CHAPTER II.
THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE.
"How long before the French can come up?" asked Wellington, hearing ofthe pursuit that was thundering close on his rear in the most criticalhours of the short, sultry Spanish night. "Half an hour, at least," wasthe answer. "Very well, then I will turn in and get some sleep," saidthe Commander-in-Chief, rolling himself in a cloak, and lying down ina ditch to rest as soundly for the single half hour as any tireddrummer-boy.
Serenely as Wellington, another hero slept profoundly, on the eve of agreat event--of a great contest to be met when the day should break--ofa critical victory, depending on him alone to save the Guards ofEngland from defeat and shame; their honor and their hopes rested on hissolitary head; by him they would be lost or saved; but, unharassed bythe magnitude of the stake at issue, unhaunted by the past, unfretted bythe future, he slumbered the slumber of the just.
Not Sir Tristram, Sir Caledore, Sir Launcelot--no, nor Arthurhimself--was ever truer knight, was ever gentler, braver, bolder, morestanch of heart, more loyal of soul, than he to whom the glory of theBrigades was trusted now; never was there spirit more dauntless andfiery in the field; never temper kindlier and more generous with friendsand foes. Miles of the ridge and furrow, stiff fences of terribleblackthorn, double posts and rails, yawners and croppers both, tough asShire and Stewards could make them, awaited him on the morrow; on hisbeautiful lean head capfuls of money were piled by the Service andthe Talent; and in his stride all the fame of the Household wouldbe centered on the morrow; but he took his rest like the cracker hewas--standing as though he were on guard, and steady as a rock, a heroevery inch of him. For he was Forest King, the great steeple-chaser,on whom the Guards had laid all their money for the Grand Military--theSoldiers' Blue Ribbon.
His quarters were a loose box; his camp-bed a litter of straw freshshaken down; his clothing a very handsome rug, hood, and quarter-piecebuckled on and marked "B. C."; above the manger and the door waslettered his own name in gold. "Forest King"; and in the panels of thelatter were miniatures of his sire and of his dam: Lord of the Isles,one of the greatest hunters that the grass countries ever saw sentacross them; and Bayadere, a wild-pigeon-blue mare of Circassia. How,furthermore, he stretched up his long line of ancestry by the Sovereign,out of Queen of Roses; by Belted Earl, out of Fallen Star; by Marmion,out of Court Coquette, and straight up to the White Cockade blood, etc.,etc., etc.--is it not written in the mighty and immortal chronicle,previous as the Koran, patrician as the Peerage, known and beloved tomortals as the "Stud Book"?
Not an immensely large, or unusually powerful horse, but with race inevery line of him; steel-gray in color, darkening well at all points,shining and soft as satin, with the firm muscles quivering beneathat the first touch of excitement to the high mettle and finely-strungorganization; the head small, lean, racer-like, "blood" all over;with the delicate taper ears, almost transparent in full light; wellribbed-up, fine shoulders, admirable girth and loins; legs clean,slender, firm, promising splendid knee action; sixteen hands high, andup to thirteen stone; clever enough for anything, trained to close andopen country, a perfect brook jumper, a clipper at fencing; taking agreat deal of riding, as anyone could tell by the set-on of his neck,but docile as a child to a well-known hand--such was Forest King withhis English and Eastern strains, winner at Chertsey, Croydon, theNational, the Granby, the Belvoir Castle, the Curragh, and all thegentleman-rider steeple-chases and military sweepstakes in the kingdom,and entered now, with tremendous bets on him, for the Gilt Vase.
It was a crisp, cold night outside; starry, wintry, but open weather,and clear; the ground would be just right on the morrow, neither hardas the slate of a billiard-table, nor wet as the slush of a quagmire.Forest King slept steadily on in his warm and spacious box, dreamingdoubtless of days of victory, cub-hunting in the reedy October woods andpastures, of the ringing notes of the horn, and the sweet music ofthe pack, and the glorious quick burst up-wind, breasting the icy coldwater, and showing the way over fence and bullfinch. Dozing and dreamingpleasantly; but alert for all that; for he awoke suddenly, shookhimself, had a hilarious roll in the straw, and stood "at attention."
