But, as the crowd surged about him, and the mad cheering crowned hisvictory, and the Household in the splendor of their triumph and thefullness of their gratitude rushed from the drags and the standsto cluster to his saddle, Bertie looked as serenely and listlesslynonchalant as of old, while he nodded to the Seraph with a gentle smile.
"Rather a close finish, eh? Have you any Moselle Cup going there? I'm alittle thirsty."
Outsiders would much sooner have thought him defeated than triumphant;no one, who had not known him, could possibly have imagined that hehad been successful; an ordinary spectator would have concluded that,judging by the resigned weariness of his features, he had won the racegreatly against his own will, and to his own infinite ennui. No onecould have dreamt that he was thinking in his heart of hearts howpassionately he loved the gallant beast that had been victor with him,and that, if he had followed out the momentary impulse in him, he couldhave put his arms round the noble bowed neck and kissed the horse like awoman!
The Moselle Cup was brought to refresh the tired champion, and before hedrank it Bertie glanced at a certain place in the Grand Stand and benthis head as the cup touched his lips: it was a dedication of his victoryto the Queen of Beauty. Then he threw himself lightly out of saddle,and, as Forest King was led away for the after-ceremony of bottling,rubbing, and clothing, his rider, regardless of the roar and hubbub ofthe course, and of the tumultuous cheers that welcomed both him and hishorse from the men who pressed round him, into whose pockets he had putthousands upon thousands, and whose ringing hurrahs greeted the "Guards'Crack," passed straight up toward Jimmy Delmar and held out his hand.
"You gave me a close thing, Major Delmar. The Vase is as much yoursas mine; if your chestnut had been as good a water jumper as he is afencer, we should have been neck to neck at the finish."
The browned Indian-sunned face of the Lancer broke up into a cordialsmile, and he shook the hand held out to him warmly; defeat anddisappointment had cut him to the core, for Jimmy was the firstriding man of the Light Cavalry; but he would not have been the frankcampaigner that he was if he had not responded to the graceful andgenerous overture of his rival and conqueror.
"Oh, I can take a beating!" he said good-humoredly; "at any rate, I ambeat by the Guards; and it is very little humiliation to lose againstsuch riding as yours and such a magnificent brute as your King. Icongratulate you most heartily, most sincerely."
And he meant it, too. Jimmy never canted, nor did he ever throw theblame, with paltry, savage vindictiveness, on the horse he had ridden.Some men there are--their name is legion--who never allow that it istheir fault when they are "nowhere"--oh, no! it is the "cursed screw"always, according to them. But a very good rider will not tell you that.
Cecil, while he talked, was glancing up at the Grand Stand, and when theothers dispersed to look over the horses, and he had put himself outof his shell into his sealskin in the dressing-shed, he went up thitherwithout a moment's loss of time.
He knew them all; those dainty beauties with their delicate cheeks justbrightened by the western winterly wind, and their rich furs and lacesglowing among the colors of their respective heroes; he was the pet ofthem all; "Beauty" had the suffrages of the sex without exception; hewas received with bright smiles and graceful congratulations, even fromthose who had espoused Eyre Montacute's cause, and still fluttered theirlosing azure, though the poor hunter lay dead, with his back broken, anda pistol-ball mercifully sent through his brains--the martyr to a man'shot haste, as the dumb things have ever been since creation began.
Cecil passed them as rapidly as he could for one so well received bythem, and made his way to the center of the Stand, to the same spot atwhich he had glanced when he had drunk the Moselle.
A lady turned to him; she looked like a rose camellia in her floatingscarlet and white, just toned down and made perfect by a shower ofSpanish lace; a beautiful brunette, dashing, yet delicate; a littlefast, yet intensely thoroughbred; a coquette who would smoke acigarette, yet a peeress who would never lose her dignity.
"Au coeur vaillant rien d'impossible!" she said, with an envoi of herlorgnon, and a smile that should have intoxicated him--a smile thatmight have rewarded a Richepanse for a Hohenlinden. "Superbly ridden! Iabsolutely trembled for you as you lifted the King to that last leap. Itwas terrible!"
It was terrible; and a woman, to say nothing of a woman who was inlove with him, might well have felt a heart-sick fear at sight of thatyawning water, and those towering walls of blackthorn, where one touchof the hoofs on the topmost bough, one spring too short of the gatheredlimbs, must have been death to both horse and rider. But, as she saidit, she was smiling, radiant, full of easy calm and racing interest, asbecame her ladyship who had had "bets at even" before now on Goodwoodfillies, and could lead the first flight over the Belvoir and the Quorncountries. It was possible that her ladyship was too thoroughbred notto see a man killed over the oak-rails without deviating into unseemlyemotion, or being capable of such bad style as to be agitated.
Bertie, however, in answer, threw the tenderest eloquence into his eyes;very learned in such eloquence.
"If I could not have been victorious while you looked on, I would atleast not have lived to meet you here!"
She laughed a little, so did he; they were used to exchange thesepassages in an admirably artistic masquerade, but it was always a littledroll to each of them to see the other wear the domino of sentiment, andneither had much credence in the other.
"What a preux chevalier!" cried his Queen of Beauty. "You would havedied in a ditch out of homage to me. Who shall say that chivalry ispast! Tell me, Bertie; is it very delightful, that desperate effort tobreak your neck? It looks pleasant, to judge by its effects. It is theonly thing in the world that amuses you!"
"Well--there is a great deal to be said for it," replied Bertiemusingly. "You see, until one has broken one's neck, the excitementof the thing isn't totally worn out; can't be, naturally, becausethe--what-do-you-call-it?--consummation isn't attained till then. Theworst of it is, it's getting commonplace, getting vulgar; such a numberbreak their necks, doing Alps and that sort of thing, that we shall havenothing at all left to ourselves soon."
"Not even the monopoly of sporting suicide! Very hard," said herladyship, with the lowest, most languid laugh in the world, very like"Beauty's" own, save that it had a considerable indication of studiedaffectation, of which he, however much of a dandy he was, was whollyguiltless. "Well! you won magnificently; that little black man, whois he? Lancers, somebody said?--ran you so fearfully close. I reallythought at one time that the Guards had lost."
"Do you suppose that a man happy enough to wear Lady Guenevere's colorscould lose? An embroidered scarf given by such hands has been a gageof victory ever since the days of tournaments!" murmured Cecil with thesoftest tenderness, but just enough laziness in the tone and laughter inthe eye to make it highly doubtful whether he was not laughing both ather and at himself, and was wondering why the deuce a fellow had to talksuch nonsense. Yet she was Lady Guenevere, with whom he had been in loveever since they stayed together at Belvoir for the Croxton Park week theautumn previous; and who was beautiful enough to make their "friendship"as enchanting as a page out of the "Decamerone." And while he bentover her, flirting in the fashion that made him the darling of thedrawing-rooms, and looking down into her superb Velasquez eyes, he didnot know, and if he had known would have been careless of it, thatafar off, while with rage, and with his gaze straining on to the coursethrough his race-glass, Ben Davis, "the welsher," who had watched thefinish--watched the "Guards' Crack" landed at the distance--muttered,with a mastiff's savage growl:
"He wins, does he? Curse him! The d----d swell--he shan't win long."