CHAPTER V.
UNDER THE KEEPER'S TREE.
"You're a lad o' wax, my beauty!" cried Mr. Rake enthusiastically,surveying the hero of the Grand Military with adoring eyes as thatcelebrity, without a hair turned or a muscle swollen from his exploit,was having a dressing down after a gentle exercise. "You've pulled itoff, haven't you? You've cut the work out for 'em! You've shown 'em whata luster is! Strike me a loser, but what a deal there is in blood. Thelittlest pippin that ever threw a leg across the pigskin knows that inthe stables; then why the dickens do the world run against such a plainfact out of it?"
And Rake gazed with worship at the symmetrical limbs of the championof the "First Life," and plunged into speculation on the democratictendencies of the age, as clearly contradicted by all the evidences ofthe flat and furrow, while Forest King drank a dozen go-downs ofwater, and was rewarded for the patience with which he had subduedhis inclination to kick, fret, spring, and break away throughout thedressing by a full feed thrown into his crib, which Rake watched him,with adoring gaze, eat to the very last grain.
"You precious one!" soliloquized that philosopher, who loved the horsewith a sort of passion since his victory over the Shires. "You've wonfor the gentlemen, my lovely--for your own cracks, my boy!"
And Rake, rendered almost melancholy by his thoughts, went out of thebox to get into saddle and ride off on an errand of his master's to theZu-Zu at her tiny hunting-lodge, where the snow-white ponies made herstud, and where she gave enchanting little hunting-dinners, at which shesang equally enchanting little hunting-songs, and arrayed herself, inthe Fontainebleau hunting costume, gold-hilted knife and all, and spentCecil's winnings for him with a rapidity that threatened to leave veryfew of them for the London season. She was very pretty, sweetly pretty;with hair that wanted no gold powder, the clearest, sauciest eyes, andthe handsomest mouth in the world; but of grammar she had not a notion,of her aspirates she had never a recollection, of conversation she hadnot an idea; of slang she had, to be sure, a repertoire, but to this washer command of language limited. She dressed perfectly, but she was avulgar little soul; drank everything, from Bass' ale to rum-punch, andfrom cherry-brandy to absinthe; thought it the height of wit to stifleyou with cayenne slid into your vanilla ice, and the climax of reparteeto cram your hat full of peach stones and lobster shells; was thoroughlyavaricious, thoroughly insatiate, thoroughly heartless, pillaged withboth hands, and then never had enough; had a coarse good nature whenit cost her nothing, and was "as jolly as a grig," according to herphraseology, so long as she could stew her pigeons in champagne, drinkwines and liqueurs that were beyond price, take the most dashing trapin the Park up to Flirtation Corner, and laugh and sing and eat Richmonddinners, and show herself at the Opera with Bertie or some other "swell"attached to her, in the very box next to a Duchess.
The Zu-Zu was perfectly happy; and as for the pathetic pictures thatnovelists and moralists draw, of vice sighing amid turtle and trufflesfor childish innocence in the cottage at home where honeysucklesblossomed and brown brooks made melody, and passionately grieving onthe purple cushions of a barouche for the time of straw pallets anduntroubled sleep, why--the Zu-Zu would have vaulted herself on thebox-seat of a drag, and told you "to stow all that trash"; her childishrecollections were of a stifling lean-to with the odor of pigsty andstraw-yard, pork for a feast once a week, starvation all the other sixdays, kicks, slaps, wrangling, and a general atmosphere of beer andwash-tubs; she hated her past, and loved her cigar on the drag. TheZu-Zu is fact; the moralists' pictures are moonshine.
The Zu-Zu is an openly acknowledged fact, moreover, daily becoming moreprominent in the world, more brilliant, more frankly recognized, andmore omnipotent. Whether this will ultimately prove for the better orthe worse, it would be a bold man who should dare say; there is at leastone thing left to desire in it--i. e., that the synonym of "Aspasia,"which serves so often to designate in journalistic literature theseFree Lances of life, were more suitable in artistic and intellectualsimilarity, and that, when the Zu-Zu and her sisterhood plunge theirwhite arms elbow-deep into so many fortunes, and rule the world rightand left as they do, they could also sound their H's properly, and knewa little orthography, if they could not be changed into such queens ofgrace, of intellect, of sovereign mind and splendid wit as were theirprototypes when she whose name they debase held her rule in the City ofthe Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the divine, haughtyand eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the subtle Protagorus, Cratinus soacrid and yet so jovial, Damon of the silver lyre, and the great poetswho are poets for all time. Author and artist, noble and soldier, courtthe Zu-Zu order now; but it must be confessed that the Hellenic idolswere of a more exalted type than are the Hyde Park goddesses!
