Part 7 (1/2)
THE END OF A RINGING RUN.
”Tally-ho! is the word, clap spurs and let's follow. The world has no charm like a rattling view-halloa!”
Is hardly to be denied by anybody in this land of fast bursts and gallant M. F. H.'s, whether they ”ride to hunt,” or ”hunt to ride,” in the immortal distinction of a.s.sheton Smith's old whip; the latter cla.s.s, by the bye, becoming far and away the larger, in these days of rattling gallops and desperate breathers. Who cares to patter after a sly old dog fox, that, fat and wary, leads the pack a tedious, interminable wind, in and out through gorse and spinney, bricks himself up in a drain, and takes an hour to be dug out, dodges about till twilight, and makes the hounds pick the scent slowly and wretchedly over marsh and through water? Who would not give fifty guineas a second for the glorious thirty minutes of racing that show steam and steel over fence and fallow in a clipping rush, without a check from find to finish? So be it ever! The riding that graces the s.h.i.+res, that makes Tedworth and Pytchley, the Duke's and the Fitzwilliam's, household words and ”names beloved”--that fills Melton and Market Harborough, and makes the best flirts of the ballroom gallop fifteen miles to covert, careless of hail or rain, mire or slush, mist or cold, so long as it is a fine scenting wind--is the same riding that sent the Six Hundred down in to the blaze of the Muscovite guns; that in our fathers' days gave to Grant's Hussars their swoop, like eagles, on to the rearguard at Morales, and that, in the grand old East and the rich trackless West, makes exiled campaigners with high English names seek and win an aristeia of their own at the head of their wild Irregular Horse, who would charge h.e.l.l itself at their bidding.
Now in all the service there was not a man who loved hunting better than Bertie. Though he was incorrigibly lazy, and inconceivably effeminate in every one of his habits; though he suggested a portable lounging-chair as an improvement at battues, so that you might shoot sitting; drove to every breakfast and garden party in the season in his brougham with the blinds down lest a grain of dust should touch him; thought a waltz too exhaustive, and a saunter down Pall Mall too tiring, and asked to have the end of a novel told him in the clubs, because it was too much trouble to read on a warm day; though he was more indolent than any spoiled Creole--”Beauty” never failed to head the first flight, and adored a hard day cross country, with an east wind in his eyes and the sleet in his teeth. The only trouble was to make him get up in time for it.
”Mr. Cecil, sir; if you please, the drag will be round in ten minutes,”
said Rake, with a dash of desperation for the seventh time into his chamber, one fine scenting morning.
”I don't please,” answered Cecil sleepily, finis.h.i.+ng his cup of coffee, and reading a novel of La Demirep's.
”The other gentlemen are all down, sir, and you will be too late.”
”Not a bit. They must wait for me,” yawned Bertie.
Crash came the Seraph's thunder on the panels of the door, and a strong volume of Turkish through the keyhole: ”Beauty, Beauty, are you dead?”
”Now, what an inconsequent question!” expostulated Cecil, with appealing rebuke. ”If a fellow were dead, how the devil could he say he was? Do be logical, Seraph.”
”Get up!” cried the Seraph with a deafening rataplan, and a final dash of his colossal stature into the chamber. ”We've all done breakfast; the traps are coming round; you'll be an hour behind time at the meet.”
Bertie lifted his eyes with plaintive resignation from the Demirep's yellow-papered romance.
”I'm really in an interesting chapter: Aglae has just had a marquis kill his son, and two brothers kill each other in the Bois, about her, and is on the point of discovering a man she's in love with to be her own grandfather; the complication is absolutely thrilling,” murmured Beauty, whom nothing could ever ”thrill”--not even plunging down the Matterhorn, losing ”long odds in thou'” over the Oaks, or being sunned in the eyes of the fairest woman of Europe.
The Seraph laughed, and tossed the volume straight to the other end of the chamber.
”Confound you, Beauty; get up!”
”Never swear, Seraph; not ever so mildly,” yawned Cecil, ”it's gone out, you know; only the cads and the clergy can d.a.m.n one nowadays; it's such bad style to be so impulsive. Look! You have broken the back of my Demirep!”
