Under Two Flags (Romance Classic). Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)
at La Marche last year, and the racing at Vincennes — didn’t take a thing that could make flesh — muscles like iron, you know — never touched a soda even ——”
“I’ve trained, too,” said Bertie submissively; “look how I’ve been waltzing! There isn’t harder work than that for any fellow. A deuxtemps with the Duchess takes it out of you like any spin over the flat.”
His censurers laughed, but did not give in their point.
“You’ve run shocking risks, Beauty,” said Chesterfield; “the King’s in fine running-form; don’t say he isn’t; but you’ve said scores of times what a deal of riding he takes. Now, can you tell us yourself that you’re in as hard condition as you were when you won the Military, eh?”
Cecil shook his head with a sigh.
“I don’t think I am; I’ve had things to try me, you see. There was that Verschoyle’s proposal. I did absolutely think at one time she’d marry me before I could protest against it! Then there was that shock to one’s whole nervous system, when that indigo man, who took Lady Laura’s house, asked us to dinner, and actually thought we should go! — and there was a scene, you know, of all earthly horrors, when Mrs. Gervase was so near eloping with me, and Gervase cut up rough, instead of pitying me; and then the field-days were so many, and so late into the season; and I exhausted myself so at the Belvoir theatricals at Easter; and I toiled so atrociously playing ‘Almaviva’ at your place, Seraph — a private opera’s galley slave’s work! — and, altogether, I’ve had a good many things to pull me down since the winter,” concluded Bertie, with a plaintive self-condolence over his truffles.
The rest of his condemning judges laughed, and passed the plea of sympathy; the Coldstreamer alone remained censorious and untouched.
“Pull you down! You’ll never pull off the race if you sit drinking liqueurs all the morning!” growled that censor. “Look at that!”
Bertie glanced at the London telegram tossed across to him, sent from a private and confidential agent.
“Betting here — two to one on L’Etoile; Irish Roan offered and taken freely. Slight decline in closing prices for the King; getting on French bay rather heavily at midnight. Fancy there’s a commission out against the King. Looks suspicious.” Cecil shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows a little.
“All the better for us. Take all they’ll lay against me. It’s as good as our having a ‘Commission out’; and if any cads get one against us it can’t mean mischief, as it would with professional jocks.”
“Are you so sure of yourself, Beauty?”
Beauty shook his head repudiatingly.
“Never am sure of anything, much less of myself. I’m a chameleon, a perfect chameleon!”
“Are you so sure of the King, then?”
“My dear fellow, no! I ask you in reason, how can I be sure of what isn’t proved? I’m like that country fellow the old story tells of; he believed in fifteen shillings because he’d once had it in his hand; others, he’d heard, believed in a pound; but, for his part, he didn’t, because he’d never seen it. Now that was a man who’d never commit himself; he might had had the Exchequer! I’m the same; I believe the King can win at a good many things because I’ve seen him do ’em; but I can’t possibly tell whether he can get this, because I’ve never ridden him for it. I shall be able to tell you at three o’clock — but that you don’t care for ——”
And Bertie, exhausted with making such a lengthened exposition — the speeches he preferred were monosyllabic — completed his sins against training with a long draught of claret-cup.
“Then what the devil do you mean by telling us to pile our pots on you?” asked the outraged Coldstreamer, with natural wrath.
“Faith is a beautiful sight!” said Bertie, with solemnity.
“Offered on the altar of the Jews!” laughed the Seraph, as he turned him away from the breakfast table by the shoulders. “Thanks, Beauty; I’ve ‘four figures’ on you, and you’ll be good enough to win them for me. Let’s have a look at the King. They are just going to walk him over.”
Cecil complied; while he lounged away with the others to the stables, with a face of the most calm, gentle, weary indifference in the world, the thought crossed him for a second of how very near he was to the wind. The figures in his betting-book were to the tune of several thousands, one way or another. If he won this morning it would be all right, of course; if he lost — even Beauty, odd mixture of devil-may-care and languor though he was, felt his lips grow, for the moment, hot and cold by turns as he thought of that possible contingency.
The King looked in splendid condition; he knew well enough what was up again, knew what was meant by that extra sedulous dressing-down, that setting muzzle that had been buckled on him some nights previous, the limitation put to his drink, the careful trial spins in the gray of the mornings, the conclusive examination of his plates by a skillful hand; he knew what was required of him, and a horse in nobler condition never stepped out in body clothing, as he was ridden slowly down on to the plains of Iffesheim. The Austrian Dragoon, a Count and a Chamberlain likewise, who was to ride his only possible rival, the French horse L’Etoile, pulled his tawny silken mustaches as he saw the great English hero come up the course, and muttered to himself, “L’affaire est finie.” L’Etoile was a brilliant enough bay in his fashion, but Count Ruteroth knew the measure of his pace and powers too thoroughly to expect him to live against the strides of the Guards’ gray.
“My beauty, won’t you cut those German fellows down!” muttered Rake, the enthusiast, in the saddling inclosure. “As for those fools what go agin you, you’ll put them in a hole, and no mistake. French horse, indeed! Why, you’ll spread-eagle all them Mossoos’ and Meinherrs’ cattle in a brace of seconds —”
Rake’s foe, the head groom, caught him up savagely.
“Won’t you never learn decent breeding? When we wins we wins on the quiet, and when we loses we loses as if we liked it; all that braying, and flaunting, and boasting is only fit for cads. The ‘oss is in tip-top condition; let him show what he can do over furren ground.”
“Lucky for him, then, that he hasn’t got you across the pigskin; you’d rope him, I believe, as soon as look at him, if it was made worth your while,” retorted Rake, in caustic wrath; his science of repartee chiefly lay in a successful “plant,” and he was here uncomfortably conscious that his opponent was in the right of the argument, as he started through the throng to put his master into the “shell” of the Shire-famous scarlet and white.
“Tip-top condition, my boy — tip-top, and no mistake,” murmured Mr. Willon for the edification of those around them as the saddle-girths were buckled on, and the Guards’ Crack stood the cynosure of every eye at Iffesheim.
Then, in his capacity as head attendant on the hero, he directed the exercise bridle to be taken off, and with his own hands adjusted a new and handsome one, slung across his arm.
“’Tis a’most a pity. ’Tis a’most a pity,” thought the worthy, as he put the curb on the King; “but I shouldn’t have been haggravated with that hinsolent soldiering chap. There, my boy! if you’ll win with a painted quid, I’m a Dutchman.”
Forest King champed his bit between his teeth a little; it tasted bitter; he tossed his head and licked it with his tongue impatiently; the taste had got down his throat and he did not like its flavor; he turned his deep, lustrous eyes with a gentle patience on the crowd about him, as though asking them what was the matter with him. No one moved his bit; the only person who could have had such authority was busily giving the last polish to his coat with a fine handkerchief — that glossy neck which had been so dusted many a time with the cobweb coronet-broidered handkerchiefs of great ladies — and his instincts, glorious as they were, were not wise enough to tell him to kick his head groom down, then and there, with one mortal blow, as his poisoner and betrayer.
The King