However, the Zu-Zu was the rage, and spent Bertie's money, when he gotany, just as her willful sovereignty fancied, and Rake rode on now withhis master's note, bearing no very good will to her; for Rake had verystrong prejudices, and none stronger than against these fair pillagerswho went about seeking whom they should devour, and laughing at thewholesale ruin they wrought while the sentimentalists babbled in "SocialScience" of "pearls lost" and "innocence betrayed."
"A girl that used to eat tripe and red herring in a six-pair pack, anddance for a shilling a night in gauze, coming it so grand that she'llonly eat asparagus in March, and drink the best Brands with hertruffles! Why, she ain't worth sixpence thrown away on her, unless it'sworth while to hear how hard she can swear at you!" averred Rake, in hiseloquence; and he was undoubtedly right for that matter; but then--theZu-Zu was the rage, and if ever she should be sold up, great ladieswould crowd to her sale and buy with eager curiosity at high prices hermost trumpery pots of pomatum, her most flimsy gew-gaws of marqueterie!
Rake had seen a good deal of men and manners, and, in his own opinion atleast, was "up to every dodge on the cross" that this iniquitous worldcould unfold. A bright, lithe, animated, vigorous, yellow-haired, andsturdy fellow; seemingly with a dash of the Celt in him that made himvivacious and peppery; Mr. Rake polished his wits quite as much as hepolished the tops, and considered himself a philosopher. Of whose son hewas he had not the remotest idea; his earliest recollections were of thetender mercies of the workhouse; but even that chill foster-mother, theparish, had not damaged the liveliness of his temper or the independenceof his opinions, and as soon as he was fifteen Rake had run away andjoined a circus; distinguishing himself there by his genius for standingon his head and tying his limbs into a porter's knot.
From the circus he migrated successively into the shape of a comicsinger, a tapster, a navvy, a bill-sticker, a guacho in Mexico (workinghis passage out), a fireman in New York, a ventriloquist in Maryland,a vaquero in Spanish California, a lemonade seller in San Francisco, arevolutionist in the Argentine (without the most distant idea what hefought for), a boatman on the bay of Mapiri, a blacksmith in Santarem, atrapper in the Wilderness, and finally, working his passage homeagain, took the Queen's shilling in Dublin, and was drafted into alight-cavalry regiment. With the --th he served half a dozen years inIndia; a rough-rider, a splendid fellow in a charge or a pursuit, withan astonishing power over horses, and the clearest back-handed sweep ofa saber that ever cut down a knot of natives; but--insubordinate. Do hisduty whenever fighting was in question, he did most zealously; but tokick over the traces at other times was a temptation that at last becametoo strong for that lawless lover of liberty.
From the moment that he joined the regiment a certain Corporal Warne andhe had conceived an antipathy to one another, which Rake had to controlas he might, and which the Corporal was not above indulging in everypetty piece of tyranny that his rank allowed him to exercise. On activeservice Rake was, by instinct, too good a soldier not to manage to keepthe curb on himself tolerably well though he was always regarded in histroop rather as a hound that will "riot" is regarded in the pack; butwhen the --th came back to Brighton and to barracks, the evil spirit ofrebellion began to get a little hotter in him under th Corporal's "Ide
esNapoliennes" of justifiable persecution. Warne indisputably provoked hisman in a cold, iron, strictly lawful sort of manner, moreover, all themore irritating to a temper like Rake's.
"Hanged if I care how the officers come it over me; they're gentlemen,and it don't try a fellow," would Rake say in confidential moments overpurl and a penn'orth of bird's-eye, his experience in the ArgentineRepublic having left him with strongly aristocratic prejudices; "butwhen it comes to a duffer like that, that knows no better than me,what ain't a bit better than me, and what is as clumsy a duffer about ahorse's plates as ever I knew, and would almost let a young 'un buck himout of his saddle--why, then I do cut up rough, I ain't denying it; andI don't see what there is in his Stripes to give him such a license tobe aggravating."
With which Rake would blow the froth off his pewter with a puff ofconcentrated wrath, and an oath against his non-commissioned officersthat might have let some light in upon the advocates for "promotionfrom the ranks," had they been there to take the lesson. At last, in theleisure of Brighton, the storm broke. Rake had a Scotch hound thatwas the pride of his life; his beer-money often going instead to buydainties for the dog, who became one of the channels through which Warnecould annoy and thwart him. The dog did no harm, being a fine, well-breddeerhound; but it pleased the Corporal to consider that it did, simplybecause it belonged to Rake, whose popularity in the corps, owing tohis good nature, his good spirits, and his innumerable tales of Americanexperience and amorous adventures, increased the jealous dislike whichhis knack with an unbroken colt and his abundant stable science hadfirst raised in his superior.