”You deserve to break the King's back over the first cropper,” laughed the Seraph. ”Do get up!”
”Bother!” sighed the victim, raising himself with reluctance, while the Seraph disappeared in a cloud of Turkish.
Neither Bertie's indolence nor his insouciance was a.s.sumed; utter carelessness was his nature, utter impa.s.sability was his habit, and he was truly for the moment loath to leave his bed, his coffee, and his novel; he must have his leg over the saddle, and feel the strain on his arms of that ”pulling” pace with which the King always went when once he settled into his stride, before he would really think about winning.
The hunting breakfasts of our forefathers and of our present squires found no favor with Bertie; a slice of game and a gla.s.s of Curacoa were all he kept the drag waiting to swallow; and the four bays going at a pelting pace, he and the rest of the Household who were gathered at Royallieu were by good luck in time for the throw-off of the Quorn, where the hero o' the Blue Ribbon was dancing impatiently under Willon's hand, scenting the fresh, keen, sunny air, and knowing as well what all those bits of scarlet straying in through field and lane, gate and gap, meant, as well as though the merry notes of the master's horn were winding over the gorse. The meet was brilliant and very large; showing such a gathering as only the Melton country can; and foremost among the crowd of carriages, hacks, and hunters, were the beautiful roan mare Vivandiere of the Lady Guenevere, mounted by that exquisite peeress in her violet habit and her tiny velvet hat; and the pony equipage of the Zu-Zu, all glittering with azure and silver, leopard rugs, and snowy reins: the breadth of half an acre of gra.s.sland was between them, but the groups of men about them were tolerably equal for number and for rank.
”Take Zu-Zu off my hands for this morning, Seraph; there's a good fellow,” murmured Cecil, as he swung himself into saddle. The Seraph gave a leonine growl, sighed, and acquiesced. He detested women in the hunting-field, but that sweetest tempered giant of the Brigades never refused anything to anybody--much less to ”Beauty.”
To an uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants--bending to his Countess with a reverent devotion that a.s.suaged whatever of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival might be silently lurking in her proud heart; wheeling up to the pony-trap under cover of speaking to the men from Egerton Lodge, and restoring the Zu-Zu from sulkiness, by a propitiatory offer of a little gold sherry-flash, studded with turquoises, just ordered for her from Regent Street, which, however, she ungraciously contemned, because she thought it had only cost twenty guineas; anchoring the victimized Seraph beside her by an adroit ”Ah! by the way, Rock, give Zu-Zu one of your rose-scented papelitos; she's been wild to smoke them”; and leaving the Zu-Zu content at securing a future Duke, was free to canter back and flirt on the offside of Vivandiere, till the ”signal,” the ”cast,”
made with consummate craft, the waving of the white sterns among the brushwood, the tightening of girths, the throwing away of cigars, the challenge, the whimper, and the ”stole away!” sent the field headlong down the course after as fine a long-legged greyhound fox as ever carried a brush.
Away he went in a rattling spin, breaking straight at once for the open, the hounds on the scent like mad: with a tally-ho that thundered through the cloudless, crisp, cold, glittering noon, the field dashed off pell-mell; the violet habit of her ladys.h.i.+p, and the azure skirts of the Zu-Zu foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys while Cecil on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white weight-carrier, as thoroughbred and colossal as himself, led the way with them. The scent was hot as death in the spinneys, and the pack raced till nothing but a good one could live with them; few but good ones, however, were to be found with the Quorn, and the field held together superbly over the first fence, and on across the gra.s.sland, the game old fox giving no sign of going to covert, but running straight as a crow flies, while the pace grew terrific.
”Beats c.o.c.k-fighting!” cried the Zu-Zu, while her blue skirts fluttered in the wind, as she lifted Cecil's brown mare, very cleverly, over a bilberry hedge, and set her little white teeth with a will on the Seraph's attar-of-rose cigarette. Lady Guenevere heard the words as Vivandiere rose in the air with the light bound of a roe, and a slight superb dash of scorn came into her haughty eyes for the moment; she never seemed to know that ”that person” in the azure habit even existed, but the contempt awoke in her, and shone in her glance, while she rode on as that fair leader of the Belvoir and Pytchley alone could ride over the fallows.