Part 4 (1/2)
Pas de Charge, much behind, refused the yawner; his strength was not more than his courage, but both had been strained too severely at first.
Montacute struck the spurs into him with a savage blow over the head; the madness was its own punishment; the poor brute rose blindly to the jump, and missed the bank with a reel and a crash; Sir Eyre was hurled out into the brook, and the hope of the Heavies lay there with his breast and forelegs resting on the ground, his hindquarters in the water, and his neck broken. Pas de Charge would never again see the starting flag waved, or hear the music of the hounds, or feel the gallant life throb and glow through him at the rallying notes of the horn. His race was run.
Not knowing, or looking, or heeding what happened behind, the trio tore on over the meadow and the plowed; the two favorites neck by neck, the game little mare hopelessly behind through that one fatal moment over Brixworth. The turning-flags were pa.s.sed; from the crowds on the course a great hoa.r.s.e roar came louder and louder, and the shouts rang, changing every second: ”Forest King wins!” ”Bay Regent wins!” ”Scarlet and White's ahead!” ”Violet's up with him!” ”A cracker on the King!”
”Ten to one on the Regent!” ”Guards are over the fence first!” ”Guards are winning!” ”Guards are losing!” ”Guards are beat!”
Were they?
As the shout rose, Cecil's left stirrup-leather snapped and gave way; at the pace they were going most men, aye, and good riders too, would have been hurled out of their saddle by the shock; he scarcely swerved; a moment to ease the King and to recover his equilibrium, then he took the pace up again as though nothing had chanced. And his comrades of the Household, when they saw this through their race-gla.s.ses, broke through their serenity and burst into a cheer that echoed over the gra.s.slands and the coppices like a clarion, the grand rich voice of the Seraph leading foremost and loudest--a cheer that rolled mellow and triumphant down the cold, bright air like the blast of trumpets, and thrilled on Bertie's ear where he came down the course, a mile away. It made his heart beat quicker with a victorious, headlong delight, as his knees pressed close into Forest King's flanks, and, half stirrupless like the Arabs, he thundered forward to the greatest riding feat of his life. His face was very calm still, but his blood was in tumult, the delirium of pace had got on him, a minute of life like this was worth a year, and he knew that he would win or die for it, as the land seemed to fly like a black sheet under him, and, in that killing speed, fence and hedge and double and water all went by him like a dream; whirling underneath him as the gray stretched, stomach to earth, over the level, and rose to leap after leap.
For that instant's pause, when the stirrup broke, threatened to lose him the race.
He was more than a length behind the Regent, whose hoofs as they dashed the ground up sounded like thunder, and for whose herculean strength the plow had no terrors; it was more than the lead to keep now, there was ground to cover--and the King was losing like Wild Geranium. Cecil felt drunk with that strong, keen west wind that blew so strongly in his teeth, a pa.s.sionate excitation was in him, every breath of winter air that rushed in its bracing currents round him seemed to lash him like a stripe--the Household to look on and see him beaten!
Certain wild blood, that lay latent in Cecil under the tranquil gentleness of temper and of custom, woke and had the mastery; he set his teeth hard, and his hands clinched like steel on the bridle. ”Oh, my beauty, my beauty!” he cried, all unconsciously half aloud, as they cleared the thirty-sixth fence. ”Kill me if you like, but don't fail me!”
As though Forest King heard the prayer and answered it with all his hero's heart, the splendid form launched faster out, the stretching stride stretched farther yet with lightning spontaneity, every fiber strained, every nerve struggled; with a magnificent bound like an antelope the gray recovered the ground he had lost, and pa.s.sed Bay Regent by a quarter-length. It was a neck-and-neck race once more, across the three meadows with the last and lower fences that were between them and the final leap of all; that ditch of artificial water with the towering double hedge of oak rails and of blackthorn, that was reared black and grim and well-nigh hopeless just in front of the Grand Stand. A roar like the roar of the sea broke up from the thronged course as the crowd hung breathless on the even race; ten thousand shouts rang as thrice ten thousand eyes watched the closing contest, as superb a sight as the s.h.i.+res ever saw; while the two ran together--the gigantic chestnut, with every ma.s.sive sinew swelled and strained to tension, side by side with the marvelous grace, the s.h.i.+ning flanks, and the Arabian-like head of the Guards' horse.
