Under Two Flags. Ouida
up the sponge.’ We were all dying with laughter, and I tossed him a tenner. ‘There, my good fellow,’ said I, ‘shunt the carriage and let us finish the game. If another train comes up, give it Lord Rockingham’s compliments and say he’ll thank it to stop, because collisions shake his trumps together.’ Man thought us mad; took tenner though, shunted us to one side out of the noise, and we played two rubbers 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, and then a deep draught of soda and brandy to refresh himself after the narrative—biggest, best-tempered, and wildest of men in or out of the Service, despite the angelic character of his fair-haired head, and blue eyes that looked as clear and as innocent as those of a six-year-old child.
“Not the first time by a good many that you’ve ‘shunted off the straight,’ Seraph?” laughed Cecil, substituting an amber mouth-piece for his half-finished cheroot. “I’ve been having a good-night look at the King. 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 a gentleman to put us all up a tree; he knows he carries the honor of the Household.”
“There are some good mounts, there’s no denying that,” said Chesterfield of the Blues (who was called Tom for no other reason than that it was entirely unlike his real name of Adolphus), where he was curled up almost invisible, except for the movement of the jasmine stick of his chibouque. “That brute, Day Star, is a splendid fencer, and for a brook jumper, it would be heard to best Wild Geranium, though her shoulders are not quite what they ought to be. Montacute, too, can ride a good thing, and he’s got one in Pas de Charge.”
“I’m not much afraid of Monti, he makes too wild a burst first; he never saves on atom,” yawned Cecil, with the coils of his hookah bubbling among the rose-water; “the man I’m afraid of is that fellow from the Tenth; he’s as light as a feather and as hard as steel. I watched him yesterday going over the water, and the horse he’ll ride for Trelawney is good enough to beat even the King if he’s properly piloted.”
“You haven’t kept yourself in condition, Beauty,” growled “Tom,” with the chibouque in his mouth, “else nothing could give you the go-by. It’s tempting Providence to go in for the Gilt Vase after such a December and January as you spent in Paris. Even the week you’ve been in the Shires you haven’t trained a bit; you’ve been waltzing or playing baccarat till five in the morning, and taking no end of sodas after to bring you right for the meet at nine. If a man will drink champagnes and burgundies as you do, and spend his time after women, I should like to know how he’s to be in hard riding condition, unless he expects a miracle.”
With which Chesterfield, who weighed fourteen stone himself, and was, therefore, out of all but welter-races, and wanted a weight-carrier of tremendous power even for them, subsided under a heap of velvet and cashmere, and Cecil laughed; lying on a divan just under one of the gas branches, the light fell full on his handsome face, with its fair hue and its gentle languor on which there was not a single trace of the outrecuidance attributed to him. Both he and the Seraph could lead the wildest life of any men in Europe without looking one shadow more worn than the brightest beauty of the season, and could hold wassail in riotous rivalry till the sun rose, and then throw themselves into saddle as fresh as if they had been sound asleep all night; to keep up with the pack the whole day in a fast burst or on a cold scent, or in whatever sport Fortune and the coverts gave them, till their second horses wound their way homeward through muddy, leafless lanes, when the stars had risen.
“Beauty don’t believe in training. No more do I. Never would train for anything,” said the Seraph now, pulling the long blond mustaches that were not altogether in character with his seraphic cognomen. “If a man can ride, let him. If he’s born to the pigskin he’ll be in at the distance safe enough, whether he smokes or don’t smoke, drink or don’t drink. As for training on raw chops, giving up wine, living like the very deuce and all, as if you were in a monastery, and changing yourself into a mere bag of bones—it’s utter bosh. You might as well be in purgatory; besides, it’s no more credit to win then than if you were a professional.”
“But you must have trained at Christ Church, Rock, for the Eight?” asked another 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 plenty himself though! Coxswain said I must begin to train, do as all his crew did. I threw up my sleeve and showed him my arm;” and the Seraph stretched 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 I won’t for you or for all the University. I’ve been Captain of the Eton Eight; but I didn’t keep my crew on tea and toast. I fattened ‘em regularly 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 every Friday from the Duke’s moors; they look uncommonly as if they wanted it!’ You should have seen his face!—fatten the Eight! He didn’t let me do that, of course; but he was very glad of my oar in his rowlocks, and I helped him beat Cambridge without training an hour myself, except so far as rowing hard went.”
And the Marquis of Rockingham, made thirsty by the recollection, dipped his 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 flesh off him like a jockey, he ought to be struck out for the stakes, to my mind. ‘Tisn’t a question of riding, then, nor yet of pluck, or of management; it’s nothing but a question of pounds, and of who can stand the 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 us of them, Vere; you’re such a quintessence of decorum and respectability yourself! I say—anybody know anything of this fellow of the Tenth that’s to ride Trelawney’s chestnut?”
“Jimmy Delmar! Oh, yes; I know Jimmy,” answered Lord Cosmo Wentworth, of the Scots Fusileers, from the far depths of an arm-chair. “Knew him at Aldershot. Fine rider; give you a good bit of trouble, Beauty. Hasn’t been in England for years; troop been such a while at Calcutta. The Fancy take to him rather; offering very freely on him this morning in the 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 mare D’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 the loving loyalty characteristic of the House of Lyonnesse, that to monarchs and to friends had often cost it very dear.
“You put your faith in the wrong quarter, Rock; I may fail you, he never will,” said Cecil, with ever so slight a dash of sadness in his words; the thought crossed him of how boldly, how straightly, how gallantly the horse always breasted and conquered his difficulties—did he himself deal half so well with his own?
“Well! you both of you carry all our money and all our credit; so for the fair fame of the Household do ‘all you know.’ I haven’t hedged a shilling, 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 very strong,” said Cecil languidly. The answer was indifferent, and certainly thankless; but under his drooped lids a glance, frank and warm, rested for 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 of the Service, for the next hour in the Tabak-Parliament, while the great clouds of scented smoke circled