Awake only, could you tell the generous and gallant promise of hisperfect temper; for there are no eyes that speak more truly, none onearth that are so beautiful, as the eyes of a horse. Forest King's weredark as a gazelle's, soft as a woman's, brilliant as stars, a littledreamy and mournful, and as infinitely caressing when he looked at whathe loved, as they could blaze full of light and fire when danger wasnear and rivalry against him. How loyally such eyes have looked at meover the paddock fence, as a wild, happy gallop was suddenly broken fora gentle head to be softly pushed against my hand with the gentlest ofwelcomes! They sadly put to shame the million human eyes that so fastlearn the lie of the world, and utter it as falsely as the lips.
The steeple-chaser stood alert, every fiber of his body strung topleasurable excitation; the door opened, a hand held him some sugar, andthe voice he loved best said fondly, "All right, old boy?"
Forest King devoured the beloved dainty with true equine unction, rubbedhis forehead against his master's shoulder, and pushed his nose into thenearest pocket in search for more of his sweetmeat.
"You'd eat a sugar-loaf, you dear old rascal. Put the gas up, George,"said his owner, while he turned up the body clothing to feel the firm,cool skin, loosened one of the bandages, passed his hand from thigh tofetlock, and glanced round the box to be sure the horse had been wellsuppered and littered down.
"Think we shall win, Rake?"
Rake, with a stable lantern in his hand and a forage cap on one side ofhis head, standing a little in advance of a group of grooms and helpers,took a bit of straw out of his mouth, and smiled a smile of sublimescorn and security. "Win, sir? I should be glad to know as when was thatere King ever beat yet; or you either, sir, for that matter?"
Bertie Cecil laughed a little languidly.
"Well, we take a good deal of beating, I think, and there are not verymany who can give it us; are there, old fellow?" he said to the horse,as he passed his palm over the withers; "but there are some crushers inthe lot to-morrow; you'll have to do all you know."
Forest King caught the manger with his teeth, and kicked in a bit ofplay and ate some more sugar, with much licking of his lips to expressthe nonchalance with which he viewed his share in the contest, and histranquil certainty of being first past the flags. His master looked athim once more and sauntered out of the box.
"He's in first-rate form, Rake, and right as a trivet."
"Course he is, sir; nobody ever laid leg over such cattle as all thatWhite Cockade blood, and he's the very best of the strain," said Rake,as he held up his lantern across the stable-yard, that looked doublydark in the February night after the bright gas glare of the box.
"So he need be," thought Cecil, as a bull terrier, three or four Gordonsetters, an Alpine mastiff, and two wiry Skyes dashed at their chains,giving tongue in frantic delight at the sound of his step, while thehounds echoed the welcome from their more distant kennels, and he wentslowly across the great stone yard, with the end of a huge cherootglimmering through the gloom. "So he need be, to pull me through. TheDucal and the October let me in for it enough; I never was closer inmy life. The deuce! If I don't do the distance to-morrow I shan't havesovereigns enough to play pound-points at night! I don't know what aman's to do; if he's put into this life, he must go the pace of it. Whydid Royal send me into the Guards, if he meant to keep the screw on inthis way? He'd better have drafted me into a marching regiment at once,if he wanted me to live upon nothing."
Nothing meant anything under 60,000 pounds a year with Cecil, as theminimum of monetary necessities in this world, and a look of genuineannoyance and trouble, most unusual there, was on his face, the pictureof carelessness and gentle indifference habitually, though shadowednow as he crossed the courtyard after his after-midnight visit to hissteeple-chaser. He had backed Forest King heavily, and stood to wi
n orlose a cracker on his own riding on the morrow; and, though he had foundsufficient to bring him into the Shires, he had barely enough lying onhis dressing-table, up in the bachelor suite within, to pay his groom'sbook, or a notion where to get more, if the King should find his matchover the ridge and furrow in the morning!
