Part 2 (1/2)
Nothing meant anything under 60,000 pounds a year with Cecil, as the minimum of monetary necessities in this world, and a look of genuine annoyance and trouble, most unusual there, was on his face, the picture of carelessness and gentle indifference habitually, though shadowed now as he crossed the courtyard after his after-midnight visit to his steeple-chaser. He had backed Forest King heavily, and stood to win or lose a cracker on his own riding on the morrow; and, though he had found sufficient to bring him into the s.h.i.+res, he had barely enough lying on his dressing-table, up in the bachelor suite within, to pay his groom's book, or a notion where to get more, if the King should find his match over the ridge and furrow in the morning!
It was not pleasant: a cynical, savage, world-disgusted Timon derives on the whole a good amount of satisfaction from his break-down in the fine philippics against his contemporaries that it is certain to afford, and the magnificent grievances with which it furnishes him; but when life is very pleasant to a man, and the world very fond of him; when existence is perfectly smooth,--bar that single pressure of money,--and is an incessantly changing kaleidoscope of London seasons, Paris winters, ducal houses in the hunting months, dinners at the Pall Mall Clubs, dinners at the Star and Garter, dinners irreproachable everywhere; cottage for Ascot week, yachting with the R. V. Y. Club, Derby handicaps at Hornsey, pretty chorus-singers set up in Bijou villas, das.h.i.+ng rosieres taken over to Baden, warm corners in Belvoir, Savernake, and Longeat battues, and all the rest of the general programme, with no drawback to it, except the duties at the Palace, the heat of a review, or the extravagance of a pampered lionne--then to be pulled up in that easy, swinging gallop for sheer want of a golden shoe, as one may say, is abominably bitter, and requires far more philosophy to endure than Timon would ever manage to master. It is a bore, an unmitigated bore; a harsh, hateful, unrelieved martyrdom that the world does not see, and that the world would not pity if it did.
”Never mind! Things will come right. Forest King never failed me yet; he is as full of running as a Derby winner, and he'll go over the yawners like a bird,” thought Cecil, who never confronted his troubles with more than sixty seconds' thought, and who was of that light, impa.s.sible, half-levity, half-languor of temperament that both throws off worry easily and s.h.i.+rks it persistently. ”Sufficient for the day,” etc., was the essence of his creed; and if he had enough to lay a fiver at night on the rubber, he was quite able to forget for the time that he wanted five hundred for settling-day in the morning, and had not an idea how to get it. There was not a trace of anxiety on him when he opened a low arched door, pa.s.sed down a corridor, and entered the warm, full light of that chamber of liberty, that sanctuary of the persecuted, that temple of refuge, thrice blessed in all its forms throughout the land, that consecrated Mecca of every true believer in the divinity of the meerschaum, and the paradise of the nargile--the smoking-room.
A s.p.a.cious, easy chamber, too; lined with the laziest of divans, seen just now through a fog of smoke, and tenanted by nearly a score of men in every imaginable loose velvet costume, and with faces as well known in the Park at six o'clock in May, and on the Heath in October; in Paris in January, and on the Solent in August; in Pratt's of a summer's night, and on the Moors in an autumn morning, as though they were features that came round as regularly as the ”July” or the Waterloo Cup. Some were puffing away in calm, meditative comfort, in silence that they would not have broken for any earthly consideration; others were talking hard and fast, and through the air heavily weighted with the varieties of tobacco, from tiny cigarettes to giant cheroots, from rough bowls full of cavendish to sybaritic rose-water hookahs, a Babel of sentences rose together: ”Gave him too much riding, the idiot.” ”Take the field, bar one.” ”Nothing so good for the mare as a little niter and antimony in her mash.” ”Not at all! The Regent and Rake cross in the old strain, always was black-tan with a white frill.” ”The Earl's as good a fellow as Lady Flora; always give you a mount.” ”Nothing like a Kate Terry though, on a bright day, for salmon.” ”Faster thing I never knew; found at twenty minutes past eleven, and killed just beyond Longdown Water at ten to twelve.” All these various phrases were rus.h.i.+ng in among each other, and tossed across the eddies of smoke in the conflicting tongues loosened in the tabagie and made eloquent, though slightly inarticulate, by pipe-stems; while a tall, fair man, with the limbs of a Hercules, the chest of a prize-fighter, and the face of a Raphael Angel, known in the Household as Seraph, was in the full blood of a story of whist played under difficulties in the Doncaster express.
”I wanted a monkey; I wanted monkeys awfully,” he was stating as Forest King's owner came into the smoking-room.
”Did you, Seraph? The 'Zoo' or the Clubs could supply you with apes fully developed to any amount,” said Bertie, as he threw himself down.
”You be hanged!” laughed the Seraph, known to the rest of the world as the Marquis of Rockingham, son of the Duke of Lyonnesse. ”I wished monkeys, but the others wished ponies and hundreds, so I gave in; Vandebur and I won two rubbers, and we'd just begun the third when the train stopped with a crash; none of us dropped the cards though, but the tricks and the scores all went down with the shaking. 'Can't play in that row,' said Charlie, for the women were shrieking like mad, and the engine was roaring like my mare Philippa--I'm afraid she'll never be cured, poor thing!--so I put my head out and asked what was up? We'd run into a cattle train. Anybody hurt? No, n.o.body hurt; but we were to get out. 'I'll be shot if I get out,' I told 'em, 'till I've finished the rubber.' 'But you must get out,' said the guard; 'carriages must be moved.' 'n.o.body says ”must” to him,' said Van (he'd drank more Perles du Rhin than was good for him in Doncaster); 'don't you know the Seraph?'
Man stared. 'Yes, sir; know the Seraph, sir; leastways, did, sir, afore he died; see him once at Moulsey Mill, sir; his ”one two” was amazin'.
Waters soon threw 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, subst.i.tuting 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 s.h.i.+res 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 wa.s.sail 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; c.o.xswain came, awful strict little fellow, docked his men of all their fun--took plenty himself though! c.o.xswain 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.”