P. C. WREN - Tales Of The Foreign Legion. P. C. Wren
a place in the Point-to-Point.
The proverbs say that where there is a will there is a way, and that Heaven helps those that help themselves.
She would simply live to sell Belzébuth to dear rich old Colonel Merlonorot for three thousand francs, as a racer, hunter, hack in both saddles, bright trapper, and confidential nursery-pony! For the next month she would give mind, soul, and body to winning the Desert Point-to-Point....
* * *
Belzébuth was taken for a long quiet ride next morning, and for another in the evening, and his mistress personally superintended his feed and toilet.
Next day he was introduced to a new and glorious place where the going was beautiful and you went straight ahead between railings, with plenty of room and no obstacles.
He took his furlong burst on the race-course at a good pace, and improved daily at two, three, and four furlongs.
Madame Paës' notions of training were original, but based on the sound principle, "Train for what you have to do by repeatedly doing it—and work up gradually to the first doing."
After a week Belzébuth was doing his mile on the race-course and doing it uncommon well (as one or two observers noted). Also he went down the lane of jumps cleverly and willingly, beautifully schooled.
One morning, Colonel Merlonorot noticed Madame Paës at the meet, on a very likely-looking bay Arab—good in the legs, well ribbed up, high in the withers, and with a blood look about him. ("He liked the look of that beast. Nom d'un pipe, he did!")
Madame Paës had not hunted since she had scrambled about with the North Devons in Angleterre—a long-legged, long-haired Diana of fourteen (at a Devonshire school) on a fat pony.
She was now a tiny, slim, pale, big-eyed Diana of twenty-four—and as good as a jockey. But she looked as though she had been too long in Exile (which was exactly the case), and fitter for a deck-chair on a homeward-bound liner than for a saddle in the hunting-field....
When would they get off? How would Belzébuth behave? Would he belie his nursery mildness and go fou when it was a case of full cry and all away? Would the unwonted oats and the rousing on the race-course and over the jumps react unfavourably now for the weak-backed, weary rider? He was certain to be méchant, and might buck or bolt. Would trembling hands and aching arms be unable to hold him? How her back ached, too! ... Dear old Belzébuth, be good! It's for the babies and Guillaume.... God knew she'd sooner be in bed than in the midst of this gay throng of strong and happy men and women, well-content, well-clad, well-fed....
Well-fed! A melancholy fact. Madame Paës, wife of a French commissioned officer, was not well fed. A woman of the unselfish sort does not buy costly tonic-foods, dainties, and wines, and eat the money that is sorely needed for other things. For plain food she had no appetite. To people who have been brought up in a château atmosphere, an income—which to ci-devant dwellers in Montmartre or the bourgeois suburbs is wealth—may be degrading poverty.
The Paës had expenses which it was due to their honour and proper pride to have—and which are not due to the honour and proper pride of the bourgeoisie.... And these expenses and the health of Guillaume and the babies came before food and clothes for Madame Paës, in Madame Paës' opinion.
A note of music from the clump of jungle that had swallowed up the hounds. A crash of the grand wild music. A line! Hounds are off and the first "run" is on.
Belzébuth commenced by a series of bounds, the outcome of a high and joyous heart, good feeding, and good condition. He felt a touch of the curb, arched his back in protest, and went along at a smart canter, a vision of dainty horse-flesh.
The jackal got into a vineyard, was put out again, and had to make for open country.
It was fine going, and Madame Paës let Belzébuth go. He went—and in five minutes the first rider behind the Master was Madame Paës, and she was holding Belzébuth in, or he would have passed the Master's big Syrian-Barb who was doing his possible under Colonel de Longueville's fifteen stone.
When the end came, Madame Paës was in at the death, lengths ahead of the second arrival, and minutes ahead of the field. Belzébuth had hardly turned a hair, and the Master presented the rider with the brush and a compliment. Madame Paës took her pony home, the while the field jogged on to the next likely cactus covert.
In another week Belzébuth was doing two kilometres on the race-course, morning and evening.
At the next meet, a very long run (twenty-two kilometres, the Master said) was finished by a field of four arriving thus: the Master and Madame Paës together; Captain Dutoit of the Spahis, seconds later; fourth man, Major Bruil of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, minutes later. Rest nowhere—and strung out for miles. Belzébuth had been held, while the other horses had been spurred.
Belzébuth hunted twice more, and the hunt-correspondent of the "Depêche Algérienne" singled him out for high praise.
Madame Paës dropped race-course practice and hunting, and let him do exercise walks in the compound on one day, and a point-to-point run on another.
Riding out alone to some scrubby, sandy jungle, she would endeavour to estimate a two-kilometre distance, note a clump of palms, a tree, a hut, a hillock, and other natural landmarks, and then ride from one to the other at Belzébuth's best speed.
Once she had a narrow escape of settling the question of Belzébuth's value, and all other values, finally. Emerging at a furious gallop from a cactus-strewn area, in which pace could only be maintained and disaster avoided by skilful "bending," she came upon a beautiful smooth patch with a gentle rise ending in—a wadi or gully, thirty feet deep and fifty wide. She realized the fact in time to bring Belzébuth round in a curve that missed the precipice by inches.
On the Wednesday before the Saturday on which the race would be run, Madame Paës took Belzébuth out for his last training gallop. In the middle of it she put him at a terrasse, a "bund," or low earthen embankment, round what had once been a cultivated field.
The three-foot banks Belzébuth preferred to clear. The four-foot variety he liked to treat as on-and-offs—alighting on the two-foot top and leaving it like a bird.
This particular bank was a delusion and a snare.
Though fair-seeming to the eye on Madame Paës' side of it, on the other it was eroded, crumbling, beetling.
Belzébuth landed beautifully on the top—and horse and rider went down in a cloud of dust and an avalanche of clods and stones.
The horse turned a complete somersault across the woman.
But the flood that had caused the erosion had made some amends by scooping a channel at the base of the undermined bank, and instead of breaking every bone in Madame Paës' body and crushing her chest, Belzébuth's weight forced her into this channel and rested on its sides.
He arose and stood steady as a troop-horse.
His mistress lay still and white.
Soon she stirred, sat up—and straightened her tricorne hat. Then, too shaken to stand, sick and faint, giddy and stunned, not knowing whether she was seriously injured, she crawled to Belzébuth and examined his knees.
"Oh! Thank God!" she whispered, on finding that, instead of being broken as she had expected, they were unmarked.
What did her own injuries matter so long as Belzébuth's knees were right?
A blemish there—and two hundred francs was his price.
An hour later, Madame Paës, looking like death on a bay horse, rode into the compound of her villa and went straight to bed.
Next day she could not move.
On the Friday she was better, but unable to get up.
On Saturday she would leave her bed and, if necessary, be carried downstairs, driven to the starting-point,