CHAPTER XIV.
"DE PROFUNDIS" BEFORE "PLUNGING."
Three months later it was guest-night in the messroom of a certainfamous light cavalry regiment, who bear the reputation of being thefastest corps in the English service. Of a truth, they do "plunge" alittle too wildly; and stories are told of bets over ecarte in theiranteroom that have been prompt extinction forever and aye to the losers,for they rarely play money down, their stakes are too high, and moderatefortunes may go in a night with the other convenient but fatal system.But, this one indiscretion apart, they are a model corps for blood,for dash, for perfect social accord, for the finest horseflesh in thekingdom, and the best president at a mess-table that ever drilled thecook to matchlessness, and made the ice dry, and the old burgundies, theadmired of all newcomers.
Just now they had pleasant quarters enough in York, had a couple ofhundred hunters, all in all, in their stalls, were showing the Ridingsthat they could "go like birds," and were using up their second horseswith every day out, in the first of the season. A cracker over the bestof the ground with the York and Ainsty, that had given two first-ratethings quick as lightning, and both closed with a kill, had filled theday; and they were dining with a fair quantity of county guests, and allthe splendor of plate, and ceremony, and magnificent hospitalities whichcharacterize those beaux sabreurs wheresoever they go. At one part ofthe table a discussion was going on but they drank singularly little;it was not their "form" ever to indulge in that way; and the Chief, asdashing a sabreur as ever crossed a saddle, though lenient to loosenessin all other matters, and very young for his command, would have beendown like steel on "the boys," had any of them taken to the pastime ofovermuch drinking in any shape.
"I can't get the rights of the story," said one of the guests, a huntingbaronet, and M. F. H. "It's something very dark, isn't it?"
"Very dark," assented a tall, handsome man, with a habitual air of themost utterly exhausted apathy ever attained by the human features, butwho, nevertheless, had been christened, by the fiercest of the warriornations of the Punjaub, as the Shumsheer-i-Shaitan, or Sword of the EvilOne, so terrible had the circling sweep of one back stroke of his, whenhe was quite a boy, become to them.
"Guard cut up fearfully rough," murmured one near him, known as "theDauphin." "Such a low sort of thing, you know; that's the worst of it.Seraph's name, too."
"Poor old Seraph! He's fairly bowled over about it," added a third."Feels it awfully--by Jove, he does! It's my belief he paid those Jewfellows the whole sum to get the pursuit slackened."
"So Thelusson says. Thelusson says Jews have made a cracker by it. Idare say! Jews always do," muttered a fourth. "First Life would havegiven Beauty a million sooner than have him do it. Horrible thing forthe Household."
"But is he dead?" pursued their guest.
"Beauty? Yes; smashed in that express, you know."
"But there was no evidence?"
"I don't know what you call evidence," murmured "the Dauphin." "Horsesare sent to England from Paris; clearly shows he went to Paris.Marseilles train smashes; twenty people ground into indistinguishableamalgamation; two of the amalgamated jammed head foremost in a carriagealone; only traps in carriage with them, Beauty's traps, with name clearon the brass outside, and crest clear on silver things inside; two menground to atoms, but traps safe; two men, of course Beauty and servant;man was a plucky fellow, sure, to stay with him."
And having given the desired evidence in lazy little intervals ofspeech, he took some Rhenish.
"Well--yes; nothing could be more conclusive, certainly," assented theBaronet, resignedly convinced. "It was the best thing that couldhappen under the unfortunate circumstances; so Lord Royallieu thinks, Isuppose. He allowed no one to wear mourning, and had his unhappy son'sportrait taken down and burned."
"How melodramatic!" reflected Leo Charteris. "Now what the deuce canit hurt a dead man to have his portrait made into a bonfire? Old lordalways did hate Beauty, though. Rock does all the mourning; he's cut upno end; never saw a fellow so knocked out of time. Vowed at first he'dsell out, and go into the Austrian service; swore he couldn't stay inthe Household, but would get a command of some Heavies, and be changedto India."
"Duke didn't like that--didn't want him shot; nobody else, you see, forthe title. By George! I wish you'd seen Rock the other day on the Heath;little Pulteney came up to him."
"What Pulteney?--Jimmy, or the Earl?"
"Oh, the Earl! Jimmy would have known better. These new men never knowanything. 'You purchased that famous steeple-chaser of his from Mr.Cecil's creditors, didn't you!' asks Pulteney. Rock just looks him over.Such a look, by George! 'I received Forest King as my dead friend's lastgift.' Pulteney never takes the hint--not he. On he blunders: 'Because,if you were inclined to part with him, I want a good new hunting strain,with plenty of fencing power, and I'd take him for the stud at anyfigure you liked.' I thought the Seraph would have knocked him down--Idid, upon my honor! He was red as this wine in a second with rage, andthen as white as a woman. 'You are quite right,' he says quietly, andI swear each word cut like a bullet, 'you do want a new strain withsomething like breeding in it, but--I hardly think you'll get it forthe three next generations. You must learn to know what it means first.'Then away he lounges. By Jove! I don't think the Cotton-Earl will forgetthis Cambridgeshire in a hurry, or try horse-dealing on the Seraphagain."