It was not pleasant: a cynical, savage, world-disgusted Timon derives onthe whole a good amount of satisfaction from his break-down in the finephilippics against his contemporaries that it is certain to afford, andthe magnificent grievances with which it furnishes him; but when life isvery pleasant to a man, and the world very fond of him; when existenceis perfectly smooth,--bar that single pressure of money,--and is anincessantly changing kaleidoscope of London seasons, Paris winters,ducal houses in the hunting months, dinners at the Pall Mall Clubs,dinners at the Star and Garter, dinners irreproachable everywhere;cottage for Ascot week, yachting with the R. V. Y. Club, Derby handicapsat Hornsey, pretty chorus-singers set up in Bijou villas, dashingrosieres taken over to Baden, warm corners in Belvoir, Savernake, andLongeat battues, and all the rest of the general programme, with nodrawback to it, except the duties at the Palace, the heat of a review,or the extravagance of a pampered lionne--then to be pulled up in thateasy, swinging gallop for sheer want of a golden shoe, as one may say,is abominably bitter, and requires far more philosophy to endure thanTimon would ever manage to master. It is a bore, an unmitigated bore;a harsh, hateful, unrelieved martyrdom that the world does not see, andthat the world would not pity if it did.
"Never mind! Things will come right. Forest King never failed me yet; heis as full of running as a Derby winner, and he'll go over the yawnerslike a bird," thought Cecil, who never confronted his troubles withmore than sixty seconds' thought, and who was of that light, impassible,half-levity, half-languor of temperament that both throws off worryeasily and shirks it persistently. "Sufficient for the day," etc., wasthe essence of his creed; and if he had enough to lay a fiver at nighton the rubber, he was quite able to forget for the time that he wantedfive hundred for settling-day in the morning, and had not an idea howto get it. There was not a trace of anxiety on him when he opened a lowarched door, passed down a corridor, and entered the warm, full light ofthat chamber of liberty, that sanctuary of the persecuted, that templeof refuge, thrice blessed in all its forms throughout the land,that consecrated Mecca of every true believer in the divinity of themeerschaum, and the paradise of the nargile--the smoking-room.
A spacious, easy chamber, too; lined with the laziest of divans, seenjust now through a fog of smoke, and tenanted by nearly a score of menin every imaginable loose velvet costume, and with faces as well knownin the Park at six o'clock in May, and on the Heath in October; in Parisin January, and on the Solent in August; in Pratt's of a summer's night,and on the Moors in an autumn morning, as though they were features thatcame round as regularly as the "July" or the Waterloo Cup. Some werepuffing away in calm, meditative comfort, in silence that they would nothave broken for any earthly consideration; others were talking hardand fast, and through the air heavily weighted with the varieties oftobacco, from tiny cigarettes to giant cheroots, from rough bowls fullof cavendish to sybaritic rose-water hookahs, a Babel of sentences rosetogether: "Gave him too much riding, the idiot." "Take the field, barone." "Nothing so good for the mare as a little niter and antimony inher mash." "Not at all! The Regent and Rake cross in the old strain,always was black-tan with a white frill." "The Earl's as good a fellowas Lady Flora; always give you a mount." "Nothing like a Kate Terrythough, on a bright day, for salmon." "Faster thing I never knew; foundat twenty minutes past eleven, and killed just beyond Longdown Waterat ten to twelve." All these various phrases were rushing in among eachother, and tossed across the eddies of smoke in the conflicting tonguesloosened in the tabagie and made eloquent, though slightly inarticulate,by pipe-stems; while a tall, fair man, with the limbs of a Hercules, thechest of a prize-fighter, and the face of a Raphael Angel, known in theHousehold as Seraph, was in the full blood of a story of whist playedunder difficulties in the Doncaster express.