One day in the chargers' stables the hound ran out of a loose box with arush to get at Rake, and upset a pailful of warm mash. The Corporal, whowas standing by in harness, hit him over the head with a heavy whip hehad in his hand; infuriated by the pain, the dog flew at him, tearinghis overalls with a fierce crunch of his teeth. "Take the brute off, andstring him up with a halter; I've put up with him too long!" cried Warneto a couple of privates working near in their stable dress. Before thewords were out of his mouth Rake threw himself on him with a boundlike lightning, and, wrenching the whip out of his hands, struck him aslashing, stinging blow across his face.
"Hang my hound, you cur! If you touch a hair of him, I'll double-thongyou within an inch of your life!"
And assuredly he would have kept his word, had he not been made aprisoner and marched off to the guardroom.
Rake learned the stern necessity of the law, which, for the sake ofmorale, must make the soldiers, whose blood is wanted to be like fireon the field, patient, pulseless, and enduring of every provocation,cruelty, and insolence in the camp and barrack, as though they werestatues of stone--a needful law, a wise law, an indispensable law,doubtless, but a very hard law to be obeyed by a man full of life andall life's passions.
At the court-martial on his mutinous conduct, which followed, manywitnesses brought evidence, on being pressed, to the unpopularity ofWarne in the regiment and to his harshness and his tyranny to Rake. Manymen spoke out what had been chained down in their thoughts for years;and, in consideration of the provocation received, the prisoner, who wasmuch liked by the officers, was condemned to six months' imprisonmentfor his insubordination and blow to his superior officer, without beingtied up to the triangles. At the court-martial, Cecil, who chanced tobe in Brighton after Goodwood, was present one day with someother Guardsmen; and the look of Rake, with his cheerfulness underdifficulties, his love for the hound, and his bright, sunburnt, shrewd,humorous countenance, took his fancy.
"Beauty" was the essence of good nature. Indolent himself, he hated tosee anything or anybody worried; lazy, gentle, wayward, and spoiltby his own world, he was still never so selfish and philosophic as hepretended but what he would do a kindness, if one came in his way; it isnot a very great virtue, perhaps, but it is a rare one.
"Poor devil! Struck the other because he wouldn't have his dog hanged.Well, on my word, I should have done the same in his place, if I couldhave got up the pace for so much exertion," murmured Cecil to hischeroot, careless of the demoralizing tendency of his remarks for thearmy in general. Had it occurred in the Guards, and he had "sat" on thecase, Rake would have had one very lenient judge.
As it was, Bertie actually went the lengths of thinking seriously aboutthe matter; he liked Rake's devotion to his dumb friend, and he heard ofhis intense popularity in his troop; he wished to save, if he could, sofine a fellow from the risks of his turbulent passion and from the sternfetters of a trying discipline; hence, when Rake found himself condemnedto his cell, he had a message sent him by Bertie's groom that, when histerm of punishment should be over, Mr. Cecil would buy his dischargefrom the service and engage him as extra body-servant, having had a goodaccount of his capabilities; he had taken the hound to his own kennels.
Now, the fellow had been thoroughly devil-may-care throughout thewhole course of the proceedings, had heard his sentence with sublimeimpudence, and had chaffed his sentinels with an utterly recklessnonchalance; but somehow or other, when that message reached him, avivid sense that he was a condemned and disgraced man suddenly floodedin on him; a passionate gratitude seized him to the young aristocratwho had thought of him in his destitution and condemnation, who had eventhought of his dog; and Rake the philosophic and undauntable, couldhave found it in his heart to kneel down in the dust and kiss thestirrup-leather when he held it for his new master, so strong was theloyalty he bore from that moment to Bertie.
Martinets were scandalized at a Life-Guardsman taking as his privatevalet a man who had been guilty of such conduct in the Light Cavalry;but Cecil never troubled his head about what people said; and soinvaluable did Rake speedily become to him that he had kept him abouthis person wherever he went from then until now, two years after.
Rake loved his master with a fidelity very rare in these days; he lovedhis horses, his dogs, everything that was his, down to his very rifleand boots; slaved for him cheerfully, and was as proud of the deer hestalked, of the brace he bagged, of his winnings when the Householdplayed the Zingari, or his victory when his yacht won the Cherbourg Cup,as though those successes had been Rake's own.