Laughter loud and long greeted the story.
"Poor Beauty," said the Dauphin, "he'd have enjoyed that. He alwaysput down Pulteney himself. I remember his telling me he was on duty atWindsor once when Pulteney was staying there. Pulteney's always horriblyfunked at Court; frightened out of his life when he dines with anyroyalties; makes an awful figure too in a public ceremony; can't walkbackward for any money, and at his first levee tumbled down right in theQueen's face. Now at the Castle one night he just happened to come downa corridor as Beauty was smoking. Beauty made believe to take him for aservant, took out a sovereign, and tossed it to him. 'Here, keep a stilltongue about my cigar, my good fellow!' Pulteney turned hot and cold,and stammered out God knows what, about his mighty dignity beingmistaken for a valet. Bertie just laughed a little, ever so softly, 'Begyour pardon--thought you were one of the people; wouldn't have done itfor worlds; I know you're never at ease with a sovereign!' Now Pulteneywasn't likely to forget that. If he wanted the King, I'll lay any moneyit was to give him to some wretched mount who'd break his back over afence in a selling race."
"Well, he won't have him; Seraph don't intend to have the horse everridden or hunted at all."
"Nonsense!"
"By Jove, he means it! nobody's to cross the King's back; he wantsweight-carriers himself, you know, and precious strong ones too. TheKing's put in stud at Lyonnesse. Poor Bertie! Nobody ever managed aclose finish as he did at the Grand National--last but two--don't youremember?"
"Yes; waited so beautifully on Fly-by-Night, and shot by him likelightning, just before the run-in. Pity he went to the bad!"
"Ah, what a hand he played at ecarte; the very best of the Frenchscience."
"But reckless at whist; a wild game there--uncommonly wild. Drove CisDelareux half mad one night at Royallieu with the way he threw histrumps out. Old Cis dashed his cards down at last, and looked himfull in the face. 'Beauty, do you know, or do you not know, that awhist-table is not to be taken as you take a timber in a hunting-field,on the principle of clear it or smash it?' 'Faith!' said Bertie, 'clearit or smash it is a very good rule for anything, but a trifle tooenergetic for me.'"
"The deuce, he's had enough of 'smashing' at last! I wish he hadn't cometo grief in that style; it's a shocking bore for the Guards--such anugly story."
"It was uncommonly like him to get killed just when he did--bestpossible taste."
"Only thing he could do."
"Better taste would have been to do it earlier. I always wondered hestopped for the row."
"Oh, never thought it would turn up; trusted to a fluke."
He whom the Pu
njaub knew as the Sword of the Evil One, but who held inpolite society the title of Lord Kergenven, drank some hock slowly,and murmured as his sole quota to the conversation, very lazily andlanguidly:
"Bet you he isn't dead at all."
"The deuce you do? And why?" chorused the table; "when a fellow's body'sfound with all his traps round him!"
"I don't believe he's dead," murmured Kergenven with closed, slumberouseyes.
"But why? Have you heard anything?"
"Not a word."
"Why do you say he's alive, then?"
My lord lifted his brows ever so little.
"I think so, that's all."
"But you must have a reason, Ker?"
Badgered into speech, Kergenven drank a little more hock, and droppedout slowly, in the mellowest voice in the world, the following:
"It don't follow one has reasons for anything; pray don't get logical.Two years ago I was out in a chasse au sanglier, central France; perhapsyou don't know their work? It's uncommonly queer. Break up the Alps intolittle bits, scatter 'em pell-mell over a great forest, and then seta killing pack to hunt through and through it. Delightful chance forcoming to grief; even odds that if you don't pitch down a ravine, you'llget blinded for life by a branch; that if you don't get flattenedunder a boulder, you'll be shot by a twig catching your rifle-trigger.Uncommonly good sport."
Exhausted with so lengthened an exposition of the charms of the venerieand the hallali, he stopped, and dropped a walnut into some Regencysherry.
"Hang it, Ker!" cried the Dauphin. "What's that to do with Beauty?"
My lord let fall a sleepy glance of surprise and of rebuke from underhis black lashes, that said mutely, "Do I, who hate talking, ever talkwide of any point?"