"I wanted a monkey; I wanted monkeys awfully," he was stating as ForestKing's owner came into the smoking-room.
"Did you, Seraph? The 'Zoo' or the Clubs could supply you with apesfully developed to any amount," said Bertie, as he threw himself down.
"You be hanged!" laughed the Seraph, known to the rest of the worldas the Marquis of Rockingham, son of the Duke of Lyonnesse. "I wishedmonkeys, but the others wished ponies and hundreds, so I gave in;Vandebur and I won two rubbers, and we'd just begun the third when thetrain stopped with a crash; none of us dropped the cards though, butthe tricks and the scores all went down with the shaking. 'Can't play inthat row,' said Charlie, for the women were shrieking like mad, and theengine was roaring like my mare Philippa--I'm afraid she'll never becured, poor thing!--so I put my head out and asked what was up? We'd runinto a cattle train. Anybody hurt? No, nobody hurt; but we were to getout. 'I'll be shot if I get out,' I told 'em, 'till I've finished therubber.' 'But you must get out,' said the guard; 'carriages must bemoved.' 'Nobody says "must" to him,' said Van (he'd drank more Perles duRhin than was good for him in Doncaster); 'don't you know the Seraph?'Man stared. 'Yes, sir; know the Seraph, sir; leastways, did, sir, aforehe died; see him once at Moulsey Mill, sir; his "one two" was amazin'.Waters soon threw up the sponge.' We were all dying with laughter, andI tossed him a tenner. 'There, my good fellow,' said I, 'shunt thecarriage and let us finish the game. If another train comes up, give itLord Rockingham's compliments and say he'll thank it to stop, becausecollisions shake his trumps together.' Man thought us mad; took tennerthough, shunted us to one side out of the noise, and we played tworubbers more before they'd repaired the damage and sent us on to town."
And the Seraph took a long-drawn whiff from his silver meerschaum, andthen a deep draught of soda and brandy to refresh himself after thenarrative--biggest, best-tempered, and wildest of men in or out of theService, despite the angelic character of his fair-haired head, and blueeyes that looked as clear and as innocent as those of a six-year-oldchild.
"Not the first time by a good many that you've 'shunted off thestraight,' Seraph?" laughed Cecil, substituting an amber mouth-piece forhis half-finished cheroot. "I've been having a good-night look at theKing. He'll stay."
"Of course he will," chorused half a dozen voices.
"With all our pots on him," added the Seraph. "He's too much of agentleman to put us all up a tree; he knows he carries the honor of theHousehold."
"There are some good mounts, there's no denying that," said Chesterfieldof the Blues (who was called Tom for no other reason than that it wasentirely unlike his real name of Adolphus), where he was curled upalmost invisible, except for the movement of the jasmine stick of hischibouque. "That brute, Day Star, is a splendid fencer, and for a brookjumper, it would be heard to best Wild Geranium, though her shouldersare not quite what they ought to be. Montacute, too, can ride a goodthing, and he's got one in Pas de Charge."
"I'm not much afraid of Monti, he makes too wild a burst first; he neversaves on atom," yawned Cecil, with the coils of his hookah bubblingamong the rose-water; "the man I'm afraid of is that fellow from theTenth; he's as light as a feather and as hard as steel. I watched himyesterday going over the water, and the horse he'll ride for Trelawneyis good enough to beat even the King if he's properly piloted."
"You haven't kept yourself in condition, Beauty," growled "Tom," withthe chibouque in his mouth, "else nothing could give you the go-by. It'stempting Providence to go in for the Gilt Vase after such a December andJanuary as you spent in Paris. Even the week you've been in the Shiresyou haven't trained a bit; you've been waltzing or playing baccarat tillfive in the morning, and taking no end of sodas after to bring you rightfor the meet at nine. If a man will drink champagnes and burgundies asyou do, and spend his time after women, I should like to know how he'sto be in hard riding condition, unless he expects a miracle."
