same asold Herrick's, and he would have paraphrased this poet's famous quatraininto
Drink a pure claret while you may, Your "stiff" is still a-flying; And he who dines so well to-day To-morrow may be lying, Pounced down upon by Jews _tout net_, Or outlawed in a French _guinguette!_
Bertie was a great believer--if the words are not too sonorous andtoo earnest to be applied to his very inconsequent views upon any andeverything--in the philosophy of happy accident. Far as it was in him tohave a conviction at all,--which was a thorough-going, serious sortof thing not by any means his "form,"--he had a conviction thatthe doctrine of "Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow we die" wasa universal panacea. He was reckless to the uttermost stretch ofrecklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and hisdaily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone andlanguor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the naturaldare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless andgamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistentof all coquettes--Fortune.
Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him than they were now.So he piled all on one coup, and stood to be sunk or saved by thePrix de Dames. Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to theGuenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau atthe roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose,drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guineatickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm withGrand Dukes, gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed aMonarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a Guards' Punch, sacredto the Household.
Bertie who believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best totake the oysters first and eschew the despair entirely.
He had one unchangeable quality--insouciance; and he had, moreover, oneunchangeable faith--the King. Lady Guenevere had reached home unnoticedafter the accident of their moonlight stag-hunt. His brother, meetinghim a day or two after their interview, had nodded affirmatively, thoughsulkily, in answer to his inquiries, and had murmured that it was "allsquare now." The Jews and the tradesmen had let him leave for Badenwithout more serious measures than a menace, more or less insolentlyworded. In the same fashion he trusted that the King's running at theBad, with the moneys he had on it, would set all things right for alittle while; when, if his family interest, which was great, would gethim his step in the First Life, he thought, desperate as things were,they might come round again smoothly, without a notorious crash.
"You are sure the King will 'stay,' Bertie?" asked Lady Guenevere, whohad some hundreds in gloves (and even under the rose "sported a pony" orso more seriously) on the event.
"Certain! But if he don't I promise you as pretty a tableau as yourAsnieres one; for your sake, I'll make the finish as picturesque aspossible. Wouldn't it be well to give me a lock of hair in readiness?"
Her ladyship laughed and shook her head; if a man killed himself, shedid not desire that her gracious name should be entangled with thefolly.
"No; I don't do those things," she said, with captivating waywardness."Besides, though the Oos looks cool and pleasant, I greatly doubt thatunder any pressure you would trouble it; suicides are too pronounced foryour style, Bertie."
"At all events, a little morphia in one's own rooms would be quieter,and better taste," said Cecil, while he caught himself listlesslywondering, as he had wondered at Richmond, if this badinage were to turninto serious fact--how much would she care.