"Why, this," he murmured. "He was with us down at Veille-roc--LouisD'Auvrai's place, you know; and we were out after an old boar--not tooold to race; but still tough enough to be likely to turn and trustto his tusks if the pace got very hot, and he was hard pressed at thefinish. We hadn't found till rather late, the limeurs were rather new tothe work, and the November day was short, of course; the pack got on theslot of a roebuck too, and were off the boar's scent in a little while,running wild. Altogether we got scattered, and in the forest it grewalmost as dark as pitch; you followed just as you could, and couldonly guide yourself by your ear when the hounds gave cry, or the hornssounded. On you blundered, hit or miss, headlong down the rocks andthrough the branches; horses warmed wonderfully to the business,scrambled like cats, slid down like otters, kept their footing wherenobody'd have thought anything but a goat could stand. Our huntingbloods wouldn't live an hour in a French forest. You see we just lookfor pace and strength in the shoulders; we don't much want anythingelse--except good jumping power. What a lot of fellows--even in thecrack packs--will always funk water! Horses will fly, but they can'tswim. Now, to my fancy, a clever beast ought to take even a swelling bitof water like a duck. How poor Standard breasted rivers till that foolstaked him!"
He dropped more walnuts into his wine, wistfully recalling a mighty heroof Leicestershire fame, that had given him many a magnificent day out,and had been the idol of his stables, till in his twelfth year the nobleold sorrel had been killed by a groom's recklessness; recklessnessthat met with such chastisement as told how and why the hill-tribes'sobriquet had been given to the hand that would lie so long in indolentrest, to strike with such fearful force when once raised.
"Well," he went on once more, "we were all of us scattered; scarcely twokept together anywhere; where the pack was, where the boar was, wherethe huntsmen were, nobody knew. Now and then I heard the hounds givingtongue at the distance, and I rode after that to the best of my science;and uncommonly bad was the best. That forest work perplexes one, afterthe grass-country. You can't view the beauties two minutes together; andas for sinning by overriding 'em, you're very safe not to do that! Atlast I heard a crashing sound, loud and furious; I thought they had gothim to bay at last. There was a great oak thicket as hard as iron, andas close as a net, between me and the place; the boughs were all twistedtogether, God knows how, and grew so low down that the naked brancheshad to be broken though at every step by the horse's fore hoofs, beforehe could force a step. We did force it somehow at last, and came intoa green, open space, where there were fewer trees, and the moon wasshining in; there, without a hound near, true enough was the boarrolling on the ground, and somebody rolling under him. They were lockedin so close they looked just like one huge beast, pitching here andthere, as you've seen the rhinos wallow in Indian jheels. Of course, Ileveled my rifle, but I waited to get a clear aim; for which was manand which was boar, the deuce a bit could I tell; just as I had pointed,Beauty's voice called out to me; 'Keep your fire, Ker! I want to havehim myself.' It was he that was under the brute. Just as he spoke theyrolled toward me, the boar foaming and spouting blood, and plunging histusks into Cecil; he got his right arm out from under the beast,and crushed under there as he was, drew it free, with the knife wellgripped; then down he dashed it three times into the veteran's hide,just beneath the ribs; it was the coup de grace; the boar lay dead, andBeauty lay half dead too; the blood rushing out of him where the tuskshad dived. Two minutes, though, and a draught of my brandy brought himall round; and the first words he spoke were, 'Thanks Ker; you did asyou would be done by--a shot would have spoilt it all.' The brute hadcrossed his path far away from the pack, and he had flung himself outof saddle and had a neck-and-neck struggle. And that night we playedbaccarat by his bedside to amuse him; and he played just as well asever. Now this is why I don't think he's dead; a fellow who served awild boar like that won't have let a train knock him over. And I don'tbelieve he forged that stiff, though all the evidence says so; Beautyhadn't a touch of the blackguard in him."
With which declaration of his views, Kergenven lapsed into immutablesilence and slumberous apathy, from whose shelter nothing could tempthim afresh; and the Colonel, with all the rest, lounged into theanteroom, where the tables were set, and began "plunging" in earnestat sums that might sound fabulous, were they written here. The playersstaked heavily; but it was the gallery who watched around, making theirbets, and backing their favorites, that lost on the whole the most.
"Horse Guards have heard of the plunging; think we're going too fast,"murmured the Chief to Kergenven, his Major, who lifted his brows, andmurmured back with the demureness of a maiden:
"Tell 'em it's our only vice; we're models of propriety."
Which possibly would not have been received with the belief desirable bythe skeptics of Pall Mall.
So the De Profundis was said over Bertie Cecil; and "Beauty of theBrigades" ceased to be named in the service, and soon ceased to be evenremembered. In the steeple-chase of life there is no time to look backat the failures, who have gone down over a "double and drop," and fallenout of the pace.