"My dear Seraph," said Cecil himself once, on this point, to theMarquis, "if you want generosity, fidelity, and all the rest of thecardinal what-d'ye-call-'ems--sins, ain't it?--go to a noble-heartedScamp; he'll stick to you till he kills himself. If you want to becheated, get a Respectable Immaculate; he'll swindle you piously, anddecamp with your Doncaster Vase."
And Rake, who assuredly had been an out-and-out scamp, made goodBertie's creed; he "stuck to him" devoutly, and no terrier was ever morealive to an otter than he was to the Guardsman's interests. It was thatvery vigilance which made him, as he rode back from the Zu-Zu's inthe twilight, notice what would have escaped any save one who had beenpracticed as a trapper in the red Canadian woods; namely, the head of aman, almost hidden among the heavy, though leafless, brushwood andthe yellow gorse of a spinney which lay on his left in Royallieu Park.Rake's eyes were telescopic and microscopic; moreover, they had beentrained to know such little signs as a marsh from a hen harrier in fullflight, by the length of wing and tail, and a widgeon or a coot froma mallard or a teal, by the depth each swam out of the water. Gray andfoggy as it was, and high as was the gorse, Rake recognized his born-foeWillon.
"What's he up to there?" thought Rake, surveying the place, which waswild, solitary, and an unlikely place enough for a head groom to befound in. "If he ain't a rascal, I never seen one; it's my belief hecheats the stable thick and thin, and gets on Mr. Cecil's mounts to agood tune--aye, and would nobble 'em as soon as not, if it just suitedhis book. That blessed King hates the man; how he lashes his heels athim!"
It was certainly possible that Willon might be passing an idle hourin potting rabbits, or be otherwise innocently engaged enough; but thesight of him, there among the gorse, was a sight of suspicion to Rake.Instantaneous thoughts darted through his mind of tethering his horse,and making a reconnaissanc
e, safely and unseen, with the science ofstalking brute or man that he had learned of his friends the Sioux. Butsecond thoughts showed him that was impossible. The horse he was on wasa mere colt, just breaking in, who had barely had so much as a "dumbjockey" on his back; and stand for a second, the colt would not.
"At any rate, I'll unearth him," thought Rake, with his latent animosityto the head groom and his vigilant loyalty to Cecil overruling anyscruple as to his right to overlook his foe's movements; and with agallop that was muffled on the heathered turf he dashed straight at thecovert, unperceived till he was within ten paces. Willon started andlooked up hastily; he was talking to a square-built man very quietlydressed in shepherd's plaid, chiefly remarkable by a red-hued beard andwhiskers.
The groom turned pale, and laughed nervously as Rake pulled up with ajerk.
"You on that young 'un again? Take care you don't get bucked out o'saddle in the shape of a cocked-hat."
"I ain't afraid of going to grass, if you are!" retorted Rakescornfully; boldness was not his enemy's strong point. "Who's your pal,old fellow?"
"A cousin o' mine, out o' Yorkshire," vouchsafed Mr. Willon, lookinganything but easy, while the cousin aforesaid nodded sulkily on theintroduction.
"Ah! looks like a Yorkshire tyke," muttered Rake, with a volume ofmeaning condensed in these innocent words. "A nice, dry, cheerful sortof place to meet your cousin in, too; uncommon lively; hope it'll raisehis spirits to see all his cousins a-grinning there; his spirits don'tseem much in sorts now," continued the ruthless inquisitor, with aglance at the "keeper's tree" by which they stood, in the middle of dankundergrowth, whose branches were adorned with dead cats, curs, owls,kestrels, stoats, weasels, and martens. To what issue the passage ofarms might have come it is impossible to say, for at that moment thecolt took matters into his own hands, and bolted with a rush that evenRake could not pull in till he had had a mile-long "pipe-opener."
"Something up there," thought that sagacious rough-rider; "if thatred-haired chap ain't a rum lot, I'll eat him. I've seen his face, too,somewhere; where the deuce was it? Cousin; yes, cousins in Queer Street,I dare say! Why should he go and meet his 'cousin' out in the fog there,when, if you took twenty cousins home to the servants' hall, nobody'dever say anything? If that Willon ain't as deep as Old Harry----"
And Rake rode into the stable-yard, thoughtful and intensely suspiciousof the rendezvous under the keeper's tree in the out-lying coverts. Hewould have been more so had he guessed that Ben Davis' red beard anddemure attire, with other as efficient disguises, had prevented even hisown keen eyes from penetrating the identity of Willon's "Cousin" withthe welsher he had seen thrust off the course the day before by hismaster.
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF A RINGING RUN.
"Tally-ho! is the word, clap spurs and let's follow. The world has nocharm like a rattling view-halloa!"