With which Chesterfield, who weigh
ed fourteen stone himself, and was,therefore, out of all but welter-races, and wanted a weight-carrierof tremendous power even for them, subsided under a heap of velvet andcashmere, and Cecil laughed; lying on a divan just under one of the gasbranches, the light fell full on his handsome face, with its fair hueand its gentle languor on which there was not a single trace of theoutrecuidance attributed to him. Both he and the Seraph could lead thewildest life of any men in Europe without looking one shadow more wornthan the brightest beauty of the season, and could hold wassail inriotous rivalry till the sun rose, and then throw themselves into saddleas fresh as if they had been sound asleep all night; to keep up with thepack the whole day in a fast burst or on a cold scent, or in whateversport Fortune and the coverts gave them, till their second horses woundtheir way homeward through muddy, leafless lanes, when the stars hadrisen.
"Beauty don't believe in training. No more do I. Never would train foranything," said the Seraph now, pulling the long blond mustaches thatwere not altogether in character with his seraphic cognomen. "If aman can ride, let him. If he's born to the pigskin he'll be in at thedistance safe enough, whether he smokes or don't smoke, drink or don'tdrink. As for training on raw chops, giving up wine, living like thevery deuce and all, as if you were in a monastery, and changing yourselfinto a mere bag of bones--it's utter bosh. You might as well be inpurgatory; besides, it's no more credit to win then than if you were aprofessional."
"But you must have trained at Christ Church, Rock, for the Eight?" askedanother Guardsman, Sir Vere Bellingham; "Severe," as he was christened,chiefly because he was the easiest-going giant in existence.
"Did I! men came to me; wanted me to join the Eight; coxswain came,awful strict little fellow, docked his men of all their fun--took plentyhimself though! Coxswain said I must begin to train, do as all hiscrew did. I threw up my sleeve and showed him my arm;" and the Seraphstretched out an arm magnificent enough for a statue of Milo. "I said,'there, sir, I'll help you thrash Cambridge, if you like, but train Iwon't for you or for all the University. I've been Captain of theEton Eight; but I didn't keep my crew on tea and toast. I fattened 'emregularly three times a week on venison and champagne at Christopher's.Very happy to feed yours, too, if you like; game comes down to me everyFriday from the Duke's moors; they look uncommonly as if they wantedit!' You should have seen his face!--fatten the Eight! He didn't let medo that, of course; but he was very glad of my oar in his rowlocks, andI helped him beat Cambridge without training an hour myself, except sofar as rowing hard went."
And the Marquis of Rockingham, made thirsty by the recollection, dippedhis fair mustaches into a foaming seltzer.
"Quite right, Seraph!" said Cecil; "when a man comes up to the weights,looking like a homunculus, after he's been getting every atom of fleshoff him like a jockey, he ought to be struck out for the stakes, tomy mind. 'Tisn't a question of riding, then, nor yet of pluck, or ofmanagement; it's nothing but a question of pounds, and of who can standthe tamest life the longest."
"Well, beneficial for one's morals, at any rate," suggested Sir Vere.
"Morals be hanged!" said Bertie, very immorally. "I'm glad you remind usof them, Vere; you're such a quintessence of decorum and respectabilityyourself! I say--anybody know anything of this fellow of the Tenththat's to ride Trelawney's chestnut?"
"Jimmy Delmar! Oh, yes; I know Jimmy," answered Lord Cosmo Wentworth, ofthe Scots Fusileers, from the far depths of an arm-chair. "Knew him atAldershot. Fine rider; give you a good bit of trouble, Beauty. Hasn'tbeen in England for years; troop been such a while at Calcutta. TheFancy take to him rather; offering very freely on him this morning inthe village; and he's got a rare good thing in the chestnut."
"Not a doubt of it. The White Lily blood, out of that Irish mareD'Orleans Diamonds, too."