Louder and wilder the shrieked tumult rose: ”The chestnut beats!” ”The gray beats!” ”Scarlet's ahead!” ”Bay Regent's caught him!” ”Violet's winning, Violet's wining!” ”The King's neck by neck!” ”The King's beating!” ”The Guards will get it!” ”The Guard's crack has it!” ”Not yet, not yet!” ”Violet will thrash him at the jump!” ”Now for it!” ”The Guards, the Guards, the Guards!” ”Scarlet will win!” ”The King has the finis.h.!.+” ”No, no, no, no!”
Sent along at a pace that Epsom flat never eclipsed, sweeping by the Grand Stand like the flash of electric flame, they ran side to side one moment more; their foam flung on each other's withers, their breath hot in each other's nostrils, while the dark earth flew beneath their stride. The blackthorn was in front behind five bars of solid oak; the water yawning on its farther side, black and deep and fenced, twelve feet wide if it were an inch, with the same thorn wall beyond it; a leap no horse should have been given, no Steward should have set. Cecil pressed his knees closer and closer, and worked the gallant hero for the test; the surging roar of the throng, though so close, was dull on his ear; he heard nothing, knew nothing, saw nothing but that lean chestnut head beside him, the dull thud on the turf of the flying gallop, and the black wall that reared in his face. Forest King had done so much, could he have stay and strength for this?
Cecil's hands clinched unconsciously on the bridle, and his face was very pale--pale with excitation--as his foot, where the stirrup was broken, crushed closer and harder against the gray's flanks.
”Oh, my darling, my beauty--now!”
One touch of the spur--the first--and Forest King rose at the leap, all the life and power there were in him gathered for one superhuman and crowning effort; a flash of time, not half a second in duration, and he was lifted in the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, stakes and rails, and thorn and water lay beneath him black and gaunt and shapeless, yawning like a grave; one bound, even in mid-air, one last convulsive impulse of the gathered limbs, and Forest King was over!
And as he galloped up the straight run-in, he was alone.
Bay Regent had refused the leap.
As the gray swept to the Judge's chair, the air was rent with deafening cheers that seemed to reel like drunken shouts from the mult.i.tude.
”The Guards win, the Guards win!” and when his rider pulled up at the distance with the full sun s.h.i.+ning on the scarlet and white, with the gold glisten of the embroidered ”Coeur Vaillant se fait Royaume,” Forest King stood in all his glory, winner of the Soldiers' Blue Ribbon, by a feat without its parallel in all the annals of the Gold Vase.
But, as the crowd surged about him, and the mad cheering crowned his victory, and the Household in the splendor of their triumph and the fullness of their grat.i.tude rushed from the drags and the stands to cl.u.s.ter to his saddle, Bertie looked as serenely and listlessly nonchalant as of old, while he nodded to the Seraph with a gentle smile.
”Rather a close finish, eh? Have you any Moselle Cup going there? I'm a little thirsty.”
Outsiders would much sooner have thought him defeated than triumphant; no one, who had not known him, could possibly have imagined that he had been successful; an ordinary spectator would have concluded that, judging by the resigned weariness of his features, he had won the race greatly against his own will, and to his own infinite ennui. No one could have dreamt that he was thinking in his heart of hearts how pa.s.sionately he loved the gallant beast that had been victor with him, and that, if he had followed out the momentary impulse in him, he could have put his arms round the n.o.ble bowed neck and kissed the horse like a woman!
The Moselle Cup was brought to refresh the tired champion, and before he drank it Bertie glanced at a certain place in the Grand Stand and bent his head as the cup touched his lips: it was a dedication of his victory to the Queen of Beauty. Then he threw himself lightly out of saddle, and, as Forest King was led away for the after-ceremony of bottling, rubbing, and clothing, his rider, regardless of the roar and hubbub of the course, and of the tumultuous cheers that welcomed both him and his horse from the men who pressed round him, into whose pockets he had put thousands upon thousands, and whose ringing hurrahs greeted the ”Guards'
Crack,” pa.s.sed straight up toward Jimmy Delmar and held out his hand.
”You gave me a close thing, Major Delmar. The Vase is as much yours as mine; if your chestnut had been as good a water jumper as he is a fencer, we should have been neck to neck at the finish.”
The browned Indian-sunned face of the Lancer broke up into a cordial smile, and he shook the hand held out to him warmly; defeat and disappointment had cut him to the core, for Jimmy was the first riding man of the Light Cavalry; but he would not have been the frank campaigner that he was if he had not responded to the graceful and generous overture of his rival and conqueror.
”Oh, I can take a beating!” he said good-humoredly; ”at any rate, I am beat by the Guards; and it is very little humiliation to lose against such riding as yours and such a magnificent brute as your King. I congratulate you most heartily, most sincerely.”