"Never mind! Tenth won't beat us. The Household will win safe enough,unless Forest King goes and breaks his back over Brixworth--eh, Beauty?"said the Seraph, who believed devoutly in his comrade, with all theloving loyalty characteristic of the House of Lyonnesse, that tomonarchs and to friends had often cost it very dear.
"You put your faith in the wrong quarter, Rock; I may fail you, he neverwill," said Cecil, with ever so slight a dash of sadness in his words;the thought crossed him of how boldly, how straightly, how gallantlythe horse always breasted and conquered his difficulties--did he himselfdeal half so well with his own?
"Well! you both of you carry all our money and all our credit; so forthe fair fame of the Household do 'all you know.' I haven't hedged ashilling, not laid off a farthing, Bertie; I stand on you and the King,and nothing else--see what a sublime faith I have in you."
"I don't think you're wise then, Seraph; the field will be verystrong," said Cecil languidly. The answer was indifferent, and certainlythankless; but under his drooped lids a glance, frank and warm, restedfor the moment on the Seraph's leonine strength and Raphaelesque head;it was not his way to say it, or to show it, or even much to think it;but in his heart he loved his old friend wonderfully well.
And they talked on of little else than of the great steeple-chase ofthe Service, for the next hour in the Tabak-Parliament, while the greatclouds of scented smoke circled heavily round; making a halo of Turkishabove the gold locks of the Titanic Seraph, steeping Chesterfield'svelvets in strong odors of Cavendish, and drifting a light rose-scentedmist over Bertie's long, lithe limbs, light enough and skilled enough todisdain all "training for the weights."
"That's not the way to be in condition," growled "Tom," getting up witha great shake as the clock clanged the strokes of five; they had onlyreturned from a ball three miles off, when Cecil had paid his visitto the loose box. Bertie laughed; his laugh was like himself--ratherlanguid, but very light-hearted, very silvery, very engaging.
"Sit and smoke till breakfast time if you like, Tom; it won't make anydifference to me."
But the Smoke Parliament wouldn't hear of the champion of the Householdover the ridge and furrow risking the steadiness of his wrist and thekeenness of his eye by any such additional tempting of Providence, andwent off itself in various directions, with good-night iced drinks,yawning considerably like most other parliaments after a sitting.
It was the old family place of the Royallieu House in which he hadcongregated half the Guardsmen in the Service for the great event, andconsequently the bachelor chambers in it were of the utmost comfort andspaciousness, and when Cecil sauntered into his old quarters, familiarfrom boyhood, he could not have been better off in his own luxurioushaunts in Piccadilly. Moreover, the first thing that caught his eye wasa dainty scarlet silk riding jacket broidered in gold and silver, withthe motto of his house, "Coeur Vaillant se fait Royaume," all circledwith oak and laurel leaves on the collar.
It was the work of very fair hands, of very aristocratic hands, andhe looked at it with a smile. "Ah, my lady, my lady!" he thought halfaloud, "do you really love me? Do I really love you?"
There was a laugh in his eyes as he asked himself what might be termedan interesting question; then something more earnest came over his face,and he stood a second with the pretty costly embroideries in his hand,with a smile that was almost tender, though it was still much moreamused. "I suppose we do," he concluded at last; "at least quite asmuch as is ever worth while. Passions don't do for the drawing-room, assomebody says in 'Coningsby'; besides--I would not feel a strong emotionfor the universe. Bad style always, and more detrimental to 'condition,'as Tom would say, than three bottles of brandy!"
He was so little near what he dreaded, at present at least, that thescarlet jacket was tossed down again, and gave him no dreams of his fairand titled embroideress. He looked out, the last thing, at some ominousclouds drifting heavily up before the dawn, and the state of theweather, and the chance of its being rainy, filled his thoughts, to theutter exclusion of the donor of that bright gold-laden dainty gift. "Ihope to goodness there won't be any drenching shower. Forest King canstand ground as hard as a slate, but if there's one thing he's weak init's slush!" was Bertie's
last conscious thought, as he stretched hislimbs out and fell sound asleep.